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.

We’ve received a lot of comments here in the blog and via email about Android. You obviously are interested in a version of PocketBible for Android and that is exciting. We’re interested in a version of PocketBible for Android, too.

The way we see it there are six important mobile platforms right now:

1. iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad
2. Android
3. Blackberry
4. webOS
5. Windows Phone 7
6. Symbian

We have a product for iPhone. It has rather quickly become our flagship product, given the demise of both the Palm and Windows Mobile operating systems. (Both Palm and Microsoft have abandoned their legacy operating systems in favor of webOS and Windows Phone 7, respectively. Old apps won’t run on these new platforms.)

We have a partnership with BEIKS on the Blackberry platform. It’s a great platform but it tends to be more of an enterprise device rather than a consumer device and as a result the demand for third-party software, especially in our niche, is less than what you might expect based on the size of its market.

We have a partnership with Bits of God Software on webOS. We decided not to do our own development for this platform because its market share is relatively small and it does not support traditional programming languages like C++ and Java that would allow us to leverage our existing code.

Windows Phone 7 is a big TBD. Obviously there are zero devices right now and it has zero market share. We include it in the list only because it’s Microsoft, so we anticipate it will be a player. In the meantime we continue to support and release new content for PocketBible for the old/current Windows Mobile operating system

Symbian has problems we’ve addressed before here in the blog. It’s very difficult to successfully market a Symbian product. We’ve attended more than one Nokia/Symbian developer’s conference. We know what’s involved. The problem is not developing, it’s selling. We don’t have any plan to do a Symbian product.

That leaves Android. I can tell you now that we intend to develop a version of PocketBible for Android. But we think there’s more you need to know to understand where we’re coming from.

Sometimes I think people get the impression that we’re bigger than we are. On the one hand, that’s good, because it implies that we’re providing customer service at a level you expect from a bigger company, but on the other hand it can lead to unfounded expectations.

When it comes to product development, there’s just me and Jeff Wheeler here. We have some talented part-time employees who, while they’re skilled at what they do, only add up to the equivalent of a little over one more person. We use some outside contractors for content development (Bibles and reference books). That’s it. Needless to say, that limits what we can do.

Jeff and I used to work at Parsons Technology. I wrote the original version of QuickVerse and brought it to Parsons in 1988. Jeff and I had previously worked together and I hired him in to work at Parsons 1989. He eventually took over QuickVerse development and was the lead programmer for QuickVerse for Windows.

From about 1994 until 1998 when Jeff and I left, he had 10-12 programmers working for him. Most of those were working on QuickVerse. There was a similarly sized group of editors who created new content (Bibles and reference books) for QuickVerse. I had a small marketing group (two people) and a sales group (three or four people). All told there were about 30-35 people just in the Church Software Division. In addition to those we had access to telemarketing, direct sales, support, production and shipping, human resources, accounting, and other departments which we shared with the rest of the company. At our peak in the late 90’s Parsons had about 1200 total employees and the Church Software Division was about 10%-15% of the company’s annual sales. So you could argue that we supported about 120-180 employees.

You can do a lot with 180 people. If something new comes along, you can put a small team on it and get it done. You can’t do the same with three people.

In some respects this doesn’t bother us. We left Parsons Technology in order to be small. (See this article from Christian Computing Magazine which appeared on an old version of our Web site in 2001.) We’ve been big. We know what that’s like. We choose to be small. We enjoy what we do and wouldn’t have it any other way. But realistically, it affects what we can get done in a given period of time. We understand that.

We actually “started working” on an Android version of PocketBible a while back. But then Apple announced the iPad. We felt it was important to make sure that our existing PocketBible app would work well on the iPad. At first we were assured that would not be a problem (all well-behaved iPhone apps work on the iPad) but when we researched it further we realized we’d need to make some changes to optimize our performance on the iPad. We both dropped what we were doing and started work toward getting an iPad-aware version of PocketBible out the door.

This has proven to be challenging. We realized in order to take advantage of the cool new features of the iPad we’d have to re-architect the PocketBible user interface to better take advantage of the larger screen. At the same time, when we’re done the same code needs to run on the iPhone. So all of this has to be done carefully. (You’re going to love the iPad app by the way.)

So when I say “we intend to develop PocketBible for Android” you need to understand that doesn’t mean it will be done next month. It might not even be started by next month.

Furthermore, when we went from developing for Palm OS and Windows Mobile to developing for iPhone, we were able to bring along a lot of code from our previous projects because the iPhone “understands” the language in which it is written. We cannot run any of our existing code on Android. So we’ll be starting from scratch.

To put this in perspective, it took us about a year to release the first version of PocketBible for iPhone when we started with our existing code. It’s been almost two years now and we’re almost (not quite) done implementing all the features of our Windows Mobile app for the iPhone.

For Android we’re starting from nothing. I can’t say at this point how long it will take to develop PocketBible for Android. It’s probably not the case that it will take the year it took for the iPhone program plus the time to write the code we borrowed from our older programs. But at this point I can’t say.

