Google

Amazon’s good for more than just buying books. Used appropriately, the “look inside” feature can be a helpful research tool on its own.

Google Books can be a helpful research tool. You can find full texts of public-domain titles, as well as previews of those under copyright.

Logos Bible Software supports reopening closed tabs both via panel menus and keyboard shortcuts.

Google Street view has a dedicated tour of Petra.

HT: AWOL.

Google Books has full-text PDFs freely available for the following works by S. R. Driver:

• Commentary on Deuteronomy (International Critical Commentary; 1895; repr., 1903)

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Though it has apparently been on the chopping block for some time, Google Reader was a very useful tool. Even so, it has apparently come to the end of the road:

Google Reader will be retired on July 1, 2013. If you’d like to download a copy of all your Reader data before then, you can do so through Google Takeout. You’ll receive your subscription data in an XML file, and the following information will be downloaded as JSON files:

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On the web:

• Mark Hoffman notes that Google Maps’ street view now includes several additional locations of significance around Israel.
• Charles Jones identifies several publicly accessible dissertations from the University of Pennsylvania.
• Dirk Jongkind reflects on Acts 17:3 in connection with the two latest Nestle-Aland texts.

Google Drive’s Docs, Sheets, and Slides apps are scheduled to cease supporting exports to Microsoft’s older Office 97–2003 formats at the end of the month. According to the Google Apps blog,

In September, we added the ability to export Google documents to the newer Microsoft Office formats that rely on open standards (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx). . . . As we announced in October, after January 31, 2013, users will not be able to export files to the older Office 97-2003 formats [e.g., .doc, .xls, .ppt]. For users who still use Office 97-2003, we recommend installing the free compatibility plugin from Microsoft, which will allow them to open the modern Office file types.

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The Google Drive mobile apps for Android and iOS now allows users to create and view spreadsheets:

Previous versions had allowed creating and editing of documents but only viewing of spreadsheets created elsewhere. For more information and links to download the appropriate apps, see here.

For Gmail and at least certain Google Apps Mail users who have opted into the “new compose” experience, Google is now rolling out the ability to attach Google Drive items to email messages:

Because these items are stored in and shared via Drive, email attachment size limitations don’t apply, and any updates to the attached item(s) will automatically be available to the message’s recipients. For more information about this update, please see here.

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The Chrome Web Store now includes individual Chrome web apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides:

To make it even easier for you to create stuff quickly, Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations–now called Docs, Sheets, and Slides–are available as apps in the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, shortcuts to these apps will appear when you open a new tab in Chrome.

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On the web:

• Randy Kennedy discusses how the current economic crisis in Greece is imperiling local antiquities.
• Matthew Kalman discusses documentary sensationalism and its impact on the status of biblical archaeology.
• Charles Jones highlights resources for Macedonian coinage, the Acta Sanctorum, Augustan Rome’s geography, and the Byzantine scholia on Homer’s Iliad.
• Jim Davila notes Google’s efforts to read unopenable Dead Sea Scrolls.
• Joel Willitts comments on selections from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.
• Robert Woods discusses wisdom from a Thomistic perspective.
• Tokens provides part 3 of a series of YouTube clips series from their October 24, 2011 interview with Walter Brueggemann. See here for parts 1 and 2.

Google Books has available the full text of Sanday and Headlam’s commentary on Romans in the International Critical Commentary (5th ed.; 1899).

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Today, Google has released an Offline Gmail web app, which uses HTML5 in place of the now-deprecated Google Gears. Similar offline access for the Calendar and Docs apps is available through these apps’ settings, but offline editing in Docs is apparently still in the works.

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