One of the things I most appreciate about Logos is their ability to not only think about their product but how they are seeking to make Bible study easier and more ubiquitous.
This has led them already started to expand beyond the traditional application structure, into cloud computing with their subscription service, into web apps with their RefTagger extension in Firefox and into mobile computing with their fantastic ipod/iphone application. It is the most useful and essential bible application I own.
But there's always room for improvement in my books. When Logos 4 was released, one aspect that our friends at Logos did not anticipate was that so many of us would use and want the SmartTags feature we had in Logos 3 (this, Bible Speed search and PBBs were the only reasons I kept/keep Logos 3 alive). Although they have since deployed SmartTags in v.4 it is only in the 32 bit version and it does not appear to be a priority much beyond this iteration of Logos 4. So, I'm going to put this suggestion out there early and see if the community believes it might be worthwhile. Thinking beyond SmartTags, here's what I propose:
I believe that there is a product niche for the majority of us who still use Microsoft Word and other outside word processors for sermon preparation. But it's not just for us, its for anyone who sees a bible reference and can't remember the passage. As a pastor, I receive and send lots of emails with Bible references in them. Sometimes I'm forgetful of the exact reference (was that John 14:6 or 7?). It can take significant time to look them up. Recently I received an email from a member of the congregation that had many bible references in it (fantastic eh?!) but, the process of looking them up is repetitive and somewhat tedious. Wouldn't it be great if there was some "hover" or "1 click" application which would run in the background and as we move our mouse recognize a bible reference whatever context it was in (web, email, pdf, word processing etc.)? Kind of like the "1 Click Answers" application that I also use for quick reference of non Bible-related material. http://www.answers.com/main/download_answers_win.jsp
To me, this would be the icing on the cake for Logos and make it even more my end to end solution. I live on smartags for now, but, I would love to see a universal application that would enable me to access my preferred Bible anywhere just by hovering or "alt-clicking" on a reference. Imagine if this was a free app that accessed the Logos.com website, what great marketing potential. With some blogosphere promotion this could really take off. What do you folks think?
Blessings,
Chris.
