We just got an email from Apple saying PocketBible for iPhone/iPad is approved for the App Store. It could take 24 hours for it to become visible to you. The rest of this posting is a repeat of the announcement we made when we uploaded this new version.

Features are described here.

Video preview here: www.youtube.com/user/laridianinc.

This version adds new features to the iPhone/iPod touch and has native support for the iPad. Current users of PocketBible will see this new version as an update in the App Store app just like any other update.

If you have notes, bookmarks, etc. in MyBible for Palm OS, PocketBible for Windows Mobile, PocketBible for Windows, or iPocketBible.com you’ll be able to move these notes to your iPhone or iPad with this new version. If you have Palm OS or Windows Mobile you first need to synchronize this data with PocketBible for Windows (desktop). Then synchronize from there to iPocketBible.com. Details are here. PocketBible for iPhone/iPad syncs with iPocketBible.com so you need to get your data there to start with, then when you sync with PocketBible for iPhone/iPad it will get your notes, bookmarks, etc. from your other device(s).

Search results are displayed in the Toolbox at the bottom of the screen. Your entire library is searched, usually in a fraction of a second. Library results are on the left; results for the selected book are in the list on the right.

Split the screen into as many as five panes (three shown here) to reference commentaries and other reference books.

Here I’ve changed the font and expanded the Toolbox to give me more room to type my notes. The notes viewer supports HTML so I can create this outline using nested ordered lists. Bible text can be pasted in HTML. Here I’ve made verse numbers bold and made the text small. Any unambiguous references (such as “Col 1:3-8″ at the top) are automatically linked.

When the iPad is rotated, the Toolbox moves to the side (either right or left).

The new calculator-style verse selection method is shown here. Select the book from a drop-down list, then key in the chapter and verse on the keypad.

The Bk/Ch/Vs (”3-tap”) verse selector sports larger buttons on the iPad and is ten buttons wide to make it easier to find chapter and verse numbers.

PocketBible is great for daily devotional reading. Here Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening is shown on the left and the Bible on the right. The Reading Progress window show what you’ve already read (in green) and what you need to read (in red). I’ve hidden the Toolbox to maximize space for reading the text.

We took step one of getting our iPad version of PocketBible released by handing it off to our beta testers this afternoon. We have one known issue we’re still working on, plus whatever our testers find in the next few days.

Our intention (as always) is to have a very brief beta. You never know what you’re going to run into, but the code has been working well for us in-house and we’re hoping the beta testers have the same experience.

As I’ve mentioned before, Apple limits the number of devices we can install to outside the App Store. We have 46 beta testers, many of whom have multiple devices. 14 of them have iPads. That doesn’t include our own employees and company-owned devices. Between all of those we’re right on the edge of not being able to add new devices to our list. With iPhone 4 coming in June we didn’t think it was a good idea to add any beta testers at this point. So you didn’t miss the announcement — there wasn’t one.

While we’ve been promoting this as an iPad version, the fact is that it’s a “universal binary” that runs on both the iPhone and iPad. Many of the new or improved features are also going to be available on the iPhone (and of course, iPod touch). Here’s the feature list in no particular order:

BOTH iPHONE and iPAD

• User data synchronization with iPocketBible.com server
• User data backup/restore to iPocketBible.com server
• Screen brightness setting (Dim the screen for reading at night independent of the backlight setting)
• Multiple panes (Two for iPhone, five for iPad. View multiple books simultaneously, or multiple passages in the same book)
• Decreased page-loading time (thus launch time)
• Splash screen now covers window drawing, then fades (OK, not exactly a feature, but it’s cool)
• Gradiated title bars
• Calculator-style go-to for Bibles (Select the book, then use numeric pad to enter chapter and verse)
• Notes list now shows excerpt of note instead of excerpt of verse
• Improved error messages when nothing is found as the result of a search. Try to tell you how to fix it.
• Updated help

iPAD

• Control panel (Keeps search results and lists of notes, highlights and bookmarks available all the time.)
  • Library search (All searches search your entire library, not just the active book)
  • Notes search (Search your notes using Boolean operators, just like you search the Bible)
  • Book notes (Add notes to non-Bibles)
  • Edit note while using program (Makes it easier to copy/paste verses into your notes)
  • View search results, lists of highlights/bookmarks while using program
  • Lock panes so they don’t sync to content movement (Handy while writing notes or following cross-references out of a search)
• Additional margin and leading in single-book view (Makes for a pleasant reading experience)
• Bk/Ch/Vs go-to has bigger buttons for iPad; laid out 10 buttons wide
• Removed “lock rotation” setting. iPad has a hardware switch for this.
• New title bar style

I’ll post more screen shots and videos this week. Your patience will pay off in the end.

I’ve uploaded a video preview of PocketBible for iPad to YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/laridianinc. Because the video resolution isn’t as good as the iPad screen resolution, I’ve reproduced some representative screen shots below. Click on the screen shot to see the full-resolution image.

Nearly full-page casual reading mode with increased line leading and margins. Tool bar and title bar can be removed if you really, really have to see one more line of text.

Control panel provides quick access to search results, highlights, bookmarks, notes, and eventually more features. Control panel follows home button as iPad is rotated and can be removed in portrait mode.

PocketBible for iPad quickly searches your entire library at one time and displays number of hits per book. Select a book to see list of results; select a result to see it in context in the book. Control panel shown expanded.

View a list of all your highlights, or all highlights in a particular color in your entire library. Similarly, you can see a list of all bookmarks or all bookmarks in a particular category.

Easily choose a different font and size. Dim the display for reading at night.

Split the screen to show two Bibles side-by-side. Bibles track each other — as you move through one, the other moves to the same verse.

Open a commentary beside a Bible and the two are synchronized. As you view a verse in the Bible, the commentary follows along.

Split the screen into up to five windows.

We reserve the right to make changes to the user interface (UI) and to functionality before we ship. In fact, there are a few things still in flux and at least one major feature that hasn’t been plugged into the new UI yet. So expect changes from what you see here.

We’re especially excited about the flexibility the control panel gives us for new features and for giving you instant access to search results and bookmarks. We also have enjoyed just reading the Bible in full-screen mode.

While the iPad is faster than the iPhone, we’ve also made changes to the code that have really sped up the display of text, making scrolling by verses and even chapters significantly more useful. The nice thing is that the iPhone and iPad code is the same at this level so the improvements will spill over to the iPhone.

