New Memverse Progression System

Posted on August 14, 2010 Andy 20 comments

Hi everyone,

Today we introduced a first version of a new progression system on Memverse. It's intended to be a very complete bible memorization program that will last a lifetime. At the moment, as evidenced by those of you who whizzed through the first six levels, it only lasts about a day! We can assure you that it will become more challenging. Our hope is that this will also help new users familiarize themselves with Memverse. It should also provide a sense of achievement for those who don't want to get too caught up in the leaderboards.

You'll notice that we've also revamped the old 'reports' section under the 'Profile' tab -- the one that you never visited :) Our hope is that the new 'Dashboard' page (located under the 'Profile' tab) will be increasingly useful in the future.

A bit more about the Memverse Memorization Plan:

1. It will encourage users to explore all aspects of bible memorization and will require you to memorize longer passages and verses from all over the bible. We've tried to not make it too restrictive but your feedback is welcome.
2. We highly recommend completing at least the first ten levels as you'll get to explore all the major areas of the website. Many of the frequently asked questions will be answered in the reading in the first few levels.
3. It will enable you to proceed at whatever pace you desire. No more frantically adding verses to keep up with the power memorizers on the the leaderboards ;)
4. You will have to encourage friends of yours to join you in Memorizing the bible. Those of you who have already reached level 6 will notice that you need to refer one person to Memverse. We'll soon add a page where people can designate you as the person who referred you. We also have plans for a fun new leaderboard where you'll get to add all the verses of the people you recruit and even the ones they recruit. See Ponzi for details.
5. We will continually add levels to make sure that you never run out of things to do. It takes quite a while to add all the goals but we'll hopefully add a few new ones each week. Expect them to get quite a lot tougher as time goes by.
6. We promise you that at some point in the future there will be games incorporating the verses you've memorized. If you have some great ideas, or would like to volunteer to write one, we'd be thrilled to hear from you.
7. If you want to get a headstart: make sure you tag about 20% of your verses and keep telling others in your churches to join. And keep working on that accuracy test :)

Remember that participation is optional. If you'd prefer to stick with your own memorization plan, you won't lose out at all.

Of Tags, Translation and Gender

Posted on July 16, 2010 Andy 3 comments

There are two new settings on the profile page: you can now specify your gender so that we no longer have to refer to you with the genderless pronoun "their". Instead of seeing "Mary has memorized their 100th verse" you will now see "Mary has memorized her 100th verse".

Second, you can now pick your preferred translation. Currently, the only effect this will have is that the tag cloud (now looking a little more cloudy) will show verses in your preferred translation (if they are available in the system). In other words, if someone using the King James Version has tagged Genesis 1:1 with the "Creation" tag, you will see the verse in the NIV version (if that is your preferred translation) even if no one has tagged the NIV version of the verse. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but it should make the tag cloud a lot more useful when searching for verses based on a theme. So keep on tagging verses because it's a great way to give back to the community and remember to recycle tags when you can.

Tag Your Memory Verses

Posted on July 01, 2010 Andy 17 comments

By popular demand we have released a beta version of tagging functionality. This means that you can now start to tag and categorize your memory verses to your heart's content.

How Tagging Works on Memverse

Everyone is able to tag their own memory verses with whatever tags they would like. Our hope is that popular tags will eventually be reflected across Memverse and will be useful for everyone, including those who couldn't be bothered to tag their own verses. Additionally, there will be Memverse tags which will be controlled by us and will eventually feed into the solo progression goals which we are working on. There is a good chance that we will be guided in our selection of those tags by what emerges from the group consensus.

To tag a verse, click on the reference in the 'My Verses' list of verses. This is currently the only way to access the tagging function but over time we will propogate it to other areas of the website. Feel free to use whatever tags you want but please try to put some thought into it and stick with broad thematic tags e.g. Redemption, Salvation, Fruit of the Spirit, etc. as those tend to be the most useful.

Memory Verses from the Minor Prophets

Posted on June 29, 2010 Andy 6 comments

If you're like me, there's a good chance you don't frequently delve into the minor prophets. And you might not know that the most popular memory verse in Zephaniah is 3:17

The LORD your God is with you,
       he is mighty to save.
       He will take great delight in you,
       he will quiet you with his love,
       he will rejoice over you with singing."

As it turns out, and not doubt this is a sign of the tough economic times in which the world finds itself, the most popular memory verse in Habakkuk is also 3:17

Though the fig tree does not bud
       and there are no grapes on the vines,
       though the olive crop fails
       and the fields produce no food,
       though there are no sheep in the pen
       and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
       I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Perhaps we are all learning a collective lesson about where our focus should be. For as Haggai said in 1:5 to Zerubbabel:

Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."

We will shortly be linking to a new page where you can search for the most popular memory verse by book of the bible. Just type in a book name and Memverse will retrieve the ten most popular verses. It still needs some work but you can preview it for now. We're hoping that this will inspire people to memorize some of the lesser known passages of Scripture.

Add Entire Chapters

Posted on June 27, 2010 Andy 3 comments

We have finally released one of the most requested features: the ability to add entire chapters. Whenever you enter a verse, Memverse will now check whether the entire chapter is in the database and will give you the option to add it all at once.

We definitely recommend using this with caution. It can be very useful when you're adding chapters that you've already memorized. But if you're starting from scratch on a lengthy chapter, you will probably have more success if you take it a verse or two at a time and only add new verses as you memorize the prior ones.

