New Feature in Logos 5: Popular Highlights

Hi Ben

I don't have L5 yet, but I will have it in a few days.

But I do have a question. How about having a display of all the highlights I've made in my books. For example, If I have accessed 100 books and I have highlighted at least 100 lines in every book, and I wanted to search all my highlights, well that would be 10,000 highlights. Is there a way to search all my highlights without having to open up the books or any favorites or any layouts? Having to open these slows down the research. Why not have a database of all highlights? And even the different colors be separated? Anything like this in the future for user?

Thanks.

Al Sosa

Hi Dave,

I went to the site and followed the instructions, but somehow I do not see the display in my computer as the instruction says. For example, I do not see the "highlighting palette such as Highlighter Pens" anywhere in my display. I'm sorry but it does not work as stated in the instruction. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Either way, I did try the search and it did not work. I did open the book and do have two hightlighting in yellow. This is what I see in my display:

    I type the name of the book as stated in the instructions
         I get the following display: 
           After Clicking "All Text" I get the following display:
              "Search Field"
              "Solid Color"
              "Emphasis Markup" - I then clicked solid color and chose 'yellow'
I then hit Enter and got '0' zero entries. . .  yet my book was open and it was highlighted in two places. Honestly,too many moving parts. . . :-)

However, in my question of the function, I want to be able to do this search without opening the book. I want to be able to see 'all' my highlightings in whatever color I choose in whatever books I have. Imagine having to open up 100 books just to seek highlighting references. I would like to see research results showing highlighting and the link of the book it is found so that I can just click on the highlight and open the book, if I want to. The steps in the instruction numbered in ten steps. I am thinking of only four steps!
1. Click open highlighting tab (assuming one such exists) No books need to be open.
2. Search by author. . . or by color. . . or by topic. . . or other criteria
3. Click research button. . .
4. Read results. . . Then if even print results so that I can have them for later use. Or even save such a search for future use. . .

Thank you. . .

Blessings. . .

Eis Cristos

Al Sosa

Dominick Sela said:

I am glad it can be turned off as well, but I kind of like the feature - for certain books I will be interested in what others are highlighting in it.

One question - how do my highlights get added to the community? Or do they all, automatically? Can I control this, whether they get added to the community aggregation or not?

Currently, we analyze all ranges marked by Notes & Highlights, but we don't include a text range in the popular highlights data set unless it has been marked by a certain minimum number of users. (so if you're the only one who has highlights in a resource, they'll never be included)

If you set "Use Internet" to "no" in the Program Settings, you will not transmit any information to us.

We have chosen not to offer the feature for Bibles at this time.

Ben Torell said:

a new feature to Logos 5 that allows you to see text that has been highlighted by many users

Ah, thanks!

I like both the fact that it's available, and that we can turn it off (visual filter) if needed.

Well thought out feature.

That is really cool. I love how kindle does this. 

David Mitchell said:

If you set "Use Internet" to "no" in the Program Settings, you will not transmit any information to us.

But we must turn on the internet to get updates and such.  When we turn on the internet to get updates, does l5 send our data concerning this feature to your servers?

A Logos version of this would be fascinating! https://kindle.amazon.com/most_popular

The correct answer to 'can personalized highlighting not be sent to Logos' is 'no'. Saying 'turn the internet off' is duplicitous. The writer knows full well Logos4 and above needs the internet to buy books, get fixes to Logos goofs, etc. This issue goes back probably to the Logos4 beta days.  And I KNEW that Logos wouldn't be able to simply store the highlights etc for users to allow multi-platform accessability.

Now, that said, I'm not complaining about the new function. Just as with some of the other community features, this will REALLY be great for the broad majority (99%?) of users. In my own case, I just don't highlight on Logos4/5 ... instead I do all my highlighting and notes etc in Libronix (except for a few Logos4 books which will be deleted on completion).

Stubborn? Yes.

I know a few people won't find what I'm about to say satisfactory, but it's a fact that almost everything we do now is anonymised and aggregated. Every Google search, every supermarket purchase — every time we drive into a city there will be cameras analysing the traffic patterns. As long as the data is truly anonymised, I don't think there are privacy issues (Kindle don't provide an opt-out, by the way).

That said, I think that if we have 'Send Feedback' set to nothing, then it shouldn't aggregate our data.

David Taylor Jr said:

I don't understand the big deal.  It is a highlight, it doesn't reveal who you are, what you believe or anything.  I don't understand the problem.