Having said that, it should be obvious that not all the features of PocketBible for iPad will find their way to the iPhone. We’ll probably add split-screen, but not more than two windows.

One thing we’re concerned about is app approval times on the App Store. We submitted Romans Road for release on the April 3 iPad release date. We followed Apple’s instructions for making sure our app was available on April 3, but then we never heard anything further from them so we’re not sure what the status of that app is. We’ve heard the same thing from other developers.

We don’t have a schedule for releasing this version of PocketBible yet. As you can see it’s very nearly complete but there are some big features that need to be plugged in.

With the WiFi iPads shipping for delivery in less than a week, I thought we should update you on our status.

Today (March 27) is the last day to submit apps to the App Store and be guaranteed they’ll be available on the iPad App Store on its official release date (April 3). For a while that was our goal, but as time went on we realized it would be in everyone’s best interest if we had a chance to see what PocketBible looked like on the actual hardware. The emulator we run on our Macs is good, but it’s not the real hardware. We’re concerned about performance and simple things like the usability of the user interface, given that we can’t really tell how big our buttons are or what it’s going to “feel” like on a real device until we have one in our hands.

So, we won’t release a product to the App Store until we have a chance to see it running on real hardware. So that means sometime after April 3.

The great thing about the iPad is that it runs our iPhone code pretty much as-is. The bad thing is that it runs our iPhone code as-is. The experience of running an iPhone app on the iPad will be less than optimum, but it at least will give the iPad a couple hundred thousand apps on day one. Ideally, every iPhone developer will be customizing their apps for the iPad, and that’s what we’ve been doing.

While the iPad is a mobile device, it has the screen real estate of a desktop or laptop device (1024 x 768). That means while we’re using our iPhone code as a base, we have to think like we’re developing for the desktop. Not a desktop computer with a mouse and a real keyboard, though, but a desktop computer you operate with your fingers and type on a pop-up keyboard. So the interface is an interesting intersection of desktop and mobile paradigms.

So what will be new or different on the iPad? First, You’ll have plenty of space on the screen for some controls to be present all the time, just like on your desktop where menus and toolbars are generally always there. This makes it easier and more intuitive to get around.

Second, the bigger screen means there’s room to split the screen and show you more than one book at a time if you want.

Third, we’ve taken advantage of this opportunity to add a frequently requested feature: The ability to search your entire library at one time. The larger screen means there’s room to give you both a search results browser and a library browser at the same time. We think this is going to be a great addition to the program.

Finally, you can expect changes to how you open books and navigate within books. It should take fewer touches to find your way around your library.

We’ll post some more details as we get closer to releasing the product. With the actual release of the iPad itself coming up, we just wanted to give you some advance notice of what’s coming. We think you’re going to like it.

Apple started taking orders this morning (March 12) at 7:30AM CST for the new iPad. The WiFi version ships in time to arrive at your home on April 3, while the WiFi+3G version ships in late April.

You can place your order at store.apple.com. The 16GB WiFi version is $499. 32GB is $599 and 64GB is $699. Add $130 to each of those prices if you want 3G. You’ll have to pay for a 3G data plan separately, of course.

As we’ve said before, we don’t talk about what may or may not be under development. But you can expect some new iPad-specific features in PocketBible that we think will make it an even more compelling application than it is on the iPhone and rival what we offer in PocketBible for Windows. We’ll get more details out as we get closer to a ship date.

And don’t worry about migrating your notes, highlights, bookmarks, and reading progress to the iPad. Before it arrives, we’ll have an update that will allow you to synchronize or backup your data to our server, then synchronize or restore it to PocketBible on your new iPad. Of course this feature will also let you move any user-created data you had on your old Palm or Windows Mobile phone to your iPhone assuming you have PocketBible for Windows running on your desktop or laptop. You’ll sync your Palm or WinMob phone to PocketBIble for Windows, then sync PocketBible for Windows with our server. Then sync your iPhone with the server and you’re done.

So if you want to be the first on your block to own an iPad, get your order placed as soon as you can. By the way, you can ignore the temptation to pay for expedited shipping. Your new iPad will be shipped in time to arrive on April 3 and the shipping is free. The 2-3 shipping option applies only to the accessories you order with your iPad, which will ship later.

A few weeks ago (around the turn of the year), I answered a technical support query about whether any of our eTracts for the Pocket PC had been published for the iPhone. They haven’t been, so it was an easy question to answer. However, that question planted a seed, which sprouted and leads to today’s announcement: our RomansRoad eTract is now available for the iPhone.

RomansRoad eTract is a Scripture-based discussion guide to help you share your Christian faith. Based upon the familiar “Romans Road” series of verses from the book of Romans, this witnessing tool uses a unique question and answer format to provide a framework to help you share your faith. As each new key verse is presented, probing questions and explanatory answers are also provided to help you both explain the Scripture and answer common questions that arise.

For example, Romans 3:23 states that all have sinned. Upon presenting this key verse, the RomansRoad eTract provides the following questions:

• What is sin?
• Who has sinned?
• Does that include you and me?
• Not convinced that you are a sinner?

Answers to these questions are provided using everyday language.

This format — presentation of a key verse with concise, clear commentary in a question and answer format — provides a framework allowing you to share your faith while personalizing your discussion. Since it is discussion-based, you are able to listen and respond to the questions you receive, and be sensitive to God’s leading.

An individual page or all pages can be emailed, facilitating both further consideration and follow-up at a later date.

If you find the RomansRoad eTract a helpful resource in sharing your faith, we’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment on this article and/or post a review on the App Store with your experiences.

Find It On the App Store

The RomansRoad eTract is available on the App Store for 99 cents. Click here to go to the iTunes App Store now.

The RomansRoad eTract is fully stand-alone. It does not require PocketBible nor any other Laridian product. So, even if you use some one else’s Bible software on your iPhone (though you should try PocketBible, it’s free!), you can still use the RomansRoad eTract.

Some More of the Backstory

I first wrote and published this eTract for use on the Pocket PC. Since then, the text has been revised and expanded several times. I’d estimate that this is really the fourth or fifth edition of the text. I’ve published previous editions in paper format as well.

Last week, I posted the RomansRoad eTract icon on our facebook “fan page” and invited guesses about the program. Several were close, and a few were exactly right!