Changes to Memory Verse Reference Recall

Posted on May 23, 2010 Andy 5 comments

We've made some changes to the reference recall section. Similar to the accuracy test, you will now have a running score for the reference recall. Every set of ten questions will give you a score out of 100. Each question is worth ten points and currently you get ten points if you remember the reference perfectly, and 5 points if you get the book and the chapter but can't remember the exact verse.

In the past we've recommended that you run through the reference recall section once or twice a day. I confess that I'm often quite lazy on doing my reference recalls and it always catches up to me because I can't pair the reference and the text. My goal is to keep my reference recall score around 80% or so because I know that will help me with the main memorization section.

For those of you who like math and care about such minutiae, the running score will be calculated as 25% of the most recent test and 75% of all the previous tests.

As always, questions and comments welcome.

What's Happening on Memverse?

Posted on March 28, 2010 Andy 1 comment

If you've ever wondered what's happening on Memverse, now you'll know. The home page now has a stream of the latest happenings. So far, it is fairly limited but over time we will add news about the various leaderboards, the state and country competitions and more. The section on the home page will only include more significant events: milestones for users, chapters and books memorized etc. If you would like to see the full feed, just click on the heading. It should update in real time if you have a fairly modern browser.

Review Entire Chapters

Posted on March 21, 2010 Andy 8 comments

I'm excited to announce a new section which I have been requesting for months :)

There is now a new page  (located under the 'Memorize' menu) where you can work through entire chapters. It's currently similar to the 'Practice' section in that you can run through an entire chapter but it won't update any of the intervals, eFactors, next review dates etc. associated with the memory verses in those chapters. We'll probably find a way to work that in soon but test it out for now. I think you'll find it a great way to memorize chapters, psalms and entire books.

You do need to have an entire chapter of memory verses that you're working on. If you aren't yet working on an entire chapter, you can always start with Psalm 1. It's only 6 verses long.

Memverse in Spanish

Posted on March 07, 2010 Andy 3 comments

We have started adding support for Spanish to Memverse. Once we have implemented a Spanish version of the website, we should be able to add subsequent languages a lot quicker. For now, it is a long and relatively slow process.

To use the Spanish version of Memverse, you will have to set your language preference in the profile section to 'Spanish'. (None of the other languages are supported yet so if you select those you will still see everything in English. Feel free to set your language of choice, if it is available, as we will use those settings to determine which languages to add next. If your language isn't available, let me know and I will add it. The available languages currently only cover the available translations.)

Once you have switched to the Spanish version, you will have to enter verses using the Spanish names of the books of the bible. The autocomplete is still set for the English names but we'll hopefully have that changed soon.

Even non-alert Spanish speakers will notice some of the worst Spanish grammar and vocabulary on the internet. Since we don't speak any Spanish at all, we had to use Google's translate feature but we're hoping that users will volunteer to help translate pages. (Even paragraphs will help!)

For now, when entering Spanish verses, please enter accented letters and special punctuation. We will hopefully allow you to omit the accents when memorizing but it would be better to have the original in the database and it will probably revert to that once we start making corrections.

We're very excited about this development as it will allow Memverse to become a truly global website. We gladly welcome help translating the site into any language and will add support as quickly as we can. Once we're finished the Spanish version, we will be able to provide you with a simple translation file and you'll be able to translate independently of our development cycle.

Memverse Turns 1

Posted on March 02, 2010 Andy 5 comments

We launched Memverse a year ago, hoping to inspire a new generation of computer-savvy Christians to memorize their bibles in earnest. As of today we have hundreds of active users and thousands of verses memorized. We still have plenty of plans for Memverse (more than when we started!) and, as always, will be relying on the feedback of users in determining what to work on next.

You will also notice a couple of changes to Memverse:

1. By popular demand, the reference recall test has been changed to include all your verses. If you liked memorizing just the first verse of each passage, you can still select that option in your profile.
2. There is a new 'Accuracy Test' which will let you know just how well you really know your memory verses. Don't be surprised when you find that it's a lot harder without the feedback! We recommend taking it periodically to ensure that you're scoring yourself correctly during your memorization sessions.

That's all for today. If you'd like to give us a birthday gift, we'd love you to send out some invites to your church, mention us on Facebook, or call up a family member and ask them to memorize God's word with you.

Onwards in Christ!

New Profile Settings

Posted on February 17, 2010 Andy 10 comments

There are a few new settings on the Profile page.

Maximum Verse Interval

In the past, the maximum interval between repetitions was 365 days. If you feel that this was too long, you can now set the maximum interval to be as short as three months. On that setting, you will repeat every verse at least 4 times a year, no matter how well you know it.

Memverse Mnemonic Prompterizer

There are three settings for the 1st letter prompts on the flash card:

1. Always
2. Never
3. Learning -- this setting will only turn on prompts for new verses that you are learning. This is the default setting.

US State

If your country is "United States" you can now pick your state. And yes, there could well be a State leaderboard one day ;)

Mnew Mnemonics for Memorization

Posted on February 16, 2010 Andy 12 comments

If you're working on memorizing some new bible verses you'll notice that the memorization flash card now has the first letter of each word on the flipcard. This should help jog your memory in those early stages of memorization. I haven't ever used them before but have read in various places that people find them very helpful. They will currently only show up for memory verses with a repetition interval less than a week. We might adjust this in future based on everyone's feedback but it seemed better to not get too dependent on them.

Feel free to leave feedback in the comments or, if you prefer, click through to our main feedback website. Incidentally, the little black tab on the right (labeled 'Feedback') can be used for reporting bugs, submitting new ideas, commenting on features - pretty much anything that doesn't already have a blog post. You can also go there to vote on new features that you'd like to see on Memverse.