3onesix

It is time to announce that 3onesix.com is now running on Ministry(Starter). Moving over to Ministry(Starter) was a quick and easy process. As we get closer to the release date of Ministry(Starter), we will start revealing what makes it special. There are a few key features that Ministry(Starter) amazing to work with.

The projects page is now developed a little bit further. In the future this page will have brief descriptions, screenshots, and links to our projects.

After the Internet Ministry Conference, we headed even further east into Michigan to a small little town called Perry. Mark Harris, an amazing guy who has such an interesting past invited us to stay at his home. Saturday, we shared a great dinner and then afterwards discussed the Lord’s Word in front of a fire late into the night. The following morning we visited the church Mark attends.

So, for the weekend we headed up to the Internet Ministry Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We are just guests here. Attendees, but we are gaining so many contacts and making so many relationships with Gospel Communication Alliance members. Everyone wants to see and play with Ministry(Starter), and they all want more information! So guess what?! We are going to provide it! I will be getting together a few video screencasts within the next week of some cool stuff within Ministry(Starter), and will post some template code too! We are so excited about the template system, the pages system, the — HELL! We are excited about the whole freakin’ thing! lol Also we will be launching a full demo site! A site running on Ministry(Starter), and allow you play with it! All the templates, pages, blogs, and photos! All to play with. Also, we will be posting more soon thereafter. We are getting closer and closer to finish, and are utterly hyped, and are seeing the reaction of those here at the conference when they see Ministry(Starter) in action, and they want to play with it. So essentially: watch for updates within the next week and a half!

Well, I posted yesterday about our iPhone application, 3onesix Ministry Tools, and found today that I have to make a second announcement. Today, Apple announced the new iPod touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the phone, and has the same Safari and Wi-Fi capabilities as the iPhone. This means that the applications made for the iPhone run on this new iPod. I cannot tell you how happy this makes me, as I will likely (as soon as possible) be getting myself one of these iPod touches, as the iPhone would be silly for me to purchase (already have a Verizon phone). 3onesix Ministry Tools will indeed work on the new iPod, and will likely be getting updates (as mentioned last night) within the coming weeks.

I didn’t originally announce this on 3onesix.com because to me, it was all rather small. I, back in July, built and launched an iPhone application called 3onesix Ministry Tools. It was not feature complete, but it looked nice, utilized our favorite online Bible API (eBible), and was an all-around easy to use Bible search tool. I found myself since then using it to look up verses quickly. lol Well, when we launched it, we sent out notice to two or three different iPhone application listing sites, and got an amazing response of nearly 12,000 hits in less than a month. I was floored!

So this weekend, I spent some more time off the Ministry(Starter) project to revamp 3onesix Ministry Tools, adding in more functionality and other stuff. We now have search history and will soon have bookmarking available utilizing the Prayrbox.com account system. Also, we will be adding Elohim Notes and Prayrbox functionality within the coming two months as we ramp up a finish to Elohim Notes (and launch) and the launch of Ministry(Starter).

I often take a side project here and there just for some fun programming, and those sometimes come out amazing and snazzy. So that is why I am here to announce the coming of 3onesix Labs. The labs will be a repository of Javascript widgets, scripts, and fun stuff that I just come up with on the side. All of the stuff that I stash in the labs will be free. That’s right, absolutely free. lol I am crazy, I know. Also, a site will be launched that will be all about my tips and tricks when it comes to Javascript, AJAX, DOM, PHP, and much more. This second site will show more the tutorials on how to use stuff from the labs, but also stand alone on a lot of other tutorials. So all around fun. Expect the labs and the tutorial site to open near the end of my quarter (at college), which is the last week of September. Thank you and good night.

UPDATE Thought I should provide a link. lol http://iphone.3onesix.com.

Well, I am proud to announce that the semi-closed beta of Elohim Notes is up and running! If you still want to be a beta users, and didn’t sign-up, just head over there and sign-up! For those that want to see what the commotion is about, just head over to Elohim Notes and click browse. You will be able to browse by tag for now, and soon a page will show the latest notes (among other things).