If you follow me on Twitter, this is what I have been referring to as my “#newsecretiphoneproject”.

Screen Shots

Sample Screen

Preferences

PrayerPartner for the iPhone is now available on the Apple App Store. Search for “PrayerPartner” in the App Store, or try this link.

For only $1.99 (you may have paid more for a cup of coffee today), PrayerPartner helps you manage an important spiritual discipline: prayer.

PrayerPartner helps you by maintaining lists of prayer requests, keeping track of which ones have been answered, which ones you’d like to pray for today, and which ones have already been prayed for today. Each request can be categorized, associated with a contact from your Contacts Address Book, and scheduled to be prayed for daily, on certain days of the week, or certain days of the month. Customizable email templates let you quickly mail a personal note of encouragement to a request’s contact. Plus, use the dated journal to record your thoughts as you pray.

Not Excited Yet? Keep Reading

Many of our PocketBible beta testers jumped on board to help with final testing of PrayerPartner. One common comment from them went something like… well, let’s hear from a few directly.

“PrayerPartner has given me the push I need to stay on top of other people’s requests. How many times do people specifically ask for prayer, and we somehow forget to ever petition the Lord on their behalf? This app is helping me make sure that I take their requests seriously, and it makes it easier to follow up with them when their prayers are answered.”
— Lawson C.

“I have found PrayerPartner to be indispensable. I did not know I had a need for an app like this until I started using it, and now it is on my home screen with the applications I use all the time.”
— Paul W.

“I didn’t know how valuable PrayerPartner would be until I started using it. Now I use PrayerPartner every day!”
— Mike O.

It’s interesting that a common theme developed: “I wasn’t really interested in a prayer-related program, but I found that it’s been good for me.”

Sort of like eating vegetables and flossing, I guess.

Seriously, though, I’ve found this to be true for me as well. Now that I’m through developing and testing, I’ve been adding my requests. Here’s what I’ve added so far.

• a daily praise, different for every day of the month
• a daily prayer for my children, a different topic every day of the month
• some friends to be prayed for weekly (some on Monday, some on Tuesday, etc.); I make notes of special needs or stresses so that I can remember to pray for them
• prayer for our pastor, church and its ministries

Like our beta testers, I’m finding that PrayerPartner is helping me be both more focused and disciplined.

Screen Shots

PrayerPartner Home Screen

Adding or Editing a Request

Picking a Category

Viewing the Full Request

Still To Come?

If PrayerPartner proves successful, we have ideas that would allow sharing requests with others, even (potentially) PrayerPartner users on other platforms.

PrayerPartner for the iPhone has completed beta testing and been submitted to the Apple App Store. We expect it to be available in the App Store “soon”.

PrayerPartner helps you manage an important spiritual discipline: prayer.

PrayerPartner helps you by maintaining lists of prayer requests, keeping track of which ones have been answered, which ones you’d like to pray for today, and which ones have already been prayed for today. Each request can be categorized, associated with a contact from your Contacts Address Book, and scheduled to be prayed for daily, on certain days of the week, or certain days of the month. Customizable email templates let you quickly mail a personal note of encouragement to a request’s contact. Plus, use the dated journal to record your thoughts as you pray.

When approved for sale in the App Store, PrayerPartner will be available with an introductory price of $1.99.

Yesterday, I posted an article inviting interested persons to apply to be a beta tester on my #secretiphoneproject. I also tweeted, inviting our Twitter followers to come to the blog and read about it.

I have enough applications, so the article has been removed and the application process is closed.

Thanks to all who expressed interest. If you applied and haven’t heard back from me yet, you will soon.

We’re announcing today that we’ve signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Bits of God Software to be the exclusive provider of Bibles and other reference materials for an upcoming version of the popular Simple Bible application for the Palm Pre. Once completed, this will give current Laridian customers who have chosen the Palm Pre as their mobile platform access to the Bibles and reference books they already own for other platforms. It will also give new Simple Bible users immediate access to one of the largest collections of Bible-related content for mobile devices. The new program from Bits of God Software, currently referred to as Simple Bible Pro, will allow users to download new Bibles and reference content directly into the program from their account on Laridian’s site.

As we’ve said here before, programming for the Pre is a whole new challenge. Our existing code that runs on Windows Mobile, iPhone, Windows desktop, and Palm OS really gives us no leverage on the Pre. With that in mind we sought a partner, and when it comes to Bible software on the Pre, the guys at Bits of God are the best. We’re pretty excited about partnering with them.

Our current agreement is “an agreement to agree” so there are many details to be worked out yet. We’ve agreed in principle on most of the more difficult points of our relationship, so we don’t anticipate any problems. The important thing is that it looks like current PocketBible and MyBible customers will have a migration path if they choose the Pre, and that Simple Bible Pro will get a jump start over other Bible software on the device by having access to Laridian’s growing library of content.

We’ve been notified by Apple that PocketBible has been approved for sale in the App Store. It was fun hearing that it was available in different countries as each local App Store enabled it for their users around the world.

Now that it’s approved I can tell you what the original problem was. It seems the testers at Apple chose not to register the app and download the 39 free books that are included. As a result, when they went to the “Open Book” dialog to open a new book, they saw that only the “Bibles” and “Other Books” categories were active (the former contains the KJV and the latter the help files). They assumed that meant that PocketBible was a “lite” version that did not include the ability to view commentaries, dictionaries, and devotionals, because those categories were grayed out. If true, that would be a violation of the rules of the App Store. We explained that those categories were grayed out because they hadn’t downloaded any commentaries, dictionaries, or devotionals. That must’ve been sufficient because they later approved the app.

If you can give us some positive reviews at the App Store that would be great. If you can’t think of anything nice to say, send your negative comments to me by email so I can fix the program to your satisfaction.

It’s getting hard to pick out our answers to your questions in the comments below. It might be best to send them to Tech Support. Select the Help Desk link on our site.

As I said before, I anticipated we’d have problems getting PocketBible for iPhone through the approval process at the App Store. It’s a complicated app for one thing, and Apple’s approval process has a bit of a checkered reputation for another.

Late last night we were notified that PocketBible was being rejected. The issue was a misunderstanding about how PocketBible works. We immediately submitted an explanation, added details on how they can access “help” from within the program, and resubmitted the application.

I don’t believe this puts us at the end of the approval queue, but even if it does it only took a week for them to look at the program.

So I’m expecting our next rejection within a week.

