Goodbye to Wordsearch!

I guess I always knew it was inevitable that the Wordsearch Bible study application would fold. And realistically, it couldn’t have happened in a better way: Faithlife/Logos put them out of their misery on Friday, buying the platform (i.e. technology, licenses, and customers) from Lifeway, and immediately started moving Wordsearch users over to Logos by transferring their book licenses to Logos editions, and giving them a customized version of the Logos desktop application to run, based on how current their Wordsearch license was. For me, that meant seve...

Goodbye to BibleWorks

BibleWorks announced a couple days ago that they will no longer be selling Bible Study software as of June 15th. I found the news simultaneously surprising and not surprising. It was surprising given both the suddenness of the closure (which was probably wiser than dragging it out), and because of the recent arrangements with WORDsearch, where WORDsearch was producing some of their important resources (e.g. NICOT/NICNT) in a BibleWorks-compatible format and cross-licensing the resources across both platforms. It was not surprising insofar as it seemed in...

Some Concluding, Year-End Musings on 2012

Logos: Logos Bible Research scored huge in my estimation this year. I had struggled to be productive with earlier versions of their software, but version 4, released just about 3 years ago, represented a dramatic improvement in usability and performance, and I started drifting toward it then – especially since they were also beginning to release quality Catholic resources (e.g. works by Aquinas). Then, this Spring, they put together a series of terrific Catholic base packages, all of which included an outstanding edition of the Catechism of the Catholic ...

WORDsearch 9 Released: Initial Impressions

WORDsearch 9 was released Monday, roughly two years after the release of version 8. This is the third release of WORDsearch developed on the Bible Explorer platform for CROSS eBooks. Long-time WORDsearch users who have been waiting for a return of the search results management genius of the old Ref List will not find what they’re looking for, but some significant improvements have been made to version 8 nonetheless. The biggest improvement, by far, was a complete reworking of the window syncing mechanism. In the two previous iterations of WS, as in...

Pradis Bites the Dust

Not exactly a big surprise coming out of Zondervan today, as they have announced plans to drop their Pradis Bible Study software. Not a big loss to the industry either, I dare say, as Pradis was pretty narrowly focused on Zondervan resources (most of which were exclusively available in Pradis format), and always struck me as more geared toward promoting the interests of Zondervan than that of the Christian community. That’s OK – no law against that – but don’t look for any tears to be shed in this poor corner of the world. Frankly...

Logos for Mac is Finally Here… For Now

After several years, during which time they were roundly criticized for stringing Mac users along with vaporware, Logos is finally accepting Pre-Pub orders for a native Mac version of Logos. But based on what I can gather, it looks like something of a misstep for Logos. The biggest surprise to me is their decision to charge a $60 fee for the base engine. The base engine of the flagship Windows product has always been free, a fact I have little doubt has helped produce the significant market out there of third-party producers publishing books in Libronix ...

Logos Makes Sermon File Addin Available for Free

Logos is making their Sermon File Addin available for free in October, as they celebrate Pastor Appreciation Month. There are also discounts available for other products by using the discount code PAM2008. The Sermon File Addin is an interesting tool (usually sells for $60, if I remember right) that basically allows the user to make mini Libronix books out of their sermon files, and then tag them for easy and effective cataloging. This is one of the areas where computer-based study systems really outshine paper-based models, and I’m delighted to se...