Recently in Logos Category

Today's guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software and author of the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament, Lexham High Definition New Testament, and the forthcoming Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis.

I get asked this question a lot, a people seems somewhat disappointed by my response of "It depends on what you're doing." It's like being asked what the best tool is in my garage: the answer will always be “the tool best suited to my task,” depending on what I’m doing. Here's what I mean.

When tackling a tough passage I’ll typically consult scholarly commentaries like the Anchor-Yale Bible or International Critical Commentary volumes, and even from the forthcoming Continental Commentary Series among others. I can guess your first question: “Why in the world would I want to read Claus Westermann on Genesis or Hans-Joachim Kraus on the Psalms, aren’t these guys pioneers in source and form criticism?” Why yes, as a matter of fact they are. But they also knew their Hebrew better than most folks alive today, and they have spent most of their lives studying these books in far greater detail than I ever will. I may not share their presuppositions about Scripture, but there is much to commend their exegesis.

One of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome in seminary was being willing to learn from someone with whom I disagreed with on certain issues. I learned to read past differences in order to learn from their expertise. In a previous post I mentioned the value of older commentaries, noting that many times you will find a more robust engagement of the text on works by Godet, Olshausen and Alford, who were not distracted by the modern issues that can preoccupy new commentators. But this is not to say there is never a time to interact with critical scholars. Like any tool, each one has its strengths and weaknesses, each contributes something to the process.

Before you get the wrong impression, you need to know that I also make regular use of more devotional commentaries. The Focus on the Bible Commentaries and Christian Focus Biblical Studies Collection are great examples. Getting the difficult exegetical questions answered is not all there is to studying a passage, you also need to be able to clearly and relevantly communicate what you have learned. If you like the academic side of things like me, you too may struggle with seeing the bigger picture of a passage: the theme, flow or theology of a passage or book. I can have all the greatest information in the world, but it is useless to the congregation if I cannot present it in a way that they can understand.

Most often the more technical issues never get mentioned in the sermon, but are more about me feeling like I have handled them. Less-academically oriented commentaries—yes, even the warm fuzzy ones—are a great safeguard against missing the “forest” because of looking too closely at a piece of bark on a single “tree”. I read devotional commentaries just a critically as I do the scholarly ones, sifting wheat from chaff.

So which commentaries are best? The ones that you need for what you are working on. Just like I use my hand saw for some applications and an axe for another, building a diverse collection of commentaries can be a great boon to your study. The academically-oriented volumes can address specific questions, whereas the "lighter" ones can provide great ideas for how best to present what you have found.

For a helpful guide to multi-volume commentaries available for Logos, see our Commentary Product Guide.

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It was recently announced that Logos is included on BCWI's 2010 Best Christian Workplaces list. As I was writing the press release about the news, I couldn't help but think about how grateful I am to work at such an amazing company. Logos truly is a great place to work. In particular, here are 10 reasons I love working at Logos:

Note: If after reading this post you think you'd love working here too, then you'll be happy to know we're hiring!

1. Passion - The people at Logos are a passionate bunch. From syntax to source code, design to delivery, there is likely someone at Logos who is passionate about that area and working to deliver the very best to our customers.
2. Software - This is a pretty selfish one, but if you're a Logos user you'll know where I'm coming from. I love our software and I love building my digital library. While I'm not giving you the exact details, let's just say that the software perks for employees is very nice.
3. Challenges - Logos isn't interested in the status quo. It is great to work in a place that has fun, but at the same time drives you to deliver the very best.
4. Fun - The first snow day of every year Bob buys everyone soup. Every summer we have a huge company picnic, complete with bouncy house, climbing wall, and amazing food. Five times a year we have a company wide cook-off. We have a bike shop in the office. Free childcare during the Christmas party. The occasional company outing to see a Bells game. Ping-pong table, scooters, free coffee and snacks, the list goes on and on. We work hard around here, but there is also a lot of fun to be had.
5. Entrepreneurship - Bob Pritchett, Logos' president, is an entrepreneur and that spirit seeps down into every department in Logos. Forging new ground and pushing the envelope of possibility means there is rarely a dull moment around here.
6. Vision - The saying goes, "Go big or go home." I love being in a place that has an enormous vision for the future. More than that, it is having the courage and wisdom to actually seize that vision. Being in that environment is pretty inspiring.
7. People - There are a lot of great people at Logos. Not only that, there are a lot of brilliant people at Logos. Whether you need an expert in Semitic Languages, data systems, literature, programming, or even UFOs, there is probably one right around the corner. And, yes, we really do have a expert on UFOs here.
8. Benefits - As we say on our jobs page, we offer competitive compensation and a comprehensive benefits package including healthcare, dental care, and 401(k). Gotta love that.
9. Innovation - eBooks are a hot topic these days. But Logos has been in the digital publishing industry for over 18 years now. While everyone seems to be oohing and aahing over basic eReaders, Logos is constantly pushing the envelope of what can be done with a digital library. We're pushing into new platforms, delivering content on the web, mobile devices, Macs, PCs, iPhone. This isn't just about digital books. Logos is leading the way in digital library systems and research.
10. Customers - I absolutely love hearing about how Logos has helped our customers get more from their time studying God's Word. Evey day I see things on Twitter, Facebook, the blog, and elsewhere about how much Logos means to our customers. For me, this is a huge reason I love working here. I love knowing that I work on a product that truly helps people study the Bible.

I guess I share all this not to toot-our-own-horn, but to let you know that while you love using Logos Bible Software to study God's Word, we love creating it for you. Logos is a great company that is committed to delivering the best Bible study software in the world. Logos loves its customers and it loves its employees. That's a pretty good combination if you ask me.

And don't forget, we're hiring!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

I was talking to my pastor the other day about what books he was using in preparation for his sermon series going through the book of Acts. It got me thinking about go-to resources. There are several resources that are the first ones I reference when I have a question or need further insight on the Scriptures. So, I decided to share with you some of my go-to resources, and I hope you will do the same and share your go-to resources in the comment section.

Calvin's Commentaries
You don't have to be a Calvinist to appreciate Calvin's handling of the Scriptures. Arminius himself recognized Calvin's skill when he said, "...he (Calvin) excels beyond comparison in the interpretation of Scripture...". I find that Calvin's Commentaries are approachable, easy to understand, thorough, and applicable. I always appreciate hearing what he has to say.

Most anything by John Piper
Ever since being introduced to John Piper's ministry, I've truly appreciated his insights into the application of Scripture to life. While I like referring to Piper in my studies, there is one title that truly changed my life in a tangible way and I include it among the most influential books in my life. The Supremacy of God in Preaching, fundamentally changed how I approached the ministry of preaching. Even though years have passed since I last picked it up, I often meditate on this quote from page 24:

"The true usefulness of our preaching will not be known to us until all the fruit on all the branches on all the trees that have sprung up from all the seeds we've ever sown has fully ripened in the sunshine of eternity"

NICOT/NICNT
I was first introduced to this series when the church I attended in Richmond, VA, was going through 1 Corinthians and the pastors, among other resources, were reading together through Fee's commentary. I later encountered the NICNT when I was taking a course on the book of Hebrews, taught by Simon Kistemaker. He assigned FF Bruce's commentary from the collection. Since adding the series to Logos I've enjoyed having access to the entire collection. It is scholarly, without being overwhelming, and provides commentary on every verse... something Calvin doesn't always give me.

Horae Homileticae
Prior to working at Logos, I had never even heard of Charles Simeon. Boy was I missing out! If Simeon was alive today, I'd certainly subscribe to his podcast. I thoroughly enjoy both the content and format of Homileticae, and find that I go to Simeon when I want a more bird's eye view of a passage.

Your turn
Sure, there are other titles that I love and use often... but the above four are probably the ones I go-to most often. So, what about you? What are your go-to resources? Leave them in the comment section below (and provide a link to them on Logos.com so people can find them and have a look!).

Logos is happy to announce the winner of our second Seminary Scholarship award, Justin Hoke. Justin is currently working to finish his MDiv through the distance education program at Reformed Baptist Seminary.

As the winner of the Seminary Scholarship, Justin received a $1,000.00 tuition scholarship and a copy of the Logos 4 Scholar's Library.

Next Scholarship to be Awarded May 10th

If you're a seminarian (whether you're full time, part time, distance, or residential) and you're interested in applying for a $1,000.00 scholarship for tuition and a copy of Logos 4 Scholar's Library, then visit www.SeminaryScholarship.com and apply today.

Not a seminarian? Well, it is likely that you know one. Please take a moment and send them an email, tweet, Facebook message, or even an old fashioned letter letting them know about this great opportunity.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

I'm a coffee drinker, and perhaps, have a small-to-medium addiction to it. I make myself feel better by reading medical studies that highlight the fact that drinking coffee could lower my risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, colon cancer, as well as lift my mood, treat headaches, and lower my risk of cavities. My personal issues aside, we drink a lot of coffee at Logos and 2009, with the launch of Logos 4, was no exception. So, with 2010 upon us, I thought we'd take a stroll down Logos' coffee lane.

On June 21, 2004, Logos received its beloved Coffee Machine. To be precise, it is a Saeco Super Automatic IDEA De Luxe espresso machine. Since the initial purchase, this magnificent coffee making machine has made over 106,000 cups of coffee! That averages out to more than 73 cups of coffee EVERY WORK DAY!

As far as I can tell, our first public mention of the coffee machine was back in October, 2005, when, after almost a year and a half of service, the machine was taken in for repairs. According to the blog post, we had already consumed 20,000 cups of coffee. That's about 57 cups per work day.

Since then we've blogged about it a few times, showing pictures of coffee and using it as an opportunity to sell Logos branded merchandise... which, by the way, how would you like to buy a very nice Logos glass coffee mug for just $6.95?

While the public blog didn't cover much more about the coffee machine, I did come across an internal wiki that chronicles some of the machine's past. It would appear that the time between its October 2005 fix and the next service was about 2 1/2 years. In April, 2008, we sent the coffee machine off for a number of issues that had sprung up, including a "loud noise, followed by clicking sounds," "brownish water coming out of the steam wand," "an error message which states: load circuit," and several of other problems. Perhaps the problem was that we had now consumed 72,907 cups of coffee. That averages out to, over those 2.5 years, about 81 cups per work day.

Later in 2008 the machine was again sent in for repairs. Despite the initial diagnosis that the turbine needed to be replaced, it was in fact a clogged brewer unit. In those brief 5 months we managed to drink another 7,842 cups of coffee, or about 71 cups per work day.

Which leads us to today. As we enter 2010, we have collectively consumed over 106,000 cups of coffee. That's about 73 cups a day over the last 5 1/2 years and about 83 cups a day since October, 2008.

If you're looking for something more inspiring than the history of our coffee machine, then I highly recommend you open Logos 4 (upgrade if you haven't already) and get into God's Word in 2010 and reflect on His goodness in the year ahead.

And, if you need a cup of coffee to sip during your study, we'll be open until 5 p.m. PST. You're welcome to stop by and add your cup to our running total.

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Merry Christmas from all of us here in Bellingham, Washington. We hope you’re having a wonderful celebration of the birth of our Savior with family and friends.

Many of you have already upgraded to Logos 4, and you may have even used it to read the Christmas story, prepare for your Christmas Eve sermon, or study the themes surrounding Christ’s first advent for your personal devotional time. If you haven’t upgraded to Logos 4 yet because you were waiting for some Christmas money, I wanted to take a few moments to give you your 4 options for moving to Logos 4. And even though we’re closed today, our website is available to take your order right now. If you choose the download option, you might even be able to start playing with your new toy later today.

Option 1: Base Package Upgrade

The first and best option is to upgrade your Logos 3 base package to a higher Logos 4 base package. So if you currently have Scholar’s Library for Logos 3, your best option is to upgrade to a higher base package like Gold or Platinum for Logos 4. The reason this is the best option is because we’re offering some extra special introductory discounts right now, and you always get the best deal on our highest base packages. In addition to keeping all the books you already own, you’ll get the most new features and resources at an amazingly low price. If you have the money or would like to use one of our payment plans, this is definitely the way to go. Even if you’re not sure if your computer can handle Logos 4 yet, it still makes sense to upgrade now to take advantage of the extra savings. In the meantime, you can even enjoy the majority of your new resources in Logos 3.

Option 2: Base Package Crossgrade

If you can’t afford moving up a couple of levels in your base package or you feel that you’re already at the base package level that’s right for you, the next best option is to crossgrade your current base package to the new Logos 4 version. So if you own Scholar’s Gold for Logos 3, you can move over to Scholar’s Gold for Logos 4. You won’t get as many new books or quite as good of a deal as upgrading, but in a couple of cases you’ll get more than 100 new titles for less than $2 each! Crossgrading your base package is a great option for those on a tight budget.

Option 3: Minimal Crossgrade

The next best option if you don’t really want to add new books to your library is the Minimal Crossgrade. The Minimal Crossgrade gives you just the core essential resources and databases necessary to move your existing library over to Logos 4 and take advantage of many of the cool new features. We highly recommend that you purchase at least the Minimal Crossgrade to get the true Logos 4 experience.

Option 4: Free Core Engine

The last way to move to Logos 4 is to download the free core engine. The free Logos 4 core engine without a Logos 4 base package or the Minimal Crossgrade will be lacking many of the new databases and resources necessary to use features like Biblical People, Biblical Places, Biblical Things, the new reverse interlinears, many of the sections of the Guides and the Home Page, Logos controlled vocabulary database of synonymous terminology, and a few other things. You also won’t be able to use your current library of books on the iPhone app. If you want to have the best experience with Logos 4 and access your books on the iPhone app, choosing the free core engine is not the right choice. But if you’re just looking for very basic functionality, it’s hard to beat the price. :) Remember, though, that the free core engine option will always be around, but the extra special upgrade discounts won’t last forever.

To sum it all up, here are your 4 options laid out in a table.

¹ Plus your current resources, which will move over to Logos 4 at no additional charge.

² Numbers are estimates and will vary depending on what you already own.

³ Depends in part on which base package level you’re at.

⁴ With special, limited-time discounts.

The first significant update to Logos 4 is now available as a free download to all Logos 4 users. Version 4.0a adds tons of new features and tweaks and includes numerous bug fixes. If you have automatic updates turned on (screenshot), which is the default setting, Logos 4 should have already notified you that updates are ready to be installed.

When you see the balloon tooltip window, right-click on the Logos icon in your system tray and choose to “Install update” (screenshot). If the update hasn’t been downloaded yet and you just can’t wait any longer to get your hands on the latest release, just type Update Now into the command bar (screenshot). This will force Logos 4 to check for any available updates (screenshot) and begin downloading them.

What’s New in 4.0a?

Below you’ll find a list of many of the new features and improvements we added in 4.0a. To help you learn about some of them, I’ve taken several screenshots. Click on the links below to see the corresponding images. In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss some of these new features in detail here on the blog.

• Search Analysis grid in Bible and Morph searches (screenshot)
• Bible Text Only visual filter (screenshot)
• Ctrl+Alt+B opens Copy Bible Verses from any Windows application (if Logos 4 is running) (screenshot)
• Help > Explain the screen (F9) (screenshot)
• Index Merging reduces the time it takes to build a full library index when adding new books.
• Redesign of the Cited By tool (screenshot)
• Commentaries section in Bible-reference-based guides supports custom collections of commentaries (e.g., Favorite Commentaries) (screenshot)
• Added more Highlighting styles (screenshot)
• Added hit counts to concordance results in Bible Word Study sections with a ring graph (screenshot)
• New look for Topics and Important Words in Passage Guide (screenshot)
• Home Page ribbon can be customized (screenshot)
• Search: My Content shows results from saved guides
• Ctrl+H opens History
• Alt+P opens or closes the Help menu
• Added two new handout styles
• Added new styles for the Ctrl+Drag distance calculation in Biblical Places maps
• Added searching indicator to Reading Lists searches
• Added Visual Bookmarks settings
• Added Resource Panel Background settings
• Added “rebuild index” command
• Added “merge index” command to force index merging (when possible)
• Added a “Copy” option to the context menu for the reading plan reference range selector
• Improved performance in many areas of the application

To see a list of some of the main bugs we squashed, check out “What's New in Logos 4.0a.”

Time to Upgrade to Logos 4?

Many of you have been cautiously watching from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity to make the switch to Logos 4. As you can see, Logos 4 is now better than ever. It’s had nearly two months of extensive testing by thousands of users, and our team of developers has been fixing bugs, listening to user feedback, and adding some really cool new features.

But 4.0a is just the beginning. Work has already begun on 4.0b. We’re in the process of adding these additional features, as well as many others that we can’t tell you about yet.

There’s never been a better time to upgrade to Logos 4. It’s a powerful, stable, cutting-edge piece of software that just keeps getting better all the time. And best of all, these updates come to you free of charge.

The window of time for taking advantage of our upgrade discounts is getting smaller. Don’t miss out on your chance to move to Logos 4 at our special introductory discount prices. What are you waiting for? Upgrade today.

What’s Your Favorite New Feature?

After you’ve updated to 4.0a, drop a note in the comments and tell us what your favorite new feature is. I think I’m most excited about the search analysis feature—virtually endless ways to explore and organize biblical data. The ability to use custom collections of commentaries in guides is also pretty sweet. What’s your favorite?

What about Logos 4 for Mac?

The Mac version of Logos 4 is also making some nice progress with a new build coming out about once a week on average. The latest release, Alpha 8, is coming together quite nicely. If you’re ready to help up test it, you can either upgrade your base package or download core engine.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

“Late in time behold Him come/Offspring of a Virgin’s womb”

Between singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” listening to sermons, and doing advent readings with my daughter, I can’t help but think about the significance of the virgin birth.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to show how to use Logos 4 to study the virgin birth. Typing Matthew 1 or Luke 1 into the box on the Home Page and clicking “Go” is a great place to start. Doing a Bible Word Study on parthenos (παρθένος) is also a useful exercise. You can launch a Bible Word Study from the Guides menu by typing g:parthenos or by right-clicking on virgin in a verse like Matthew 1:23, selecting “Lemma παρθένος,” and choosing “Bible Word Study.”

Another direction you might take is a systematic or theological one. I started by doing a search of my entire library for “Virgin Birth.” I instantly received over 7,500 hits. Awesome, but I wanted to make my search a bit more focused.

In order to narrow it down, I made a collection of my Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. Searching only those books yielded a more manageable 565 results. I started by looking at the article “Virgin Birth of Jesus” in the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible. Of its theological importance I learned, “From the very beginning the doctrine of the virgin birth became the foundation of a high Christology. Many have pointed out that the earliest church fathers stressed this more perhaps than any other event as proof of the incarnation and deity of Christ” (2126). And in New Bible Dictionary I read about Biblical evidence for the virgin birth outside of Matthew and Luke. It turns out those books aren’t the only place to go for allusions to the virgin birth. Paul makes a possible reference in Galatians 4:4.

The next thing you might do is ask, “What have Christian writers throughout the centuries had to say about the virgin birth?” I quickly made a collection of all my systematic theology books and discovered over 1,000 potential targets!

The first thing I checked was G. C. Berkouwer’s chapter in The Work of Christ entitled “The Great Mystery.” In it he dealt with the virgin birth at length and connected it with a doctrine of original sin: “In confessing the virgin birth we do not attempt to exclude Christ from the original sin which supposedly would be derived from a human father, but rather from the original guilt of all who are born of Adam” (129). Clearly that’s food for thought!

In Church Dogmatics I/2, Karl Barth called the virgin birth the “Miracle of Christmas” and described the coming of the Son of God in flesh through the Virgin Mary as a “new thing” outside our normal experience as humans. And because Jesus Christ came for us and our salvation, the exclusion of an earthly biological parent excludes the possibility of us humans contributing to our salvation in any way. The virgin birth is a sign of God’s total grace towards us.

However you celebrate your Christmas, Logos 4 is an excellent tool for understanding the significance of this important season.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Today’s guest post is from Sarah Wilson. Sarah is one of our friendly receptionists and works in our customer service department.

Here at Logos, we’ve always taken pride in the quality of our customer service. One of the ways that we do that is to have a real person answer and direct all calls. When you call Logos, you can depend on having a friendly person greet you and offer to direct your call. Our brand new release of Logos 4 has introduced an exciting and busy time in our main offices. We want to give you the inside scoop on what happens when you call for sales or customer service, and how you can be transferred and assisted as soon as possible.

The receptionist answers all incoming phone calls and transfers them all over the company, mostly to sales and customer service. We have a wonderful staff of personable receptionists who are well trained in customer service. The receptionist’s main job is to answer your call and make sure you get where you need to go!

Here are a few things to remember as you call Logos:

• If you need sales, the receptionist will ask if you are currently a student or faculty with a college or seminary, so that she can send you to the appropriate department, either Academic Sales or End-User Sales. If you have the name or extension of a sales person who has helped you in the past, this can help you get transferred even faster.

• If you need customer service, the receptionist will ask if you have either a Windows PC or a Mac. Clarifying which platform you are using will ensure that you don’t wait in the wrong support line! Our Windows support department can help you with Windows PC questions and issues, as well as Pre-Pub issues, renewing your Bible Study Magazine subscription, account management, and return requests. The Mac support team can assist you with all questions related to Mac products.

• If you have a question about your payment plan or need to make a payment, our accounting department is available to help you from 7 AM to 5 PM (PST).

• If you have a different kind of question, the receptionist will know how to assist you in finding the right department or person.

Your call-in experience is important to the receptionist and all of customer service. We know that the wait times for customer service and for sales have been longer since we released Logos 4, but we appreciate your patience as we help each of you, our valued customers.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

This post is aimed specifically at those of you who have never posted on, or perhaps, have never even read the forums. That’s right noobs, I am looking at you!

As Phil stated in his recent blog, Getting the Most Out of the Forums, the forums are an important place to learn great new tips, get your questions answered fast, and join a wonderful community of people who—like you—are using Logos Bible Software to help facilitate their Bible study.

Maybe you have checked out the forums and you were a little confounded by some of the tech talk there. You might have thought to yourself, “Hmmm, this is a little overwhelming.” Let me assure you, with more than 10,000 people posting on the forums, statistically speaking, you cannot be the least tech savvy person there! There is a need for people of all skill levels to be chiming in, asking questions and building community. It is a way to facilitate becoming more technologically astute and, at the same time; helping to encourage discussions that others of your skill level may need to see.

Getting involved in the forums is so easy. It is simply a case of signing in. You will use the same email and password that you use to sign in to Logos.com and Logos 4. If you don’t have a Logos.com account yet, you can easily create one.

If you are brand new to our forums I would like to help propel you forward. I have started a thread on the forums expressly entitled, Newbies!! It is a nice place to jump in and get your feet wet. Tell us a little about yourself and how you got involved with Logos Bible Software.