We’re at one week since submitting the app to the App Store and I want to answer a few questions that have come up in email and in the comments.

• We will not get any feedback from Apple until/unless the app is approved. The current status is “In Review” and that’s all we’ll know until they actually either approve or decline it. If they decline it, they’ll tell us why and tell us what to do to fix it. We don’t have any reason to believe they won’t approve it, or if they find problems, that they won’t approve it eventually.
• We appreciate your offers to give us donations to cover the cost of development. We’ve thought about formalizing that process but at the same time you can “donate” by simply not using our discount codes when you place an order for add-on books. We’re embarrassed to even suggest such a thing and are humbled by your generosity.
• We will be having some kind of site-wide sale once the new product is approved on the App Store. We’ll send an email out to current customers and probably post something here in the blog. If you’re interested in building your library, that will be a good time to do it.
• You will have access to all your current Bibles and reference books from inside PocketBible for iPhone. I’m not sure how to make this more clear. Take a look at the first video here. All I’m doing is logging into my existing account using my customer ID and password (you can also use your email address instead of customer ID if you don’t know it). Once I’m logged in, I see a list of everything I’ve previously purchased for any platform. I can download any of those titles to the iPhone.
• Memorize!, DailyReader for Palm OS, and the old PrayerPartner for Palm OS are programs, not reference books, and won’t be included in the titles you can download for iPhone. We have not announced our plans for a version of Memorize! or PrayerPartner for the iPhone. The features of DailyReader are built into PocketBible and will be enhanced in future releases of PocketBible for iPhone.
• MyBible users will probably have the biggest transition to make. As you might know, MyBible was written by an outside developer who was a Palm employee at the time. We marketed it on his behalf. At the same time, we developed PocketBible for Windows Mobile in-house. It was the original product that Jeff Wheeler and I wrote starting back in 1998 and which motivated us to leave Parsons Technology in late 1998/early 1999 together with Jim VanDuzer to start Laridian. PocketBible for iPhone is based on the Windows Mobile code base and overall philosophy of operation. The differences are subtle but you may notice them. For example, MyBible lets you highlight a single letter in a word. PocketBible highlights entire verses.
• Remember, this is version 1.0.0. Other versions are coming. If you don’t see a favorite feature, tell us about it, then wait. We’ll be constantly working on updates for the next few months. Those of you who got involved in iPocketBible.com in the very early stages remember that we issued updates every couple of weeks for a few months as we rounded out the feature list. We’ll be doing the same thing with PocketBible for iPhone.
• If you can find it in your hearts, give us a nice review. Early reviews are important. If you can do us the favor of complaining to us directly by email instead of through your reviews on the App Store, that would be great. We’re going to do everything we can to be responsive and make sure PocketBible for iPhone is everything you want it to be. If people express their complaints through App Store reviews instead of directly to us, the product could fail before we have the opportunity to finish it.
• We haven’t forgotten Windows Mobile. There will be a new release of WM next year and we currently plan to revisit PocketBible for Windows Mobile sometime before then and release an update. Nothing firm yet.

That’s it for now. I just checked and there’s no change in the status of the app as of this morning. I’m sure one of you will probably spot it before I do.

This afternoon I uploaded PocketBible for iPhone version 1.0.0 to the App Store.

Now we wait.

Apple says it will take about two weeks. We’ll see. I know that uploading took me only 15 minutes, but that was after spending hours trying to find the right combination of options NOT to choose and titles I was NOT allowed to use for the program. So I’m not going to be surprised if approval takes longer than two weeks.

In the meantime we have a lot of work to do on the Web site to get it ready for the release. We’re going to try to make some changes to the way our e-commerce works at the same time. Hopefully we won’t break anything important.

I previously posted several videos of PocketBible in action. So if you’re curious, take a look at those.

One of the last things to come together was the program icon. We went through three major themes before finding a last-minute idea with promise. Our first idea was to lift the Bible icon from our Windows Mobile app. But when we looked at the 60 or more Bible apps on the iPhone, it seems over half of them had the same idea. So we were afraid we’d get lost.

So then we went with a version of our company logo. That had some fans, but suffered from being not very scalable as we release new programs (i.e. we only have one company logo but we expect to have more than one iPhone app). Plus it was boring.

While this was going on we had an artist work on a “Bible in a pocket” icon. The beta testers weren’t crazy about that one.

One of our testers is a fellow developer. He turned us on to his icon designer, who had the idea to used stained glass as a theme. We weren’t crazy about this at first but then I found a stained glass artist in Minnesota who had done some very contemporary looking work for a Lutheran church that seemed like it might work. We contacted the artist (Nicholas Markell) and he was willing to work with us. There were some interesting copyright issues, but Nick was a very reasonable guy and was pretty knowledgeable on the topic and we were able to work through those very painlessly.

So the program icon and splash screen (shown here) are based on a stained glass window entitled “Baptism of Jesus”. While the baptism of Jesus has little to do with our program, a little creative reinterpretation makes it work well. The Holy Spirit, represented here as a dove, illuminates the Scriptures for the believer. The water represents the “living water” (John 4) of the Word of God that gives eternal life through the cross, which is in the background of the image. Across the surface of the water runs the “scarlet thread of redemption” that ties the Bible together from the first verse of Genesis to the last verse of Revelation.

In addition to the obvious symbolic significance of this particular work of art, there’s the bigger symbolism of stained glass in a Christian context. Beyond its obvious beauty, stained glass windows served a valuable purpose in churches: They taught the stories of the Bible to a largely illiterate population. For many people in medieval times, church windows were their Bibles.

We like the meta symbolism of the medium of stained glass representing the Bible, and the specific symbolism of this piece as it relates to studying the Bible with our program. And besides, it looks really nice on the iPhone.

It’s unlikely we’ll hear any good news until the program is approved. We’ll pass along any bad news we receive just to keep you informed. Until then we have plenty to do to get ready. We appreciate all your kind words and prayers.

One of our PocketBible beta testers spotted a picture of Jeff in a Laridian pullover with me in a Laridian polo and asked if he could purchase Laridian apparel anywhere.

We have a long-standing relationship with Lands’ End going back to our days at Parsons Technology. I have a picture on my wall of the entire Church Software Division staff at Parsons in our purple Parsons polos from 1995, and for a couple of years I gave out Lands’ End gift certificates to them as Christmas gifts.