Tons of little features are present to make this an all around easy and awesome application for note-taking, but also for finding notes on certain subjects/topics. I hope that as people notice Elohim Notes more and more, there will become more notes available to cruise through. I want to, one day, go and look for notes on “Adonai”, and be able to find tons. So go there, advertise it, talk about it. Beta users: really push it and see what it can do. Play with it and see what you want. If you want a feature, request it. You know my email address, and you can also message me on Elohim Notes.

Okay, everyone, I am happy to say that the Elohim Notes beta is almost ready. I have been working so much on so much. Late last week I put up a feature spec on the website. Here are some of my favorite features:

eBible Integration: From the get-go I wanted an editor that had a Bible search. Two years ago, I could never have hoped for such a thing. Builting my own Bible search would have meant licensing translations, programming for sleepless weeks, and way to much more to think of. But now, we have an API from eBible (the Web 2.0 Bible), and it allows for the creation of whatever your heart desires. We are still working on some features for the search system, but the essentials are done and working. Just type in your search (John 3:16, Romans 1:16, etc.) and strike you enter key. A little window appears with your result. Piece of cake. Want a different translation (New King James is default), just type “NCV: James 1:6” and the New Century Version will be used instead. Or, if you want to always use the NCV, go to your preferences and change your default translation!

Bookmarks: One thing I wanted was the ability to bookmark pages. With social networks you may add people to your friends list and whatnot, but with a site based around notes, you probably want to remember select pages (notes and profiles), right? I know I would! So I built that in, and it works with pretty and fast AJAX. You click the star on any profile or bookmark, and it animates a bookmark draping over the page. Easy and quick. Also, if you bookmark a profile, you can see in your Bookmarks window the last three notes published from that user.

Faux-pop Windows: What are faux-pop’s? If you have seen the hundreds of websites using Lightbox, you know what a faux-pop is. Faux-pop is what I call it, as it is a fake/false pop-up window. We use them for the Bookmarks, Friends, Private Message, and Browse/Search windows. They are sleek, fast, and display information is a more clean environment then a full browser window. I am sure you will all love them as much as I do.

AJAX: This is my first big AJAX project, and I love working with it. Now, the first thing that beta users will notice is that the site requires Javascript and a fairly modern browser to work. I will get at least a few complaints about graceful degradation, so I will say it now: I am working on it. We will have full graceful degradation by (non-beta) launch! So many of the base processes (auto-save, eBible search, online users, and more) need AJAX. These cannot be reimaged to work with Javascript, so they will be stripped from the non-Javascript pages.

The programming for this project is actually relatively easy. The pain is all the DOM scripting in Javascripting. I have created a few things that make it easier for me to program what I want to program, but it still is pretty intensive. I do love it though. Keep an eye open for the beta release. Please, if you want to beta test, sign-up for the beta at elohimnotes.com. If you don’t want to sign-up, watch the blog here. Non-beta users will have access to the public side of Elohim Notes, which includes viewing of profiles and published notes. So you do get something. Keep watch, my friends!

Well, everyone, we have a new product. I came up with an idea last month that blossomed into a project called Elohim Notes. Elohim Notes is a simple to use Bible note-taking web application and notes resource. No matter if you are publishing your sermon notes, or starting a Bible study, Elohim Notes is an awesome site to use. It is very AJAXed (for those that know what that is), and for those who have no clue, it is very cool. lol

We are doing a little something different with this site than we did with Prayrbox. We are beta testing it. If you head over the Elohim Notes, you can send us your email address and name, and we can inform you of the beta release. The beta release is soon, and you can still sign up after the announcement. So keep an eye open.

Also, you’ll note that we added a “3onesix network” bar at the bottom of the homepage. Both Prayrbox and Elohim Notes run on the same user system, meaning if you are already using Prayrbox, your user account will transfer (when it comes out of beta), and vise versa.

