Posted by Geoff
Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:53:00 GMT
So, we’ve already handed out 2 of the 20 t-shirts, so we started off the day with 18 more to go. After some good e-mails and a quick technorati lookup of eBible.com, we have 2 new winners.
For day #2 of the 10 Days of eBible.com, we have a special thanks going out to Michael Arrington, who had a very good review of eBible.com that generated a lot of excitement around what we are trying to do with eBible.com. Michael runs the very popular Techcrunch site. Check out his review of eBible.com Thanks again Michael.
Today’s second winner is Artjom who has been very helpful with feature requests, bug fixes and general activity at the eBible.com forums. Thanks Artjom, we appreciate your interest and all the things that you’ve weighed in on. Thanks again.
So, with only 2 of 10 days down, there’s still lot’s of time to get in on the action. I’ll be focusing on new blog posts and reviews for the next couple of days…
no comments
Posted by Geoff
Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:18:00 GMT
We’ve been really blessed by the amount of newcomers to eBible.com that have taken the time to use their invites, blog about the site or even post reviews. All of this helps bring more and more people to eBible.com, and ultimately helps us build a better site. We are trying our best to listen to everyone, if that’s through the forums, blogs, e-mails etc.
So, long story short, we want to thank everyone who has done their part, shown interest and helped other’s come to know what eBible.com is all about as we try to provide something that helps people’s Bible search and study online. One way to show some of that appreciation is through the 10 Days of eBible.com….. So what’s that you’re asking? It’s simple. We are giving away 2 eBible.com t-shirts per day for the next 10 days starting Thursday June 29th and ending July 12th. We are looking for blog posts, site reviews and other stunts of grandeur to help spread the word. If it’s doing a show and tell of the site at your local church or making eBible.com the default home page on all the local Best Buy PC’s, it’s all fair game for the giveaways, just make sure you take photo’s or send me some details…!
If you’ve already done any of these things, we sincerely than thank you. I will take the time to reward both new and existing efforts.
The first winner of a slick new eBible.com T-Shirt is Tim Bednar for his early review of eBible.com Thanks Tim, we appreciate all that you’ve done.
The second winner is Antoine from Mobile Ministry Magazine who has been really helpful with feature ideas, submitting bugs and has also ran a blog, review and is now offering eBible.com invites for a contest prize. Thanks Antoine, we appreciate all your input and efforts to spread the word.
Stay tuned to this blog, as I’ll be updating it daily with the latest t-shirt winners. I will be selecting winners from a combination of e-mails that get sent to me notifying me of your exploits, as well as my own hunting around the web for new and impressive blog postings, reviews and other stunts of grandeur. If you want/need additional invites for your scheme, let me know and I will top up your account with as many as you need. So without futher ado, let the 10 Days of eBible.com begin….!
**Here are some mock up’s of the t-shirts to give you some idea of the goodies that could be yours.
Men’s Gray Seek and Ye Shall Find Shirt
Ladies Blue Seek and Ye Shall Find Shirt
Mens Brown Seek and Ye Shall Find Shirt
Men’s Orange This Ain’t Your Granny’s Bible Shirt
Men’s Army Green Jesus Loves Web 2.0 Shirt
Men’s Black Jesus Loves Web 2.0 Shirt
Ladies Brown Jesus Loves Web 2.0 Shirt
4 comments
Posted by Scott L
Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:18:00 GMT
With all the back-end spring cleaning we did on the last release we thought we would extend the favor to everyone and make things just a little bit more user friendly and intuitive. We’ve also made the browsing of different content available so you can wander and discover things you never knew. Like this.
We’re happy to see people are starting to use the bookmarking feature and as of right there are 712 saved bookmarks and counting. We’ve added the ability to edit and delete your bookmarks as well as made the viewing of them a little bit more intuitive and clean. Searching continues to lead the way with over 128,000 bible searches so far!
As usual continue to post your comments and feedback at discuss.ebible.com because we actually do read and use it!
Posted in Releases | 6 comments
Posted by Mark
Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:13:00 GMT
Or as we like to call it, our first “invisible release”. Today we went live with a new version of eBible.com … and nobody will probably even notice the fruit of our hard work.
You see, we have been getting so many great ideas from people that we knew in order to better keep scaling the site and adding features a good old fashioned spring cleaning was in order. So you won’t see many changes but hopefully you feel a bit warmer inside knowing that behind the scenes things are now all shiny and clean. :-)
(And not just spray-it-with-some-perfume kind of clean, we are talking real scrub-it-hard-with-mr-clean-even-behind-the-fridge kinda clean!)
So this has paved the way nicely for our June 20th release. Stay tuned for more details on what is next in the eBible.com journey.
