Posts Tagged ‘search’

How to Find Out What’s Happening with Mobile Ministry

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

paperboy shouting imageHow do you keep up with the topic of mobile ministry? Some people have asked this and there’s no real science to it, we basically just keep our ear to the ground and spend sufficient time reading what’s there, reaching for what isn’t, and relating to what makes sense.

Of course, we’ll also get the statement, “who has time to do that?” And so, here’s one tip towards keeping track of the conversation: follow what’s being talked about in the following Twitter searches:

So now you have the searches, what can you do with them?

First, if you have a Twitter account, these are searches that you will want to save and just make a part of your daily/weekly timeline. Simply seeing the discussions and bringing those items to the forefront in your organizations (meetings, conversations, etc.) will help enable conversation and activity in mobile ministry.

Second, you might not have a Twitter account, so here you can take advantage of RSS to keep you informed on these conversations. RSS is a format used online for syndicated data. In reference to these searches, they have an RSS (news)feed available in which you can use your browser (like Firefox, Opera, etc.) or a web service (like Google Reader, Netvibes, etc.) to save each of these searches and you’d have them for reference.

Third, you can save the links into the favorites/bookmarks area of your browser. This way you can just peek in on the conversations as they happen to have interest for you.

Now, the aspect of interpreting that data and turning it into actionable items is something that you will have to discern against your organization’s goals, issues, and available resources. You can’t expect all of your questions to be answered at this juncture – mobile ministry is a wide, not deep, conversation. But, there are elements of understanding what’s possible, what has happened, and what you can do if you engage some of the conversations taking place.

If you have other ways in which you keep up with conversations about mobile ministry, feel free to drop those in the comments as others will want to glean from your methods and share some of their own.

 

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Fostering Meditation by Journaling and Sharing by Mobile

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

We scribble sermon notes w/Tactilis, @YouVersion, @evernote, ... on TwitpicOne of my favorite verses of Scripture is found in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures (Joshua 1:8 KJV):

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

There’s something direct and simple about that command that the Lord gave to Joshua. And it also happens to be effective to us in these days as well. Many people have the behavior of reading the Bible (I won’t get into statistics about this), but we don’t always hear as much outside of those whom are published what it looks like to meditate – contemplate, consider, debate within ourselves – the meaning of Scripture. 

This is something we’d hear from time to time with those in the pastorate. But, to hear the same from a layperson – someone not with some kind of official capacity to be teaching one or more people – is a bit different than what we are used to. Looking at this verse though, it would seem that its not just meant for the newly established leader, but for those who walk alongside that leader (even if not in a noted capacity) as well.

This past weekend, I had two experiences that brought to my forefront this idea of contemplation with Scripture, and there was an interesting intersection with mobile tech in both cases. In the first, I was speaking with a former pastor of mine (I visited my old church in Philadelphia) and spoke about what it is I’ve been doing with MMM. One of the questions that I asked him was, “how do you use your smartphone besides calls, texts, and an occasional game?” His mention was that he doesn’t do much at this time and my responses was something to the effect of, “have you considered using your smartphone as a means to share your sermon outline before you teach?” I gave him an example of how he could upload all of those sermons to Google Docs, and then simply text the members in attendance right before he gets up to preach the URL for that outline.

The second moment came later on in the same day. My mother had seen my notes in Evernote (especially the handwritten ones, via Tactilis) and remarked that she’d like to try that app on her Nook Color if that were available. So, I took her Nook Color, and showed her how to search for the app then download it. She then got a message noting she needed a memory card. So I took an 8GB memory card that I’d been using as an archive of my previous mobile, copied its contents to my 32GB USB memory key using just my Nokia N8 (the N8 can connect to a USB memory key and also has a microSD card slot), and formatted the card so that she could use it in her Nook Color. After doing that, I walked with her through the setup process of her Evernote account and she was ready to start writing her notes in Evernote. I had also added the Evernote app to her Windows laptop so that she’d have her notes in both places ready to access as needed. 

In both cases, the central point was notes. How do we utilize this mobile and web technology to endear us towards contemplative moments in faith? I think that both situations give us two ways to approach it. We can play the role of a pastor-teacher and have some kind of outline or memory points ready to share that are simply shared directly to a mobile using SMS or MMS. And then we have the second where a person should be able to leverage their computing devices, network-services, and various methods of writing notes (pictures, typed text, etc.) to record and retrieve those notes.

One of the things my mother liked in my use of Evernote was that I had the ability to search across all of my notes from any device I was on. My pastor mentioned that he has over a half decade of sermons typed up, but they are simply sitting on his computer not shared with anyone unless he directly sends it to them. What can we realize in this life of faith when we take both of those matters and put ourselves towards utilizing the tools we have to be in that position ot meditate on the text everyday? Could you imagine the kinds of walls that would be ready to come down in our lives if that were to happen?

 

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Proposal: A Bible App That Starts from the Commentary Out

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Last night, I attended a Bible study where the pastor/teacher had his congregation study the text beforehand, and then come to the study being able to respond with cross-referenced verses to the primary passage. Really excellent seeing the engagement of the entire community to study the text and be able to respond intelligently to some of the questions.

However, there was some issue with cross-referencing while respecting cultural or literal context with some of the additional Scriptures. And while that’s certainly something worth finding out if it is something addressed for that kind of study, it got me thinking about the structure of Bible applications and how switching the primary interaction.

Since the dawn of digital Bibles, the emphasis has been on reading and seeking. We have a library of Bibles and commentaries, but the start of anything that we do is with the text. This works out for many types of interactions, as in many cases, the place of a mobile device is usually within a context where you are looking up a passage or a bookmarked entry.

