More videos are forthcoming, as there are many powerful features on the Puritan Hard Drive to showcase.

Puritan Hard Drive Introductory Video (Click Here Now!)

More free online videos: Puritan Hard Drive Tutorial Video #1 (Overview) - Puritan Hard Drive Tutorial Video #2 (Browsing Resources) - Puritan Hard Drive Tutorial Video #3 (Introduction to Search) - Puritan Hard Drive Tutorial Video #4 (Advanced Search Techniques)

THE MOST EXTENSIVE AND POWERFUL PURITAN AND REFORMATION SEARCH AND RESEARCH CHRISTIAN STUDY TOOL EVER PRODUCED!

Over 12,500 Classic and Contemporary Puritan and Reformation Resources On SWRB's New, Portable, USB Puritan Hard Drive (SWRB-PHD) - Now Including An Embedded Database and SWRB's New, Custom, Proprietary Search/Interface Knowledgebase Program (With Over 70,000 Category Cross References, Over 4.5 Million Records Related To Resource Category Signatures and Over 10 Million Page References In The Indices We've Appended To All OCRed Books), For Easy, Virtually Effortless, Access To All 12,500+ Puritan And Reformation Resources (Books, MP3s and Videos) and the Power to Search, Build, Print and Even Save An Unlimited Number of Study Lists Related to Whatever Authors, Topics and Titles You Most Need To Know and Understand!

Four sample screenshots from the powerful, custom SWRB KnowlegeBase program that comes with the Puritan Hard Drive are show below.

SWRB's PURITAN HARD DRIVE is the most extensive and robust Reformation study tool ever created — thanks be to the Lord! It presently contains over one million dollars worth of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformation books (PDFs), MP3s and videos, a comprehensive custom search/interface program (SWRB KnowledgeBase, see screenshots below), and a powerful embedded database. The extensive world-class KnowledgeBase software and database are also fully upgradeable (via free Web downloads we will provide as new features are released), so the PURITAN HARD DRIVE can grow with you as you grow in the Lord. Moreover, all future SWRB publications (PDF books, MP3s and videos), as well as resources from other participating publishers, may also be downloaded free, or at a nominal cost (most for just 99 cents each), as they become available in the future. These low cost digital downloads will be completely integrated with the KnowledgeBase and database on the PURITAN HARD DRIVE and will even include the rarest of Reformation resources, which can cost thousands of dollars each on the antiquarian book market (e.g., just one eight volume set presently on the Puritan Hard Drive cost $US28,000.00 to obtain for scanning). Additionally, as an added bonus, most books on the Puritan Hard Drive are either already in text format or have been ORCed using state-of-the-art Optical Character Recognition software. We have even embedded indexing in the OCRed books (PDFs) so that they are not only searchable, but can be searched a lighting fast speeds (see below for more details). You may also cut and paste from these books! We have also appended extensive indices to all of the searchable books to further aid you in you studies. In short, the PURITAN HARD DRIVE can greatly increase your knowledge of the Lord and His truth (by God's grace) in much less time than any other study method or tool of which we are aware. Furthermore, in the 25 years we have been building the PURITAN HARD DRIVE, only the very best resources were selected for inclusion, which means you will have virtually instant access to the very best (and most sanctified) Christian minds in history on virtually every topic you can imagine. Never before has a Christian study tool this powerful ever existed, all thanks and glory be to the Lord! Please take full advantage of the best Christian (Puritan and Reformed) study resources and cutting edge educational technology ever available, at the lowest price possible, by purchasing the PURITAN HARD DRIVE today (or before the prepublication sale ends). You, your family and your church will be very thankful (even potentially eternally grateful) you did!

Most of books on the Puritan Hard Drive will now be searchable!

The world-class software architect who is heading up the development of the custom KnowledgeBase software, embedded database, and file preparation for the Puritan Hard Drive (PHD) has once again (by God's grace) implemented his God-given genius in these things to add another extraordinary feature to the Puritan Hard Drive.

We recently announced that we have been OCRing all books (in more modern font styles) on the PHD. Not only have the OCR accuracy results been turning out much better than expected, but laying the OCRed text behind the images of the book pages has led to more incredible features which will greatly benefit everyone who uses the PHD.

Some of the search, cut and paste, indexing, etc., advantages of having the OCRed text available have already been mentioned in previous emails (email us at swrb@swrb.com to join our email list), so today I would like to focus on what may very well be one of the foremost feature enhancements that has resulted from OCRing the majority of the rare Reformation, Puritan and Covenanter books that are on the PHD (and remember you may download all the no cost PDF listings related to the massive 12,500+ resources on the PHD above).

