Inspiration from the Bible

Of course we can get inspiration from the Bible but I'm not talking about spiritual inspiration here. I'm talking about creative inspiration.

I started by seeing an article on a blog by a programmer I greatly admire, Larry O'Brien. He is much more than just a programmer. In addition to his programming abilities, he is an editor, a writer and has also run his own company. His short article, Bible-Study S/W Is…uh…Inspirational, led me to the full article at O'Reilly Media titled What ebook designers can learn from Bible-reading software. By the way, you MASH fans will get a kick out of the name of the blog at O'Reilly Media, Inc. - it's called O'Reilly Radar.

But it didn't end there. The O'Reilly article is just a republished version of the original article from the A New Kind of Book site titled Better eBook Ideas from…the Good Book. Finally, the end of the road. Now I could read it and enjoy it. It's a good lesson in how to be creative even though you are using material that your readers may already be familiar with. I love it when you find someone who doesn't have to have the latest material to make something new. Of course, the people making eBooks based on the Bible are using new techniques and a lot of creativity to help their readers learn more about the Bible and to help in the study of this amazing collection of books.

It's also a lesson in not stopping at the first link you find. Each of the sites added information to the original article but it always pays to find the original article. You don't know what the later authors may have changed or missed in the original. In this case, they didn't miss anything and just added new insight. But you never know. Keep digging and get to the truth. Just like when you're reading the Bible itself!