Lands’ End normally password-protects logos so that they won’t be used without permission. So I went fishing for a way that you can use our logos on your purchases there. Turns out they have a way for us to create our own store. We don’t get a commission, which is dumb, but you get to use our logos.

So here’s a link to Laridian at Lands’ End. There are two versions of the Laridian logo. One is the one you see here. The other has LARIDIAN in large type with a very small version of the flying book logo below it. That version is in black and looks good on most colors.

Note that you don’t automatically get the Laridian logo on everything you buy. You have to add it. Once you select your item, there’s an option to choose a logo and a location on the item to put the logo.

Like I said we don’t make a dime from these sales, but the quality is very good and customer service is excellent. We hope you’ll enjoy your Laridian apparel from Lands’ End!

Just a quick note to let you know we released Beta 5 to the testers tonight. We consider this a true release candidate. In other words, if the testers don’t find anything wrong, there’s nothing left to do before it goes to Apple. (Nothing, that is, other than changing the version number and putting the official program icon into the program, which hasn’t been finished yet.)

We expect the beta testers will find some things that need to be fixed.

Apple is reporting that most apps are approved within two weeks based on the current volume of submissions. Since this is our first submission, we expect it to come back with things we need to fix before it can be accepted.

We appreciate your patience more than you know. We also want to remind you that once this version is released we will be following it with several updates in rapid succession to round out the feature list. So stick with us through 1.0.0 and your favorite features from our other programs will show up fairly quickly.

I put a link to these videos in my last post but some of you may have missed it since I edited an existing blog article.

I’ve posted some videos of PocketBible for the iPhone in action on our YouTube channel. You can view those videos here.

These videos were created while running the program in the iPhone Simulator on the Mac. It makes for a nice video but the program runs faster on a Mac than it does on the actual device.

I told you a few weeks ago I’d let you know when Beta 3 of PocketBible for iPhone went to the testers, but I forgot to do that. I’m here this evening to let you know that Beta 4 went out the door a few minutes ago.

Click here for a few videos showing PocketBible for iPhone in action.

I think the program is coming together well and we’re down to tasks like writing the documentation. One of the cool things about the iPhone app is that the documentation is “just another book” inside the program. So as we revise the User Guide, our testers just go to the “Add/Remove Books” function of the program and grab the latest version from our server. It is downloaded directly into the program.

Back in January we asked our Alpha testers, “Would you rather that we release the program as soon as possible but perhaps missing a few features, or wait until we’re completely done before releasing it?” They were very vocal in their opinion that we should get something out ASAP. So we’re going to be asking that you bear with us just a bit through the first 3-4 updates of the program once we release it to the App Store. Version 1.0.0 will be missing a few features that we fully intend to have in the program. In fact, by the time Apple approves 1.0.0 we’ll probably already have 1.0.1 ready to upload to the App Store with the additional features. I anticipate doing this very regularly for 3-4 versions until the program gets its full set of features.

This is not to say that the first release won’t be a useful program. It will support all our Bibles and reference books but will be missing a few things like note taking and tracking your devotional reading progress. Those features will come quickly after the initial version is released.

Thanks for your patience and prayers. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s looking less and less like an oncoming train.

It’s been a long six weeks since we released Beta 1 of our native version of PocketBible for iPhone. At the time I said we were expecting the beta period to be short. Needless to say I was wrong.

A Wrench in the Works

Two major things happened to really slow us down. First, we have been really struggling to get adequate performance out of our code to allow you to be able to smoothly scroll through the Bible like you would a Web page in Safari on the iPhone. Safari has the advantage of being able to render the entire page. Once that is done, scrolling around on it — even zooming in and out — is pretty easy with the features of the iPhone OS. In our case, however, we can’t render the entire Bible while you wait. We have to load it into memory in pieces. Unfortunately, computers can only do one thing at once and while it was busy loading the next chunk of text it needed to display, the scrolling would get clunky. It wouldn’t keep up with your finger motions.

We actually got to the point where it was working pretty well. We were loading text in a separate thread and drawing during otherwise idle times (say, while the graphics processor was busy animating the motion of the text). But then we installed the OS 3 SDK and things fell apart.

We couldn’t afford to take the time to figure out how and why the new version was causing us problems. Suffice to say that the particular functionality we were taking advantage of was rewritten for version 3, and in so doing the handling of touch events changed in ways that may not be significant to some applications but were significant to us.

As a simple example, when you’re tracking a touch event, the system can send you a “cancel” message. This means the phone is ringing or some other event has happened and your program needs to stop what it’s doing and let something more important take over. Well, with version 3 we’d be happily tracking a touch event and suddenly we’d get a “cancel” message. It seems the system was watching the touch events and had decided that the touches weren’t doing anything it cared about, so it told us to cancel our handling of those events. We could’ve ignored the “cancel” message (knowing it was just the OS trying to take over touch handling) but since the “cancel” message also means “really — the phone is ringing — you need to stop right now” we couldn’t afford to make that assumption.

Anyway, the end result was we threw out about six months worth of work and in about a day I coded a replacement that doesn’t depend on a lot of fancy background threads, idle-time drawing, or system touch event handling. The new user interface is simple, practical, and best of all — it’s done.

As if That Wasn’t Enough…

So as we’re recovering from that crisis, the 3GS is released. Now, when you’re developing for the iPhone there are some strict procedures you have to follow to install your program on your phone. Apple wants to make sure all program distribution happens through the App Store, so they limit how many devices you can install your app on outside the App Store. Every time we distribute a beta version (or even one of our own builds we do internally and install on our own phones) we have to identify exactly which phones it will run on. Apple lets us install on no more than 100 devices outside the App Store.

To manage this, developers maintain a list of “unique device ID’s” (UDIDs) in their account on the Apple Web site. Each phone as a UDID that uniquely identifies it. We ask all of our beta testers for their UDIDs and enter those at the Apple site. When we distribute a new build we request a certificate from Apple that contains all the UDIDs we want the program to run on.

So as I was saying, the 3GS was released. Jeff bought one for us to test with. A bunch of our beta testers bought them. So anticipating the release of Beta 2, I started collecting all these new UDIDs so I could update our account on the Apple site and create the new distribution certificate with everyone’s new UDID in it. I got about half way through entering them and the site told me I couldn’t enter any more. It said I had already used my 100 devices.