I can promise you that there is no entrance exam and no learning curve. You just have to make that initial jump. You will be glad you did.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

It is that time of year again—the time where we celebrate Jesus, the greatest gift we have received, by giving gifts to those closest to us. This year as you are looking over your Christmas list, consider giving the gift of Logos 4 to that special someone. In fact, we would like to offer a discount of 25% off any of our base packages through Christmas! Simply use the coupon code blessing to save.

Whether they are a pastor, a seminary student, a Bible study leader, or they are in need of an incredible tool for their personal devotion and study time there is a perfect package available for them. You would be hard pressed to think of a better present than one that will immerse your loved one in God’s Word, helping to lead them in a deeper appreciation of God’s character, attributes, and ultimately, His profound love for them.

Logos 4 is a resource that is user-friendly enough to keep up on Bible and devotional reading; but powerful enough to be a personal research assistant in sermon preparation, dissertation writing, and in-depth Bible study. The intuitive nature, coupled with the adaptability of Logos 4, makes it a resource that is both capable and convenient.

When you add the benefits of Logos 4 to the mobility of our free iPhone/iPod Touch app things go from great to amazing. Imagine having many of your resources available to you wherever you are, synced to the last place you closed them on your desktop, access to many of the Bibles featured at Bible.Logos.com, and Logos’ search functionality to quickly find relative verses in an instant.

Remember, purchase any of our base packages through Christmas at 25% off using the coupon code blessing or pass this blog on to a loved one to do so for you! If you want to get yourself a great Christmas present simply login or create a Logos.com account so you can check out the Upgrade Discounter for your personal tailor made discount.

Another great gift idea for yourself or a loved one is a subscription to Bible Study Magazine. At a low cost of $14.95 (almost 50% off the cover price) you simply cannot go wrong. And over the course of the year they will get six issues featuring further tools for Bible study as well as interviews and insights from respected voices in the Church and biblical scholarship.

Logos Bible Software, providing gifts that truly keep on giving.

(Don't forget about the Twelve Days of Logos. Check out today's deal on the Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary)

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

With Christmas just around the corner, many of you have asked if we are going to have any special sales or promotions to celebrate. While we did just launch Logos 4 and have some absolutely amazing deals on upgrades and base packages that are perfect for the holiday season, we dug a little deeper in our bag of goodies and found 12 more incredible deals for you. From December 9th--20th visit www.12daysoflogos.com and find a new deal every day!

Starting December 9th and running through December 20th, we’ll be posting a new deal every day on www.12daysoflogos.com. Each day, there will be something new, and the offer will only last for 24 hours. So, you’ll have to act fast to grab it. With some titles going for up to 85% off, you’ll want to be sure to check the site every day to get the latest offering!

So, how are we starting it off? Today's deal is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol for $0.95. At less than a buck, this is a deal that even Scrooge wouldn't pass up.

Now, these deals only last for 24 hours, so don't wait around or you'll miss out. While you're on the site, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed or register for daily email reminders. I've seen the deals we're offering over the next 12 days and, believe me, you don't want to miss any of them!

Logos Bible Software 4 is a professional-level power-tool. Ultimately, it exists to help us facilitate the most worthy pursuit in the universe—God—knowing, glorifying, enjoying, worshipping, and telling others about Him. If you were blessed enough to obtain it, would you want anything less than a professional-level power-tool to even scratch the surface of this inexhaustible and monumental task?

Just like other professional-level software packages that say, for example, run nuclear power plants, you can imagine Logos Bible Software 4 is going to take more than 30 seconds to download, install and get set-up... a lot more. It's not a toy after all, it's a professional-level power-tool.

Logos Bible Software 4 is exciting and we know you'll want to play with your new purchase right away, but remember this one time investment in the proper process will pay dividends for years to come. Here's what to expect.

So, you just purchased or upgraded to Logos 4 and, being confident in your internet connection, you chose the download option. What should you expect from the whole process?

There are three steps to getting set up to use your new software, and the entire process can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days (worst case scenario), depending on (1) the speed of your internet access, (2) the speed of your computer, and (3) the size of your library.

Step 1: Installation and Downloading

After purchase you will be prompted to download Logos4Setup.exe, which is a small (322KB) installer. Once the download finishes, double-click the file to install Logos 4. When installation is complete, you will be prompted to log in to your Logos.com account. Logos 4 will then begin downloading the resources for your package.

Installing a base package is going to require the downloading and installation of many resources and, depending on the number of resources you have in your pre-existing library, could mean many GBs for you to download. Your internet connection and download speeds are going to affect the downloading process and you might want to start the installation process in the evening and leave it to run overnight.

• TIP: Remember, if you are upgrading from a previous Libronix installation your licenses need to be synced in order for Logos 4 to know to transfer and install books that you already have in your collection! This can be done by simply going to Tools > Library Management > Synchronize Licenses in Libronix. If you do not have this option you are running an older version of Libronix DLS and should update to the latest version or call Customer Support at 800-875-6467 for assistance.
• After you sync your licenses, enter your Customer ID (found under Help > About Libronix DLS) in your Logos.com account.

Step 2: Preparing Your Library

After your resources are downloaded, Logos 4 begins preparing your library. During this procedure, Logos 4 is involved in finding files from your Logos 3 installation on your computer (if applicable), copying them to your resources folder, importing data into your Library Catalog, preparing Interlinear management, as well as a host of important processes.

Step 3: Indexing

When Logos 4 is done preparing your library, the program itself will open and you can begin exploring the wealth of tools and resources in your new base package. However, it's not quite ready for full use yet. You'll notice that an icon in the system tray indicates that Logos 4 in now indexing your library to enable you to do amazingly fast searches (more about the indexing process can be found here).

You will begin to enjoy the layout and ease of Logos Bible Software 4 during the indexing process but indexing is an integral part of installation. The power of Logos 4 is not realized until all of your resources are fully indexed. When the indexing is complete you will begin to see exactly what Bible study reimagined looks like.

So, once your computer starts indexing, go enjoy the holiday season by spending time with your family or go bake some cookies (and send some to the Logos office). Once indexing is completed, we are confident you will find that the wait was well worth it!

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Like many companies in the US, Logos will be closed today for the Thanksgiving holiday. While we may be closed, we realize that many of you will be using, buying, or simply wanting to learn more about Logos 4. Since we won't be in today to answer your questions, I thought I'd put together some links that might help you out.

• First, for those of you who are browsing Logos.com today and thinking about buying Logos 4, you might want to start by viewing the Logos 4 demo. This 4 minute video gives you a brief demonstration of what Logos 4 is all about.
• After that, if you're interested in seeing more footage, head over to our video page where we have over 50 videos highlighting many of the new features of Logos 4.
• With videos behind you, visit www.logos.com/products to take a look at all our base packages.
• After viewing those pages, you'll want to stop by our special discount page to see what sort of sweet offers we have for our new and existing customers. When you visit the page, be sure to login or create a Logos.com account so you can see a custom price tailored just for you.
• Once you have a good idea of what all your options are for Logos 4, read through the special FAQ we created for people considering the purchase. This will help answer some of the question you may have, or didn't even know you had.
• Finally, if you're looking for more information, head over to our community forums where there are literally hundreds of conversations about Logos 4. Join in the discussion and ask any questions you may have. The community is more than happy to help you out.

• As I mentioned in the above section, you should head over to www.logos.com/upgrade. Whether you are an existing user or new to Logos, this page will give you the best price for all our base packages. Be sure to login or sign up for a Logos.com account to see the best price.
• Before completing your purchase, be sure to read this FAQ. We outline some important information that will help make your purchase and installation run more smoothly.
• If you're looking for something to do while you wait for Logos 4 to install, check out our videos and visit our community forums.

• Our customer service department has been pulling extended hours and weekend shifts for the last 3 1/2 weeks to help all our users get used to their new software. While they are getting their well-deserved rest today, our community forums are here for you 24 hours a day.
• If you haven't seen our training and feature tutorial videos, be sure to check them out.
• Be sure you catch up on all our Logos 4 blog posts from the past couple weeks. There is a lot of great information in there.

So, there you have it. I hope that this information helps you out. If you need further assistance, we'll be in the office bright and early Friday morning. Wait, who am I kidding, we live in Bellingham, WA. We'll be in the office dark, cold, rainy, and early Friday morning.

Finally, from everyone at Logos, we truly hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Logos Bible Software 4 is a powerhouse of tools to help facilitate the deepest of Bible studies. Whether preparing for your personal Bible study or using Logos 4 to work on your doctrinal thesis, you can rest assured that you have the most effective ally in Logos Bible Software. But Logos 4 is not just a great resource for research and study, it is an immersive environment for getting the most out of simply reading from your growing library.

One great aspect of Logos 4 is that, while the in-depth study capabilities are amazing, the simplicity and layout of the program itself is refreshing as well. Logos Bible Software is perfect for analysis, research and your personal devotions. You will find yourself drawn towards pursuing your personal Bible reading and devotions with Logos 4.

Imagine, you wake up in the morning, go through your normal routine and, with your favorite morning beverage, sit down and open Logos 4. Right there on the top of the Home Page is your Reading Plan. Your reading plan is entirely customizable by you.

If you want to see more, simply click on the Bible reading for the day and your customizable Passage Guide open up with your favorite references and commentaries to the passage from this day’s Bible reading. If you want to continue on in your Bible reading F11 puts you into Reading view which maximizes your browser and clears everything but the text that you are reading. The simple, clear layout encourages you to read chapter after chapter.

From the Home Page you can also read today’s passage from your daily devotional which can also be put into reading mode.

There is so much in Logos 4 that enables, not only study, but your ability to get into the word. You can walk away from your desktop and pick up right where you left off from your laptop thanks to the incredible syncing ability of Logos 4. You can arrange your books in whatever format is most helpful and Logos 4 automatically saves a snapshot of your layout so that you can pick up where you left off.

Logos 4 is a clean, intuitive, and adaptable Bible software that invites you, not just to study the Bible for information’s sake, but to fall in love with simply reading the Scriptures again.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

To have a grasp on the biblical languages once required years of study. For those who wanted to dabble in understanding some Greek and Hebrew works they might add a Vine's Expository Dictionary or many of the other print helps available to give one a rudimentary understanding of key Greek and Hebrew words.

Maybe you have studied Greek and Hebrew in seminary but your skills are just not what they used to be. With the Exegetical Guide in Logos 4, your passage of Scripture is analyzed for you, word by word, in its original language, and definitions are displayed from dictionaries. You can also get insight from leading grammarians, see where biblical manuscripts differ, and observe the structure of the text.

The Bible Word Study gathers extensive information on any word in the Bible, whether Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, and shows you how the word is translated and how it functions. It also shows you where else it is used in ancient literature.

Reverse interlinears are built right into many of Logos 4's English Bibles which allows you to see the Greek or Hebrew behind your text. Simply highlight a portion of text in one interlinear, and Logos 4 will highlight the corresponding text in other open Bibles. You can see immediately how the Greek and Hebrew was translated in other translations.

Logos Bible Software 4 is not just powerful for language studies. Search your resources with its lightning fast search engine which can scan your whole library in a second. Print brand new, high-resolution infographics that are PowerPoint ready to illustrate some of your major points in sermons, essays or Bible studies. This can all be done in an interface that is completely intuitive and adaptable to your study needs.

If you haven't upgraded to Logos 4 yet, what are you waiting for? Now is the time to streamline your study and work smarter, not harder.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

The 3.0 version of Logos Bible Software has been out in the marketplace for several years, and it works pretty well. Still, it was built on an underlying technology that was better suited to 1999 than 2009, and has been starting to show its age. That, and I've always thought it could use a little more design.

So, four years ago, we embarked on a ground-up rewrite of the software and a ground-up redesign of the user interface. Yes, we re-used some of the code that shows a book on screen, some of the searching internals, and so on. But the user interface, the part that users see and interact with, is completely new.

My role in the Logos 4 rewrite was "designer", which means I spent a lot of time making pages like this:

I like to think of it this way:

• If a software project is like a construction site, then I'm like the architect. I drew the plans. I didn't build anything, and the core ideas weren't mine. Still, I made a thousand tiny decisions every day, pondering such imponderables as: Link or button or link button? What happens when you click it? Where best to put it?
• Bob (the President of Logos) was like the owner/client. It's really his baby. He has ideas, lots of them. Sometimes he scribbles them on my whiteboard. My job as designer is to translate his ideas, along with customer feedback, marketing input, and a thousand other streams of information and opinion into workable designs.
• The lead developers are like engineers. If an architect says, "We're going to build a 10,000 square foot room with no support columns" the engineer is there to tell him that it can't be done. Or that it can, but not with the budget we've been allocated. When it comes right down to it, the designs are just suggestions of what could be; once you get out to the job site and start sinking knee deep in the mud, your pretty blueprints may not count for much.
• The other devs are like the tradesmen and craftsmen who actually do the work. Like carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and painters, they are all highly skilled at making wonderful things. The Logos team is the best. I'm sure Google and Microsoft have great teams, but the Logos dev team is a highly motivated, highly intelligent, highly worthy group of men and women.

In the process, I tried to adhere to three design principles that I shamelessly stole from the Shakers:

(1) Is it necessary? This is all about prioritizing the design goals, and not getting carried away with the client's/user's/marketeer's exuberance. You try not to build the bad ideas, but given that you've only got so much time and effort, sometimes you can't even build all the great ones, either. So the first question boils down to: Can we ship without this? We were relentlessly minimal about the design of Logos 4; it's fully featured, but nothing on screen is wasted. At every turn, we asked ourselves: What's the simplest thing that could possibly work? One of the mottos we used was: "What you need, when you need it."

(2) Does it suit its purpose? This is really the hard one, because you have to know what goals a given feature is trying to accomplish, and then you have to figure out how to measure whether or not they were, in fact, accomplished. You can fail at either end: Identifying the right goals won't help much if you build something that doesn't accomplish them. Testing a product to death won't help much if you've identified the wrong goals. "Yes, it does the wrong thing entirely, but it does it really well!"

(3) Can it be beautiful? I don't do final art, and I don't make pixel-perfect specifications, but I do try to make sure my mockup screens and specification documents look as good as possible. Why? Because I find it's not that much harder for me to do, and it gives everyone, from client to developer to art designer a better vision of what we're trying to accomplish.

If those three goals can be achieved, then you've hit that sweet spot we designers like to call "elegance." With Logos 4, I think we did. (I may be biased, of course.)

The design work doesn't stop there: Parallel to Logos 4, we designed an iPhone app for Logos library resources, and we're working on several other projects that I can't tell you about. Yet.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

The new Logos Bible Software iPhone app has totally revolutionized "Bible study on the go." There have already been more than 10,000 downloads within the first few days of release—all from a simple Twitter announcement that it was available. Seconds later, a flood of "re-tweets" and social networking word-of-mouth lit up the Internet, and that's just the beginning. So what is this incredible app that has taken off like a rocket? A whole new way to access Bible study on the go.

At its most basic level, this free download from the App Store will give you immediate access to more than 30 Bibles* from http://bible.logos.com—Bibles including great translations like the ESV, NLT, NASB, and the Holman Christian Standard Bible.

...but wait, there's more!

When you sign up for a free account with Logos you will gain access to about another 30 free books!

...but wait, there's more!

When you register your account with Logos.com you will be able to access any free books from publishers that want to showcase new titles, or random books that we offer from time to time on free preview. You never know what might show up in your Logos Bible Software iPhone library some day. Imagine picking up your iPhone and seeing the hottest new title available in your library for free preview! One book per month, week, day? Who knows!

...but wait, there's more!

Add any Logos 4 base package and watch your resources grow as much of your library is synced with your iPhone or iPod Touch; the resources are available and your favorites, bookmarks and settings are transferred from one platform to another. Walk away from your desktop or laptop and your location is saved in the books you are using so that you can pick up where you left off on your iPhone.

The Logos iPhone app is so much more than a simple Bible reader. Mobile Bible study is transformed with multiple versions of the Bible that can be read, searched, cross referenced and compared. You can set-up reading plans that are synced from your desktop or laptop so your Bible reading is always on schedule. In addition, finding a passage is as easy as typing in the reference, using the book navigator, or dragging the scrollbar to the right location.

This application was created with the desire to bring the functionality of Logos Bible Software 4 to your iPhone. In particular, the ability to dig deeper into Scripture with the Passage Guide. Enter a verse and click “Go” to receive a report linking directly to commentaries referencing your verse. The Passage Guide also provides cross references, media resources, topics, and interesting words—all linked to resources in your library.

Do an in-depth Bible Word Study from anywhere by a simple "tap and hold" on any word, in a Bible with a reverse interlinear, and a pop-up will display the English word along with all the original language information. From this pop-up, click Bible Word Study to see the definition, pronunciation, translations, and example uses of the various translations.

Right about now you should be getting the idea that you need this app, you need it now, and you need to register it right away. There is simply no other Bible app that is this intuitive, intelligent and easy to use.

For more information check out some great screenshots and information, read our FAQs, and check out some customer reviews at the app store!

If for no other reason than to fully integrate your Bible study with your iPhone, you need to get a Logos 4 base package today. If you are a new user, check out the detailed information we have just posted about the most advanced Bible software in the world at our Logos 4 mini-site and if you are an existing Logos customer check out the limited time upgrade discounts available for you today.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

* The list of e-books that can be read through Logos Bible Software is changing constantly as we secure rights and convert resources. Not all Bibles are linked word-for-word to the Greek and Hebrew yet.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

We are merely hours into the release of Logos Bible Software 4, and while many of you have already waited for your massive libraries to index, you may have caught yourself thinking, "I thought Logos 4 was supposed to be fast. What happened to 'What You Need, When You Need It'?"

Logos 4 takes searching to a whole new realm with faster, smarter searching. And unlike most search engines, Logos 4 provides matches for synonyms! For those missing the significance of this, if you are searching for articles on communion, no search engine is going to bring results back for synonyms like the Lord's Supper or Eucharist. Nor will the other search engines ask you if you wanted a closely related topic like fellowship. This is the difference with Logos 4. We have gone through hundreds of topics and manually connected them to relative terms.

In order to do such searches, however, every word and every term in the thousands of books available for Logos needs to be indexed during installation. This allows Logos 4 to search a library of 10–10,000 books and return thousands of results in under one second—less time than it takes to pull one print book off your shelf! Nearly 63,000 hits for communion in 35,951 articles in less than 1 second means more time studying and less time searching.

It's true, this functionality takes a significant amount of time to install—an investment of your time in the beginning—but what you get in return later on is a fulfillment to what we promised from the start, "What You Need, When You Need It." Indexing your entire library allows the time consuming hindrances to be removed so you can get right to the task of serious Bible study.

Indexing. Think of it as if you were waiting for UPS to deliver your Amazon order. A little patience and investment of time up front—during installation—means that later on, whether you're preparing for next Sunday's sermon, working on your dissertation, or having your daily devotional time, Logos 4 will deliver thousands of relevant results —fast!

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

In the history of our company, Base Package Upgrades have generally been the best way to get a tremendous amount of new content for minimal cost. The release of Logos Bible Software 4 is no exception.

Upgrading your base package gives you all the benefits of Logos 4—a revolutionary tool for Bible study. Logos 4 has a brand new Home Page to get you started, powerful (and fast!) new search tools, an intuitive and easy-to-use design, plus lots of other new features.

When you upgrade, you get a tremendous amount of new content for minimal cost. You could potentially get hundreds of books for up to 95% off. We’ve added lots of new content to every base package—new Bible translations, reverse interlinears, commentary sets, reference material, preaching and ministry resources, and a whole lot more. Depending on your situation, you could easily double or triple your current library at minimal cost to you. Take a look at the comparison chart on logos.com/upgrade to see the sheer number of new books we’ve added to our collections.

With an upgrade to Logos 4, you can take advantage of today’s most advanced tools designed specifically with Logos Bible Software 4 in mind. Visualize the Bible with new people, places, and things databases. Zoom into the Holy Land with interactive, topographical maps linked with coordinates to Google Maps. Get an additional perspective on the place you’re exploring with thousands of images and photographs—all viewable with the new media resource functionality of Logos 4. You can also interact with the stories of Scripture with high resolution Infographics commissioned specifically for the release of Logos 4. Logos 4 also comes with new one-of-a-kind databases, stunning graphics, and a whole lot more.

You have nothing to lose. Literally. You will retain all of your current resources when you upgrade. When you buy an electronic book from Logos, you will never lose your book. And we’ll never make you buy the same book twice. That means if you’ve recently purchased new books, and now decided to upgrade, you won’t lose the resources you’ve purchased. You’ll simply add a significant amount of new content at a fraction of the cost. You keep everything you’ve purchased in the past—and you'll gain dozens, hundreds, or maybe over a thousand new books at a significant discount, depending on your situation.

For the initial release period, we’re offering discounts on all upgrades. Visit the custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a new Logos 4 base package. If you’ve been thinking of expanding your library, the release of Logos 4 presents you with the perfect opportunity. Upgrade today!

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Today we are announcing the all-new Logos Bible Software 4, designed from scratch to accomplish our goal of helping more people do more and better Bible study.

The leading Bible software products available today (including our own Libronix DLS 3.0) are powerful tools designed 10-20 years ago. Most Bible software companies were started in a day when users owned screwdrivers for opening their computer case and knew what a DIP switch was. Our software was designed for people who liked technology and were comfortable with it.

Today everybody has a computer, and everybody isn't a computer-geek. A computer is just one more tool in your life for doing whatever it is you want to do, from Bible study to photography to water skiing.

While technology has moved into the mainstream, it hasn't stopped improving. We re-invented Logos Bible Software repeatedly to stay on the cutting edge of technology and user interface. But the edge keeps moving.

Our last product couldn't anticipate the incredible inter-connectedness of today's users, with widespread broadband, wireless, and mobile-phone Internet. Today's leading programming language didn't even exist when we designed the Libronix DLS. Apple and Microsoft have changed processors, operating systems, and more. And, most importantly, the customer base has changed: today's Bible student with a computer isn't a computer hobbyist. We are appliance users who expect power, elegance, and simplicity. We want computers to be like our toasters, TV's, and cars. Turn them on and they just work.

This generation needed yet another back-to-the-drawing-board approach to Bible software. And we were glad to do it. Because only by starting with a clean slate can you leave behind mistakes and poor choices. Only facing an empty whiteboard can you design an architecture that isn't constrained by the limitations of long-gone hardware and operating systems. Only by abandoning your existing product can you truly hear what your users want in a world unconstrained by yesterday's designs.