Find lists of hundreds of search results in seconds (or less)!

As you  probably know, Adobe's PDF reading programs have some very powerful search features. However, what you may not know (I didn't know this myself), is that it is possible to embed text indices into PDF files.

Why is this important? The primary advantage of embedding text indices into PDF files can be seen in how fast searches of PDF documents take place. I was recently testing OCRed/indexed PDF books that I received from our Director of Software Development and I am still shaking my head in shock at how useful it is to have virtually instant access to all the text in the books on the PHD that contain embedded indices (not to mention that for a number of these books this will be the first time in history that the text in these books is searchable).

Now the OCRed books on the PHD will all have embedded text indices which allows then to be searched at lighting fast speeds -- even for searches that bring up hundreds of results! What's more, even beyond the blinding search speeds that are now available, all these results can be viewed in context when you use the "Full Reader Search" in Adobe readers.

How important this is for serious Christian study can not be overstated!

Now, when you are using the PHD, you can combine all the "big picture" features we have been revealing in past emails, to quickly find, list, amend, manipulate, save, print, etc., large or small resource lists from among the 12,500+ Reformation resources on the PHD (even adding your own personal notes) -- and then take your studies to the next level by getting into the most minute details of the text for every OCRed book on the PHD and in your personal search results lists.

I was literally astonished at how quickly I was able to complete complex research projects, when I was testing our upgraded PDF files, because almost as soon as my finger came off  the mouse, after hitting the "Search" button in Adobe Readers' "Full Reader Search," the search term(s) I was looking for were already listed in content -- even when there were hundreds of search results. Thus, not only are many of the rare Reformation and Puritan books on the PHD searchable for the first time in history, they are searchable at blistering fast speeds!

The embedded indices in our OCREd books on the PHD have now eliminated a great deal of the common time barriers that previously attend the information gathering process of studying. Every instance of OCRed words are now literally at you fingertips in a large number of the best Puritan and Reformed books ever written!

An example of the increased search speed and how much time this will save you.

Here is one example of how much computer waiting time you can save because of the embedded indices in the OCRed books (in PDF) on the PHD. If you were to average five "Full Reader Searches" (this is the advanced search you can use when you click the little arrow next to the "Find" box in Adobe readers and you choose "Open Full Reader Search") per day, over a 365 days, with the equivalent processing power I was using (4 X 2.5 GHz PPC G5 Mac with 4.5GB of RAM), you would save over one full 24 hour day of computer waiting time -- and some of us will be doing much more than five "Full Reader Searches" per day (on average).

And it is not just the total time saved, but as everyone who has graduated (over the years) to faster and more powerful computers knows, the increased speeds tend to change the way you use your machine -- allowing you to explore and learn more and more because it takes so much less time for various functions, this leading in turn to the doing of many things that you may not have even attempted on slower, less powerful, machines. This is exactly the advantage that embedding indices into the OCRed files provides you -- especially the ability to almost instantly pull large amounts of search results (in the blink of an eye)!

You may now test the speed of a new OCRed/indexed PDF for yourself, on your own computer, as well as see the extensive index we have appended to this complimentary sample book, which we are giving to you free of charge!

Just go to http://www.puritandownloads.com/ and download the no cost, complimentary copy of the SWRB PDF of William Cunningham's Historical Theology (volume two).

Better yet, you may also directly download this complimentary book using this URL: http://snipurl.com/svq2q or http://www.puritandownloads.com/Historical-Theology-Vol2-William-Cunningham.pdf.

This PDF contains OCRed text (behind the image of the actual book pages), an embedded text index, and an appended OCR-based (page number) index, which we have added, which are all the same items we have or will be adding to the majority of the books on the PHD (as previously announced).

The search of the OCRed/indexed PDF file of Cunningham's complete book (of over 600 pages) took about two seconds and brought up 525 results.

One "Full Reader Search" that yielded the stunning results noted above was for the word "Calvin," with none of the boxes checked in the selection below where you enter your search term. The search of the OCRed/indexed PDF file of Cunningham's complete book took about two seconds and brought up 525 results. The exact same test on the exact same OCRed book, but without the embedded index took 51 seconds. Thus, this one search, with the embedded index in the PDF took about 49 seconds less than the same search without the embedded Index in the PDF. If you do the math for the scenario given two paragraphs above, you will see why you would save over one full 24 hour day of computer waiting time over a year because of the added embedded index (assuming similar searches on similar machines).