I only had 82 devices in my list. Turns out when you change someone’s UDID it counts as a new device. I had added 85 devices, deleted 3, and made 15 changes. When you delete a device you don’t get its “slot” back, so from Apple’s perspective the total was 100.

After several email, support forum, and telephone conversations with Apple and other developers, we concluded that we were out of luck. We had to wait until our annual program renewed on July 12. At that time, Apple said our device count would reset. We could delete all our devices and start over. But once we started adding devices, we were stuck with those for a year.

One thing that meant is that we couldn’t have 82 beta testers. We needed to cut the list dramatically. I wanted to get down around 40 testers. That would allow us to add some people over the next year and have room for device upgrades. We should be able to struggle through until Apple figures out that its developers aren’t trying to rip it off; we’re just trying to test our software.

So last week we sent out an email “firing” about half our testers. It wasn’t pleasant, but we had to do it. I think we have a pretty good group left. I can tell they’re good because I disagree with them most of the time. It’s good to be challenged to look at things a new way, and these folks are definitely keeping us honest.

Beta 2 Features

There are some notable features in Beta 2 that the testers will be looking at over the next week or two. These include:

• Easily navigate to the next/previous page, chapter, or verse using simple taps and gestures.
• Rotate between open books and Bibles with a tap or a swipe.
• Hide all controls including the system status bar for full-screen reading, while having instant access to all the controls with a tap.
• Search for words, phrases, and combinations of words using Boolean logic. Limit searches to any passage, book of the Bible, or range of books. Limit searches to only verses you’ve highlighted in a particular color or bookmarked in a particular category.
• Add books from your Laridian account. Purchase books at our Web site and download them directly into PocketBible. Remove books as needed to free up memory (just download and install them any time you need them again).
• Select from any installed font and font sizes from 8 to 72 points.
• Lots of customization options, and many more features….

What’s Next?

There will be at least one more beta version before we submit PocketBible to the App Store. We’ll post an article like this one when Beta 3 is released, and another article when we send PocketBible to the App Store.

Once submitted, it will take a while for Apple to approve it. They might send it back and ask us to make changes. There’s no way of knowing how long that process will take. Sometimes it takes just a few days or a couple weeks. Other times it takes six months by the time you make all the changes they want and submit version after version for review. We don’t anticipate it will take that long but we have no way of knowing.

Any Bibles or books you buy today for any platform will be accessible from PocketBible for iPhone.

I posted the first beta version of PocketBible for our beta testers this afternoon. Hopefully it’s raining somewhere over this Memorial Day weekend so a few of them will get some testing done.

We don’t anticipate this to be a lengthy beta. We’re planning to ship with a short to-do list of features we’ll add in version 1.1 and 1.2 (and beyond). The important thing is to get the application out the door.

We’re currently planning to let you download PocketBible from the App Store at no charge. It will come with the KJV and the ability to create a download account at our site that will let you download all our free resources (ASV, DNT, YLT, etc. Bibles plus several commentaries and devotionals). And of course if you already have a download account at our site you’ll be able to download any existing titles you already own, even if you bought them for a different platform. So the cross-grade charge should be $0. We’re hoping you’ll be so thrilled with the price that you’ll buy more Bibles and reference books to help pay for the cost of development.

I hope to be able to post some quotes from the testers and some indication of our progress over the next few days as we prepare to submit the app to Apple for approval. Then we wait while they give it the once over. We’ll be letting everyone know by email and here at the blog when we see it at the App Store.

Thanks for your patience, and especially thanks to those of you who volunteered but who we had to turn away due to limits on the size of our beta testing group. We think you’re going to be pleased with the results.

	The AMG Concise Introduction to the Bible is for every person who has ever wanted to get a firm grasp on Bible history and Bible meaning, but didn’t have a clue how to do it or where to begin. Where did we come from? How did we get where we are? What is our future? Preeminent among all literature about the big questions of life is the Holy Bible. Nowhere else can one get the insight, perspective and answers that God’s Word provides. Find the answers to the big questions of life through the recounting of Bible history made relevant to today’s readers.
	The AMG Concise Bible Doctrine takes hard to comprehend Biblical doctrine and makes it readily understandable for the contemporary Bible scholar. Includes: How to Interpret the Bible Who God Is The Present Ministry of Jesus Christ The Present Ministry of the Holy Spirit The Works of Angels The Nature of Satan and Demon Activity The Nature of Prophecy The Signs of the Times and the Rapture The Eternal Abode of the Unsaved The Eternal Home of the Saved
	AMG’s Encyclopedia of Bible Facts is more than a trivia book, more than an introduction to the Bible, more than a dictionary, and more than a word almanac of the Bible. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about the Bible and then some. Christianity is an historic religion based on countless verifiable facts. Whether you want to inquire about archaeological findings, New Testament manuscripts, culture, people, prophecies or many, many other areas, you will find what you need here. Over 100,000 fun-filled and interesting Bible facts.
	Reese Chronological Encyclopedia of Christian Biographies is a virtual “Who’s Who” of Christian History form the First Century AD to Today! Reggie White | C.S.Lewis | Martin Luther | John Knox | Bill Bright | Francis Bacon | John Milton | John B Phillips | Amy Carmichael | Frinces Ridley Havergal | Merrill Unger | Oswald Chambers | …and thousands more With over five thousand biographical sketches of Christian leaders spanning twenty centuries, readers will be hard-pressed to find someone of note not mentioned in this volume.

Until June 9, 2009 get all four titles for only $39.99 (33% off the list price)!

Click for Palm | WindowsMobile | Windows | iPhone/iPod Touch

The ESV Study Bible is now available for PocketBible for Windows, WindowsMobile and iPhone (Palm is coming)!

The ESV Study Bible recently received the “Christian Book of the Year” award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. It contains new study notes, maps, illustrations, charts, timelines, articles and introductions. All of this and the ESV text (if you already have the ESV text watch your email for a special discount on purchasing the ESV Study Bible). It’s the equivalent of having a 20 volume Bible resource library all in one study Bible (and all in the palm of your hand if you’re purchasing it for WindowsMobile or iPhone). The ESV was created to help people understand the timeless truths of the Bible in a deeper way. It was created by a team of 95 evangelical Christian scholars and teachers. I’ve been using it for a while now, both in print and in PocketBible and have found it extremely useful. It really is like having a reference library in the palm of your hand! The ESV Study Bible is regularly priced at $29.99. Until the end of April you can purchase it for $23.99 (20% off).