Throwing it all away and starting over is incredibly rare in the software world. It is considered a dangerous business decision. It puts years between major releases and increases development costs. And the better your existing product is, the more your new product upsets existing users, many of whom just wanted a few small improvements.

But it is the only way to take advantage of the latest technology. It is the only way to design for today's users, and their expectations about elegant design, powerful features, and Internet integration. It is the only way to keep some of the world's finest software developers interested and engaged. (It's no fun maintaining a decades-old codebase.)

Starting over takes courage, but it is the only way to do something extraordinary.

Logos Bible Software 4 is not an upgrade. Logos 4 is Bible software re-imagined. To help you do more and better Bible study.

Already a Logos Bible Software user?
Visit our custom upgrade discount calculator to see what discounts you qualify for on an upgrade to a brand new Logos 4 base package.

Want to be a Logos Bible Software user?
New customers should visit http://www.logos.com/4 to learn more and see what discounts are currently available.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

On the blog we try to take opportunities to show you what it is like to work at Logos. We've shown you our cook-offs. We've introduced you to some of our employees. We've even shown you our Bible study bus.

Well, Friday we shipped the New International Commentary and thought that this would be a perfect time to show you what it is like around the office when we ship a new product.

Later today we will award our first SeminaryScholarship.com scholarship. The scholarship includes $1,000.00 towards tuition, plus a copy of Logos Scholar's Library which contains more than 330 titles, which in print would cost over $6,100.00.

Next Scholarship--January 10, 2010

While we'll announce the scholarship winner next week, we wanted to let you know that we'll be awarding another SeminaryScholarship.com scholarship on January 10, 2010. So, if you didn't get around to applying for our last scholarship, you can apply now. For those who applied for our last scholarship, we encourage and invite you to apply again.

Not in Seminary?

Help the seminarians around you by letting them know about this scholarship opportunity. Post a link on Facebook, tweet about it, or just send the link (http://www.seminaryscholarship.com/) in email to someone you know in seminary.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

As a former seminarian, I can say with great confidence that I always appreciated the person who told me about opportunities to get money to help pay for my education. If you know a seminarian, today is your day to be that person! Today is Help-a-Seminarian Day.

In just 13 days, Logos will award its first Seminary Scholarship, which includes $1,000.00 towards tuition and a copy of Scholar's Library.

Help the seminarians around you by letting them know about this scholarship opportunity. Applying is easy and only takes less than 15 minutes.

How can you help a seminarian? Spread the word!

Facebook: Login to your Facebook account and post the link http://www.SeminaryScholarship.com on your wall. Be sure to include a line that lets your friends know what the link is all about. Something like, "If you are in seminary, here is a scholarship that might help you out." You can also just click here to share on Facebook.

Twitter: Post a tweet with a link to http://www.SeminaryScholarship.com. Not sure what to tweet? You can just click here and tweet this.

Blog: If you have a blog, you can help out seminarians two ways. First, you can write a post on your blog letting seminarians know about the scholarship. Second, you can add one of our new Seminary Scholarship web banners to your site.

Not sure what to write? Try this:

Need Money for Seminary?

Searching for a seminary scholarship is tough. Everywhere you turn there are requirements. Degree track, financial need, denominations, demographics —what seminarian has time for all that!?!

Now there is a scholarship that is open to everyone and doesn’t take a week’s worth of late nights to apply for. At www.SeminaryScholarship.com all you have to do is watch a demonstration of Logos Bible Software and fill out a brief application. Once your application is submitted you will be entered to win a $1,000.00 scholarship AND a digital theological library that, in print, would cost over $6,100.00!

www.SeminaryScholarship.com

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Mental note: Just because I know something does not mean everyone knows it.

I was reminded of the above truth the other day when on Twitter someone mentioned that they had wanted to buy Logos Scholar's Library for awhile, but their budget never had room for the expense. I replied to the person saying, "Not sure if this helps, but we do have payment plans http://www.logos.com/paymentplan." The person responded a couple minutes later, very excited, thanking me and letting me know that this was just what they needed in order to be able to fit Logos into their budget.

The part of the story that surprised me was that the person had been thinking about buying Logos for a while now, but never knew we had the payment plan option. I followed up that Twitter conversation with a tweet to all our followers letting them know about our payment plan. I received numerous messages following that tweet with people thanking me and saying that they never knew this program existed.

Today I ran a quick search on our blog for "payment plan" and didn't come up with any hits. So, I decided I'd lay aside my assumption that you all know we have a payment plan available and say, "Hey, if you didn't already know, we offer payment plans for orders over $29.90."

To take advantage of the payment plan, simply select the payment plan option during the final step of checkout, enter your phone number, and select the number of payments you'd like to make. It is that simple.

You can get full program details here.

Twelve more people have now received a top-of-the-line premium leather Bible from the Great Bible Giveaway.

Will you be next? You still have 6 more days to enter for your chance to be one of our September winners! Visit the Great Bible Giveaway for full details and to enter today.

Congratulations to our August winners:

Want to see how this all started? View our original Great Bible Giveaway blog post.

A new version of Logos Bible Software for Mac is now available for download. Version 1.2.2 fixes a couple of bugs: a font display issue that occurred in some reports with Snow Leopard and a search problem with queries ending with search operators. Everyone running Safari 4 (whether you’re using Snow Leopard or not) should update to 1.2.2.

As with earlier updates, version 1.2.2 is free to existing users and can be downloaded from your Logos.com account. Go to Logos.com, sign in, navigate to My Account > Order History, and then click on the order number for your Mac engine or base package order.

At the bottom of the order page, you’ll see a “Files to Download” section.

Click the “Download” link next to LogosMac1.2.2.dmg to save it to your Mac, and then double-click the file to install the update. Follow the instructions, and you should be up and running with the latest version in just a minute or two.

If you don’t have a Logos.com account, don’t see the link below your Mac order, or have any other troubles updating, please contact our Mac Customer Service team at 800-875-6467 or macsupport@logos.com.

Today many Mac users around the globe are upgrading to Apple’s latest and greatest operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Our developers have been testing Logos for Mac 1.2 on pre-release builds of Snow Leopard and have found an issue that causes a handful of resources to crash the application.

Today we’re releasing version 1.2.1 to fix this bug. As with earlier updates, version 1.2.1 is free to existing users and can be downloaded from your Logos.com account. It’s also now available for purchase as a download.

Just head over to Logos.com, sign in, navigate to My Account > Order History, and then click on the order number for your Mac engine or base package order.

At the bottom of the order page, you’ll see a “Files to Download” section.

Click the “Download” link next to LogosMac1.2.1.dmg to save it to your Mac, and then double-click the file to install the update. Follow the instructions, and you should be up and running with the latest version in just a minute or two.

If you don’t have a Logos.com account, don’t see the link below your Mac order, or have any other troubles updating, please contact our Mac Customer Service team at 800-875-6467 or macsupport@logos.com.

There’s a known font issue that causes some display problems in certain reports. We’re working on version 1.2.2 to correct this bug.

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From day one Logos has had a passion for customer service and support—we love our customers!

Everyone in our company has a mandate to provide the best customer service in the universe. So much so, that our CEO/President has repeatedly made it publicly clear that if our staff of nearly 200 can’t make you happy, he will personally address your concerns himself!

From customer service and technical support on our toll-free line (USA/Canada), user surveys, and the ability for everyone to send us suggestions and feedback (which we actually read) at suggest@logos.com, to the new community forums where many of our staff members read and engage in the discussion—we want to serve you, and we thrive on your feedback.

That is why we are so pleased, humbled, thankful, and honored to have received a perfect 5 out of 5 stars award from Google Shopping, and to rank in the Top 5 Rated Websites at Reseller Ratings out of nearly 20,000 stores and 360,000+ reviews.

It is especially rewarding to see that our efforts to provide the best customer service in the world are noticed by our customers. It is great to believe we give good service, but it is good to see our customers agree—the #1 most frequently mentioned term in our customers’ reviews according to the Google Shopping report is “customer service.”

Please help us keep our good name!

We want to make sure all of our customers are taken care of with excellence, and we want you to be able to honestly tell the world that we are a great company to do business with. If you can't—we want to fix that right away.

If you have ever placed an order at Logos.com and you would like to contribute your own public review of the experience, please go to your order history to find your most recent order ID, then go to Reseller Ratings to submit a review with your most recent order ID as your “invoice number.”

If for some reason you aren't comfortable giving us a glowing review, we want to take care of you right away and do what we can to make you a happy customer! Please call us at 1-800-875-6467 or email cs@logos.com so we can help you. If that doesn't work, ask for the president—we want you to be taken care of!

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The anticipation of the yet-to-be-completed Logos Bicycle Jersey Pre-Pub didn't stop a group of Logos employees from gathering for this year’s Tour de Whatcom. Even without the jersey, the Logos team looked sharp on the road as they led the peloton in both the 50- and 105-mile rides.

In order to gather more interest for the Logos jersey, Jim Straatman, our IT Manager, actually took a prototype of the Logos jersey and safety-pinned sections of it onto his regular jersey! Place your Pre-Pub order to help move it into production and soon enough, you can look for riders around the country sporting the new Logos Bible Software bicycle jerseys . . . if you can keep up. ;)

Tour de Whatcom Wrap-Up

In the century leg of the Tour, a ride spanning the same distance from the U.S./Canadian Border (Peace Arch Crossing) down to Seattle, Jim Straatman and Scott Alexander averaged almost 20 mph—good enough to finish first. For Jim, this was his first organized 100+ mile ride where several hundred people participated. And leave it to our IT Manager to capture the ride’s GPS data!

For the 50-milers, it was Sean Fields, Director of Visual Design here at Logos, who finished first with an average speed of over 19 mph. The Tour has become a traditional birthday celebration ride for Sean, who remarked, "It's a great way to start off a new year of my life—a fun fast bike ride!"

In all, nine Logos employees participated in this year’s Tour:

Related posts:
Bike-to-Work Day
People behind the Product: Jim Straatman

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Today’s guest blogger is Jayson Bradley, the newest addition to our marketing team.

As the new guy in the marketing department, I write my first blog post only eleven days after walking through the doors as an employee. I thought that I would use this opportunity to give you faithful readers of our blog a small peek behind the curtain into the inner workings of your favorite Bible software company.

I have been a Logos Bible Software user for many, many years, but I had no idea how much the experience of working with Logos Bible Software (the software) would mirror working at Logos Bible Software (the company). Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean.

One of my favorite things about using Logos has always been the startup sound; it has always seemed so relaxing, almost anticipatory as if it was promising something special was going to happen soon. Walking into the Logos building gives off that same ambience; a simple, classy presentation, the dulcet sounds of reception and a feeling that something exceptional is happening here.

Another thing I have always loved about Logos is the cleanliness of the interface. For such a powerful tool that offers so much, there is a simple elegance you can see right from the home page. In the same way, the main hallway that greets you off of reception also carries an authoritative simplicity; one that is both inviting and inspiring.

In the future I would love to address the operational efficiency, the diversity of roles and applications, the ease of use, and the productivity that I see mirrored already in both the Logos organization and the software that bears its name.

It would seem that the things that I have loved about Logos the software seem to come not just from design but are woven into the climate and culture of Logos the company.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

With the launch of the brand new Logos Bible Software Community Forums we have been seeing a bit of discussion on the topic of Logos Bible Software for mobile devices and ebook readers.

From multi-function devices like iPhone, Google Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile to dedicated readers like Amazon's Kindle, we think we have an idea of what people like—but before heading off in the wrong direction we wanted to hear from you too!

Since the forums are relatively new and haven't been discovered by most of our users yet, we wanted to bring the topic to the forefront with an open survey on Logos Bible Software for Mobile Devices to get as much feedback from as many people as possible.

If you would like your voice to be heard, this is your chance. Please take a moment to complete our simple 8 question survey about Logos Bible Software for Mobile Devices.

After you take the brief survey be sure to drop by the forums and take a look around, or start your own thread. If you have a Logos.com account, you are already registered—no need to start a whole new account and password—so take a look around and become part of the community of Logos Bible Software users all around the world today!

You should follow us on Twitter here.

UPDATE: Logos is now available on the iPhone as a free app! Visit http://www.logos.com/iphone for more info.

The first month of our Great Bible Giveaway is over, and 12 ultra premium Bibles are on their way to the winners! If you didn't win last month, don’t worry—we have 60 more beautiful Bibles to give away between now and the end of December.

This August, Bible.Logos.com is giving away another 12 exquisitely crafted premium Bibles. Included in this month’s giveaway is a limited edition KJV from Cambridge Press that is bound in Moroccan goatskin leather and comes with a cherry wood display case. No longer in production, this Bible is sure to be a treasure to one of this month’s winners. Will it be you?

Visit the Great Bible Giveaway page for details on how to enter, as well as the full contest rules and prize list.

This month we will be giving away:

1. ESV Calfskin Study Bible (retail: $239.99) from Crossway
2. ESV Wide Margin Goatskin (retail: $229.99) from Cambridge
3. KJV Concord Cambridge Calfskin (retail: $199.99) from Cambridge
4. NASB In Touch Ministries Wide Margin Edition, Burgundy Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
5. NASB Large Print Ultrathin Reference, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
6. NASB Side Column Reference Wide Margin Limited Edition, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
7. NIV Fine Leather Archaeological (retail: $104.99) from Zondervan
8. NIV Fine Leather Thinline (retail: $49.99) from Zondervan
9. NKJV UltraSlim Bible Signature Series, Black Calfskin (Retail $129.99) from Thomas Nelson
10. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
11. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
12. TNIV Reference Bible, Black Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $99.99) from Zondervan

To read how the Great Bible Giveaway got started, check out our original Bible Giveaway post

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Last night we put the finishing touches on Logos for Mac 1.2 and made it live for all Logos for Mac users. As with earlier updates, version 1.2 is a free update that you can download from your Logos.com account. It’s also now available for purchase as a download (the 1.2 DVD will be another week or two).

In addition to fixing a number of bugs, 1.2 adds some cool new features like Bible Speed Search, Parallel Resource Associations, printing, the ability to choose an English font, and more. Read the new support article to see the complete list of changes.

Just head over to Logos.com, sign in, navigate to My Account > Order History, and then click on the order number for your Mac engine or base package order.

At the bottom of the order page, you’ll see a “Files to Download” section.

Click the “Download” link next to LogosMac1.2.dmg to save it to your Mac, and then double-click the file to install the update. Follow the instructions, and you should be up and running with the latest version in just a minute or two.

If you don’t have a Logos.com account, don’t see the link below your Mac order, or have any other troubles updating, please contact our Mac Customer Service team at 800-875-6467 or macsupport@logos.com.

You should follow us on Twitter here.

Four years ago, on July 29, 2005, Bob kicked off the Logos blog with this introductory post. Here’s why we started the blog:

Our goal is to make Logos more open and accessible and to improve our communication with you. Please join us in the process: ask questions, make suggestions, and tell us how we can serve you better.

From our perspective, the blog has accomplished its purpose fairly well. We’ve posted about 950 times—usually every Monday through Friday—more than 15,000 of you get our daily posts in your RSS reader or email inbox, and you respond with great questions and suggestions that lead us to improve our software, products, and websites.

But there’s always room for improvement.

What would you like to be different here at the blog? More posts? Fewer posts? More people blogging? More posts about Greek? Take our new poll, and leave your feedback in the comments or send it to us at blog@logos.com.

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The Exegetical Guide is perfectly suited for digging deep into the grammar and syntax of a passage of Scripture. It provides you with a wealth of information from your grammars, critical apparatuses, lexicons, and more.

When you’ve landed on a particular portion of Scripture that you’re going to study in depth in the original Greek or Hebrew—perhaps for a sermon or paper—the Exegetical Guide is the tool for the task. But sometimes you may just want to see what your grammars have to say about a verse here and there as you’re jumping from passage to passage following cross references and looking at parallel passages. Did you know that you can use the Exegetical Guide for this kind of study as well?

All you need to do is link your Bible to the Exegetical Guide by setting them to share the same link set (e.g., Link Set A), and the Exegetical Guide will follow you wherever you go—providing nearly instant access to every place your grammars discuss the passage you’re looking at. Just click the chain icon at the top of both windows, and set them to the same letter.

To keep the Exegetical Guide as speedy as possible, you can collapse the sections that you’re not as interested in. Just click the minus sign to collapse a section and the plus sign to expand it again.

This is perfect for the times you’re moving around and haven’t settled on just one passage to dig into to. Give it a try. It’s like having someone looking over your shoulder while you’re studying the Bible and finding every occurrence of the passage you’re in in all of your grammars—only instantly!

By the way, you can also do this with the Passage Guide to always have your favorite commentaries just a click away, or with the Reference Browser to have instant access to the places your passage occurs in your favorite collections of books like the Church Fathers, Systematic Theology texts, Old and New Testament Introductions, etc.

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Netbooks like the Acer Aspire One, ASUS Eee PC, Dell Inspiron Mini, HP Mini, Lenovo IdeaPad, and MSI Wind are rapidly growing in popularity due to the amount of computer they pack into such a portable size at such a low price point.

One of the things that allows these devices to be so small is the absence of an optical drive. But with no DVD/CD drive, how are you supposed to install your software? There are a few ways to do it (e.g., see this support article), but they can be overly complicated for many users.

Most software still comes on a CD or DVD, but software companies are looking to alternate delivery methods to accommodate the growing number of computers without optical drives. Moving to downloadable software is one solution. It’s something we’ve been doing for a while with most of our add-on collections and books, and it’s something we’re considering for our base collections in the future.

Another option is to move to a smaller, more universal media format—and nothing is hotter right now than flash. The most popular and universal form of flash memory is the USB thumb drive. Every computer has a USB port. But thumb drives have the disadvantage of protruding outside of the computer, making them not a very good choice for long-term use; and they tend to be a tad pricier than other forms of flash memory.

For these reasons we’ve decided to start delivering a media-only* version of our base packages via SD cards. Most if not all netbooks have built-in SD card readers, and since the SD card doesn’t stick out, you can leave it in and run your books right off the card if you need the extra space on your internal hard drive or SSD.

We’re now selling 2GB and 4GB versions of our Media-Only SD Cards. If you purchase Christian Home Library, Bible Study Library, or Leader’s Library, you’ll need only the 2GB version. But if you think you might upgrade down the road, you might want to consider purchasing the 4GB version to give you the ability to expand your library without having to purchase an additional card later. Original Languages Library and Scholar’s Library (all three flavors) will need the 4GB version.

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* “Media-only” means you’ll have to add it on to a base package purchase in order to unlock any of the included books.

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We now have the brand new Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible, Version 3 (or SESB 3 for short) in stock and ready to ship. SESB, which is a co-production of the German Bible Society and the Bible Society of the Netherlands, has been one of our most popular third-party products and is a standard for academic users around the world. Just read some of the many SESB reviews to see for yourself.

If you don’t already have an earlier edition of the SESB, you can get everything from the previous editions plus all of the new content by purchasing SESB 3. If you already have a previous version of SESB (i.e., SESB 1, SESB 1 (Logos Edition), or SESB 2), you can upgrade to SESB 3 for only $159.95.

Here’s a list of the more than 20 titles that are new to SESB 3:

• Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: WIVU Syntactic Analysis (Note: This is a new syntax database like Andersen-Forbes, not a resource in My Library.)
• Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: Workgroep Informatica Constituency Tree Analysis
• Biblia Sacra Vulgata (Apparatus)
• Biblia Sacra Vulgata (SESB)
• Biblia Sacra Vulgata: Psalmi iuxta Hebraicum et Varia Lectio (Apparatus)
• Das Thomasevangelium: Originaltext mit Kommentar
• Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet
• Den Hellige Skrifts Kanoniske Bøger 1931/1948
• The Gospel of Thomas: Original Text with Commentary
• King James Version
• King James Version Apocrypha
• Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers in English
• Lightfoot's Apostolic Fathers in Greek
• Luther Bibel (1912)
• Russian Modern New Testament
• Russian Synodal Bible Translation
• Septuaginta: Apparatus Criticus
• Septuaginta: Apparatus Criticus (Alternate Texts)
• Septuaginta: SESB Edition
• Septuaginta: SESB Edition (Alternate Texts)
• A Textual Guide to the Greek New Testament
• Zürcher Bibel

To see the complete contents, visit www.logos.com/sesb.

Note: We have a limited stock of these. Once we run out, it’ll take a few weeks to get more in stock. So it’s first come, first served!

Update: The SESB 3 Upgrade is temporarily out of stock. We have more on the way.

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Aaaah, summertime! Fourth of July, the Mid-Summer Classic (MLB’s All-Star game), and, of course, your favorite pie! Today, eleven employees treated the Logos office to one of the sweetest lunches ever—for the Logos Pie Bake-off! As soon as you stepped foot into the kitchen, it smelled like a sweet-factory . . . too bad you can’t capture smell and taste in a photo.

The pies were so good, and the competition so close, that there was a tie for third until a straggling voter cast his last-minute ballot pushing Brittany Young’s Chocolate-Dipped Strawberry Shortbread into third place. But that was not the only close call. Marketing’s very own Sarah Knepper just barely edged out Kyle Anderson’s Family Peanut Butter Pie with her Pavlova—by only two votes!

Sarah has graciously made her Pavlova recipe available, so after enjoying a few photos, give her Pavlova a try for your next summer party!

We have an impressive number of users who regularly blog and tweet about us, and many show their enthusiasm by featuring one of our banners in their sidebar. Almost daily we meet new users by reading what people are saying about us and noticing who’s linking to us.

On occasion we get emails from people asking if they can link to our site or use one of our images in their site’s sidebar. We gladly grant them permission on both counts, but we wanted to state publicly that you don’t even need to ask. If you want to link to us, feel free. If you find a Logos image that you’d like to use in a post or put in your sidebar, help yourself.

To make it easy for you to find just the right one, we’ve created two pages where you can find dozens of images and ads that you can display on your site to show your enthusiasm for Logos to your readers.

If you’ve been wanting to show Logos a little love on your website or blog, head on over and grab an ad or image and link it up to the demo or to the appropriate product page.

Our EULA allows you to install Logos on two of your machines for your personal use. If you have Logos on two machines, you may be well aware of the challenge of keeping everything in sync between your desktop and your laptop or netbook, or between your home computer and your work computer.

You can currently keep your licenses in sync between your two machines by going to Tools > Library Management > Synchronize Licenses (your licenses are safely backed up on our servers), but what about the rest of your data?

If you use Logos extensively on both machines, you will probably eventually end up with notes, visual markups, favorites, bookmarks, Bible reading plans, prayer lists, toolbars, collections, resource associations, diagrams, saved searches, etc. that are on one computer but not on the other—or even worse, that are on both, but not identical. Having your valuable data spread between two computers is not a good scenario. I originally tried to create or edit my content only on one machine and use the other machine only to access my library and do searches. But this proved not to be a very good long-term solution for a number of reasons. If Logos is installed on two of your machines, it makes the most sense to use all of its features on both machines.