You should also make sure you have a recent version of Adobe Reader or Pro, as some of the older versions will not take full advantage of the embedded index, for super fast searches. You may go to http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/ and click on "Download Adobe Reader" for the latest no cost version of Adobe's PDF Reader.

The graphic below illustrates what the search results for this "Calvin" test looked like.

In the Adobe Reader results window, like the one below, you can also "mouse over" any individual result to see what page the result is on, or, even better, single click any individual result to instantly jump to that result. The result you jump to will also be highlighted as in the second graphic below.

 


The  graphic below illustrates how search terms are highlighted, in the PDFs on the Puritan Hard Drive, when they are found through your searches.

 
More bonuses related to adding text via OCRing.

Another nice little bonus of having the OCRed text available is that the same search term highlighting shown above occurs whatever type of search you are running, making it very easy to quickly and easily spot your search result on the page.

One more exceedingly useful feature that also comes into play because we are OCRing many of the books on the PHD is the "Read Out Loud" function (which is under the "View" among the top menu items -- and also available directly through some operating systems). You will now be able to listen to all the OCRed books on the PHD through Adobe's no cost Reader and/or the paid Pro version.

I (Dr. Reg Barrow) often use cordless headphones (or other portable devices) to listen to sermon and audio book MP3s while I eat and at other appropriate times during the day -- which is one of the reasons I've been able to listen to somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 audio sermons/lectures/books since the Lord saved me over 30 years ago (went through a lot of cassettes in the "old days" but now everything is so much easier with MP3s and the like). I find this to be an excellent way to "redeem the time" (Ephesians 5:16) and would encourage everyone to implement a regular listening plan which takes advantage of the best technologies of the day (iTunes, iPhone, Zune, etc.) if cordless headphones are not a viable option in your situation.

The blessings that come from such regular communion with the Lord, through this means of grace (i.e., the hearing of the preached or written Word), are incalculable. Having this massive new library of freshly OCRed versions of the best editions of the best Puritan books now available for audio, on the PHD, is just one more reason that I am eagerly awaiting (to totally understate the case) the completion of the PHD myself, as there are hundreds of books on the PHD I'd like to listen to as it has been probably 20-25 years since I first read some of these Reformation classics -- and the books on the PHD are certainly worth going through multiple times.

Also, remember that we have placed over 4,080 MP3 audio sermons/lectures/books at http://www.sermonaudio.com/swrb (and 96 videos, see http://www.sermonaudio.com/go/7018 ), which you may obtain at no charge, to get your daily personal listening program up and running quickly -- and to keep it going indefinitely.

Moreover, the PHD contains over 6,000 additional MP3s (some of the best stuff!) that are not available on our sermonaudio site. Furthermore, all the audio on the PHD is fully integrated with the powerful, custom search/access KnowledgeBase program, which gives you even more control over what you find on the PHD to listen to, what type of lists you build, save and/or print, etc.

Your part in the growing worldwide Reformation of our day and your ongoing generational influence for the glory of God -- from the comfort of your own home, using your own PC or Mac.

Request our recent email entitled "Major (Amazing) Puritan HD Announcement, More New PHD Screenshots, 6 More New No Cost MP3s, etc." if you would like us to send you a copy of this email just email your request to swrb@swrb.com.

The Puritan Hard Drive now provides you with the perfect combination of custom, propriety software tools, with numerous powerful study features, which (to my knowledge) are not available in any other Christian software on the market today.

This potent combination of "big picture" and "details" tools on the PHD will allow you to find more truth in less time -- while, at the same time, providing you with over 12,500 of the very best of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformation resources ever gathered into one offering!

And because the Purtian Hard Drive is fully expandable, this unrivalled collection can grow with you for the rest of your life -- as we plan, Lord willing, to be offering you many more new, free and low priced, digital resources in the future. These new digital books, MP3s and videos will be published by SWRB as well as by any other modern-day Reformed, Creationist and homeschooling publishers who want to work with us to incorporate their books, MP3s and videos into the PHD/SWRB schemata.

Even more ways in which OCRing the books, to make the text searchable on the PHD , allows for additional features in the powerful, custom, Puritan Hard Drive search/access/analyze (SWRB KnowledgeBase) program.

The Lord has once again been very good to us concerning the amazing developments concerning the Puritan Hard Drive (PHD) which I will share with you below. The PHD is now many orders of magnitude better than the 62 CDs we previously published -- so much so that I feel safe in comparing the 62 CDs to a tricycle and the Puritan HD to a Ferrari. Both will get you where you want to go, but that is about where the comparison ends.

