Almost five years ago I made a big purchase: I bought a copy of the Logos Bible Software. “Is the largest electronic library we have ever assembled!” the promo said. It contains nearly 400 titles worth over $8,000.00 in equivalent print editions!” I wasn’t sure what to think, but I got a good deal and decided to take the plunge.

The software was good, and it’s improved with every version. It’s become a major part of my library.

This morning, Logos is releasing Logos Bible Software 4. Bottom line: it’s excellent. I’ve been trying out the beta version for a while. It’s intuitive, flexible, easy to use, and visually engaging. I liked the previous versions, but this is a huge step forward in terms of user interface and in making the capabilities of the software more accessible.

What’s more, you can now access your library on an iPhone using a free new app. I downloaded this yesterday and I’m impressed.

A Mac version of Logos 4 is also on its way. I use the current version which is okay, but nowhere close to what’s being released today. It’s the main reason I use Boot Camp.

I’m old school when it comes to books. I still prefer reading most books on paper. But Logos is superior when it comes to commentaries, reference books, and older books like the B.B. Warfield Collection or the Charles Spurgeon Collection. It’s portable and easy to replace compared to physical books. And you can’t beat the price of the pre-publication deals.

I’m definitely a fan. You should check it out. They have a variety of packages, and upgrade discounts are available for existing customers.

Update: Discount code available here.

I’ve been blogging for almost seven years now. Most of that (until last December) has been on Movable Type. At the time, MT was by far the best blogging platform out of there, and I was happy with it for a long time.

Two things turned me off of Movable Type. One was my own doing. I had customized the installation to the extent that upgrading was a major chore, and one that I no longer desired. Also, the server load was quite heavy. I had my account suspended once for the demands it was putting on the server.

This January, I moved to Typepad. I got a free lifetime account with the Typepad for Journalists program. Typepad is good; they handle the back-end maintenance. I encountered a few problems:

• I had a couple of complaints that people couldn’t load the home page. I found that it didn’t always load the style sheet.
• Images posted on the site are really hard to get off if you ever decide to move.
• I missed tracking applications like Google Analytics and Mint.

So I’ve made the move to WordPress. WordPress seems fairly easy to maintain, and powerful as well. I’ve been impressed with things so far.

One thing is for sure: I hope it’s a very long time before I have to change blogging platforms, or spend hours on the back-end!

I remember when people worried about blogs dumbing everything down. People no longer read books, critics said, and could no longer sustain their attention for anything longer than blog posts.

That was before Twitter came along. In Twitter, you have 140 characters or less that you can use to communicate pretty much anything: what you’re up to, what you’re thinking. Anything goes.

I love Twitter, but everything has its drawbacks. Sometimes I wonder if we’re being trained to think in 140 characters or less. I also wonder if we’re being trained to go for breadth (a huge number of small messages coming in all the time) rather than depth (a small number of significant messages that need a deeper level of thinking).

It’s not just Twitter either. The constant barrage of emails and messages make it hard to be fully present anywhere. Mobile technology means we can stay connected to the incoming barrage all the time, making it difficult to be fully present anywhere.

Haddon Robinson once said that being a seminary president felt like getting trampled by a herd of ducks. Sometimes I think that social media leads to the same feeling, and all the ducks are quacking all the time. It’s not just seminary presidents who are being trampled; it’s all of us, except for the Luddites.

Reggie McNeal wrote this back in earlier days, and it’s even more relevant now:

Fax machines, emails, telephones, beepers, an over-committed schedule, the press of people’s needs…these are the tools of mass destruction for spiritual leaders. Their development and deployment often proceed without inspection. They threaten to shut down the spiritual leader’s communion with God. Once that happens, the leader’s effectiveness is destroyed. The leader becomes a casualty of a struggle that is as old as humanity ‚Äì the drowning out of eternity by the screams of temporal concerns. (Reggie McNeal, A Work of Heart)

Nothing wrong with any of these technologies. We just have to figure out ways of not getting trampled.

This is very cool. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Logos Bible Software for Mac is almost ready to go. You can check it out here.

I have a significant investment of resources that I use through Logos, and I’m really looking forward to having this software.

There was a time that I was sure I was going to get an iPhone whenever it came out in Canada. That all changed when I realized how much it would cost. Then I saw that Rogers was reducing their rates in response to customer feedback. I began to lean towards getting one again, until I realized their reduced rate didn’t include features like Visual Voicemail, which you could get for an extra $8. Feels too much like getting nickeled and dimed.

All of a sudden I’m liking the monthly fee on my iPod Touch.