But what’s the best way to accomplish this?

Manual Method: USB Thumb Drive

Some people solve this problem by using a USB thumb drive. They carry their drive with them at all times and copy their My Documents\Libronix DLS folder to it after every use—replacing only the updated files. Then they copy those files to their other computer—again, replacing only the updated files. This method can work, but it’s far too tedious for most, and it’s too easy to forget to do it every time. Before you know it, your files are out of sync.

Thankfully there’s a better way.

Automatic Method: Sync Software

There are many free applications that allow you to sync files and folders across a network or across the internet. Some sync directly between the two computers, requiring that both be running at the same time. Others use a cloud backup of your files, eliminating this problem.

My personal recommendation is to use a combination of Windows Live Mesh and Windows Live Sync (formerly FolderShare)—Live Mesh for your My Documents\Libronix DLS folder and Live Sync for your Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources folder.

Live Mesh: Sync Your Personal Files

Live Mesh allows you to sync up to 5GB of data with no limit to the number of files and folders that make up that 5GB. It uses a cloud backup of your data, so your machines can stay in sync even if you never have them both powered on at the same time—and your data is protected if both of your machines are stolen, destroyed, etc. Live Mesh also comes with remote desktop functionality, so you can log on to one of your machines (if it is powered on) from your other machine to access data you need but aren’t syncing.

Before you use Live Mesh, be sure to back up all of the data you plan to sync. If you do something wrong, it’s possible to unintentionally delete important files. Our customer service team cannot provide support for third-party software, so proceed with caution if you’re not at least moderately techie.

To use Live Mesh to sync your personal Logos files, install the application on both machines, navigate to your My Documents folder, right click on Libronix DLS, and then click “Add folder to Live Mesh.” Live Mesh will begin syncing your files and notify you of any conflicts that need to be resolved. In my experience, it’s best to start either with identical data on both computers or with the data only on one computer. Otherwise you may have hundreds or thousands of file discrepancies to deal with.

Live Sync: Sync Your Resources

Unlike Live Mesh, Live Sync has no GB limit, but it does have a file limit of 20,000 files per synchronized folder (you can have up to 20 synchronized folders). This makes Live Sync ideal for keeping your resources in sync, since many users have more than 5GB of resources, and a cloud backup of resources is unnecessary. No more having to install a new product on both machines. Install it on either machine, sync your licenses, and Live Sync will take care of syncing your new resources.

To use Live Sync to sync your Logos resources, install the application on both machines, and then set up and sync your folder from the Live Sync website. Live Sync errs on the side of protecting your data, so when duplicates are found, it will keep both by renaming one of them to indicate its source. To avoid having lots of duplicates to clean up, it’s best to start with identical data or with data only on one machine.

Using a combination of Live Mesh and Live Sync will enable you to keep your Logos files in sync effortlessly. If you’re looking for a good sync solution for Logos, I highly recommend giving this a try.

What do you do to keep your Logos data in sync? What are your favorite sync programs? Let us know in the comments.

Update: Mark points out in the comments that Live Mesh can sync more than 5GB by simply disabling the sync to Live Desktop for the folder that you don't need a cloud backup of. This means that you could use Live Mesh for both your personal Logos files and your resources. Thanks for the tip, Mark.

Today marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564). Hundreds of thousands commemorate this day with gratitude to God for this man and his influence on the church.

Many who disagree with his theology still regard him as a gift to the church. John Wesley called him “a great instrument of God,” and Jacob Arminius considered Calvin “incomparable in the interpretation of Scripture” and recommended Calvin’s commentaries second only to the Bible itself. So learning and benefiting from Calvin isn’t just for the five pointers.

To join in the celebration of the grace of God in the life of John Calvin, we decide to launch Calvin500.com—a resource site devoted to everything John Calvin—and create several new Calvin collections, including the impressive Calvin 500 Collection, which contains more than 100 books by and about John Calvin.

If you missed the original announcement and haven’t yet seen the site or the collections, be sure to give them a look.

In addition to the site and the collections, don’t miss out on the two special birthday presents we have for you.

More Books, No Additional Charge!

First, we’ve added 11 new volumes to the Calvin 500 Collection, bringing the total up to 108! To cover the addition of these new titles, the price needs to go up. But instead of raising it immediately, we decided that we’d keep it at the already crazy price of $299.95 through the weekend. If you’ve been contemplating placing your pre-order, you have one last chance to pick up the most comprehensive Calvin collection on the planet at the lowest possible price. First thing Monday morning (July 13), the price will increase.

If you’ve already pre-ordered the Calvin 500 Collection, you’ll get all of these 11 new titles at no additional charge, but we need your help to cover the added cost. Please spread the word about the even bigger Calvin 500 Collection. Blog it. Tweet it. Facebook it. Or email it.

Get a Free Copy of Calvin’s Institutes!

Second, we’re giving away the Beveridge translation of Calvin’s Institutes through the end of the month. To get your free book, you’ll need three things:

1. a copy of the Libronix Digital Library System installed on your PC or Mac
2. a Logos.com account with a credit card on file
3. a Libronix Customer ID that is connected to your Logos.com account

Here are the steps to follow to get all set up:

Step 1: Download and install Libronix for Windows. (Mac users can purchase the Mac version of the engine, or buy a Mac base package.) If you already have Libronix up and running on your computer, jump to the third step.

Step 2: Activate Libronix. When you do, you’ll create a Libronix Customer ID (usually your email address, if you enter it). You can find your Libronix Customer ID by going to Help > About Libronix DLS.

Step 3: Create a Logos.com account. If you already have one, just log in.

Step 4: Make sure that your Libronix Customer ID is associated with your Logos.com account. Go to My Account, enter your Libronix Customer ID from Step 2, and click “Confirm.” If it’s already there, no need to do anything.

Step 5: “Buy” the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Go to the page and click “Add to Cart,” or just add it straight to your cart from here, and then make sure to add the CALVIN-500 coupon code to your cart and click “Update Cart.” Proceed through the checkout process and then click “Submit Order.” If you don’t have a credit card on file, you’ll need to enter your credit card information. Don’t worry. You won't be charged. It’s an unfortunate inconvenience in our current checkout system, and we hope to change it at some point.

Step 6: Unlock and download your new book. If you’re on a Windows machine, just click the orange “Unlock & Download” button. If you’re on a Mac, just synchronize your licenses (Tools > Library Management > Synchronize Licenses) and manually put the book file in your resources folder (Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Libronix DLS/Resources on the startup volume).

Step 7: Start using your new book! Open Libronix, open My Library, then type Institutes to find it. Double-click it to open it.

Most Americans celebrated the 4th of July by watching fireworks, but five Logos employees celebrated by spending more than 80 hours working outside—in temperatures approaching 100 degrees in the afternoon—putting on a massive fireworks display for others to enjoy. Customer Service representatives Justin Kooy, Debbie Mickens, Kat Hutchison, and Christy Powell and software developer James Van Noord joined three others to put on a fireworks display at Fort Spokane over the July 4th weekend.

All but one of the Logos pyrotechnicians have done professional displays in the past, and Justin will be getting his official pyrotechnics license later this summer. We thought you’d enjoy seeing how some of the people behind the product spent their 4th of July.

Here’s a slideshow of some of the pictures—courtesy of James Van Noord.

A congratulations is definitely in order to Justin Kooy, who proposed to his now-fiancée Katie during the fireworks show (see the second to last picture). Congratulations, Justin and Katie!

If you’re learning a new language, mastering the most commonly used words is an essential task. Did you know that Logos makes available 24 different vocabulary lists taken from the most popular grammars to help you? We currently have 14 different Greek vocabulary lists, 7 Hebrew, 2 Aramaic, and 1 Akkadian. The best part is that all of these lists are free. Just download them and save them to C:\. . .\My Documents\Libronix DLS\VocabularyLists.

The two latest additions are the lists from Learn to Read New Testament Greek by David Alan Black and Essentials of New Testament Greek by Ray Summers. Visit our Vocabulary Lists page to download these new lists—and any of the others you’d like. You don’t have to own the corresponding resources to make use of the vocabulary lists.

Once you’ve downloaded them, you can access your new lists in Logos by going to File > Open, selecting “Vocabulary List” from the Types column, and then selecting the list of your choice from the Documents column.

With your list opened, you have the ability to add to it, edit it, and print out vocabulary cards that you can carry with you and review between classes or when you’re away from your computer.

If you’re not a fan of print vocabulary cards, you can work through the lists right in Logos. Just grab another Window and cover up the right column. Move it down after you guess the meaning for each Greek word.

Visit our Vocabulary Lists page to download the available lists.

We’re about to give away 72 ultra-premium versions of the most amazingly bound Bibles ever printed. From the finest you can imagine top-end offerings in leather and calfskin—to the limited production run—“only a handful in existence” type heirloom quality of ultra-premium goatskin in a custom-carved Rosewood box imported from England!

Wow, was that breathless or what? …but seriously, if you are used to the feel of the paperback Bible you got from church the first day you visited youth-group as a teenager, you won’t believe how different these bindings can be.

We know “…the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” and we love it no matter what it is printed on and no matter what it is bound with. In fact, some of the most “heirloom quality” Bibles in the world are the most plainly bound, simple, worn and weathered Bibles. What makes many Bibles “heirloom quality” is the deep personal connection to God’s Word that they represent for those privileged to steward them.

So why are we giving away such high-end Bibles? Well, it all started when I received an ESV Study Bible in Premium Calfskin. I literally had no idea that leather could feel so supple, so smooth and so cottony-soft. I found myself wondering if it was fair to say that my new Bible could actually be creamy, velvety, and like butter all at the same time. When it came time to launch Bible.Logos.com I wanted to do something spectacular. I wanted to highlight the brand-new ultra-premium access to the Bible that Bible.Logos.com provides, with some ultra-premium print Bibles that people would be more familiar with.

Over the next 6 months Logos is giving away 72 premium print Bibles on Bible.Logos.com—worth over $11,500.00!

Every month from July thru December, we will give away 12 premium Bibles featuring the most popular translations from Bible.Logos.com, including ESV, KJV, NIV, NASB, NLT, and NKJV. These Bibles are the top-of-the-line versions and feature the highest quality leather and binding—some are valued at over $400.

This month we will be giving away these 12 Bibles:

1. ESV Study Bible, Black Calfskin (Retail $239.99) from Crossway
2. KJV Concord Wide Margin Reference, Black Goatskin (Retail $229.99) from Cambridge Bibles
3. NASB In Touch Ministries Wide Margin Edition, Burgundy Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
4. NASB Large Print Ultrathin Reference, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
5. NASB Side Column Reference Wide Margin Limited Edition, Black Calfskin (Retail $149.99) from Lockman Foundation
6. NIV New Women’s Devotional, Espresso Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $59.99) from Zondervan
7. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
8. NIV Study Bible, Black Goatskin (Retail $229.99) from Cambridge Bibles
9. NIV Study Bible, Black Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $124.99) from Zondervan
10. NKJV UltraSlim Bible Signature Series, Black Calfskin (Retail $129.99) from Thomas Nelson
11. NLT Tyndale Select, Black Calfskin (Retail $135.00) from Tyndale
12. TNIV Reference Bible, Black Renaissance Fine Leather (Retail $99.99) from Zondervan

For details on how to enter, as well as the full contest rules and prize list, visit The Great Bible Giveaway page.

By default RefTagger will tag only the bare Bible references on your site. If a Bible reference is already linked to Bible.Logos.com or another online Bible site, RefTagger will ignore it. So you won’t get the cool tooltips to show up on references you’ve already linked manually.

We’ve received some feedback from people who want to be able to link Bible references to Bible.Logos.com and have RefTagger add the tooltips, so we’ve decided to add support for it. It also works with Ref.ly links, which is perfect if you syndicate your Twitter feed to your blog.

Here are a couple of examples:

• Ro 8:28 (linked to http://bible.logos.com/passage/Ro8.28)
• Jn 3:16 (linked to http://ref.ly/Jn3.16)

All you need to do to enable this new functionality is add one additional line of code to the RefTagger script code in the footer of your site. Simply add

Logos.ReferenceTagging.lbsConvertHyperlinks = true;

to the RefTagger JavaScript code anywhere before the line

Logos.ReferenceTagging.tag();

This will tell RefTagger to add tooltips to all of the Bible references that are hard linked to Bible.Logos.com or Ref.ly.

Why would you want to do this? Well, since RefTagger uses JavaScript, Bible references in your site’s feed don’t get linked because the JavaScript code runs only on your site, not in your readers’ feed reader (e.g., Google Reader or Bloglines). If you want your Bible references to be linked in your feed, you’ll have to link them manually (or use this hack to save a little time). Before, you had to choose between linking your Bible references to Bible.Logos.com or using RefTagger. Now you can do both and enjoy the best of both worlds.

Most Bible translations have a variety of footnotes throughout the text, giving you instant access to cross references, alternate translations, text-critical notes, and more. These notes are helpful when studying the Bible on your computer, but you may not need them when you copy the text into a sermon or paper.

A fairly common question we hear from new users is how to copy text from a Bible without including the internal footnotes. Let’s take Romans 12:1–2 in the ESV, for example.

You’ll notice 10 notes in these two verses. The superscript letters are for cross references, and the superscript numbers are for alternate translations, comments on manuscripts, etc. Sometimes you may want to include these when copying and pasting, but often you want just the bare Bible text.

There are three ways to accomplish this.

Method 1: Switch to “Bible Text Only” Viewing Mode.

With your Bible open and active, go to the View menu and select “Bible Text Only.” This will strip out all footnotes and allow you to copy only the text with chapter and verse numbers. The downside to this method is that you lose the paragraphing; each verse is formatted as its own paragraph.

Method 2: Uncheck “Include Footnotes When Copying.”

Another option is to go to Tools > Options > General > Interface and uncheck the box “Include Footnotes When Copying.” This will tell Libronix to skip any internal footnotes when copying text from your resources. Formatting and paragraphing will be preserved, but the potential downside to this method is that it applies to all resources and not just Bibles. So if you like having footnotes appear when you copy text from a commentary, for example, then you’ll want to try the next method.

Method 3: Use the “Copy Bible Verses” Tool.

This final method is far and away the best. If you’ve paid careful attention to the icons in your system tray (which is usually in the lower right corner of your screen next to the time), you’ve probably noticed that Libronix adds three icons when it’s open. The black one that looks like a Bible is the Copy Bible Verses tool.

There are two ways to use this powerful tool. You can double-click on the icon in your system tray, type in a passage, and click “Copy” (or “Copy and Paste” to send it directly to your open Word document, for example). Or you can highlight the text you want to copy and select “Copy Romans 12:1-2 to Clipboard” (instead of selecting “Copy” or using Ctrl+c).

One of the cool features of the Copy Bible Verses tool is that you can create as many different styles as you want—one for your sermons, another for your blog posts, another for papers, etc. For additional help creating styles, see the training article “Copy Text without Footnotes and Citations.”

If you copy Bible text frequently, you’ll quickly come to love this very handy little tool. It’s not hard to see why this is some users’ favorite feature.

The Anchor Yale Bible was our biggest Pre-Pub ever in terms of its size, the number of hours it took to get it from print to digital, and the team assembled to tackle it.

Pictured below are the folks in our Electronic Text Development department who did the lion’s share of the work.

Several others are not pictured here because they forgot to wear their t-shirts! Many more were involved in other ways like working with the publisher and doing things like marketing, sales, testing, shipping, and support.

Since this was a special Pre-Pub, we did something out of the ordinary. One of our artists designed a t-shirt that those who worked closely on the project received. Here’s a close-up of someone wearing his new t-shirt proudly.

I know some of you are thinking how much you’d like to add this to your wardrobe. Well, if you wear a medium, you just might be able to. We have three medium t-shirts left. If you bought the Anchor Yale Bible and want one of these cool shirts, leave a comment below. We’ll randomly pick out three winners and send out the shirts in the next day or two.

Since 2002 we’ve had an active group of users on our newsgroups. After much deliberation we’ve decided that it’s time to make the switch to web forums. We’ve been testing them with a small group for a couple of weeks, and now we’re ready to invite you to come join the discussions at the new Logos Bible Software Forums.

To use the Logos forums, you’ll need to be logged in to your Logos.com account. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for one now. Already have one? Sign in and head on over to http://community.logos.com/, or just click the new Forums link in the navigation at the top left of any Logos.com site.

If you happen to get an “Access Denied” message, your Logos.com cookies need to be updated. Most of the time logging out of your Logos.com account (top right hand corner of Logos.com) and then back in again will take care of the problem. If that doesn’t work, delete any *.logos.com cookies, restart your browser, sign in at Logos.com, and then return to the forums.

If you’re fairly new to Logos and are looking for some help learning the ropes, the forums will be the perfect place to get help from our top-notch group of power users who love to help others learn how to use Logos Bible Software better.

We look forward to seeing you at the Logos forums!

Rick Brannan is no stranger to longtime users and readers of the Logos blog. He’s been with Logos since 1993 and is approaching his 16th anniversary of employment with the company. Rick is an information architect in our design and editorial department and blogs at Ricoblog and PastoralEpistles.com.

Though he’s a regular contributor to the Logos blog and has done dozens of videos, most of his posts and videos are about Greek and not about Rick. In this People behind the Product video, you’ll get to find out a little bit about one of Logos’ earliest employees.

Other Posts about Rick:

• Video Interview with Rick: What's So Cool about the LGNTI?
• Fourteen Years and Counting
• Time for an Introduction

Seminary is expensive. As a seminarian myself, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on tuition, books, and the many other expenses of seminary. During my journey I’ve always been on the lookout for scholarships and creative ways to finance my studies. That is why I am so excited to announce Logos’ latest project, SeminaryScholarship.com.

If you’re a seminarian and are looking for a seminary scholarship, then this announcement will come as good news. In November, just in time for the start of the Fall term, Logos will award its first $1,000.00 seminary scholarship. In addition to the tuition award, the scholarship will include a copy of the Scholar’s Library. The scholarship is open to all seminary students and the application process should take you less than 15 minutes.

If you’re a seminarian, head over to SeminaryScholarship.com and apply today. If you’re not a seminarian but know someone who is, please share the site with them. I’ve included some banner ads below that you can paste onto your website or blog to help spread the word.

Are you preaching through Mark’s Gospel or writing a paper, article, or thesis on some aspect of Mark’s text or theology?

Maybe you’re studying Mark in your own personal Bible study time or with a small group at your church and want to work through a devotional study to help you apply what you’re reading to your life.

Regardless of your task, having a variety of quality commentaries and Bible study resources on hand is essential.

With Logos Bible Software, you have a plethora of titles to choose from. Our new Product Guide on Mark brings them all together in one place: commentaries you can purchase individually, sets covering Mark, and Bible studies.

Visit www.logos.com/mark to see all of the titles we currently offer on Mark’s Gospel.

If you don’t see something you think we should offer, send an email to suggest@logos.com and let us know.

The May–June issue of Bible Study Magazine featured an article by Elizabeth George on what it means to be a member of God’s household (pp. 19–20) based on her book Understanding Your Blessings in Christ, a study through the book of Ephesians, so we’ve teamed up with Harvest House Publishers to give away 20 copies of her book.

We’re also giving away five subscriptions to Bible Study Magazine and a copy of Bible Study Library.

There are four different ways to enter the giveaway, and you can increase your chance of winning by doing all of them.

Complete any or all of the following by June 30, 2009 to enter:

1. Simply fill out the entry form and click “Submit.”
2. Post a link in any of your social spheres (blog, forum, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) to www.biblestudymagazine.com/elizabeth letting people know about the giveaway. In July, we'll search through all the backlinks to the site and select winners at random.
3. Since Bible Study Magazine is published by Logos Bible Software, if you mention the giveaway and post a link to www.logos.com, we’ll search through those backlinks as well and select winners at random.
4. Subscribe to Bible Study Magazine between now and June 30, 2009, and we’ll give you two more entries.

Head over to the giveaway page at BibleStudyMagazine.com for all of the details.

Looking for a Summer job, or know someone who is?

Make real cash over the summer! Put some money away, give some money away, catch up on bills, save for your next missions trip, add books to your library, go on a great vacation, serve others, or pay tuition next semester. The Logos Ambassador Program can help you do just that. Be your own boss this summer and earn a generous income while working as little or as much as you want!

Your summer job is here!

As you head back home between semesters or stick around to save on travel expenses, what are you going to do with your spare time? Why not earn a generous income while maintaining an independent and flexible schedule?

You have already been sharing your love for Logos with your friends and family. Now you can show them how their Bible study time can be transformed—and get paid to do it! Become an Ambassador today and start selling Logos Bible Software’s base packages, from Bible Study Library through Scholar’s Library: Gold (available for PC and Mac).

Make more than a lawyer!

The Ambassador’s payout is quite generous. You’ll earn a commission of 15% on the products you sell. That could be well over what almost any summer job would pay! Simply selling one Scholar’s Library: Gold would earn you over $150 for that one sale—and the average sale probably takes less than an hour.

It only takes about ten minutes to show someone a demo video, a few minutes to talk about your experience with Logos, and a few minutes to show them how it will help them in their Bible study. That’s it. Show the demo, take the sale.

Want books instead of cash? Earn $300+ in books for just one sale.

If building a comprehensive digital library is your desire, you can double your commission to 30% in Logos credit if you would rather get Logos books. Just selling one copy of Scholar’s Gold to your pastor, friend, associate pastor . . . could earn you over $300 in Logos book credit.

Summer Freedom!

The beauty of this program is that you can work as much or as little as you want. No time clocks, no shift changes. You are your own boss and make your own schedule—so go ahead, take a weekend off to go with your friends on your annual trip. Where else are you going to find something like this?

Visit our Ambassador page for more information, read the details and FAQ, and then submit your signed application today!

Jeff Straub, a seminary professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota, shares in two posts how he’s made (and continues to make) the transition from a print library to a digital library with Logos Bible Software and why he loves it.

It was a hard sell for me. After more than 25 years in ministry, tirelessly searching for books anywhere they might be found, hoping against hope to find good books at cheap prices, I finally switched . . . to a digital library . . . to Logos. And I love it! I travel a bit, sometimes overseas, and I love the portability of my digital library.

He goes on to talk about the “back-breaking task” of moving more than 100 heavy boxes of books to Minneapolis. I remember doing the same thing about a year and a half ago, but thankfully with only 40 boxes.