But, what if we turned that model around a bit. What if the Bible application only stored our notes, dictionaries, and commentaries? What if that same application was intelligent enough to stitch our notes and the Scripture references that we used to online Bible services such as a YouVersion or Biblia? And it would also be able to – by a metadata driven index – be able to link our notes to similar phrases and indices within those dictionaries and commentaries? What would that do for a study like the one that I described able, where the point is to make the connections within Scripture to common concepts, while forcing the reader to literally meditate on the Scripture to know that those threads exist?

Example and Description

Proverbs 28:9
- Note(s): is the position of your life and heart in right relation to God and His instructions
- (XR) Isaiah 1:15 (hands full of blood) – JH Commentary, MH Commentary – 50% Relevant to Source Scripture (History of Isaiah book, book #2…)
- (XR) John 9:31 (God doesn’t hear sinners) – MH Commentary, JMA Commentary – debatable relevance because of context of the speaker and the lesson that was being taught
- Search for more (XR)

So, here we have a person that’s got a source piece of text, and a note attached to it. The note is scanned for all possible search matches (word, phrase, etc.) and the next button asks if the user wants to search all available library material (local and connected dictionaries, commentaries, Wikipedia, etc.) for cross-references (XR). After the search is completed, the user taps on the verse and gets what was cross-referenced (the word or phrase) and those associated resources which speak more on that specific XR. It then gives a percentage of the relevance of that XR to the note and primary Scripture based on some algorithm that weighs the primary Scripture, then the associated resource, then the user’s note content.

Thinking about it like this, the person is essentially having a near-real-time query of every statement they make in their notes run up against all available materials, without storing the Biblical text itself on the device. Ideally, one would use a API call in this app to link the Scripture to whatever Bible of choice the user wants – but this app keeps the focus on the notes and the ability of the user to constantly make connections which have higher relevance ratings.

Potential Benefits
There are several good things which would then come from this: we’d have people who become used to search as a means to relate applicable concepts to literal Scripture and already existing commentary (filling a gap where education might not be attainable); we’d have people who are made more aware (or at least more quickly aware) of their inconsistencies in reading or understanding Scripture against already established memes; it will expose people to the wealth of content that folks like Logos have turned digital in an amazing amount of time; and it would further push this idea of getting content in the open where publishers can better see who digests it, possibly making for them another means to make good where print/legacy study interactions might be failing because of the switch to digital content streams.

I will admit, this is about as rough as ideas get here; but something that would be worth exploring by a developer/publisher who is looking to sow some kind of application into the digital ether, but wants to do something that’s not as “me-too” as the hundreds of Bible apps and reading plans already available.

Your Comments
So let’s hear from you. If you are a pastor/teacher, would this kind of application be a help to you personally or for a Bible study such as what’s described above? If you are a developer, what are some of the good points of this idea? What are some of the issues you can see? Is anything in this idea impossible, or improbable? Let’s discuss :)

 

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Posted in Devices and Software | 3 Comments »

Of Applications and Motivations

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Been thinking a bit about some of the statements made in that Future of Bible Software piece. Sometimes, a bro can be a bit far-reaching, and other times, I simply expect more out of us all than what’s probably realistic.

I mention this because I’m thinking about my primary mobile device (a Nokia N97 running the Symbian^1 operating system) and why I no longer have a Bible reader application on it. Part of the reason is becasue I’ve found it better in many of the gatherings that I attend to simply listen to what’s being said, using my mobile to note important points. Other times, I’m in a setting where the larger screen and UX of the iPad plays a better role for things.

I wonder though about going back to having something more than a link to preferred Biblical resources on my device. Something that isn’t a Bible reader, but does give me some of the benefits of a quick and targeted search. I don’t (necessarly) need to even bookmark the passage, but I do need to possibly copy it (or tweet it) so that I can recall it later.

And so, I thought some about the Biblia API project started by Logos, and how simply their releasing of this API releases them from an expectation of having to create an application [for me] – but it puts the onus on me to learn how to use that pipe for the kind of content experince that I desire. I’m in favor of such a move, because it is indirectly causing some aspects of the user-base of Bible applications to become fishers of content themselves, and creators of more personal solutions.

However, I’ve not started to crack open the book(s) on learning this API, nor how best it could be used in my kind of a scenario. In some passing conversations with Brett (MMM’s latest team member), his expressed desire to learn to develop for various platforms has rubbed off on me. I want to learn how to use that API, and do it in such a way that adds value to my Biblical needs, not just scratches an itch for information at my fingertips.

What I have been doing is planning my approach. For example, I know that I want something that’s not a native application – it needs to be a web runtime (WRT) widget. The widget would need to have two panels: the static one on my homescreen would just display an icon to the left and the Scripture references to the last two or three items I searched for (there’s no room for more than that). Clicking on the widget would take me to an expanded view where I see a listing of my latest searches (5-7 perhaps) and a search box at the bottom where I could put into it any measure of references, boolean operators, and phrases, which would then spit back to me on a similar screen the results of the search. Clicking on a search result would automatically add it to my “history,” open the browser to the biblia.com website to that reference, and on the widget there’d be a button at the bottom to go back to my search results screen. Because this is a widget, it wouldn’t need to save anything, so when I close it, the only things really saved are my history of the references I went to, not the search queries.

In my mind, on my mobile device, this is something that’s very possible. I don’t necessarly need an app anymore than I can develop one myself. The pipes are there, and I can do with the content what I can based on legal and ethical agreements.

It has me thinking hard about the future of applications as a whole, but also how we are motivated towards creating our own experiences or doors into searching and valuing the availability of Scriptural content. I can’t say that at this moment that I’ve moved forward past what I’ve said here, but I am thinking that something like this should happen nearer than in the future.

 

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Posted in Devices and Software, Future Trends | 1 Comment »