Click your platform to go to the product page and add the study Bible to your order form.
Windows | WindowsMobile | iPhone (subscription required)

If you’ve purchased the ESV in the past, watch your email for a discount off of the ESV Study Bible.

UPDATE 3/28/2009 6:50AM EST…We released the Palm version of the ESV Study Bible last night! Check your email for the announcement.

MyBible 5 is now available.

For additional information, see:

• Laridian Web site: Palm OS Products
• Blog Article: Coming Soon: MyBible 5!

Upgrading from MyBible 3 or 4?

• Simply purchase and install the new MyBible 5 program.
• You don’t need to remove or delete your previous version of MyBible before upgrading to MyBible 5. (In fact, if you do delete the prior version of MyBible, you’ll also erase your notes and bookmarks and highlights, too.)
• You don’t need to re-purchase, re-download, or re-install your current MyBible Bibles and books; these will work just fine with MyBible 5.
• You won’t lose your notes, bookmarks or highlights when you upgrade to MyBible 5. MyBible 5 will automatically convert your notes and bookmarks to the new format used in MyBible 5.

MyBible 5 is complete and will be available soon!

We expect to begin sending upgrade announcements to registered, active customers as early as next week. If you’re a registered owner of MyBible, you can take these steps to ensure that you receive your upgrade announcement in a timely manner:

1. Make sure that email from news@laridian.com makes it through any junk mail filters that you use. If you’re not sure how to do this, we offer some suggestions here.
2. If you have not placed ordered with us within the past 18 months, you may have rolled off of our mailing list. If you’ve not ordered from us in a while, one easy way to be sure that you’re an active customer is to place an order for any of our products, including a free product.

So, what’s new in MyBible 5?

Zoom: MyBible now supports two viewing modes: Zoomed and Unzoomed. Unzoomed is the method provided by previous versions of MyBible. Zoomed is the new method supplied in MyBible 5. Zoomed allows any book to be zoomed to near full-screen size, allowing you to easily switch between seeing several books at a time and only one book at a time. A screenshot of MyBible 5 in zoomed mode is shown below.

Autoscroll: Any Bible or book can be automatically scrolled at a rate of your own choosing. Both books and Bibles scroll by a line at a time.

Enhanced Bookmark Features

• Bookmarks can now be categorized into categories of your choosing.
• The number of bookmarks that you can add to your Bibles has been increased from 250 to over 64,000. (You probably won’t ever hit that limit!)

Enhanced Note Features

• Your notes can now include html tags to apply formatting such as bold and italics.
• The maximum size of each note has been increased from about 2000 to about 10,000 characters, and limits on the number of notes per book of the Bible have been removed.
• Bible references in your personal notes are automatically linked to the specified Bible verse or passage.
• Navigation from note to note has been improved.

Synchronization of Personal Data: Your personal notes and bookmarks are now in a format that can be synchronized with other Laridian products, such as PocketBible for Windows. Any notes and bookmarks from a previous version of MyBible will be automatically converted to the new format. Additional (free!) synchronization software is required and will be released in conjunction with MyBible 5.

A while back we invited some of our blog readers to beta test this new version of MyBible and personal data synchronization. What are our best testers saying about the new MyBible?

I love the zoom feature. Not only does it make having multiple resources open much more useful, navigation is virtually effortless–I just zoom in on the resource I want and use the 5-way navigator on my Palm T|X. I’ve been very happy with every Laridian product I’ve purchased over the years and MyBible 5 is clearly another success.
- Jeffrey S., Rockledge, Florida

Comparing how different translations treat a particular verse or phrase has never been easier. MyBible 5’s Zoom feature enables you to display 3 of your favourite translations full-screen and switch between them with a single click. Time is of the essence in Bible class and sermon prepararion today. I now prefer MB5 over my paper Bible.
- Roland R., Whitby, Ontario Canada

Laradian’s MyBible version 5 is easily the most comprehensive and powerful Bible software that I’ve ever found for the Palm Treo and Windows. I am one VERY happy customer!”
- Bill Z. Hillsboro, Missouri

We’re excited to be able to bring you this upgrade and (finally) data synchronization with PocketBible for Windows! Registered MyBible customers can watch their inbox for an upgrade anouncements. And if you’re not yet using MyBible 5 on your Palm OS device, now’s the time to give it a try!

We’ve been sitting on some big news here at Laridian. We’ve kind of been dropping hints about some titles that are coming out soon, but didn’t want to say anything until we were actually closer to release dates.

Well that time has finally come. Here it is…

We have signed a contract with Thomas Nelson for twenty titles!

I’ll list the titles below, but just want to say how hard we’ve been working on this contract and on the titles. Both things have been happening simultaneously. Watch your email this month for offers for some of the titles on this list. Because of the things that need to happen in the background we won’t be releasing all of the titles at once, but they will be coming out over the next several weeks.

Enjoy!

Commentaries:

• Believer’s Bible Commentary
• MacArthur’s Bible Commentary MacArthur Study Bible Notes
• Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary
• Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee
• With the Word Commentary
• Women’s Study Bible Commentary

Dictionaries:

• Find It Fast In the Bible
• I Never Knew That Was in the Bible
• MacArthur’s Topical Bible
• Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary
• Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
• Nelson’s New Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible
• New Strong’s Greek & Hebrew Lexicons
• Nelson’s Topical Bible
• Vines Complete Expository Dictionary of OT/NT Words
• What Does the Bible Say About…
• Where to Find It In the Bible

Devotionals:

• Grace for the Moment
• On This Day
• Truth for the Day

Zondervan has announced the upcoming release of the NIV Study Bible for Windows Mobile and Palm. We are doing this product in partnership with Zondervan. It will include our Windows Mobile and Palm readers (PocketBible and MyBible) plus the option of a one-year subscription to iPocketBible.com for iPhone and iPod Touch users.

The NIV Study Bible has undergone a 25% revision to its over 20,000 in-text study notes. It also includes a comprehensive topical index. Zondervan will be selling a CD-ROM version of the product through Christian bookstores and other retail establishments. Laridian will sell it through its Web site. The release is slated to correspond to a reprint of the print edition of the NIV Study Bible coming out this fall.