On the bright side, at least Jeff discovered Logos before his next move, and at least he didn't have as big of a print library as Rousas Rushdoony did. According to Wikipedia, Rushdoony had more than 60,000 books in his personal library (and read nearly half of them). Imagine what 1,600 boxes of books would do to your back!

Find out more about why Jeff is lovin’ Logos in these two posts:

• Lovin’ Logos
• Lovin’ Logos, Part 2

For years we’ve had several quality Catholic products available, like the popular Collegeville Catholic Reference Library. You’ve asked for even more, and we’ve listened. If you follow our Pre-Pub (RSS) and Community Pricing (RSS) pages, you’ve probably noticed the many new Catholic collections now available for pre-order:

• The Catholic Encyclopedia (17 Vols.)
• Catena Aurea, by Thomas Aquinas (8 Vols.)
• Catholic Spirituality Collection (12 Vols.)
• Catholic Theology and Dogma Collection (8 Vols.)
• Collected Works of John Henry Newman (31 Vols.)
• Dogmatic Theology, by Joseph Pohle (12 Vols.)
• Douay-Rheims Bible
• G. K. Chesterton Collection (15 Vols.)
• Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler (12 Vols.)
• The Major Works of Anselm of Canterbury (4 Vols.)
• Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, Part 1 (Vols. 1–18)
• PBI New Testament Studies Collection (11 Vols.)
• Summa Contra Gentiles, by Thomas Aquinas (4 Vols.)
• Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, English and Latin Bundle (30 Vols.)
• Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas, English Only (22 Vols.)

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to check them out and place your pre-orders for the ones that interest you.

Catholic Product Guide

With the addition of all of these new titles, we decided it was time to build a Catholic Product Guide, which contains an exhaustive list of all of the Catholic titles we currently have for sale or pre-order. We’ll keep it up to date as we make more Catholic resources available, so be sure to bookmark it and check back regularly. You’ll find it at www.logos.com/catholic.

As always, we invite your suggestions for additional titles you’d like to see. Just email them to suggest@logos.com, and we’ll see about putting them on Pre-Pub or Community Pricing.

Free Catholic Lectionary

To kick off all of these new Catholic offerings, we’ve partnered with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to give away a new Catholic lectionary to everyone who has our Lectionary Viewer Addin, which is included in all of our Windows base packages except for the Original Languages Library. To get the new Catholic lectionary, simply run Libronix Update from the Tools menu in Libronix or run the 3.0f Auto-Update Script. You’ll find additional details and help on our Lectionaries page and in a prior blog post.

5 Free Copies of the Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2

If you appreciate these new offerings and want to see more, it’s largely up to you to make it happen! We need the help of all of our Catholic users to reach a broader audience so we can produce even more quality Catholic titles. As a thanks for helping us spread the word, we’ll be giving away 5 free copies of the Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2.

Here’s what you need to do to enter. You only need to do one, but you can do them all if you want to increase your chances of winning.

On Your Blog

1. Write about our new Catholic titles, the free Catholic lectionary, etc. on your blog and link to both the Catholic Product Guide and this blog post.
2. We’ll search for links to both and enter you in the drawing, but if you want to be sure that we don’t miss yours, provide a link to your post in the comments below or in an email to blog@logos.com with the subject “Logos Bible Software for Catholics.”

On Facebook, Twitter, etc.

1. Share the news about our new Catholic titles, the free Catholic lectionary, etc. on your favorite social networking site and link to both the Catholic Product Guide and this blog post (might be difficult to get both links in on Twitter, but we think you can do it!).
2. We’ll search for links to both and enter you in the drawing, but if you want to be sure that we don’t miss yours, provide a link to your post in the comments below or in an email to blog@logos.com with the subject “Logos Bible Software for Catholics.”

Via Email

• Send an email about our new Catholic titles, the free lectionary, etc. with the subject “Logos Bible Software for Catholics” to 5 people you know who you think would be interested and carbon copy blog@logos.com on the email.

At the end of June, we’ll pick out the five winners and send out the free copies of Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, Version 2.

By default, searching a Bible for multiple terms will find those words or phrases only when they occur in the same verse. So a search for grace “in Christ” in the ESV will return all of the verses where the word grace and the phrase in Christ occur in the same verse (i.e., Rom 3:24; 1 Cor 1:4; Eph 2:7; Col 1:2; 1 Tim 1:14; 2 Tim 1:9; 2:1; 1 Pet 5:10), but won’t return the places where one of the search terms occurs in the preceding or following verse, even if that verse is part of the same sentence (e.g., Eph 1:1–2, 3–6, 7–10, etc.). That’s because the default search unit is verses, as you can see in the image below.

Normally you’ll get plenty of targeted search results this way, but sometimes you may want to see results that cross verse boundaries, especially when a sentence spans several verses. Getting more results is as simple as switching the search unit from “Verses” to “Chapters or Sections.”

Our search for grace “in Christ” now turns up 116 occurrences in 28 articles instead of 16 occurrences in 8 verses. But this may be too broad, since it will return chapters where grace and in Christ occur nowhere near each other and are contextually unrelated. To tighten it up a bit, simply add a proximity delimiter like 25 words. So our search would be grace WITHIN 25 WORDS “in Christ”. This search returns 37 occurrences in 16 articles and gives us several additional targeted results to work through.

For more help on searching, be sure to read our training article “Exploring Logos Searching.”

Now that Anchor Yale Bible is done, our electronic text development team is starting to pump out quite a few other Pre-Pubs. The following 11 are projected to ship within the next 2 to 3 weeks:

• 1,000 Bible Images
• The Annotated Bible (9 Vols.)
• Baker New Testament Studies Collection (14 Vols.)
• Charles Ryrie Collection (8 Vols.)
• Cornerstone Biblical Commentary (9 Vols.)
• Eerdmans Bible Reference Collection (5 Vols.)
• An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by John Owen (7 Vols.)
• Hermeneia on CD-ROM 2.0 (43 Vols.)
• Lectionary Reflections Collection (2 Vols.)
• The New Unger's Bible Handbook (may ship today!)
• The Works of H. A. Ironside (65 Vols.)

I’m pretty excited about picking up several of these, and I know many of you are too. But if you haven’t placed your pre-orders yet, you’d better act fast or else you’ll miss out on the opportunity to pick up some of these titles at the nicely discounted Pre-Pub price. In some cases you have just a few days left to get your pre-orders in.

The annual National Camp Logos hosted right here in Bellingham, WA is just around the corner. The two days of practical, thorough, hands-on training with authorized trainer Morris Proctor are slated for June 11-12 at Birchwood Presbyterian Church, which is located at 400 Meadowbrook Ct.

Watch Morris’s latest video (embedded below) to learn why you should attend an upcoming Camp Logos.

Camp Logos regional seminars take place all over the country throughout the year (see the list below), but the national camp is extra special. You’ll receive the same professional and biblical training as you would at any Camp Logos, but you’ll also get these additional benefits:

• More training. The training hours are expanded from 9 to 4:30 each day so you can get as much instruction as your body and brain can endure.
• Q&A times with the Logos leadership. Key Logos leaders will be available each day to answer your questions and tell you about exciting new happenings at Logos.
• More food. Your registration includes a huge continental breakfast and a tasty lunch for each day.
• Interaction with more Logos users. You have ample opportunity to meet many other Logos users like yourself and learn how they’re using the software.
• A tour of the Logos headquarters. A highlight each year is when we visit the offices of Logos Bible Software to see where these electronic resources are developed.
• Vacation time in the northwest. Plan an extra couple of days to enjoy the beautiful country of Washington state.

Register today. For more information, contact mp|seminars at info@mpseminars.com or 877.237.3168.

If you can’t make it out to Bellingham for the National Camp, no need to worry. Morris and his team are coming to an area near you. Check out the complete schedule to see a list of upcoming regional camps around the country.

• Huntington, WV | 5/18–19
• Oklahoma City, OK | 5/28–29
• Detroit, MI | 6/18–19
• Nashville, TN | 6/30–7/1
• Shreveport, LA | 7/8–9
• San Jose, CA | 7/27–28
• Mansfield, OH | 8/4–5
• Denver, CO | 8/11–12
• Indianapolis, IN | 8/26–27
• Houston, TX | 9/23–24
• Raleigh/Durham, NC | 10/15–16
• St. Louis, MO | 10/19–20
• Nashville, TN | 12/1–2

Update: The venue has changes from Bellingham Covenant Church to Birchwood Presbyterian Church, which is located at 400 Meadowbrook Ct.

With National Bike-to-Work Day coming up next Friday, we thought we’d take a moment to share with you a little corner of the Logos offices that you might not know exists—the bike shop.

Equipment purchases at Logos typically include laptops, servers, and networking gear. So Bob was a little surprised to see an IT department purchase request that included everything necessary to set up a bicycle repair shop, but he supported the project from the get-go.

When asked about the bike shop, Bob said, “It was a great idea. Many of our employees bike to work, and others go for rides during the day. Having a fully equipped bike shop on site is a great way to encourage healthy habits that are good for the environment, too.”

The bike shop is equipped with everything you would find in your local bike shop. With so many specialty tools, thankfully we have a number of avid bikers and former bike shop employees—including our IT Manager, Jim Straatman—who are more than willing to lend a helping hand to employees who aren’t sure what to do.

Hopefully we’ll see a big response from employees next Friday, and lots of folks will bike in to work. For added motivation, that Friday will also be the day of our annual Chili Cookoff. Now we can all enjoy an extra helping of chili, knowing that we can bike off the extra pounds on our way home from work.

Journals are perfect resources to have in your Libronix library. I turn to my journals collection over and over again. Finding relevant scholarly articles on a given topic or by a particular author takes just seconds with our powerful searching. Compare that to the amount of time it would take to pull hundreds of paper volumes off the shelf (assuming you even owned them all) and scan through each one’s table of contents.

Even more significant is the ability to find all of the occurrences of a particular passage of Scripture or mentions of certain words or phrases. In Libronix you can get these results in less time than it would take you to pull the first journal off your shelf and flip to the back, only to find out that there is no Scripture index or topic index. That’s right, if you want those kinds of results in print, you’ll have to read every volume cover to cover!

We already have dozens of first-rate journals available for purchase, but we’re always looking to add more. Our latest offering is Themelios, “an international evangelical theological journal that expounds and defends the historic Christian faith.” From 1975 until 2007, Themelios was a publication of the RTSF/UCCF in the UK. In 2008 The Gospel Coalition acquired it and continues to release top-notch content.

Contributors to the journal include leading evangelical scholars and pastors such as Richard Bauckham, G. K. Beale, Craig Blomberg, Gerald Bray, Geoffrey Bromiley, D. A. Carson, Peter Enns, R. T. France, Ronald Fung, Richard Gaffin, Simon Gathercole, Michael Haykin, Paul Helm, Tim Keller, Derek Kidner, Robert Letham, Richard Longenecker, I. Howard Marshall, Alister McGrath, Richard Mouw, Scott Oliphant, J. I. Packer, Clark Pinnock, Stanley Porter, Philip Graham Ryken, Thomas Schreiner, John Stott, Carl Trueman, David Wright, N. T. Wright, Robert Yarbrough, and many more.

We’re taking pre-orders for all 99 issues published between 1975 and 2008 and will release future volumes as they become available (intervals TBD). If you haven’t already, go have a look and place your pre-order to help send this wealth of evangelical scholarship into production.

We just gave our demo page a makeover and launched a brand new demo video of the Windows version of Logos Bible Software. If you have a decently fast internet connection (the video weighs in at 94.5MB), jump on over and take a look. Otherwise, try out the YouTube version (embedded below), which is a little easier on the bandwidth.

We’re also offering a 25% discount on base packages for two weeks using coupon code NEWDEMO. So if you haven’t picked up a base package yet, now’s your chance to get one at a nice discount.

Feel free to spread the word about the new page, video, and coupon code. Just drop a link to www.logos.com/demo and embed the YouTube version of the video right in your blog post.

Here’s the code you’ll need for the video (you can manually adjust the dimensions):

<p style="text-align: center;"><object width="500" height="306"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rZifvSUE0yo&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rZifvSUE0yo&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="306"></embed></object></p>

In addition, you can grab one of our sidebar ads or images and link it to the new demo page.

Not all digital books are created equal. I regularly interact with people who have never used Logos Bible Software, and one of the most common things I hear goes something like this: “I already have ________ as PDFs. Why would I want to get the Logos version?”

I go on to explain all of the things that you can do with Logos resources that you can’t do with PDFs, and people get interested. Once they try it for themselves, they are blown away. One professor recently responded this way, “I can’t believe how fantastic this is in Logos—far superior to PDFs.”

One of the things that makes Logos resources so useful is all of the tagging behind the text. We put together a video recently that talks about the various kinds of links in our digital books. What is a red link, and how does it differ from a blue link? Did you know that just about every word is a link? Find out more in the video below.

For more videos, visit www.logos.com/videos or www.macbiblesoftware.com/videos.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great Protestant Reformer John Calvin. For several years we have had Calvin’s Commentaries and Institutes available, but there is a large portion of Calvin’s writings that we don’t yet have (e.g., his collected writings in Latin span 59 dense volumes!). So we decided that 2009 was the perfect time to work on digitizing as much of Calvin’s corpus as possible—and to update our existing Calvin material.

Seven New Calvin Collections

We are excited to make available for pre-order seven new Calvin collections:

• The Calvin 500 Collection (97 Vols.)
• Calvin’s Commentaries (46 Vols.)
• The Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin: English, Latin, and French (9 Vols.)
• The Letters of John Calvin (4 Vols.)
• Tracts and Treatises of John Calvin (8 Vols.)
• John Calvin Biography Collection (10 Vols.)
• Calvin and the History of Calvinism (20 Vols.)

The Calvin 500 Collection contains all of the volumes from the other six collections and is an unbelievable value. It offers an additional 50% off the cumulative Pre-Pub prices for the individual collections—which themselves are already priced very low! It’s 97 volumes, nearly 40,000 pages (!), and currently just $299.95. That makes this the lowest priced Pre-Pub (in terms of price per page) that we have ever offered! In short, this is an amazing deal that you won’t want to pass up.

If you already own our earlier editions of Calvin’s Commentaries and Institutes, don’t worry. There’s an upgrade collection available that offers you an even lower price based on what you already own—and you’ll get all of the newly updated content at no additional charge.

Calvin’s Sermons

What about Calvin’s sermons? Most of Calvin’s extant sermons were translated into English in the late 1500s, but 16th-century English uses different spelling, and the majority of these volumes haven’t been updated to modern English spelling. We’re in the process of evaluating our options for a Calvin Sermons Collection and hope to be able to put it on Pre-Pub in the near future.

Additional Titles

The literature by and about Calvin is as massive as the great Reformer’s influence has been. It’s possible that we missed important books in our research, so we may add additional volumes to many of these collections over the next few months. That means the prices will probably have to go up to cover the additional production costs, so you’ll definitely want to pre-order early to lock in the lowest price! If you pre-order now, any additional volumes that we add to these collections will essentially be free!

Calvin500.com

In conjunction with the release of these new collections, we’ve also just launched a brand new website: Calvin500.com. We’ve done a fair bit of research on Calvin, so we thought we’d share it with you. You’ll find information about Calvin, bibliographies of Calvin’s works and literature on Calvin, a list of all Calvin 500 conferences, a page that tracks all Twitter mentions of John Calvin, and some fun stuff like a Calvin quiz and a couple of birthday countdown widgets. There’s also a blog where we will post news and announcements. Be sure to subscribe to the Calvin 500 feed to stay in the loop.

Blogging at Conferences

By the way, if you’re planning to attend any of the Calvin conferences this year and would like to blog the conference at Calvin500.com—or even if you blog about them on your own blog—let us know. We’d love to feature you on our site.

Go check out the new site and collections, and help us spread the word by blogging about it or mentioning it on Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networking sites you frequent.

It’s time for another episode of “My Story.” This one comes from Dr. Beau Abernathy, pastor of CrossPointe Church.

Dear Logos,

Words escape me to adequately express my appreciation to the Lord for you and your ministry!

As a bi-vocational church planting pastor, time is a premium commodity. How do I balance being a loving husband and father with work and church responsibilities? In order for a new church to grow, one part is that the people coming need to sense that the messages are excellent, challenging and life-related.

When preparing a message, in the time it would take me to get out of my chair, find a commentary (provided I own it in the first place), and get back to the study, I can flip through a dozen commentaries with Logos! It is the most effective, efficient use of my time to use Logos Bible Software when preparing messages, studying, and I have recently begun to use it with my quiet time with the Lord. The Word Study feature takes the years of Greek and Hebrew I took in seminary and condenses it into an understandable, usable format in seconds—something I could never do with the hard-copy reference books.

Probably the feature I like the most in Libronix is the “Copy Bible Verses” button in the taskbar. I use “Copy Bible Verses” on a daily basis so that I can paste passages from various translations into a message, church letter or pastoral letter very quickly.

Thank you again for providing this service for the family of God and for those called to shepherd God’s people!

Thanks for sharing your story, Dr. Abernathy. It’s always a joy to hear how Logos Bible Software helps pastors like you to be better pastors—and better husbands and fathers. Enjoy your $100 worth of unlock credit!

Read more stories and find out how to submit yours on our Newswire page. If we use your story, we will apply $100 worth of unlock credit to your account as well.

One of the last remaining products to be updated from the old Logos Library System (LLS) format to the Libronix Digital Library System (LDLS) format is the R. C. Sproul Digital Library. This is especially good news to all of our Mac users, since Logos for Mac reads only the newer Libronix files.

The collection includes the following 20 updated titles:

• Annotated Bibliography of R.C. Sproul’s Works
• Before the Face of God, Book 1: A Daily Guide for Living from the Book of Romans
• Before the Face of God, Book 2: A Daily Guide for Living from the Gospel of Luke
• Before the Face of God, Book 3: A Daily Guide for Living from the Old Testament
• Before the Face of God, Book 4: A Daily Guide for Living from Ephesians, Hebrews, and James
• Choosing My Religion
• Chosen by God
• Doubt and Assurance
• Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
• Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification
• Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology
• The Holiness of God
• The Last Days According to Jesus
• Lifeviews: Make a Christian Impact on Culture and Society
• Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology
• Renewing Your Mind: Basic Christian Beliefs You Need to Know
• R. C. Sproul’s Chapters from Symposium Volumes
• Selected Articles from “Tabletalk” Magazine
• Ultimate Issues
• Willing to Believe: The Controversy Over Free Will

(Right-click on any of the above titles to save the file to your computer.)

If you already own the R. C. Sproul Digital Library, you can download all of these new books for free. If you are using Logos on a Windows machine, just run the resource auto-update script. If you are using Logos for Mac, download the files to your resources folder (i.e., Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Libronix DLS/Resources on the startup volume) and restart Logos for Mac.

Once you’ve downloaded the new files, you can safely delete the old files. In Windows you can do this by running the Delete Duplicate Resources tool (for more advanced users), or you can just manually locate and delete the files from your resources folder (i.e., C:\Program Files\Libronix DLS\Resources). The file names are the same as the new ones, but the extensions are .LSF and .LIX rather than .lbxlls.

There are several other R. C. Sproul titles that are not included in the R. C. Sproul Digital Library:

• Following Christ
• The Glory of Christ
• If There’s a God, Why Are There Atheists?
• The Intimate Marriage
• The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
• Pleasing God
• The Soul’s Quest for God
• Surprised by Suffering

Each of these is available for individual purchase and will work on both the Windows and Mac versions of Logos.

The latest Geeks & God podcast, episode 116, is now available, and it’s all about Logos Bible Software. It runs a little over an hour and features the following:

• a recap of BibleTech:2009 by Rob Feature (a.k.a. Bob Christenson), who was one of this year’s speakers (3:00–9:45)
• a review of Logos Bible Software for Mac by Matt Farina (9:45–45:30)
• an interview with our President and CEO, Bob Pritchett (45:30–1:07:00)

I listened to it yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s very well done. You can listen to it on the Geeks & God site or download it in MP3 or MP4 format and listen to it on your commute to work or while you’re working out or mowing the lawn.

If you’re into techie stuff and want to hear some of the other topics that the Geeks & God guys cover, be sure to subscribe to their podcast via email, iTunes (ACC or MP3), or RSS.

Last Friday Logos participated for the fourth time in the annual Trivia Bee sponsored by the Whatcom Literacy Council. There were 28 teams, and for the first time we made it all the way to the finals. We ended up placing 5th overall, beating out teams of librarians and engineers. I hear that our team has their sights set on 1st place for next year’s contest.

Ken Smith, the head of our Electronic Text Development department and a former team member, was this year’s coach. Team members were software developer James Van Noord, who has participated every year, and first-timers Heather Anderson and Isaiah Hoogendyk, both of whom work in ETD.

All three of this year’s team members are originally from Lower Michigan, so they decided to call themselves the Trolls (see Wikipedia for details).

Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings participated again this year as the lifeline. Each team could buy up to 3 lifelines. If the team didn’t know an answer, they could substitute Ken’s answer for their own. If he got it right, their team got it right. I’d guess that going with the answer of a guy who won 74 times in a row on Jeopardy was a pretty safe bet!

Here are some pictures of the event, courtesy of of former Logos employee Mark French.

After five rounds of competition with almost 40,000 votes cast, we’re down to the championship game of the 2009 Logos March Madness book tournament. There have been some close-fought battles and surprising upsets along the way.

Who will rise to the top and become the Logos March Madness champion?

The final match is between The Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer by philosopher and apologist Francis Schaeffer and The Existence and Attributes of God by Puritan Stephen Charnock. The winner will be awarded a 75% discount, and the loser a 50% discount.

Voting begins today and runs through Sunday night, at which time the champion will be decided. You will then have until the following Sunday night (April 12) to take advantage of the discounts. Head on over and place your vote now for your favorite title!

By the way, the two titles that got knocked out in the Final 4 round are currently available at 45% off using coupon code MMFF. The code is good through Sunday night (April 5).

• The Life and Work of St. Paul (2 Vols.) by F. W. Farrar
• The Prophecy of Isaiah by J. Alec Motyer

If you don’t regularly read Christian Computing Magazine (CCMag for short), you’ll want to be sure to check out the cover story of the March issue: “An Inside Look at Logos Research Systems, Inc. and Logos Bible Software.” You’ll find it on pages 9–12.

Steve Hewitt interviews Dan Pritchett, our Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, and covers a very nice spectrum of topics. You’ll learn a bit of the company’s history and find out some interesting facts about how the company has grown and changed over the last 18 years. You’ll also read about many of the things we’ve been working on recently. If you look carefully, you might even learn about some things coming down the pike that have never been shared publicly before.

So go give it a read.

UPDATE: We have set up a live twitterfeed of the conference on the BibleTech website.