Major New Puritan Hard Drive Announcements

As noted in previous emails, we are presently working on about 35 instructional videos to include with the PHD (to join our double opt-in email list plase email us at swrb@swrb.com). However, because we noticed (some time ago) that this was going to take longer than originally expected, we purchased more computer equipment and began running a top Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program over the image-based books on the PHD. Because this can be done almost entirely programmatically (while we are working on the videos), as we are applying the OCR process to digital files already produced (which have already been scanned), it should not delay the release of the PHD more than a day or two, but will provide you with a number of very important, major, and powerful study advantages!

Moreover, because the OCRed (and searchable) text is being laid behind the images of the book pages, you get the best of both worlds -- as you will still be able to see the actual book as it originally appeared (as in teh graphic above) and at the same time have all the advantages of a text-based file.

This means, often for the first time in history, you may now run computer searches on the many rare Puritan and Reformed books on the PHD which will be OCRed.

This exponentially increases the usefulness of all these files!

Moreover, it also means that you may now cut and paste from all OCRed books.

However, we won't have time to proof the OCRed content, so the indices, and what you are able to cut and paste, will only be accurate to the level that the OCR program produces. Nevertheless, we have seen OCR accuracy rates as high as 99.67% and the more modern the font style, the better the results. This means most of what you will get will be accurate -- and this opens a fantastic new door for the study of these rare and influential tomes! I've been thoroughly amazed at what I've already been able to find as I've been test searching through various files that are already completed -- and how much this expedites the study of the all the topics I've been checking.

You Spoke, We Listened

We also know that adding the text behind the images, and therefore making the PDF book files searchable, is the most requested improvement we have been asked to complete on the large body of books we have published digitally -- and we are very thankful to the Lord that He has ordered everything surrounding the PHD so that we are now able to fulfill these requests to a great degree. And to whatever degree any work remains to be done (in this regard) after we ship the PHD, it may be helpful to remember that virtually everything on the PHD (including the custom KnowledgeBase program, the embedded database, all the resource files, etc.) has been designed so that they can be easily upgraded in the future. This means that as we are able to proof read and otherwise upgrade these files in the future, we will be able to provide them to you via Web downloads to install the upgrades on the PHD. We will also be able to provide, as they are completed in the future, any files we don't get OCRed by the time the instructional videos are completed and we begin shipping the PHD shortly.

Of course, all the books on the PHD which are already in text format do not need to be OCRed and will also benefit from the additional indexing features I will describe below -- as there are even more benefits to having the searchable text available for many of the books on the PHD.

Overview of Additional OCR Benefits

Below is a short overview and four screenshots related to some of the additional benefits that will be included on the PHD as a result of having so much book material in searchable (text) format.

First, because we will now have the text for all the books that are OCRed, we are also running a very fast indexing program over the text to produce indices for every book that is OCRed. In a number of cases this will be the first time indices will be available for some of the most important Puritan and Reformed writings that have ever been available!

All the extensive programmatically produced indices for the OCRed books will also be appended to the actual PDF (book) files on the PHD (download a free sample of William Cunningham's Historical Theology [volume 2] to see exactly what this appended OCR-based Index looks like), giving you the ability to quickly and easily dig deep into this treasure trove of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books using these sizable and substantial indices.

Moreover, because of the power of the indexing technology we are using, the SWRB produced indices will often contain many more references than most indices you would find in books that may already have indices (from the original publisher).

The new SWRB generated indices also have the advantage of referring to the page in the PDF, rather than the actual page in the book, which will make it much easier for you to speedily access any indexed word or phrase in the book (and you will still be able to see the original book page number when you arrive at your destination -- if you need that reference for any purpose).

More Scintillating, Even "Jaw-Dropping," Bonuses Added to the PHD

What's more, we added additional scintillating, even "jaw-dropping," bonuses to the PHD, as a result of  having most of the books on the PHD OCRed -- which I will outline below!

Because having searchable and copy/cut/pastable text available to you (with additional and complimentary indexing search features) will be so valuable to your studies, and because our primary software engineer is a world class software developer who can do remarkable things in very little time, we have already added some great new features to the SWRB KnowledgeBase program on the PHD -- related to the many new indices that will be available.

New PHD Screenshots Illustrating New Functions, Features and Bonuses

First, as the screenshot below illustrates, you will be able to search for indexed words or phrases using a built-in "help screen" that will present all indexed words or phrases related to your search term.