Since the beginning of the Ministry(Starter) project we have been concepting and developing a large framework geared towards Object Oriented Web Applications. The system started out as a few php scripts running on the side that would make our lifes easier while developing software. I started realizing the importance of this little system a few months ago and started it’s own project. The name “Fish” was immediately adopted. Fish is the combination of two letters from James’s last name “Finley” and two letters from my last name “Krush”. The name Fish not only sounds good, but also represents what we live for.

What makes Fish special? The system is inheriting many features from Java and Cocoa that I believed stood out and made the job easier. The system shows how wonderful code can be written, but also reminds us how easy it is to slack off a bit. Anyhow, Fish is a new tool that I want to release into the world, and figured it would be best for the World to know it exists.

Hey everyone! While I assure you we are working hard on the Ministry(Starter) project (which has an update coming soon), we are glad to tell you of a new project, which isn’t too new. Back in September of 2006, I started a project called prayrbox. Prayrbox was/is a community of prayer. I worked very hard on it, and almost had it done. Then school got in the way. Well, I am glad to announce that tomorrow at 10:00 am (Central Time), we will be launching prayrbox.com.

What is prayrbox? Prayrbox is a community of prayr, created to make it easier to organize your prayrs, and be brought together with other believers in prayer. What I always find hard is that people ask me to pray for them, and I completely forget. I feel horrible about this, and Prayrbox makes this very easy. You see, I click a “I Will Pray” link on a posted prayr, and it adds it to my Prayr Report. I can then print it out for my prayer time at night, and not forget a single prayer before God.

Second to that is the community. I am a very busy person, and that is no excuse, but I want to feel like I am in prayr with others, and cannot find time to do so. So, I wanted community. The idea behind the new Web 2.0 trend is social everything, and that is the point of the Gospel of Christ Jesus. Prayrbox is at its very core, a community, based on praying for each other and praising the Lord with each other. This is something that we need! You can comment on others prayrs and prayz, and you can message other users.

We will be adding more features to Prayrbox to further the social elements of the community, and also will be providing an API. We want to open stuff up for developers, so watch for that in the next month. So please, come back here and go to prayrbox.com tomorrow morning to join the community of prayr.

Hey, all. I am glad to announce the new layout and logo for Ministry(Starter), along with the logo for 3onesix. We went with the idea of the arrow, symbolizing moving forward. So many bad CMSs are out there that are hard to use or weak, and we are intending to revolutionize, and move past those.

The Ministry(Starter) logo is symbolizing hitting “play” on the web. The box with a “play button”/arrow is just the start of your online ministry. For the 3onesix logo, we went with the same arrow idea, but what we are for. The sound waves moving outward symbolizes the web and also our Christian mission is proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The main focus of our sound is up to the heavens, praising the Lord of the mission He laid before us.

As for the new layout for Ministry(Starter), we had it in the plan when we launched, but had other things to do. The layout is geared towards providing information on the system, and the new “Playground” section (yet to be populated) will be the home of a sleuth of video tutorials/previews, a discussion system to talk about Ministry(Starter), and a demo. We, of course, have the demo running, and want you to play with it. It is in very early stages (feature-wise), and thus not fully debugged.

More to come. Yes, we have another (relatively large) update coming soon to the demo. We have three more sections under way, and will likely have those up next week. We also have been working on the actual Javascript framework for Ministry(Starter). A lot of functionality are being added via Javascript (drag n’ drop, for one) and a lot more are to come. The framework currently includes basic effects, AJAX functionality, and will have drag n’ drop soon. We will, within the next two weeks, reprogram a majority of the photo gallery Javascript to make it more efficient and faster.

What is 3onesix? Who is 3onesix? We are a Christian web development team located in the northwest Chicago area. Our primary project at this point is Ministry(Starter), which is an extremely powerful CMS designed specifically for ministry organizations. You can cruse the site to find out more about us, and if you have any questions just use the contact form on the Contact page to drop us a line.

More content will be added to the site soon, and both of us plan on launching our own portfolio sites soon to showcase our own work. Please stay tuned for plenty of blogging and content from both of us, and also watch the Ministry(Starter) project site. There will soon, hopefully be a full newsletter for Ministry(Starter) updates and stuff, and of course there is always RSS.