Leslie Franke

eBible.com is a new web 2.0 online Bible study tool with tagging and searching among other features. (See my previous posts about eBible here and here.) A good way to enhance your eBible experience is to use the Mozilla Firefox web browser when browsing through eBible.

Firefox can make it easier to search for items in eBible. The first way is the most simple, install eBible’s Firefox search plugin and just like searching Google or Yahoo, you can search eBible from Firefox’s search box in the upper-right hand corner.

Secondly, you can use a keyword on a Firefox bookmark to search eBible by typing search terms into Firefox’s address bar. First you must create a search bookmark by doing the following:

1. Navigate to eBible.com.
2. Right-click on the search box at the top of the page.
3. From the context menu that appears click on the “Add a Keyword for this Search…” option.
4. Give a name to the new bookmark, such as ‘eBible Bible Search’.
5. Choose a keyword for the bookmark such as ‘eb’. You will type this string along with a search term in the Firefox address bar in order to search eBible.
6. Click on OK.

To use your new search bookmark, just type ‘eb’ into the address bar followed by a space and then the words to search eBible with, such as in the example below.

Finally you can search eBible with the help of the Firefox DictionarySearch extension. First you must install the extension. Once it is installed go into the extension options and set up a search term. Now whenever you’re reading a web page and want to look up a term or passage on eBible hightlight the words on the page, right-click, and from the context menu select the “Search eBible for _______” option.

The screen shot below shows how to set up DictionarySearch extension to search eBible’s Bibles, tags and answers. You can use any or all of the settings below. Each one will create a different search entry on the Firefox right-click menu.

Firefox also makes it easy to view eBible on your full screen in Windows, getting rid of the Windows Taskbar and many or all of the Firefox tool bars, thus allowing you to view more of the Bible on the screen at once. By default pressing the F11 key, when in Firefox, will hide the Windows Taskbar and Firefox menu bar. If you want even more screen space install the Firefox AutoHide extension and the full screen can now be devoted to reading eBible.

For those who are still looking for an invitation to eBible.com, Mobile Ministry Magazine is running a contest where an invitation is being given out to the person who best answers the question “Where will the Church be in relation to the use of mobile and Internet technology in 3 to 5 years?”.

See my review of eBible.com here.

eBible.com has undergone some significant updates recently adding several nice features.

1. Additional translations have been added. This makes it nice as you can set your default translation and/or view two translations side by side.

2. Tags have been added to eBible. You can now tag a verse(s) in the Bible with certain keywords. This looks like it could be useful in the future as more and more people start using eBible.

Note: See my orginial post on eBible here.

There are many Bible sites available on the web including the popular BibleGateway.com. A new Bible search engine called eBible, currently in invitation-only beta is a welcome addition to the scene. eBible is a “Web 2.0″ on-line Bible service that features a simple, slick interface and very good search capabilities.

eBible allows you to search by verse & keyword or by answers. Searching for a verse of scripture displays the verse in the context of the passage to which the verse belongs. Different translations can be viewed and/or multiple translations can be bought up in parallel, making it easy to compare verses. In addition, Biblical commentary is available in a collapsible sidebar on the left and in popups within the actual text. A search by keyword, delivers results which show the references to the term in scripture. A search by answers gives answers to the term searched for, referencing specific verses and passages in the Bible with links to the related scripture.

eBible is already a great online tool that shows great promise and provides a very useful tool as an online interactive Bible. The ability to compare translations is a nice tool as is the interactivity and accessibility built into eBible. As with any beta software there are areas that could be improved. It would be nice if there were more translations such as the NIV, probably not included due to licensing issues, and not all links are easily bookmarkable (cleaner URLs would be nice). Some people may also consider it a negative that eBible has sponsored links. I have tested eBible in Windows XP with the Mozilla Firefox browser and have experienced no real problems so far.

Google announced several new products yesterday as part of their media day, including Google Trends, a frequency query tool that displays how often Google users searched for a certain term over a period of time. It also includes a news volume graph which displays the number of times the search term appeared in Google News stories (this does not include blogs). In addition, you can compare up to five terms by separating each term with a comma and the results are broken down by language, region and city.

While I see the usefulness this will be to PR people and marketers, for the lay person like myself it makes for an interesting look at the popularity of certain products against other products or how their popularity has changed over time. For example, take a look at the Palm Treo versus the Blackberry. The slight lead the Blackberry has held over the Treo has remained fairly consistent over time. Compare the searches for the Treo 650 versus the Treo 700W over the last month or different Palm products in 2005. Google Trends is an interesting way to look at the large volume of search data compiled by Google’s users.

There are many sites on the web that allow the user to set up a personal, customized homepage. Google has recently jumped in the ring, becoming more and more competitive. The Google Personalized Home lets you add your own customized content, such as news, RSS feeds, stocks, weather, etc.

I am not a heavy user of the Google Personalized Home page but do use it to quickly get several pieces of information. What makes the Google Personalized Home page stand out is:

1. The Google Personalized Home page is clean and fast with no adds.
2. There is a mobile version that works very well on small devices such as a Palm.
3. The Personalized Home page is extensible. Besides the functionality the default addons (modules) give, you can also add different modules that allows each individual user to customize their page to their liking.

While the Google Personalized Home Page has the standard modules such as a weather forcast, Gmail preview, and RSS feeds, several other modules are worth having. They include the following:

1. Personalized Home - This module allows you to change the look (skin) of the Google Personalized Home page. A user can change the background colors, the column spacing, link and text color, and add a background.
2. Weather Map - Provides a weather map for a given zip code region.
3. Photos from Flickr - Provides a photo gallery/slideshow from Flickr. One large photo or nine smaller photos can be shown at a time.
4. Date and Time - Places a small calendar and clock on the page.
5. UPS Package Tracking - Tracks a UPS package.
6. Del.icio.us - Displays a user’s del.icio.us links with a favicon.
7. US Traffic Information - Displays Yahoo traffic information on a Google map for a given location.
8. Almanac - Calculates the sunrise, sunset and current moon phase.
9. Free Text Message - Send a free text message (US only).
10. Module Manager - A module that allows the user to save their favorite modules in cookies.

Note: There are many more modules available at Google Modules, an unofficial directory of modules to add to your Google Personalized Home page.

Rollyo has just released a tool that enables Mozilla Firefox users to create toolbar search engines, of up to 25 sites, very quickly. These search tools will install in the upper right hand corner of your browser along with the Google, Yahoo, etc. search engines. It is a very simple process to create one yourself or use one someone else has created.

Using a Rollyo Firefox search engine is easy. Look for the link on each search page that says “Click here to add the ___________ to your Firefox Search!”. Click on this link and then click on OK when Firefox asks if it can install the search engine. To use the search engine, just click on the little drop down error in the search box and choose the Rollyo search and away you go.

Here are my Rollyo searches. Anyone of these can be turned into a Firefox search engine.
Palm
Palm Software
Firefox

And others of note.
Palm Addict by Sam Mcloughlin
Firefox Development by Chris Pederick
Palm by 1src.com

Note: If you install a search engine which you do not want to continue using, it is easy to uninstall the search engine by using the Firefox SearchPluginHacks extension from IosArt. The SearchPluginHacks extension adds a entry to right-click menu in the search plugins drop-down list, which allows quickly deleting unwanted search engines.

Update: Rollyo has also developed a tool to allow a user to create and add a search engine to Firefox without having to register with Rollyo.