I agree that to me it's not a problem. But if Logos says that setting "Send Feedback" to "None" does not gather any information (which it does say), then people with that setting should not have their highlights aggregated. I hope that is already the case, and it's just been communicated badly.

Ben Torell said:

Once this feature is deployed, popular phrases in non-Bibles will be shown with a light, dashed underline.

This feature could be handy when browsing through a large amount of material.

Once Logos users are familiar with this feature, it would be nice if it could be a little less intrusive in the text.

Could the annotation [17 highlights] be reduced to a smaller font size? Sans serif?

Or with only the number and X?

[17X]

DMB said:

David ... I don't disagree with you or Mark's disinterest in the issue. And I don't try to 'control' the full enjoyment of other's use of Logos.

But I used to do data mining (and still do with the hebrew and greek) and was a speaker at the mining conferences. The problem isn't 'today'. The problem is 'tomorrow'. People just do not know how smart computers are (the databases they usually can comprehend). Does that mean Logos can't be trusted. No. I just make a rule to limit on-line data flow and avoid companies that ignore people like 'me'. Frankly, I think Europe is far ahead of the US in looking down the road.

The point is it is a highlight, not personal info. 

fgh said:

David Mitchell said:

If you set "Use Internet" to "no" in the Program Settings, you will not transmit any information to us.

Are you saying that even if we have Send Feedback set to None, you're taking our data anyway???

Setting "Send Feedback" to "None" controls whether statistics about your system (resolution, CPU speed, etc.) and basic usage statistics (number of sessions, average session length, etc.) are sent to our servers.

Other data that you enter into the application—such as notes and other documents—are discussed in the "Online Backup" section of our EULA, which can be found here: http://www.logos.com/support/EULA.

fgh said:

I asked this same question about Community Tags and Ratings earlier, but received no reply. This time I want one!

If you feel that any of your questions have been inadequately answered or overlooked, please contact Customer Service or—if an issue is important to you—even our CEO (bob@logos.com), who regularly corresponds with customers. We can't guarantee that we'll see—and answer—every question on the forums, so if you need an answer directly from Logos, this is the best way to go.

Edwin Bowden said:

Once Logos users are familiar with this feature, it would be nice if it could be a little less intrusive in the text.

Could the annotation [17 highlights] be reduced to a smaller font size? Sans serif?

Or with only the number and X?

I believe that there are plans for a more subtle style in a future version of the desktop app.

I don't have this feature. I have portfolio and 5.0a. No updates available

.

 That was it. I didn't know it didn't apply to Bibles.... Thanks

Harry Hahne said:

Can the transmission of personal highlighting data to Logos be disabled in the setup?

Agree that this should be an option.

David Mitchell said:

However, if you turn it off for all resources—as described in the original post—that value will be your default for all devices

Thank David and sorry that I did not read the original post properly.

This is very promising! I was glad to see it last evening.

tim bray said:

Can we search (using the search function) 'popular highlights' the same as we can search by our own highlights? 

Not at this time.

tom said:

Mark Barnes said:

I understand that, and have no objection to Logos receiving our highlighting data even with that setting set to 'none' - it's used for sync, after all. But I do feel that users who have have setting set to 'none' should not have their data aggregated or analysed at all.

 

I agree

EULA said:

Logos will not share your data without your permission, but may examine it programmatically for anonymous statistical purposes or in order to provide technical support.

As the way I read the EULA, there is a problem.  It states that Logos will not share my data.  And it also says that the data can be examine for anonymous statistical purposes.  Nothing wrong here, but if you are now sending out the statistical data that used my information, you are now sharing my data.  As I read the EULA, that statistical data needs to be kept in house because Logos has said that it will not share my data.

Can we quit being ridiculous and silly and enjoy the new feature? 

David Mitchell said:

The default for a new user is for the visual filter to be enabled. However, if you turn it off for all resources—as described in the original post—that value will be your default for all devices.

Here's a compromise solution that works for me.

I opened a resource that has popular highlights (PH) available...in this case I opened 50 Reasons Jesus Came to Die by J Piper.

I clicked on the PH toggle and then right-clicked the Popular Highlights item and chose 'Do not show in any resources'.  This turns off the PH in everything where it is resident.

Then, I opened a different book where I want to see what people are highlighting (I chose A Holy Ambition by Piper).  I clicked on the PH toggle and checked the PH box to show PH in this book.  Doing this DID NOT turn PH back on for anything else.

So now, my resources won't show the PHs unless I choose to open/show them individually myself.