We are pleased to be able to work with publishers during this phase of a new release. The timing allows both the print and electronic products to benefit from the promotion of the other and reduces questions about the availability of each. Forward-thinking publishers are beginning to do this more and more — thinking about electronic rights at the same time they’re releasing major new reference works in print. Zondervan is among that group.

We don’t have further details such as pricing at this time. We just wanted to let you know about it as soon as we could. You should see this product in September from us, and in Christian bookstores for the Christmas season.

As you may have heard, Tyndale recently announced their plans to publish the NLT Study Bible based on the New Living Translation (second edition). The study Bible will have almost 26,000 notes on various verses. It will include maps, charts, illustrations and a built in word-study system. It also has introduction notes on ten major sections of the Bible, personality profiles and more in-depth articles on places and topics.

Laridian is happy to announce that we have been chosen by Tyndale to be one of the first Bible software companies releasing the electronic version of the study Bible simultaneously with the release of the print edition (slated for the fall of 2008). The collection will include the NLT(se), NLT Study Bible Notes and cross references, two volumes of the Cornerstone Biblical Commentary Series (Matthew/Mark & Romans/Galatians), the Tyndale Concise Bible Commentary, the Tyndale Bible Dictionary, the One Year Bible and One Year Bible Companion, One Year with Jesus and One Year Walk with God devotionals. Tyndale will be placing this bundle in Christian retail outlets. Laridian will be adding all these titles (and some others) to our existing product line.

These titles will be available for PocketBible for Windows, PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, iPocketBible for iPhone and iPod Touch, MyBible for Palm and the NLT(se) for the Noah reader for Blackberry (already available).

Bookstore representatives attending the ICRS convention in Orlando this past week were treated to a pre-release copy of the NLT Study Bible collection.

Laridian and Tyndale have enjoyed a close relationship over the past ten years of Laridian’s existence and we at Laridian are extremely excited to be working so closely with Tyndale on this project.

Stay tuned for this release in the Fall. Also, stay tuned for some other exciting news about additional titles being released over the next month or so. We’ve been working hard and it’s been hard to keep it all quiet. You’re going to really like what we’ve been working on!

It’s about time I got around to writing an article about PocketBible 4. It’s been a busy week.

On Tuesday we released an upgrade for both PocketBible for Pocket PC and PocketBible for Windows Mobile Smartphone. In order to reduce confusion about whether you have a Smartphone, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Standard, or Windows Mobile Professional device, we put both programs into one installer and called it PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile. Regardless of the type of Windows Mobile device you have, this product should work for you.

PocketBible for Windows Mobile should work on all Pocket PC’s back to Pocket PC 2000, including PocketPC 2002, 2003, and 2003SE. It works on the new Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. It works on the old Windows Mobile Smartphone 2002 and 2003. It works on any device that calls itself Windows Mobile Classic, Standard, or Professional.

Our excitement over reducing the confusion was short-lived. The problem now is that since the feature set is different between the two programs (PocketBible 4 for Pocket PC has a few more features than PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile Smartphone, to use the older device names), you all are looking at the features of one and deciding that’s what you want, then you’re confused when you install to your device only to discover you have a different feature set. All I can say is read carefully.

Jeff has written a good article on how to tell the difference between the different devices. It’s really quite simple: Just ask yourself, “Does my device have a touch-screen?” and “Is my device a phone?” Based on those answers, here’s what you have:

• Has a touchscreen, no phone: Windows Mobile Classic (it’s a Pocket PC)
• Has a touchscreen, is a phone: Windows Mobile Professional (it’s a Pocket PC Phone Edition)
• No touchscreen, but it is a phone: Windows Mobile Standard (it’s a Windows Mobile Smartphone)
• No touchscreen, no phone: Ummm… it’s a BlackBerry without a service plan? An iPod? A pencil?

You can tell which version of PocketBible is going to be installed on your device based on whether or not it has a touchscreen. If it has a touchscreen, you’ll get “PocketBible for Windows Mobile Classic/Professional/Pocket PC”. This is the one with the most features. If you don’t have a touchscreen you’ll get “PocketBible for Windows Mobile Smartphone”. This is the one that could be argued is the most improved. The previous version only let you view Bibles and didn’t have the ability to do notes, highlights, or bookmarks. It was pretty basic. The new version gives you access to commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, and all the rest of our books. Plus it has notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress.

The most common problems we’re seeing are mostly questions related to ordering and installing. For example: “Will PocketBible 4 work with my existing books or do I need to re-purchase or update them?” If you’re upgrading from PocketBible 3, there’s no need to update your books. If you’re upgrading from PocketBible 2 you don’t need to re-purchase your books but you do need to update them. In both cases there are articles in our Knowledgebase to help you upgrade.

We’re hoping to post some videos of PocketBible 4 both as marketing and tutorial tools. I think if you can see features like the customizable toolbar and maximized windows in action it will give you a better idea of how these can improve your Bible study experience.

Finally, a few of you have written to say you didn’t get our upgrade offer. We’ve identified a few thousand customers that did not get our initial email and we’ll be re-sending to those customers on Tuesday. In the meantime, if you want to upgrade just contact tech support to get the appropriate priority code. You can reach tech support through our Web site.

With the recent release of PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, we have also released the PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider. This synchronization provider allows data synchronization between PocketBible for Windows and PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, including Windows Mobile Classic (Pocket PC), Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) and Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC Phone).

(This synchronization provider also supports PocketBible 3 for Pocket PC.)

Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) owners not already using PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile will need to upgrade to PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile in order to take advantage of these synchronization features.

The PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider is free. Visit the Synchronization Providers product information page for additional details.

Note to users of the PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider

The PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider is an update and replacement to the now obsolete PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider. If you have previously installed the PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider, you can continue to use this synchronization provider. In fact, the PocketBible for Pocket PC synchronization provider will synchronize data with a Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone) device; it will just refer to that device as a Pocket PC.

If and when you choose to update to the newer PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider, then you should first remove / uninstall the PocketBible for Pocket PC Synchronization Provider before you install the PocketBible for Windows Mobile Synchronization Provider.

As promised, we have released three new PocketBible library collections featuring our PocketBible for Windows program and a selection of our best-selling Bibles and books. Prices range from $49.99 to $199.99 but save you 60% or more over purchasing the same items separately. They are available on CD-ROM, USB Flash drive or for immediate download.

If you’re still shopping for Christmas gifts, you can view more suggestions from Laridian here.