Posted in Releases | 8 comments
Posted by Mark
Mon, 05 Jun 2006 19:07:00 GMT
A few IT issues had us down from early this morning until a few minutes ago. We greatly apologize and are working hard to navigate this new world of lighttpd, fastcgi, ruby on rails and the like.
Your patience is appreciated through this beta period! :-)
3 comments
Posted by James
Thu, 01 Jun 2006 19:19:00 GMT
After weeks of hard work, late nights, and many a befuddled look, bug.alicio.us err… tag.alicio.us has finally been deployed. Most of you who have been using the site will see a ton of changes. Some subtle, some not so much.
Among the new features and enhancements:
- Tagging and bookmarking
- Images in some titles:
- Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
- Nelson’s New Illustrated Manners and Customs
- Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary
- Smith’s Bible Dictionary
- ESV is now available – Thanks for letting the publisher know you love and want their Bible!
There are a few more things to tidy up and fix in the few days. Thanks for giving us feedback and finding bugs!
James
Posted in Releases | 4 comments
Posted by Geoff
Tue, 23 May 2006 20:31:00 GMT
With the cobwebs of a long weekend just now starting to clear from our heads, we thought it was maybe a good idea to let the cat out of the bag on the next release of eBible.com. So, without any pomp or circumstance let it be known that May 31 st will mark the next release that has long gone under the adopted name of Tag.alicio.us.
Tag.alicio.us will marry social tagging with Bible search. Confused? If you’re already familiar with this concept of “shared online bookmarking” then I won’t waste your time.
For the rest of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, please stay tuned and come May 31st, you’ll catch your first glimpses of how tagging can come alive within the Bible.
But onto more important things…. we’ve had a lot of interest in some of the t-shirts that we are making (after the eBay auction went up for an eBible.com invite and a Jesus Loves Web 2.0 t-shirt
Pricing is to be determined and the availability will be very limited. We also will be handing some out at our leisure for random acts that may or may not include blog posts, reviews of the site and other spreading the good word activities.
If you think you have something that makes you worthy of a shirt, drop me an e-mail and let me know and I’ll see what I can do ;) geoff@godspeedcomputing.com
no comments
Posted by James
Wed, 10 May 2006 21:34:00 GMT
So Geoff, being the eBay genius around here has put up an invite for auction on eBay.com to help raise money for our Nepal trip this fall. Now, we don’t care to make money off this for our own sake. The money from this auction will go towards the purchasing of stoves for families in Nepal.
Many homes in Nepal have very unsafe stoves, or no stoves at all. In homes without stoves, cooking is often done over an open fire. This leads to very poor air quality, and as a result, children develop respiratory conditions very early on in life. By providing stoves to families, we hope to improve their lives in a very practical way.
Each stove costs ~$100 to purchase, deliver, and setup, and teach a family how to use and maintain it. The stoves use propane which are much cheaper to run than the current kerosene stoves that they are using now. This will also free up money for the families to pay for other necessities like education for their kids.
We’re not sure how much we’ll get for the invite and the shirt, but every extra bit will help.
8 comments
Posted by James
Wed, 10 May 2006 20:47:00 GMT
So Mark calls and wakes me up this morning and says. “Unbelievable… you’ll never guess what happened we just got blogged on Techcrunch.com.” So in my bleary eyed state, I drag myself out of bed, into the shower, then off to the office, where we discover that we got dug at Digg.com, our lineup to get into eBible.com has just doubled, and you’re lucky if you’re reading this blog cause it crashed this morning.
This is all pretty exciting for us here at Godspeed developing in this 2.0 space, because it’s validation of some of the things we are doing, and some ideas we were trying out. It’s also great for Thomas Nelson to be branching out into some new technologies, and making strides to be a technology leader in the Christian publishing space.
What does this all mean? It means that we’re going to keep driving forward to deliver the best online Bible experience out there.
And now, back to the insanity…
3 comments
Posted by Scott L
Wed, 03 May 2006 19:58:00 GMT
Yesterday was a huge day on all of our calendars as it marked the official beta launch of ebible.com. We want to welcome all of you who have been let in from the line as well as those that have been invited by current members. We have given every new member one invitation so that you can invite someone to create their own account and help “spread the word.� Stay tuned as we continually add new content, and believe me there is a TON more on its way!
We have noticed a few blog postings about the site and are excited what people are saying. Tim Bednar over at e-church has written up a great review, as well as Ryan Heneise from art of mission.
For those of you that have been here since the last release, here are some new features:
- loads of new content! You can see all the titles in your bookshelf by clicking on your name in the nav-bar. You can also set your defaults for each type.
- The store is here! You can now search and browse from thousands of Christian books.
- Shortcuts to the answers section from within the bible search results.
Remember, if you want to check out what other people are saying about specific parts of the site, or if you want to start your own discussion then head over to http://discuss.ebible.com.
Posted in Releases | 44 comments