Today’s guest post is from J. D. Elgin, a member of the Marketing Department and the coordinator for this year’s BibleTech conference.

BibleTech:2009 officially begins today at 9:00 AM Pacific Time. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re missing out on all the excitement! We certainly don’t want any of our faithful blog followers to feel left out, so we’ve assembled a list of speakers who will be covering the conference live via their personal blogs and Twitter feeds. We invite you to use the links below to follow all of the action.

Three conference speakers will be sharing their thoughts on the conference, so you can get the latest by checking out their blogs or subscribing to their RSS feeds.

• Rev. Wesley Allen of ABCNJ from New Jersey (RSS)
• Sean Boisen of Logos Bible Software (RSS)
• Antoine RJ Wright of Mobile Ministry Magazine (RSS)

Or try out this Google Blog Search (also available via RSS) to catch any blogs we may have missed.

Also, you can follow these speakers on Twitter:

• Ellen Frankel and JT Waldman of The Jewish Publication Society at @JewishPub
• Rob Christenson of Geeks & God and Mustard Seed Media, Inc. at @Rob_Feature
• Stephen Johnson of Olive Tree Bible Software at @RearCog

Or just follow the BibleTech:2009 hashtag, #BibleTech09, to get all of the Twitter action in one place.

You will also want to stay tuned to the BibleTech Conference website in the coming weeks. We will be recording the conference audio and will post the MP3 files as soon as we are able.

Update: Follow along with the Twitter action right at http://www.bibletechconference.com/live.htm.

Last night we released the next minor update to our Libronix Digital Library System for Windows. If you are planning to install Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (or if you already have), it is vital that you update to Libronix 3.0f to avoid some minor incompatibility problems. Best of all, the update is completely free.

In addition to the IE8 compatibility fixes, 3.0f includes several bug fixes and improvements, as well as updates to a number of resources and lectionaries. For a complete list of all of the bug fixes and changes, see the new support article.

To update, simply open Libronix and go to Tools > Libronix Update. After it looks for available updates, click “Update,” close Libronix, and then wait for the updates to download and install. When installation is complete, click “Close” and then restart Libronix.

If you have biblical content on your website or blog, you’ll definitely want to consider adding the new Bible Search Bar to your sidebar. RefTagger allows your readers to have instant access to the Bible passages that you cite in your post, but what if they want to look up a verse that you don’t mention or launch a search for a word or phrase that you discuss? They could manually navigate to Bible.Logos.com, but the Bible Search Bar makes it even easier for your readers to find what they’re looking for.

The Bible Search Bar comes in two sizes, the one you see pictured to the right, which is also in the sidebar of the Logos blog, and a smaller one with horizontal orientation.

It’s very easy to add to your site. Just grab the code that we provide and paste it into your sidebar, or wherever you’d like the Bible Search Bar to appear. If you have trouble getting the styles to show up properly, you may need to add the styles to your sites style sheet or paste the style sheet link in the head section of your template.

Head on over to the new Bible Search Bar page at Bible.Logos.com to see the two options, grab the code, and get it set up on your site.

At Logos we tend to love books more than we love basketball. So, with March Madness starting today we thought we’d spin our own variation of the tournament and launch LogosMarchMadness.com.

The premise is simple—we’ve selected 64 of our titles and placed them in 4 divisions: OT, NT, Theology, and Popular. You visit LogosMarchMadness.com and vote for which titles advance each round. In each division, titles will compete based upon your votes. The highest voted titles advance until we have a grand champion.

To make things more interesting, we’re offering discounts on ALL the books in the tournament and YOU control how much the discount is. Every round that a book advances in the tournament, the discount increases. Discounts will be between 25% and 75%. That means that if you see a title you really want, it is up to you to spread the word and get people to vote. Post it on your blog, tell your Facebook friends, and tweet it on Twitter! If you want the discount, you need to get the votes. The discount is in your hands!

The tournament will run from March 19 through April 6 and will have 6 rounds. We’ve posted the full schedule and brackets on the site.

Opportunities like this don’t come along often, so don't miss out. Be sure to subscribe to the Tournament RSS feed to receive updates on what books are advancing and the all important discount codes!

Logos March Madness—When books move up, prices go down. Spread the word!

Are you passionate about Logos? Do you have a desire to introduce others to your favorite Bible software? Are you looking for a little extra income or help building your digital library? If this describes you, then the Logos Ambassador Program might be a perfect fit.

Almost daily we meet people who have never heard about us and wonder where we’ve been all of their lives. We use just about every means possible to let people know about us (e.g., websites, blogs, email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, radio ads and interviews, TV interviews, conferences, web ads, print ads, Bible Study Magazine, etc.), but we can only reach so many. We count on our happy customers to spread the word to family, friends, and colleagues.

Many of you are already great promoters, and we appreciate all that you do to spread the word about Logos. Why not take advantage of the opportunity to make a little extra money or build your digital library doing what you already love to do? When you present Logos to friends, family, and others in your community, you’ll earn 15% (if taken as a check) or 30% (if taken as Logos credit) commission of the sale price for every base package that you sell! This could provide some nice supplemental income or help you afford that next collection you were hoping to add to your digital library. The beauty of the program is that you can work as much or as little as you want, so the Ambassador Program can be a perfect fit no matter how much extra time you have.

Getting started is easy. Visit the Ambassador page, read the details and FAQs, and send in your application with your one-time payment of $39.95, which covers the cost of the Startup Kit. We’ll notify you as soon as you’ve been approved and send the Startup Kit to you. It contains all the essentials that you’ll need to do your presentations, take orders, and start making a little extra income.

Is the Ambassador Program right for you? Go find out!

I love reading stories about how people experience Logos Bible Software for the first time. Just yesterday I read a glowing email from a professor who a few months ago had never used Logos and thought it was little more than a collection of PDF-like books. He was absolutely blown away when he first tried Logos and saw its powerful searching abilities and the quality of texts in the particular collection that he got.

We’re going to start a series of posts here on the blog featuring stories like this. In the past we’ve asked you to send your stories to NewsWire@logos.com and promised that if we used yours, we’d give you $100 worth of unlocks as a “thank you.”

If you’ve never told us your story, we’d love to hear from you. Tell us a little about yourself and how and why you use Logos. Include how you found out about Logos and what the main influences were that led you to purchase it. Include anything that makes for a good story. Write it up and send it to NewsWire@logos.com. Your story could be the next one to be featured.

Here’s this week’s story:

My name is Todd Smith. I am a church planter, pastor, father of three, husband of a home schooling mom, member of an ordaining council, and a denomination clerk for our state. . . . I have a BUSY schedule . . . most likely—JUST LIKE YOU. Needless to say, I need some time savers when it comes to preparing for sermons. I have used many different Bible Study programs in the past, only to get frustrated because they were not user friendly.

I was introduced to Libronix DLS through the purchase of a book that included a CD with the Libronix software, and it was then that I discovered how easy it was to use. I went on to purchase the Series X Scholar’s Library, and it was well worth the investment. Whether used on a desktop computer or a laptop, with the Scholar’s Library, an individual can have material at their finger tips that would normally take up a room full of book shelves. I can do now in a much shorter time what it would have previously taken me hours upon hours to do. Now I can enjoy my children, pastor, be a husband, and all the other things without feeling so frustrated! It’s a must to have!

Read more stories and find out how to submit yours at www.logos.com/newswire.

Our Logos—Facebook Photo Contest—especially the picture of Ryan all decked out—got people asking about Logos gear and how they can get some for themselves. You may never have seen it before, but we actually have a product category on Logos.com called Logos Merchandise that will show you all of the items that we currently have available.

Right now we have five items in stock:

• Logos Water Bottle—Blue Polycarbonate/Stainless Steel (pictured to the right)
• Logos Stainless Steel Mug
• Logos T-Shirt: Binary Logo
• Logos Clear Glass Mug
• Logos Insulated Travel Mug

And for a little bit longer, each item is on sale for only $1! But you need to act fast. We mentioned this special in our last Newswire, so our stock is going quickly.

To give everyone else a chance to get in on this special deal, please limit your orders to a quantity of one per item. You may order all five items, but just not more than one of each.

The discount is good through this Sunday, March 8, when you use coupon code LOGOSGEAR.

By the way, this is a good opportunity to remind you to make sure you’re subscribed to the Newswire email list. We regularly mention cool deals there, and many don’t make it to the blog. So be sure to sign up.

A week and a half ago we announced the Logos–Facebook Photo Contest and invited you to take pictures of yourself with Logos Bible Software and upload them to Facebook. The response to the contest was super. Nearly 900 new people connected with us on Facebook, and close to 400 photos were uploaded and tagged.

The deadline for entering was Sunday, March 1, but we allowed all photos submitted by the time we picked the winners yesterday afternoon. With so many creative and cool entries, it was very difficult to pick the winner for each category, but here’s what the judges came up with.

Most Creative

There were several really creative photos, but the award for most creative goes to Richard Flink.

Oldest Logos Stuff

The oldest actual Logos product in any of the pictures we saw was Logos 1.6, which I believe came out in 1993. (There were some pictures of CDWord from 1989 and 1990, but that was before CDWord became a Logos product, so we had to exclude them.) Five people had Logos Bible Software 1.6 pictured, but only three included themselves in the photos. So we had a three-way tie between Mike Monroe, Stephen Hustedde, and Dennis Martin.

Congratulations to these faithful, longtime users!

Coolest Setup

The coolest setup went to Tyson Heyn who has Logos running on an Intel Cord 2 Quad Q9550 CPU with 8GB of RAM and four monitors!

Most Unique Location

The coolest location was especially difficult to pick, but after much deliberation we decided to award it to Raymond Minot for his picture of Bible study on the balcony of a monastery overlooking the Swiss Alps. (Click through to see some nice shots of the Alps.)

Most Logos Stuff

The award for the most Logos stuff goes to pastor and Logos user Andrew Rappaport, who has accumulated over 325 disks and 4,585 digital resources! Wow!

Congratulations to all of you! If you were one of our seven winners, you may call 800-875-6467 to use your $100 unlock credit whenever you’d like on any downloadable books at Logos.com.

And a big thanks to all of you who participated. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the pictures of you and Logos!

If you haven’t yet seen them, go take a look at all of the entries.

The NT Gateway is one of the oldest and best known biblical sites on the internet. Mark Goodacre, Associate Professor in New Testament at the Department of Religion at Duke University, started the site back in 1997 (hosted then as part of his homepage) as a place to collect useful links to resources and sites dedicated to New Testament studies.

In 2000 it moved to NTGateway.com and continued to grow. As time went on, the site, which was built as a collection of .htm files and folders, became difficult to manage and keep up to date. For some time Mark has been giving thought to the future of NT Gateway and recently decided to partner with us to improve the site and take it to the next level.

We’ve moved all of the content over to WordPress, slightly reworked the organization, added site navigation in the sidebar, and given it a fresh new look. Mark will continue on as the editor and will continue to update the site.

Mark has moved the old NT Gateway blog to a new location and will continue to blog there. He has a new RSS feed, so you’ll need to subscribe to it to get all of the new content syndicated. The NT Gateway blog is restarting from scratch. It, too, has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.

So go check out the new site, and let us know what you think.

Our Logos–Facebook Photo Contest is off to a great start. We’ve made hundreds of new connections with Logos users around the world, and we’ve seen some really cool photos. If you haven’t yet entered any pictures of you and Logos, you still have a few more days left. But remember, the deadline for entering your photos is this coming Sunday, March 1, so don’t miss out. And don’t forget to tag both yourself and “Logos Bible Software” so we get notified and include you in the contest. See the previous post for all of the details.

If you’re looking for ideas of what to do, how about taking the “extreme ironing” approach. (Extreme ironing involves taking pictures of yourself ironing in some of the craziest conceivable locations, like on the top of a mountain, on the beach, under water, while skiing or jumping off a cliff, etc.)

Just grab your laptop, water bottle, coffee mug, or Logos t-shirt and head to a cool location, like . . .

The Center of South America

The Grand Canyon

The Mall of America

The Hockey Hall of Fame

Disney World

Cabela’s

Your Favorite Hunting Spot

If you live in a unique, beautiful, or famous area, you have the perfect opportunity to enter to win $100 worth of Logos books. Are you a missionary in a picturesque or notable location? Why not give your fellow Logos users a glimpse into your part of the world?

We’re looking forward to seeing what else you come up with!

Like free Logos books? Get your cameras ready! Starting now and running through the end of the month, we’re having a Logos–Facebook Photo Contest. Here’s how it works. You take pictures of yourself with Logos Bible Software, upload them to your Facebook account, and tag yourself and Logos in the pictures; and we’ll award the owners of the five best photos with $100 unlock credit to use on downloadable titles at Logos.com.

Here’s what you need to do, step by step:

1. Log in to your Facebook account. (If you’re not already a member, you can sign up for free.)
2. Become a friend of Logos Bible Software on Facebook, if you aren’t already.
3. Take as many pictures as you want of yourself and Logos Bible Software.
4. Upload as many of those pictures as you want to your Facebook account.
5. Tag both yourself and “Logos Bible Software” in all of the photos that you uploaded. (Note: you won’t be able to tag “Logos Bible Software” properly until we accept your friend request. We’ll try to respond ASAP.)
6. Check the Logos blog on March 3 to find out if you were one of the five winners of the $100 unlock credit for Logos.com.

On Monday March 2 we will choose five winners, one for each of the following categories:

1. Most Creative
2. Oldest (disk, box, logo, version of Logos running, etc.)
3. Coolest Setup (could be your computer setup or your setup of Logos stuff)
4. Most Unique Location
5. Most Logos Stuff

The following day, Tuesday March 3, we’ll post the top five photos, announce the winners, and award the $100 unlock credit.

Here are some additional details:

1. What counts as Logos in a picture? Anything that is identifiably Logos Bible Software, like Logos running on your computer, a Logos box, disk, t-shirt, mug, etc., or the Logos logo sticker on your computer.
2. How many photos can I enter? Enter as many photos as you want. The more you enter, the greater chance you have of winning!
3. How long do I have? The deadline for entering is March 1, 2009.
4. Why can’t I tag Logos in my photos? You won’t be able to tag “Logos Bible Software” properly until we’ve accepted your friend request. We’ll do our best to respond ASAP.

Have any other questions? Drop a note in the comments, and we’ll answer them.

Need help getting some ideas? Check out Ryan’s picture below. But don’t just copy what he did. Be creative. Come up with something that you think will set you apart from the competition!

Share the fun with others. Click on the Facebook icon to the right (may not work in your feed reader—visit the post) to let others on Facebook know about the Logos–Facebook Photo Contest. Of course, feel free to share it on your blog, on Twitter, and wherever else you’d like.

Oh, by the way, if you’re not a fan of Logos or in the Logos user group yet, don’t forget to do that too.

If you do a lot of academic research and writing, you're probably familiar with software like Endnote, Nota Bene's Ibidem, and Zotero, all of which allow you to manage your research sources and easily insert footnotes or endnotes and build bibliographies based on the sources you cite.

I haven't used Endnote or Ibidem, but I just started using Zotero, which comes in the form of a free Firefox plugin, and it looks like it is going to be very handy.

When trying to decide whether or not to use Zotero, two (related) problems I faced were (1) how Zotero would integrate with my Libronix library, where I do the bulk of my research and citing, and (2) how I would get all of my Libronix sources imported into my Zotero database.

If you use Zotero, you have to let it handle all of your citation footnotes, otherwise it won't be able to automatically convert citations to the shortened form or to ibid where appropriate. As you know, Libronix automatically adds footnotes into several word processing programs, but if you use Zotero, you'll have to recreate the footnotes with Zotero. That sounds like a lot of work, but the solution is fairly simple. All you need to do is export your Libronix library (a portion of it or the entire thing) into Zotero.

Open the Bibliography tool by going to Tools > Library Management > Bibliography. Select the collection that you'd like to export, and set the style to BibText Style, which Zotero supports.

After the report finishes generating, go to File > Export and save the report as a text file. (If you're using Logos for Mac, just copy the contents of the report and paste them into a text file.)  You can then import this file into Zotero. If you're dealing with thousands of resources, the import process may take a while, so be patient.

Now when you paste quotations from Libronix into your word processor, you can simply delete the footnote that automatically appears and quickly reinsert the citation with Zotero.

Last week I read some advice that a seminary student was giving to potential Logos users. It went something like this: when trying to decide whether to invest in Logos, calculate the print value of the books that you think you'd actually use and, if that amount exceeds the cost of the package from Logos, buy it. But in your calculations make sure to exclude any books that are available for free elsewhere (e.g., from Google Books or Amazon's Online Reader).

I think the first part of the advice is generally* sound, but the second part has problems. While it's often a good idea not to spend money for something you can get for free, this is not always the case. The advice above leaves out two important factors: quality and convenience.

Quality

First, the advice above is not really comparing apples with apples. The quality of Logos digital books exceeds the quality of books available at Amazon's Online Reader, Google Books, and other places on the internet.

So it may very well be worth paying money for books that are available for free online, if you want the ability to perform incredibly powerful searches, copy and paste text into papers or sermons with automatic citations, get instant access to Bible passages with a hover or a click, jump to cited books and articles, and all the other things that make Logos digital books so valuable.

So the advice would have been better if it had said, "Exclude any books that are of equal quality and available for free elsewhere." But that still doesn't quite do.

Convenience

Second, even if we were comparing apples with apples, that is, books of equal quality—or let's assume you are the rare person who doesn't need any of the benefits I mentioned above—there is value in the convenience of an integrated digital library. When your digital library is spread across multiple platforms and websites (e.g., Google Books, PDFs and Word docs on your computer, Amazon, and other places), it takes time (1) to remember where you have access to x, y, and z books and then (2) to perform multiple searches on multiple websites and desktop applications. That extra time spent can be quantified in terms of value, so it may be worth the money for the added convenience and time-saving benefit.

Let's say you use iTunes for your music library. Numerous legal sources allow you to listen to music for free online, but you have to be connected to the internet and go to the website to listen to it. You can't download it and integrate it into your digital music library in iTunes—or listen to it on your iPod. Perhaps for many songs that would be fine, but the benefit of convenience may make it worth it to purchase some music that is available for free elsewhere.

So I think we could further improve the advice by saying, "Exclude any books that are of equal quality and available for free elsewhere in a medium that offers equal convenience."

Everyone has different needs and different financial abilities, and there are definitely times when it is financially wise to be content to use good secondary tools like Google Books and Amazon's Online Reader. But if quality and convenience are important to you, it may very well be worth paying for something you can get for free elsewhere.

* However, I think you could make a case for why it might be wise to buy Logos even if the digital cost exceeded the print cost, but that is perhaps for another day and another blog post.

There's a new feature at Bible.Logos.com that you may want to check out. In the right-hand sidebar, we've added integration with Sermons.Logos.com, so you can reference additional material that deals with the passage you're reading.

As you navigate through the Bible, we dynamically pull relevant content—both sermons and illustrations—from our Sermons site and display the top three hits with a link to all of the other contributions that deal with the passage of Scripture you're in.

The coolest part is that no matter where you are in the Bible, the list is automatically updated so there are always related sermons and illustrations just a click away.

This is just a little taste of our vision to have a family of sites tightly integrated together. There's much more to come.

By the way, you can help us continue to build the content at Sermons.Logos.com by uploading your own sermons for free. If you use Logos for Windows, our Sermon File Addin makes the process even easier.

Use coupon code SERMONS to take 75% off the Sermon File Addin. This offer is good through the end of the month.

While I don't typically write out a list of new years resolutions, I do usually take some time around the new year to think about things I would put on a list if I were to write one. On my mental list I usually include things like:

• Be a better husband and father
• Sleep less (I love sleep)
• Increase financial giving
• Go to the gym
• Pray more
• And, of course, read the Bible in a year

I'll admit, many new years have come and gone with that last item going undone. Like many of you, I start off the new year strong. I have my Bible reading plan all laid out and ready to go. Then, somewhere in the year, something goes wrong and my plan falls to the side.

This year, I'm going to try something new and use Global Bible Reader. This free download from Logos is a powerful desktop application that provides community and accountability in a Bible reading plan.

Once you install Global Bible Reader you sign in with your Logos.com user account and choose from one of the six reading plans. After you chose a plan (or multiple plans) Global Bible Reader will download six days worth of reading (so you can even read when you're not online). After you finish the reading for a day, click the Done Reading button and Global Bible Reader will mark the day as completed. In order to make sure you don't fall behind, you can set up Global Bible Reader to give you a daily reminder to read the day's text.

More than just reading yourself, Global Bible Reader plugs you into a community of people who are on the same reading plan as you. A globe in the application spins around showing you where all the other readers are located around the world. Not only that, Global Bible Reader allows you to post comments. You can use this feature to leave comments about the day's readings or to encourage your fellow readers. Also, since your Global Bible Reader is linked in to your Logos.com user account, you can update your profile picture and location and they will be imported into Global Bible Reader.

One of the only limitations to Global Bible reader, until now, was that it was tied to the computer where you install it. That problem was remedied today as we have now integrated Global Bible Reader into Bible.Logos.com! That means you can now keep up to date with your reading even when you are away from your main computer. Simply go to Bible.Logos.com, sign in, and click the Reading Plan. You'll see links to the day's readings and a button to click once you're done reading. Since Global Bible Reader and Bible.Logos.com are connected, clicking Done Reading in either location will mark the section read in the other.

Join me this year and read through the Bible with Global Bible Reader and Bible.Logos.com. Having a community and accountability might be just the thing I (we) need to stick with it this year!

Logos.com just got a whole lot better. We launched some powerful new search functionality along with greatly improved search results.

To be quite honest, our previous search on our website wasn't the best at helping you find what you were looking for unless you knew the exact title or author of the product. A search for something like Grudem theology would turn up no results. Now that same search finds exactly what you're probably looking for: Grudem's Systematic Theology.

The default functionality used to be a quote search. It would find only the exact words you typed and in the order that you typed them. Since "Grudem theology" never appears exactly that way on our site, you wouldn't get any hits. Now our search by default does an OR search. It will find any place where either Grudem or theology occur. It also does stemming, which means that it will find Grudem and theological too. You'll now get plenty of search results with the best matches on top.

Want to narrow your results? No problem. The new search at Logos.com now recognizes the AND search operator. So you can search for something like Geisler AND apologetics or MacArthur AND Romans. You can also perform standard quote searches as well, like "works of jonathan edwards". This gives you full control over what our search engine finds for you, but usually just entering in a couple of words and hitting enter should bring you very relevant and targeted results.

Misspell a word in your search? No problem. We now suggest the correct spelling for you! For example, if you search for John McArthur, we'll ask you, "Did you mean John MacArthur?" Clicking that text will then perform the search you meant to perform. Cool, huh? (And notice that even the search with the misspelling gives you some pretty good results too!)