The most amazing thing about this screen/function is that once you click on an indexed word or phrase, you will be presented with a Search Results screen that will show you every book on the PHD that contains the indexed word or phrase you choose!

This will be phenomenally helpful for getting right to the most specific of indexed words or phrases in every text-based book (which will now be most of the books on the PHD), across the complete Puritan Hard Drive.

And the uses go on and on for just this single, unprecedented, new feature on the PHD!

 

Second, in the Resource Detail window on the PHD, you will have direct access to the index (for any indexed book) directly through a lower tab panel, called Keyword/Phrases, on this screen.

The scrollable list, in this tab, will provide you with all indexed words or phrases for the selected book, how many times the word or phrase shows up in the OCRed text, and the first few results of page references which fit in this screen (to see additional results you may easily open the resource and consult the complete index we will have added to the back of the book).

This bonus feature should be very valuable for study purposes in a number of ways, not the least of which will allow you to quickly access how much a given book deals with a specific subject based on how many times a word or phrase appears in the book..



Third, you will have all the same direct access to all this useful index information through the Keyword tab on all Search Results screens.

Fourth, if a resource (like MP3s [audio], WMVs [video], or a book) does not contain an SWRB generated index, you will be able to tell immediately as there will be no words or phrases listed when you are viewing the Keyword tab in a Search Results screen.

There are also some small indexing caveats I should mention.

First, the index program, though eminently useful and blazingly fast, picks up even partial matches -- which means that some of the references in the indices may not be exactly what you are expecting. This usually won't be a problem, as in a case of words like "sin" and "sinful" being indexed together, but I thought you would like to know exactly what you are getting in this feature, in case you run into the occasional anomaly. On the other hand, sometimes this may even be an advantage for serendipitous (or better, providential) advances in sanctification, as you are led to words which also form part of other words, which you may not have otherwise been looking for, which ultimately end up aiding you in your studies of God and His Word, and helping you to press forward in your growth in grace.

Second, the indices will only be as good as the OCRed generated text and therefore, on occasion (among the books in more modern type), may not include a word that is actually in the text -- and this drawback will be even more evident once we start OCRing the books in the older font styles (the change to more modern font types seems to me to have taken place in the early eighteen hundreds, though I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who knows the exact time when the typography changed to more modern type styles for books written in English). However, from what we have seen so far, we believe that we will be able to accurately provide the great majority of the text in searchable format (behind the images) for all books which were published using more modern fonts -- having already seen accuracy results as high as 99.67% in sections of the OCRed text we have sampled. Even when accuracy rates have been lower than 99% they have still been very high -- and we believe that it is much preferable to have most of the text accurate and searchable (and all of it in the OCRed books available for copying, cutting and pasting), rather than not having any searchable text available at all (for the image-based PDFs on the PHD).

Third, to make sure the indices include every instance of a correctly OCRed phrase or word, from the master index word list, the indices that will be appended to the books will be in all lower case letters. This certainly does not mean, even in the slightest, a disrespect or dishonor to our Lord when His name appears this way in the indices (as nothing could be further from our thoughts) -- it simply allows for greater indexing accuracy.

Puritan HD OCRing Plan (Present and Future Bonuses)

We have planned to OCR all the books on the PHD which are in more modern font styles, first, and we already have many of them completed, as we began some time ago. OCRing these types of books first makes sense, as they can be OCRed with the greatest accuracy. We also hope to eventually get to the older font style books (which are a minority of the titles), likely after the PHD has shipped. But, even among the smaller number of older books (where the OCR accuracy is much lower), which are not likely to get OCRed before we begin shipping the PHD, you may still OCR these files yourself using the OCR feature in Acrobat Pro or other OCR programs.

Moreover, when, Lord willing, we do get to OCRing these older titles (with the oldest typography), we can still make them available to you (along with the updated database, so all the features in the screenshots above include these books as they become available) via download to add to your Puritan HD -- for as previously noted just about everything related to the Puritan HD has been constructed with the utmost flexibility in mind, including the ability to update and upgrade the KnowledgeBase program, the embedded database, the PDF (book), MP3 and video files (which means you will be able to download new resources as the become available in the future, and add them to you Puritan Hard Drive, with all the functionality related to all the features upgraded and intact at the same time!).

Additionally, please keep in mind that even some of the older books, originally published prior to the end of the seventeenth century, have already been retype set and therefore can be accurately OCRed (for the most part) and will be available with searchable text (and all the other features related to searchable text) on the Puritan HD when it first ships.