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 49 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 12 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 11 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.