That's not all. The new search also recognizes fields like author, title, and description so you can perform some very powerful searches just like you can in Logos Bible Software. Here are some examples:

• author:piper
• title:(God AND love)
• title:(Greek grammar)
• description:"english translation"

Just as exciting as the powerful new searching is what we've done to the search results. We've added the ability to sort search results by several different criteria. The default search order is by relevance, but you can also sort by price, author, and title.

All search results are now conveniently divided into two sections: products and support. Looking to add something to your library? Then products is what you want. Looking to learn how to use Logos better with a video or support article, then support is what you want. By default, we'll show you both products and support. Just click either word in the top left to filter the results.

Oh, one last thing--blog posts are now indexed as well, so if you're searching for help on something, you'll see all the great support articles at Logos.com as well as the relevant blog posts from here on the blog. No need to come here and search the blog separately.

We really hope you enjoy this powerful new functionality, and we welcome your feedback on ways we can make searching at Logos.com even better.

What are you waiting for? Go give it a try!

For all of you dedicated Christmas day blog readers, we put together a little Christmas video and some pictures from around the office and at our annual Christmas party. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Logos is going to Macworld and we wanted to invite you to come along—in fact, we're even giving away tickets to the expo!

If you'd like a free ticket to the expo, we have a couple ways you can win.

1. Post a note on your blog with a link to http://www.macbiblesoftware.com. Then send me an email (rburns@logos.com) to let me know where you posted.
2. Follow us on Twitter and write a tweet telling people about @Logos (we'll see the reply, so no need to email or DM me).
3. If you don't have a blog or Twitter account, drop a comment below telling us why you want to come and hang out with us at Macworld.

We only have 90 tickets to give away, so act fast as we'll give them away on a first-come, first-served basis. If you're looking to attend more than just the expo, we can also save you 15% on some of the programs offered at Macworld. Just use our Macworld registration link, and the discounts will be shown during on the program listing page. The discount is open to everyone, so enjoy.

If you already have your tickets to Macworld this year, we'd love to see you there. You can find us in the North Hall, booth number 3526-S. Drop us a comment below and let us know you'll be there!

Important Contest Info: We're only giving away tickets to the Expo ($45 value). That means, if you win a ticket, you will only have access to view the exhibition floor (but with almost 500 exhibitors, I'm sure you'll have plenty to do). If you want to purchase tickets for the keynote or any other event, that is up to you. Also, Macworld is in San Francisco, January 5-9, 2009. We're not covering your airfare, travel expense, or meals... so, please be aware that you are responsible for those items before you enter.

The contest begins. . . right. . . now!

We're starting a weekly blog contribution from our Customer Service department. In it you'll learn a variety of tips to help you keep your copy of Logos Bible Software running smoothly. We hope you enjoy the series.

Today's guest blogger is Elizabeth Sanborn, a member of our Customer Service team.

One problem we encounter often is when users install an outdated version of Libronix from an old disk onto a new computer running Windows Vista. Older versions of Libronix are not compatible Vista, so it's essential that you install the most recent version, which is presently 3.0e.

Everyone should be running Libronix DLS 3.0e, regardless of which version of Windows you're using. Products that were released earlier than 2008 won't have the most recent version. You can save yourself a lot of time and effort either by installing directly from our website or by purchasing a media only disk, which is available for only $4.95 plus shipping.

If your version of Libronix is really old, you may need to purge off the old system instead of using Add/Remove programs. If that looks too complicated or scary, don't hesitate to call us at 800-875-6467. We'd love to walk you through the process.

So this week's tip is: make sure you're installing the latest version on your new machine. More and more computers are coming with Vista, and we want to ensure that Libronix runs smoothly for you.

By the way, to find out what version of Libronix you are running, start Libronix and go to "Help" > "About Libronix DLS." You'll see this window pop up.

If you're not running 3.0e or later, find out how you can easily get up to date—for free!

Oftentimes we'll get a newly licensed book that would be a perfect fit in a collection that's already up on Pre-Pub. What we end up doing most of the time is sneaking that book into a collection and giving you more content at no additional charge. Every once in a while we'll say something about it, but usually we do it without even telling you.

We usually have to raise the price after we add the new volume to cover the additional costs, but the good news is that those of you who already placed your pre-order are locked in at the lowest possible price.

We've done this several times recently, so I thought I'd call attention to them.

1. Holman Reference Collection (13 Vols.), which contains the award-winning Apologetics Study Bible, added two new books: 131 Christians Everyone Should Know and Harmony of the Gospels.
2. Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection (17 Vols.) picked up Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics.
3. The Moody Counseling Collection (11 Vols.) now has A Gift from God: Foundational Principles of Biblical Parenting.
4. Face2face Collection (7 Vols.) got Elisha: Encountering the Messenger of Salvation.

What's the moral of the story? We do our best to reward those of you who faithfully order Pre-Pubs—and do so early.

If you don't want to miss out on little bonuses like these, make sure you're subscribed to our Pre-Pub RSS feed. This is just one of the several reasons it's a good idea to pre-order early.

Update: Two more collections just got new books!

1. A. T. Robertson Collection (15 Vols.) added Preaching and Scholarship, the inaugural lecture given at Southern Baptist Seminary in 1890.
2. Kress Biblical Studies Collection (8 Vols.) picked up Richard L. Mayhue's The Biblical Pattern for Divine Healing and Snatched Before the Storm: A Case for Pretribulationism.

We've updated our endorsements page and wanted to share it with you. Most of you who read this blog are probably already Logos users, so there's not much personal benefit to reading the endorsements other than being able to say, "Cool! I didn't know _______ uses and recommends Logos!"

That's fun and all, but we really have two other reasons for mentioning our new endorsements page. The truth is, endorsements are a huge help to many people.

First, most people make purchases at least partially based on the recommendation of a friend or someone they respect. I'm sure you know people who are potential Logos users. In addition to sharing your own opinions about Logos Bible Software, you can provide additional help by pointing them to the opinions of ministry leaders, industry insiders, academic users, pastors and missionaries, and average Christians who love to study the Bible.

Second, you may know people who love Logos and rave about it (you may even be one!) but have never had the chance to let their voice be heard on a scale where it can benefit lots of other people. If you know of someone who has an endorsement of Logos that they'd like to share with the world, send them on to our endorsements page where they can submit their own feedback.

Although I wasn't there, I heard that we had a blast at ETS and SBL this year. Thanks for stopping by and saying hello. We love to meet new users and get reacquainted with old ones.

In case you weren't able to attend and don't keep up with the blogs of Mike, Rick, and Steve, I thought you might like to know that their papers are now available.

Mike presented a paper on "The Concept of a Godhead in Israelite Religion." He plans to turn it into two articles: one for a Christian academic audience, the other for a broader audience. If you're interested in OT studies and theology proper, I'd encourage you to give it a read. He welcomes your feedback. Read more at Mike's blog.

Rick's paper was on "The Discourse Function of αλλα in Non-Negative Contexts." He provides a helpful conference handout, as well as a nice abstract. If Greek conjunctions are your thing, this is sure to be stimulating reading. Read more at Rick's blog.

Steve presented a paper at ETS on "The Exegetical Significance of Meta-Comments for Identifying Key Propositions," with an accompanying PowerPoint presentation. The paper is a good taste of Steve's forthcoming Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction for Teaching and Exegesis, which is available for pre-order at Logos.com.

At SBL Steve gave a second paper on "The Discourse Function of Left-dislocation Constructions and their Contribution to Information Structure," which also had a PowerPoint presentation. Read more at Steve's blog.

By the way, we mentioned before that we introduced a number of new bundles and collections at ETS and SBL. They are still available at the same prices, so if you missed the first mention, be sure to give them a look.

Update: John Barry also presented a paper at SBL entitled "Will the Servant 'See Light'?: A Reexamination of the 'ôr Variant in Isaiah 53:11." He provides a helpful handout that summarizes his argument. Read more at John's Blog.

Today's guest blogger is Adam Navarrete, who works in the marketing department here at Logos.

As the 2008 Logos Lecture Series comes to a close, I would like to personally thank our loyal attendees for making the lectures a wonderful time. Our final lecture for 2008 is only days away—so I invite you to join us this Monday!

Dr. Peter Jones of truthXchange will be speaking about the upsurge of neo-paganism.

With an overview on the rise of neo-pagan thought in the United States and abroad, Dr. Peter Jones shows that a neo-pagan pantheistic worldview is steadily displacing atheism and its materialistic secular humanism as the dominant mode of thought in contemporary culture. He'll argue that conversions from secularism to pagan spirituality occur without too much difficulty because both deny the living personal God of the Bible.

Please note that this lecture will be held at the Mount Baker Theater in Bellingham, WA.

Event Details

• Date: Monday, December 8th
• Time: 7:00 PM
• Title: "Neo-pagan Religion: Stepchild of Secular Humanism"
• Speaker: Dr. Peter Jones
• Location: Mount Baker Theatre in Bellingham, WA
• Admission: FREE!

About This Month's Speaker

Dr. Peter Jones, born in Liverpool, England, was educated at the University of Wales, Gordon Divinity School, and Harvard Divinity School. In 1971, he married and was a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary before heading to France where he taught New Testament. There he also wrote, spoke, and helped start a Christian school and a church. Invited to teach at Westminster Seminary, California, Dr. Jones re-entered the U.S. where he experienced culture shock as a new spirituality had taken over America. This led him to write The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back. Dr. Jones is currently executive director of truthXchange.

His writings include Gospel Truth, Pagan Lies, The God of Sex: How Worldview Determines Sexuality, and Capturing the Pagan Mind. He also co-authored Cracking DaVinci's Code and followed up with Stolen Identity: The Conspiracy to Reinvent Jesus.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about two ways that you can create a Logos wish list using Google or Kaboodle. I recommended the Kaboodle method because of its ease of use with the integrated Firefox and IE plugins and its additional features.

Since that post, Logos user T. C. Black has written about a third way to create a Logos wish list using Amazon. Amazon has always had a nice wish list feature, but it was limited to items you could buy at their site. A few months ago they added a universal wish list feature that allows you to add items from other sites like Logos.com with a simple JavaScript bookmarklet.

It's very easy to use and is perfect for those who already keep track of other wish list items at Amazon.

Here's how to use it:

1. Log in to your Amazon.com account, or create one if you don't already have one.
2. Create a new wish list, click "Edit list information" in the left sidebar to give it a name like "Christmas Wish List," and then click "Make this list my default list" (applies only if this is not your first list).
3. Drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks.
4. Navigate to a product page at Logos.com, like the John Piper Collection (24 Vols.).
5. Click the boomarklet and fill out the information in the box that pops up.*
6. Keep shopping and add as many other items as you want.
7. Once you're done, visit your wish list to make sure that all the settings are as they should be (e.g., is it public or private) and to share your list with others.

Here's a sample Christmas wish list that I whipped up.

Create your own, and post a link to your wish list in the comments.

*One thing you might want to do in the notes section is specify whether you want the CD-ROM or the download, if applicable. If you want the download, be sure to provide your Libronix Customer ID in the comments as well. The individual buying for you can enter your Customer ID in the final stages of the checkout process. The only downside to going the download route is that you will receive a notification immediately when the order is placed. So if you want it to be a surprise, choose the CD-ROM option.

As a hat-tip to all our loyal Logos blog readers, we wanted to let you know about our latest online project, Sermons.Logos.com (beta). While we aren't ready for a full-out release announcement, we thought it would be fun to let you guys and gals get the first chance to visit the site and "kick the tires."

Sermons.Logos.com is an online community built around user created sermons and illustrations and already hosts over 56,000 sermons and illustrations.

Along with the ability to search Sermons.Logos.com using the same powerful search engine that runs Bible.Logos.com, you can also rate sermons, subscribe to sermon RSS feeds, create links to sermons and illustrations you want to share with people, and even create your own user account to upload your sermons and illustrations to the site.

If you already have a Logos.com account, there is no need to create a new account to use the site. Your Logos.com username and password work on Sermons.Logos.com. Not only that, but you can also promote your church and your sermons by enhancing your profile with a picture, a link to your church, your title, organization, personal blog or website, denomination, and much more. To enhance your profile, just visit: https://www.logos.com/user/MyProfile.

If you're a Logos user and have the Sermon File Addin, contributing to Sermons.Logos.com is as easy as checking the "add my sermons to the Logos database" checkbox. Your sermons will automatically be added and, even more, when you edit them within Logos, your edits will appear on the site as well.

So, there you go. Remember, the site is in beta, so go check it out and let us know what you think.

Last week I wrote a post about my Logos epiphany; that moment when I realized I can have my entire theological library with me all the time. Over the week many users posted comments about the time when they had that same realization. Reading the comments, I was deeply encouraged to see how having a Logos library has helped men and women serve their churches, ministries, and communities. Since I know that a lot of people don't often go back and read comments on old posts, I thought I'd share a couple that really impressed and inspired me.

Mark said, "In the fall of 2005, I deployed to Iraq as a chaplain with my bible and Logos on my laptop. I was able to do full exegesis and exposition in my sermons thanks to Logos."

Mike shared that his epiphany came "while teaching a new group of believers the Bible in the remote villages of southern Siberia."

Caroline, who serves in a ministry to senior citizens, said, "Having my Logos Library ready to answer questions is wonderful. It is difficult for a senior citizen to always have an immediate answer but my Logos gives a rapid response."

David is experiencing the difference in travel now that he has Logos. "Traveling between the US and India during the early 1990's to teach in a theological college for a few month meant carrying half of my luggage allowance in books. So about 70 pounds of books went with me. Currently I'm in India again; I brought a few books that are not in Libronix data, but much of what I need is on this notebook computer."

Eric, a missionary currently traveling around the country, said, "There is no way I could carry my "other" library around the country while I raise my support."

Sam said, "I realized this when I spent last summer helping plant a church in Northern China. I never could have carried enough books to do good study for preaching and teaching every week with me. Libronix made it possible for me to do a lot of study without luggage overcharges or lack of space in the apartment. And also saved me so much time giving me more to use teaching instead of studying."

Comments and stories like these remind me why Logos is such a special company and product. Logos is helping people to do in-depth study of the Bible and share its message around the world.

QUICK NOTE - Speaking of around the world, Dan just pointed me to a post from about 2 1/2 years ago that shows the shipping costs to send the print equivalent of a Logos library overseas. The crazy thing to note is that the shipping costs in the 2006 post were as much as $6,650. Since then, the USPS has increased international shipping costs by 13.8% in 2007 and plans to increase it another 8.4% in 2009. At those prices, shipping books overseas does not make sense. For that kind of money you could double or triple your Logos library!

Now, you don't have to be in a foreign country to appreciate Logos. Maybe you're like Caroline and ministering in your community, or like me and just doing Bible study on a bus. No matter what you do or where you are, having (and growing) a Logos library simply makes in-depth Bible study easier and more convenient.

We prepared 12 new bundles for ETS and SBL and wanted to share these specials with you as well. Each of these collections was carefully crafted and offers some really nice savings.

Whether you're into the original languages, OT studies, NT studies, church history, theology, or apologetics, there's something here for just about everyone.

For those of you who want to beef up the Greek and Hebrew sections of your digital library, we have three language supplements containing some of our best original language resources:

• Advanced Greek Supplement (6 Vols.)
• Advanced Hebrew Supplement (11 Vols.)
• Original Languages Supplement (12 Vols.)

Many of our other top-selling resources and collections have been conveniently combined into these nine bundles.

• Ancient Near Eastern Bundle (30 Vols.)
• Hebrew Bible Bundle (54 Vols.)
• Early Judaism Bundle (30 Vols.)
• New Testament Studies Bundle (64 Vols.)
• Early Church Bundle (59 Vols.)
• Protestant Theology Bundle (336 Vols.)
• Christian Apologetics Bundle (94 Vols.)
• Theological Reference Bundle (19 Vols.)
• Scholar's Reference Bundle (140 Vols.)

Go take a look at what's included and see if anything here would be a good addition to your Libronix library.

Today's guest blogger is Adam Navarrete, who works in the marketing department here at Logos.

Just in time to get you thinking about your holiday cooking calendar, we held another bake-off this past Friday. There were more than a dozen delicious treats, but three rose to the top.

Our winners were as follows:

1. Heidie Godfrey with her Chocolate Raspberry bars
2. Elise Starkovich with her In Search of Wow Wow Wibble Woggle Wazzie Woodle Woo (translation: Cookie Cheesecake)
3. Elizabeth Sanborn with her Keebler Bars

We invite you to download the recipes and give them a try!

If you make any of these for your household, church function, or holiday event, let us know how you like them.

Enjoy!

Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence here at Logos and author of the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament, the High Definition New Testament, and the forthcoming Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction to Discourse Features for Teaching and Exegesis has contributed to the blog here on several occasions.

But he has a lot more to say about discourse grammar, his area of expertise, so he's decided to start his own blog, NT Discourse. His stated goal is to remove the mystery from discourse grammar. If it's still a mystery to you, you might want to give it a read.

Steve's hit the blogging ground running, and has been averaging about five posts per week. Here's a sampling of the kinds of things he's been discussing:

• Intro to near/far distinctions
• Structuring information
• Meta-comment: Gal 1:9
• Choice and meaning
• The many faces of 'this', part 3
• The many faces of 'this', part 2
• The many faces of 'this', part 1
• Which "if" is it? Semantic meaning versus pragmatic effect
• Introduction to Meta-comments

If you've purchased the LDGNT or the HDNT and are looking for some help learning how to put them to good use, you'll definitely want to check out Steve's new blog. You RSS folks can grab his newly burned FeedBurner feed.

Even if you're not into discourse grammar, you won't want to miss Steve and his dog singing a duet!

It's been more than a year since we've shared any official news about Logos Bible Software for Mac here on the blog. We've intentionally been quiet because we wanted our next announcement to be more than just a minor progress report.

Well, since we're posting with a title "Logos Bible Software for Mac," we must have some big news. Yes, in fact, we do. We're thrilled to announce that we're just about there and are ready to start taking pre-orders.

Place Your Pre-Order

Those of you who have been waiting patiently can now pre-order one of our five Mac base packages.

• Bible Study Library for Mac
• Leader's Library for Mac
• Scholar's Library for Mac
• Scholar's Library: Silver for Mac
• Scholar's Library: Gold for Mac

Current Logos users who want to crossgrade and move their existing Logos Bible Software digital library over to our new Mac software can purchase the Logos Bible Software for Mac engine for only $59.95.

Special Promo

Wait! Before you buy the Mac engine, you might be interested to know that you can get it for free.

Here's the deal. If you spend $250 or more on live products at Logos.com or over the phone (800-875-6467) in a single order during the month of November, we'll send you the Mac engine for free as soon as it's ready.

Find out more.

Watch the Demo!

Want to see it for yourself? Watch the demo video below.

The best way to get started with Logos Bible Software is to purchase one of our base packages. Not everyone has the same budget or needs, but the bigger packages are definitely the better value. For those who are serious about studying the Bible and are convinced of the value of building a digital library, there's no better place to start than Scholar's Gold.

But once you have your base package and are ready for more, what should you buy next?

That's the question that a new Logos user asked in the newsgroups recently:

I bought the Scholar's Gold edition. Can you suggest any other good resources I would want to add to it?

I use it mostly for speaking/preaching so I enjoy having lots of good commentaries.

With around 9,000 resources, it's good to have a little guidance to find out what others consider most useful.

Several longtime Logos users responded with their recommendations. Here are some of the things that they suggested:

• Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary
• Hermeneia
• Word Biblical Commentary
• BDAG and HALOT (available at a discount in a bundle)
• Theological Journal Library
• Robert Reymond's Systematic Theology
• Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology
• Cornelius Van Til
• Pillar New Testament Commentary

I'd concur with most of these recommendations and probably add the Essential IVP Reference Collection and the new Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament Bundle. I'd also point out our Top 10 lists, our Commentary product guide, and our Pre-Pub system.

What would you recommend? What are your top picks for moving beyond a base package?

We've decided to extend the special offer on the Sermon File Addin through the weekend, so if you haven't yet taken advantage of this tremendous offer, it's not too late!

If you missed the earlier post (which mentions a number of other specials as well), for a limited time we're "selling" the downloadable version of the Sermon File Addin for the whopping price of $0. That's right. It's totally free. No tax. No shipping. And no waiting.

The Sermon File Addin allows you to turn years of old sermon manuscripts into a powerful, organized, searchable Libronix book file. You can create a second book of all of your illustrations as well. Not only can you search and interact with your new books like the other books in your Libronix library, but you'll even see your own sermons and illustrations show up in the Passage Guide. If you haven't seen how it works, be sure to watch the two-minute demo video.

Get Started Today

If you've already picked it up, it's easy to start importing your sermons from a variety of common file formats. In these five tutorial videos, we walk you through the simple process.

Sermon File Addin (Part 1): Importing Your Sermons and Illustrations

Sermon File Addin (Part 2a): Edit Screen

Sermon File Addin (Part 2b): Edit Screen

Sermon File Addin (Part 3): Navigate Your New Sermon and Illustration Books

Sermon File Addin (Part 4): See How Your Sermons and Illustration Are Integrated into Logos

To watch these videos in higher resolution, see the Sermon File Addin section of our videos page.

Update: This offer has expired.

A potential customer emailed me his concerns about investing in an electronic library:

"I have had the desire to invest in an electronic library, but I am terrified of investing all of this money into one and then losing my money's worth because new computers will not be able to read them. How does Logos deal with this? Will my grandchildren be able to use my electronic library?"

This is a fear we hear regularly, but one that quickly goes away once we explain how Logos licenses the content, not the file-format.

It's true that digital data can be lost if it is not constantly migrated to new storage media and kept in up-to-date or easily parsed formats. Paper books can be lost, too — just look at New Orleans and the libraries lost to flooding and mold.

The key issue is, who is ensuring your continued access? With paper it's you — you have to keep it dry and away from fire, and you have to be willing to store and move it. (Most books are "lost" when people don't want to move them yet again.)

I can't make guarantees about the future; nobody can. But in Logos' case, we've got a 17 year track record, we're a strong business, and we've honored users licenses to the electronic books through various format, media, and operating system changes for more than a dozen years. That's a pretty good record.

Moreover, what we sell you is the license to the book, NOT the digital file. When we change formats (which we've done) you don't have to re-acquire a license. When music went from vinyl records to cassettes to CD's, you had to re-purchase the album each time. But we aren't selling you "today's format" — we're selling an electronic license. With Logos, it's as if you're provided the song free on cassette, CD, and then digital download, all because of your original vinyl purchase.