I was already starting to analyze what drives me to want things like this so strongly. I began typing this post using iPhone as a keyword. As I typed i the program suggested idolatry as a tag. If an idol is something that you long for, that you hope will give you meaning and fulfillment apart from Christ, then maybe the iPhone is too much like an idol for me. Sad when you think about what it is.

Last year I saw John Piper react to being given an iPhone. He offered thanks, and then said, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” I know what he means.

So no iPhone for me. And I’m glad actually.

What Wordle did with the words on my home page. Cool idea.

Here is this coming Sunday’s sermon:

via

I had a really bad technology day yesterday.

• First, my HTC Touch phone dropped on the floor. Phew, looked safe – until it bounced into the dog’s water dish. It worked for a while but it’s not looking so good right now.
• Later on I was deleting a duplicate post and hit a server error on this blog, and lost about 20 comments, which I’m restoring now.
• Then last night my router died.

Blah. Glad yesterday’s over.

Update: It’s not over. The Time Capsule, a combination router and network drive, failed last night, less than 24 hours after I purchased it.

One reason not to get a MacBook Air:

On Sundays in my apartment, the coffee table where the Air sat becomes the final resting place for the bulky New York Times. It is not unusual for other magazines, and newspapers from previous days, to accumulate there as well. My wife, whose clutter tolerance is well below my own, sometimes will swoop in and hastily gather the pulp in a huge stack, going directly to the trash-compactor room just down the hall from our apartment, dumping the pile into a plastic recycling bin. Sometimes the whole mess gets so nasty that I even perform this task myself. Could it be that somewhere in the stack was a Macintosh computer so thin that its manufacturer brags it could fit inside an envelope? I believe so. (For the record, my wife does not subscribe to this theory.)

As humiliating as it sounds, let me repeat: the MacBook Air is so thin that it got tossed out with the newspapers.

Here’s another:

Today, something is different. Instead of my bags trundling through the x-ray machine, she stops the belt. Calls over another agent, a palaver. Another agent flocks to the screen. A gabble, a conference, some consternation.

They pull my laptop, my new laptop making its first trip with me, out of the flow of bags. One takes me aside to a partitioned cubicle. Another of the endless supply of TSA agents takes the rest of my bags to a different cubicle. No yellow brick road here, just a pair of yellow painted feet on the floor, and my flight is boarding. I am made to understand that I should stand and wait. My laptop is on the table in front of me, just beyond reach, like I am waiting to collect my personal effects after being paroled.

I’m standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. “There’s no drive,” one says. “And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,” she continues.

A younger agent, joins the crew. I must now be occupying ten, perhaps twenty, percent of the security force..

Behind me, I hear the younger agent, perhaps not realizing that even the TSA must obey TSA rules, repeating himself.

“It’s a MacBook Air.”

He missed his flight.

One of the reasons I run Boot Camp on my Mac is to use Logos Bible Software. Now, finally, the Alpha version of Logos for Mac is out. It’s an alpha version but I’ll take it. One step closer to the release version.

It’s happening at Citizenship and Immigration Canada:

It may be wishful thinking, but a Canadian government ministry has sent out a directive to its employees urging them to relax and not to use their BlackBerry smartphones at night or on weekends and holidays.

It’s also happening Intel, according to Macleans:

When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity, he wasn’t fiddling with a BlackBerry; he was reclined against an apple tree in quiet contemplation, or so the story goes. For today’s scientist, as for any office worker, with colleagues, endless meetings and an overflowing inbox, such uninterrupted moments are rare. What does the lost time mean for creative thought? Computer giant Intel is studying this question: in a six-month pilot project dubbed “Quiet Time,” workers shut out all distractions and wait for the proverbial apple to fall.

Quiet Time, which began in September, happens each Tuesday at two of Intel’s U.S. sites (they won’t reveal exactly where). From 8 a.m. to noon, the 300 engineers and managers in the test group set email and instant messaging to off-line mode, forward all calls to voice mail, and hang “do not disturb” signs at their cubicle entrances.

Is it time to unplug, at least part of the time?

Fax machines, emails, telephones, beepers, an over-committed schedule, the press of people’s needs…these are the tools of mass destruction for spiritual leaders. Their development and deployment often proceed without inspection. They threaten to shut down the spiritual leader’s communion with God. Once that happens, the leader’s effectiveness is destroyed. The leader becomes a casualty of a struggle that is as old as humanity – the drowning out of eternity by the screams of temporal concerns. (Reggie McNeal, A Work of Heart)

Lent starts tomorrow – maybe it’s time to unplug?