On the move!

We are moving, i.e. changing hosting of our blog. The address will stay the same or almost the same. It will be osnova.com/blog. We hope the transition will be smooth and everything will be preserved intact. This blog will remain at the address osnovapress.wordpress.com but it should redirect to our new site hosting. Most likely your blog subscriptions will have to be updated.

Just in case, if your link to our old post doesn’t work.  Please add “blog/” after .com within the link as follows:

http://osnova.com/2010/12/09/279/ becomes:

http://osnova.com/blog/2010/12/09/279/

The Essential Greek New Testament for the Absolute Beginner

We are excited to release the Essential Greek New Testament (thank you, James, for the title).

This book represents a new approach to the study of the Biblical Greek by allowing an absolute Greek beginner to start “reading” the Greek New Testament from the first day. As such, it will establish itself as an indispensable resource for those who would like to get a glimpse of the New Testament in the original. The compilation of resources will also be useful to those who have some knowledge of Biblical Greek.

For a limited time only, we set the introductory price to $4.99. Get your copy.

We’ve been blogged.

Mobile Ministry Magazine, which we have been reading from time to time, has done a post about us and used such nice words as “Effective In-Bible Interfaces” (is it really about us?)  The full extent of the power of mobile Bibling (Bible-computing, my coinage) is still to be explored.  But even now it is clear that mobile Bibles penetrate through the tightest of fences.  The Soviet Union may not have survived as long if God’s Word was freely available electronically as it is now (see my earlier post about the treatment of God’s Word in the Soviet Union).

MMM* has reminded me about my ruminations about various approaches to Bibling: (a) a walled-garden, expensive, heavy weight one a la Logos; (b) apps way (for iOS, Android, etc.), (c) epub/mobi open ebook method (what I have been mostly doing); (d) simple Java Bible for each cell phone that has power to revolutionize missions in prosecuted countries.  I may refine them and put them to paper (screen) in the future.

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*Apropos, there are a couple of associations for me with this abbreviation, 1 and 2

Title Contest

It was suggested that the working title for the upcoming publication (i.e. Greek NT for (Absolute) Beginners; see previous post) is somewhat bland.  We need a title that would convey to people that this is the publication that they absolutely must have and can’t live without (which it is, of course ).

Our own brainstorming has come up with:

• Ultimate Greek New Testament for Absolute Beginners
• Greek New Testament for the Rest of Us
• Practical Greek New Testament (subtitle: “Read this Greek NT even if you don’t read Greek” or “Learn Koine Greek with Us”)
• and … The One Greek New Testament You Must Have

Well, what do you think?  Would you share your ideas about the title?  If we select your title, we’ll give you any book in the OSNOVA Store for free.

Upcoming publication: Greek NT for those who don’t read Greek

We are putting finishing touches on the Greek New Testament for Absolute Beginners (a working title). It was done for personal reasons. We don’t read Greek.  We made it as useful as possible for ourselves, in other words it will be a useful tool for those who don’t know Greek but want to read the NT in its original. It will combine parallel Greek and English texts, will link each Greek word with a code identifying its grammatical categories and the included Greek lexicon. This new e-book will contain many more useful features for those who don’t read Greek but want to study it or simply “read” the Greek NT (I know one of my friends would say it’s a dangerous thing). Screenshots after the cut.  Let us know  what you think.

Hyperlinks on Kindles

Another point of comparison among Kindle Keyboard, Kindle Fire, and Kindle Touch is the use of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are especially important in Bibles and Bible Study materials for reading a footnote, a cross-reference in the Bible, a dictionary entry, etc.

Issues with Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform

Given the appearance of Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, we are updating our publications to work better with touchscreens.  However, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform does not function properly at the moment and prevents us from updating the files sold on Amazon.  As a temporary measure, if you have a problem with how OSNOVA publications work on Kindle Touch or Fire, please send us an email  to osnova@gmail.com describing the issue and attaching a purchase receipt.  We will send an updated file in an email if we are able to correct the issue.

My thoughts about Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch

Below is the email I sent to a person asking about Kindle Fire.

“Kindle Fire is a new device. However, even now I can tell that the Kindle Fire lacks a lot of functionality when compared to Kindles 2, DX, and 3, and even Kindle Touch.

Problems with DVJ?

We have received a number of reports that the DVJ navigation may be affected by the new updates to the Kindle 3 software. We’re exploring this issue and the ways to fix it, if possible.

We are also looking into DVJ functionality on Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch.

Thank you for your patience and loyalty!

The National Bible Week

The National Bible Week has been celebrated during the week of Thanksgiving every year since 1941. The goal is to raise awareness of the Bible’s importance and relevance to the American nation as a whole, as well as in the lives of individuals. The first day of the week – Monday, November 21 – has been designated as the National Day of the Bible.

Reading the Bible publicly has its roots in the Word of God, in which we read that the people of Israel gathered to hear their leaders read Scripture.