Can you loan the book, and can your grandchildren have it [see the clarification below]? No. But not because of the electronic format. It's because we offer a really good price in exchange for licensing to one user. We sell our electronic books (in collections) at a huge discount from list price.

The big question is, what is your goal? To have beautiful books on your shelf that you can pass as heirlooms to your descendents, or to get convenient, useful access to a large library of content with a powerful set of tools for searching and reports?

I can "acquire a movie" in several ways: $9 at the theater, $1.99 VHS rental later, $29.95 to own the DVD, or (maybe) hundreds of dollars to acquire a film print. Each format has strengths and weaknesses. The theater experience is the best way to see it, but when it's over, it's over. The rental lets me rewind and pause and watch it a few times, but it's on a small screen and later in the release cycle. The DVD is also on my home screen, costs more, and might still go obsolete years down the road. The film is physically simple — shine light through the film to project — and actually the "safest" format to ensure my descendents can watch it, but it's more expensive, more awkward, etc.

The biggest risk with our electronic books is that we go out of business and then, some years later, computers change in a way that doesn't let you run our software. We intend, of course, to stay in business, and (to the best of our knowledge) we're the largest and strongest player in Bible software. But still, A) virtualization technology will probably ensure the ability to run this generation of applications for a long time and B) we have a large enough customer base that even in a bankruptcy someone would probably acquire and retain our product line and/or customer relationships.

So is your investment in e-books a safe bet? I believe so. Plus, it's easier on the back when it's time to move your library.

Today's guest post is from Dr. Steve Runge, a scholar-in-residence at Logos Bible Software and author of the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament and Lexham High Definition New Testament.

I have been reading through one of my seminary textbooks, the first edition of Robinson's Biblical Preaching. The more I read, the more I was struck by how closely his approach to exegesis matched up with the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament and the High Definition New Testament. Grammar professors are usually interested in the detail, the specifics of the words. The homiletics profs focus on the 'big idea', i.e. how the smaller parts contribute to the whole. The hard part is synthesizing these two elements.

This synthesis is captured in Robinson's Stage 3 of preparation, after the lexicons, dictionaries and commentaries have been consulted. He states, "As you study the passage, relate the parts to each other to determine the exegetical idea and its development" (p. 66). What is interesting is that while he lists eight different kinds of resources to help you through your study Stage 2, he does not list any for Stage 3. Apparently, you're on your own.

The core part of Stage 3 is identifying what Robinson calls the Subject and the Complement. The Subject "accurately describes what the author is talking about" (p. 67). Complements "complete the subject and make it into an idea" (p. 67). In other words, any given passage is made up of subjects, to which complements are added. The most important part of identifying these elements, says Robinson, is understanding the structure of the passage. If the structure is understood, then the flow of thought or reasoning can be accurately discerned and communicated. This is accomplished by developing what he calls a 'mechanical layout', essentially a block diagram that charts the flow of the text.

Such a layout points up the relationship of the dependent clauses to the independent clauses. . . . Either a diagram or a mechanical layout brings analysis and synthesis together so that the major idea of a passage is separated from its supporting material. (68)

Here is the sample of his mechanical layout from Appendix 2 of the first edition. It is not included in the second edition.

Now let's shift gears and take a look at what is found in the Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament. It provides the same kind of block outline for the entire New Testament as seen in Robinson's layout.

The independent clauses can be differentiated from the dependent ones by the labels in the left column, by the indenting, and by the discourse annotations like backgrounding (e.g. Text).

Where the Greek writer uses special devices to highlight that something is part of Robinson's Subject, the LDGNT annotates this as a frame of reference (e.g. ^[TP Text ^TP]). Some frames of reference introduce topics, others introduce information that helps you relate what follows to the preceding text. Either way, they are clearly marked to avoid confusing them with Robinson's Complement. Greek writers also used special devices to emphasize the most important part of the Complement. This too is indicated for you using bolding.

The LDGNT was intentionally developed for preachers and teachers. It includes many other devices that help you identify where the writers highlight key themes, or highlight significant connections between ideas, and much more. We felt like this information was so important that it had to get into the hands of folks without training in Greek. This resulted in a slightly simplified version called the Lexham High Definition New Testament: ESV Edition.

Check out the videos for the HDNT and LDGNT to learn more about each resource.

Those of you who already have the LDGNT will be excited to hear about a forthcoming resource I've been working on: Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament: A Practical Introduction to Discourse Features for Teaching and Exegesis. This text introduces the discourse concepts annotated in the LDGNT, starting with how standard Greek grammars like BDF, Robertson, Wallace and Porter treat them. Keep an eye out for it on the Pre-Pub page.

Today's guest blogger is Adam Navarrete, who works in the marketing department here at Logos.

I want to thank everyone that came out to our last lecture with Arnold Fruchtenbaum—it was a packed house! Can you believe that it's time for another lecture already? I am really excited about this lecture as I have heard nothing but great things about Professor Zylstra—and the topic looks to be quite interesting: "Understanding Radical Islam."

About the Lecture

Many people in Western democracies know little about Islam, especially the beliefs of some of its minority groups. Professor Clarence Zylstra of Whatcom Community College has taught political science and history for over thirty years. In this lecture, professor Zylstra focuses on the beginnings of Islam, its historical radicalization, and how Islamic eschatology is a driving force behind the Islamo-fascism mounting a threat to the West today.

About This Month's Speaker

Professor Clarence Zylstra was born in Holland in 1930 and lived there through World War II and the Nazi occupation. In 1948 he immigrated to the United States. He served in the U.S. Army as a linguist from 1951 to 1952. Following his discharge he became a dairy farmer in Everson and student at Western Washington University. Upon obtaining a master's degree in Economics, History and Political Science, he became an instructor at Whatcom Community College where he has taught for more than 30 years.

Event Details

• Title: "Understanding Radical Islam"
• Speaker: Professor Clarence Zylstra
• Date: Monday, October 27
• Time: 7:00 PM
• Location: Mount Baker Theatre in Bellingham, Washington
• Cost: Admission is free!

There's just one lecture left before 2009! Check the lecture page for updated information.

Hope to see you there on Monday night!

I'm a people person. Maybe it comes from my years as a college pastor, but I really love to just sit down and hear people's stories. Finding out the little (and big) things in people's lives makes me appreciate them at a level that is deeper than the passing, "Hey, how ya doing? Nice weather today, huh?"

So, as a new employee at Logos, I've enjoyed getting the chance to meet lots of new people. It got me thinking that maybe some of you would like to meet them as well. I mean, sure, knowing that the VP of marketing is a die hard Flyers fan and top-notch ping pong player or that most of the customer service department has a Nerf gun at their desk won't help you with your Anderson-Forbes syntax resources or getting more out of your Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary but it might help you get to know some of the people who help make Logos more than just a software company.

With that in mind, we're going to start a regular feature on the Logos blog that will introduce you to some of the people behind Logos Bible Software. From kite surfers to PhDs, you'll get a chance to see Logos from a whole new angle. We hope you enjoy it.

For our first video I want to introduce you to Deborah. Deborah is a member of our customer service department and has been with Logos for a little over a year. Here is some footage from when I stopped by her desk the other day.

If you've watched our company video or talked with us on the phone multiple times, you're probably aware of the various ways we pronounce our name. Some say Lŏgŏs, others say Lōgōs, and a few say Lōgŏs.

Which is it? As Eli so aptly put it, "It doesn't matter how you say it. It's Lōgōs, Lŏgŏs, Lōgŏs. It's all good."

Take the poll and let us know how you say it.

There are two other variations of our name that I've come across several times lately—not in pronunciation, but in spelling: Logo's Bible Software and Logo Bible Software. Both of these assume that the first word in our name has something to do with a logo (i.e., "a symbol or emblem that acts as a trademark or a means of identification of an institution or other entity").

It's easy to understand why people would think this since logo is a very common English word, and our name comes from a Greek word that may be unfamiliar to many.

If it's still Greek to you, then now's your chance to learn a little about the Greek word λόγος (i.e., logos)—and the meaning behind our name.

Λόγος is a noun that occurs 330 times in the Greek New Testament. It's most basic meaning is "word," "speech," "utterance," or "message." It's used of Jesus as the Word (i.e., Jn 1:1, 14; Rev 19:13). It's also used to refer to the Bible or some portion of the Bible as the Word of God (e.g., Mt 15:6; Lk 5:1; 8:21; 11:28; Jn 10:35-36; Ac 6:2, 7; Heb 13:7). Commonly it has specifically in view the preeminent word or message from God, namely the gospel (e.g., 1 Thes 1:5-6, 8).

So that's what the Logos in Logos Bible Software is all about—the Word of God.

We recently created a new LinkedIn group for Logos Bible Software users. If you are a member of LinkedIn and use Logos, we invite you to join our group.

If you aren't sure what LinkedIn is and want to learn more, watch the video below.

For more on the benefits of LinkedIn, you'll find tons of useful ideas in Linked Intelligence's 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn.

By the way, we're on Facebook, too. Check out our profile, our business page, and our groups:

• Logos Bible Software Users
• Logos Lecture Series
• Bible Study Magazine
• BibleTech

Today's guest blogger is Adam Navarrete, who works in the marketing department here at Logos.

To play our part in the ever present need for blood, Logos organized a mobile donation unit from Puget Sound Blood Center (PSBC) to park outside our downtown offices this past Friday as our employees volunteered their arms—some, for the first time—and collected 19 units of life-sustaining blood.

Nearly 900 units of blood are needed each day in order to maintain PSBC's desire to have a four-day supply of blood at all times. According to the PSBC website, "every two minutes someone in western Washington needs a blood transfusion."

It is great knowing that PSBC, a non-profit, community-supported organization, supplies patients and hospitals in western Washington, allowing our donations to be redistributed throughout our own communities.

We were privileged to contribute to our community in a meaningful and practical way. Our one-day drive helped register 82 donors, collect 19 units of blood, and will benefit up to 57 patients! A needle prick is not a bad trade-off when a life can be saved.

Enjoy some pictures and a short video clip below.

Here's a short clip of the action.

Andy Naselli, a good friend of mine and an avid Logos user, points out a relevant quote in a new book from Crossway: The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ, edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton. In his chapter, "Professors with a New Public: Academics and New Media," Fred Sanders avers,

The coming crisis in academic publishing is centered on the expense of printing and distributing scholarly works with an extremely narrow focus. Electronic publishing is the obvious source of a solution to this problem. The current editorial systems could stay in place just as they are, with the cost of production dropping to a fraction of the current system. It may be a long time before paperless publication is desirable for all users, but in academia it seems like an obvious need. The current system . . . must find a way out of its deadlock. (p. 172)

We're happy to be a large part of this solution.

If you've been following our Pre-Pub offerings for the last couple of years, you're well aware that we are publishing digital editions of a host of expensive academic resources. While the front-end costs of high-end digital publishing aren't small (especially if we have to work from print rather than digital sources), the on-going costs are significantly less allowing volumes that cost $100-200 or even more in print to be available for significantly less digitally. This set was a perfect illustration of the savings that digital can offer: Library of NT Studies: JSNTS on the Gospels and Acts (16 Vols.).

On a closely related note, you may remember that back in May Dale Pritchett addressed this subject in his presentation "Logos in the Classroom." If you missed it, be sure to give it a listen or read the transcript.

Most of us still use desktop applications when we want to do serious work, but web applications are improving rapidly and fast becoming viable alternatives, at least when it comes to basic functionality. Desktop applications simply can't compete with the convenience of being able to access your data from any computer connected to the web.

That's why Logos continues to develop web-based tools and applications.

WBSA

A little over a year ago we re-released a site that's come to be referred to as WBSA (short for "What the Bible Says About"), an interactive online version of the New Nave's Topical Bible. WBSA allows you to enter a Bible topic and quickly get access to relevant Bible passages.

RefTagger

Then about six months ago we launched RefTagger, a powerful free tool that makes your Bible references come alive and gives websites the feel of your Bible software.

Bible.Logos.com

Now we're releasing a beta version of our online Bible site.

Why another Bible site? What makes Bible.Logos.com different? Here are a few reasons we think Bible.Logos.com will soon become your first choice for searching the Bible on the web.

• Efficient UI: Its unique user interface allows you to do more—more quickly and more conveniently—without having to continually load new pages and without losing your place. (1) Search results and Bible text are side by side. (2) Both use infinite scrolling. (3) Switching to a different version is seamless; your location and search results are instantly mapped over.
• Incredible Speed: It's blazingly fast. Searches are instantaneous, and pages load in a flash.
• Smart Searching: It uses cutting-edge fuzzy searching technology so you can search the Bible more like you search the web. Search results are prioritized so you get the best hits first.
• Seamless Integration: WBSA, RefTagger, and Bible.Logos.com will all be tightly integrated into a growing family of websites allowing you to have a more connected Bible study experience—both on and off the web.

Help Us Test It

As soon as Bible.Logos.com is ready to handle all the traffic that RefTagger is generating, we're going to flip the switch and connect the two.

This is where we need your help. We've been beta testing the site with a small group for the last two weeks, and we're ready to open it up to a broader audience to help us work out any remaining bugs. We want to make sure that it's really ready.

Here's what you can do. Spend 5 or 10 minutes looking up passages, running searches, and navigating through the various translations that are available. Give it everything you've got.

Type in things like:

• all sorts of Bible references using a variety of formats and abbreviations (e.g., Jude; Job 22; Mal. 3:11; Jn 5:5-10; Mt 6.1-3; Rv 4:8-9)
• words and phrases from the Bible (e.g., good, love, lion, in Christ)
• words and phrases that you think might be from the Bible (e.g., honor your parents, I love Jesus)
• words and phrases that sound like they could be from the Bible, but aren't (e.g., God helps those who help themselves, cleanliness is next to godliness, do your best and let God do the rest)
• anything you want to (e.g., I'm very tired, drink milk)

Go give it a try.

Please send your bugs and feedback to bible@logos.com or drop us a note in the comments.

This doesn't have much to do with Logos Bible Software, but it's too good of a deal not to pass on to you.

Microsoft is again offering Office Ultimate 2007 for only $59.95! It retails at $679.95, so this is a savings of more than 91%.

Ultimate includes these 10 programs:

• Word 2007
• Excel 2007
• PowerPoint 2007
• Outlook 2007
• OneNote 2007
• Groove 2007
• Publisher 2007
• Access 2007
• InfoPath 2007
• Accounting Express 2008

That's only $6 per program!

There are two stipulations for qualifying:

1. You must have a .edu email address.
2. "You must be a student at a U.S. educational institution and must be actively enrolled in at least 0.5 course credit and be able to provide proof of enrollment upon request."

While there are a couple of good Office competitors out there, Office is still the standard and it integrates best with Logos (e.g., Bible reading schedules in Outlook, search results in Excel, and copying and pasting text with auto-citations into Word).

If you're a student and don't have Office, you should definitely give this a look.

Looks like starting September 8 you can also grab the upgrade to Vista Ultimate SP1 for only $64.95 (retails at $239.99).

Today's guest blogger is Dan Pritchett, VP Marketing & Business Development at Logos.

Have you ever wished your sermons had the same visual excitement that your song lyrics have? Wouldn't it be great if you could tie in all the pieces of your worship service with the same graphics and have one consistent look and feel throughout your entire service? Now you can!

PowerPointSermons.com offers the best resources available on the web to help pastors present professionally prepared PowerPoint sermons every week. For a reasonable yearly subscription rate, pastors from any denomination can find visual elements that will make the sermon the central focus of the worship service and help their congregation focus on the message in a way that enhances their learning experience.

We try hard to make Logos Bible Software the only tool you need for sermon preparation, so we have integrated the PowerPointSermons.com graphics with the Passage Guide results. When you use the Passage Guide to study a portion of Scripture, Logos will provide you with the essential tools and resources for preparing and presenting your sermon—including picking a selection of PowerPoint templates perfectly suited to your passage or topic.

The first few graphic sets you use are free, and if you decide to continue to use the service simply sign up for unlimited yearly access for your entire staff! No need to surf the web or use the same old template over and over. With PowerPoint Sermons integrated into Logos, you'll always have something fresh, relevant, and attractive—and just a click away.

Watch the video below to see why your church should consider subscribing to PowerPoint Sermons.

(If you don't see a video here, visit the blog post to watch it.)

For more information on PowerPoint Sermons integration in Logos, see the following:

• Get PowerPoint Sermons in Your Passage Guide!
• PowerPoint Sermons in Your Passage Guide

The recently-released Lexham Greek-English New Testament Interlinear has, as one of its primary distinguishing features, domain-article references to the Louw-Nida Greek Lexicon (info here, here and here). That's all well and good, but -- beyond keylinking to a specific Louw-Nida article -- what can we do with the references?

One thing that you can do (shown in the below-referenced video) is begin to explore using the concept of "semantic chaining" (also known as "semantic chunks" or "semantic clustering"). The idea is to explore how a section of text (a pericope or chapter or book) uses or repeats ideas found in particular domains or domain-subdomain references.

OK, I'll speak in English this time. You know how repeated words can be important when you're looking at a passage? Well, Louw-Nida references let you expand that notion to repeated concepts. The theoretical backgound for this concept is well-established in the literature* but as of yet has not really been available in a consumer-level Bible study product.

But you can do it with the Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament if you've also got the Louw-Nida lexicon (Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains) and are willing to learn how to reference search using the Bible Speed Search dialog.

The video shows you how. Our sample passage is 1Ti 2.1, and our sample concept is prayer.

• Video: Flash, 13 megs, 9:50, with sound.

* Some references include:

• Reed, Jeffrey T. A Discourse Analysis of Philippians, pp. 296-331. This book will be available in the Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection.


• Porter, Stanley E. and O'Donnell, Matthew Brook. "Semantics and Patterns of Argumentation in Romans: Definitions, Proposals, Data and Experiments", pp. 154-204 in Stanley E. Porter (ed.), Diglossia and Other Topics in New Testament Linguistics. This book will be available in the Studies in New Testament Greek and JSNTS Collection.


• Guthrie, George, The Structure of Hebrews: A Text-Linguistic Analysis.


• Van Neste, Ray, Cohesion and Structure in the Pastoral Epistles. This book is available in the Library of NT Studies: JSNTS on Paul collection.

I was surprised when I saw some stats on the number of people not running the latest version of Libronix (i.e., 3.0e). The numbers are even more surprising when you consider that updating Libronix to the latest version is entirely free and very easy to do.

Who's Up to Date (and Who's Not)?

Most of you are running the latest version, but a sizable group are still running a version that has been outdated for months or even years. Here are the numbers.

Current Version | 70.89%

• 3.0e | 70.89%

Outdated Versions | 29.11%

• 3.0d | 18.16%
• 3.0c | 5.98%
• 3.0b | 2.29%
• 3.0 | 1.59%
• 3.0a | .93%
• Expired Betas | .16%

How to Find Out Which Version You Have

With Libronix opened, go to the "Help" menu and click "About Libronix DLS."

You'll find the version that you have installed right at the top towards the middle. If it doesn't say 3.0e, it's time to update.

How to Update

Updating to the latest version of Libronix is easy to do. There are (at least) five ways to do it:

1. Update in Libronix: With Libronix opened, go to the "Tools" menu and click "Libronix Update." Install all Required and Recommended items. If you have an internet connection, this is the easiest and best way to get updated.
2. Update from Logos.com: You can also update to the latest version from our website: http://www.logos.com/support/downloads/ldls. Click the orange "Update" button and follow the instructions. (Or just run this script: http://www.logos.com/media/update/30eAutoUpdate.lbxupd.)
3. Update from a Media Only DVD or CDs: If you'd rather not update via the internet, you can order a media only DVD (or CDs) to get the latest version of Libronix and of most of your book files.
4. Upgrade Your Base Package: All of our base packages come with the latest version of Libronix, plus lots of new addins, tools, and resources! Visit http://www.logos.com/upgrade to see your upgrade options.
5. Update from Any Recent Product: All CD/DVD products with an official release date after February 1, 2008 should include 3.0e on them. If you've purchased a new product recently or have one coming soon, you can update to 3.0e that way.

For a list of new features in 3.0e, see the previous post "Update to Libronix DLS 3.0e."

Three years and 700 posts later . . .

The Logos blog officially launched on July 29, 2005. If my math is correct, that means that today is our 3rd birthday! No need to buy us any presents, but you’re welcome to buy yourself one if you want. :)

Looking Back

Over the past three years we’ve blogged just about every weekday with a few misses here and there. On an interesting note, yesterday’s blog post was our 700th.

As a quick recap, I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the most viewed posts.

According to Google Analytics, here are the 5 posts with the most pageviews:

1. Try Out the Pre-Pub Program—and Get a Free Book!
2. The Lifework of Dr. Jim Rosscup
3. The Secret to Beating the Postage Increase
4. Free Sermons in Your Bible Software
5. New Bible Widget for Mac

According to FeedBurner, here are the 5 posts with the most RSS views:

1. Learn Logos Bible Software
2. Understanding Data Types: Definitions
3. Doing Things Faster with the Keyboard, Part 1
4. Doing Things Faster with the Keyboard, Part 2
5. Logos in the Blogosphere

Looking Forward

We’re in the process of upgrading the blog from Movable Type 3.2 to 4.2. We hope to roll out a new look with some cool new features very soon, so stay tuned for an even better Logos blog.

We value your input as we move forward. Feel free to share your suggestions for things you’d like to see us incorporate. We’d also love to hear what kinds of posts you find most helpful. What would you like to see us do more of? What could you do without? In short, what can we do to make the blog an ever better tool to keep you informed and help you get the most out of your Bible software? Let us know by leaving a comment or sending an email to blog@logos.com.

The 60th annual Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) meeting, which is on the subject of Text and Canon, is right around the corner. The event will be held in Providence, Rhode Island on November 19-21, 2008. The tentative schedule is now up at the ETSJETS website. Three people from Logos will be presenting papers.

On Wednesday November 19, Mike Heiser will be moderating the papers on the topic of Israelite Religions in Room 551 B of the Rhode Island Convention Center. At 11:00 AM-11:40 AM he will present “The Concept of a Godhead in Israelite Religion.”

On Thursday Steve Runge and Rick Brannan will present back to back, also in Room 551 B. The theme of the papers is Discourse Grammar and Biblical Exegesis. Steve presents at 10:10 AM-10:50 AM. The title of his paper is “‘I want you to know . . .’ The Exegetical Significance of Meta-comments for Identifying Key Propositions.” At the 11:00 AM-11:40 AM session, Rick will give his paper on “The Discourse Function of αλλα in Non-negative Contexts.”

If you’re planning to attend and any of these papers pique your interest, mark them on your calendar. We’ll also have a booth set up. If you’re there, swing by and say hello. We always love to meet our users.