While we are saying we intend to develop for Android, you also have to understand that we have lots of other requests and ideas on our to-do lists. Our Memorize! users would really like to see that app on the iPhone. Our PrayerPartner users are going to want us to port it to the iPad. So even once we start on Android, it might not be the only thing we’re doing.

This all helps explain why we don’t like to talk about what we may or may not do in the future. If we had told you on the day we started working on Android that we were working on Android, we’d have to tell you shortly after that that we had abandoned our work on Android to work on iPad. And now we’re telling you we “intend” to do an Android version but the schedule is unknowable. This won’t be a problem for those of you who are familiar with software development and understand what all is involved, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with software development you’ll probably get the wrong idea about the schedule — either thinking it will take us longer than it will or that it will be done sooner than is physically possible.

For a small company like ours these are exciting times. Back when Palm OS and Windows Mobile ruled the mobile space, we were riding pretty high. Things have changed quickly, and we’re working on responding to the changes. Thanks for sticking with us. We hope you’ll continue to do so.

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.

If you’re on Facebook, you can become a fan of PocketBible. Just sign up here: www.facebook.com/PocketBible. PocketBible fans on Facebook sometimes receive special offers and are among the first to receive our announcements. Plus, by being a fan, you share your appreciation of the Bible and PocketBible with your Facebook friends in a non-threatening way.

If you Twitter, you can follow us at www.twitter.com/PocketBible. Our official tweats sometimes include special offers, sometimes announcements, and occasionally some “insider” information. Plus, when you think we say something interesting, you can retweat to let your followers know.

Additionally, you can follow some of our staff via their personal accounts for some more insight into what we are working on (or our quirky opinions about life). The PocketBible Twitter account follows some of our staff, so you can easily find us from the PocketBible page at Twitter. Just click the “following” link.

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.

Apple has approved the first maintenance release for PocketBible. You’ll be happy to see synchronization can actually be turned on and off now. When it’s turned off, you can synchronize all your open Bibles and commentaries to any verse by tapping-and-holding on the verse, then selecting “Sync To…” from the context menu. When it’s turned on (Menu > Settings > Synchronization), all your open Bibles and commentaries should track to the active Bible.

A related problem came up when you were using a Bible with Strong’s numbers. Going to the dictionary for a particular number would show you the correct entry in your preferred Strong’s dictionary, but if you had other Strong’s dictionaries open they would not move to the new entry. This is fixed now so you could have several Strong’s dictionaries open and they’ll all go to the right entry (as long as synchronization is turned on in the Settings menu.

After the nightmare of the first 24 hours after PocketBible shipped, we’ve updated the network error reporting to include more detail than the classic “(null) (null) Customer ID (null)” message that was so informative in the last version.

We’re currently working on the note feature. That will be the next update. I don’t have a time-frame yet but it’s coming along nicely. There are also a couple more little bug fixes that will be rolled into that version.

Fixes in 1.0.1

• Synchronization was effectively always on. Fixed so it honors the setting in the menu.
• Once zoomed for link disambiguation, it was possible to choose something from the menu or tap the title bar and confuse the app about the zoom state of the text. Fixed so that any interaction with the program resets the zoom state.
• Following a link to a Strong’s number would display the preferred (or default) Strong’s dictionary, but other Strong’s dictionaries would not follow when synchronization was on. Fixed so all sync links to dictionaries result in proper synchronization.
• Registering an email address containing a + (plus sign) failed. Probably other special characters would fail, too. Fixed to use proper URL encoding.
• Significantly beefed up the error handling while communicating with the server to register new users, send login credentials, and download your books. Eliminated the now-famous “(null)(null) Customer ID (null)” message that was so informative.
• Changing from “reference only” search results to one of the results with excerpts would result in a correct results list but some excerpts missing. Fixed to always check the selected results format and always reformat each result.
• Fixed typos in Welcome and Help documents. (These are downloadable now using Add/Remove Books.)
• Built with book reader engine 1.066 which contains support for a new Bible translation.

We just sent out an email to current customers offering 20% off all iPhone Bibles and books. You can use priority code PBEL99 through the end of the month to save 20% on all Bibles and reference books for iPhone. Just go to www.laridian.com, select the iPhone site, then select Order Form from the upper right corner of the screen. Select the books you want to order and enter PBEL99 in the priority code field at the bottom of the order form.

iPocketBible.com Subscribers: Wait for Your Email Before Ordering

If you’ve been a monthly or annual subscriber to iPocketBible.com, you’re entitled to an additional 10% discount for a total of 30% off any PocketBible for iPhone Bible or book. Details are in the email you should receive later today.

Speaking of iPocketBible.com, subscriptions are now free. If you already have a monthly subscription, you’ve already made your final payment and won’t be charged again this month. If you have an annual subscription, you will continue to have access to the service beyond the end of your subscription.

“Donating” to Laridian

Many of you have asked if there is a way to donate to Laridian as a way of saying “thanks” for making PocketBible for iPhone free. We’re truly humbled by the suggestion and appreciate your generosity. However, we don’t want to give the impression that we’re a non-profit, charitable organization as some of our competitors do, so we’ve decided not to put a “donate button” at the site.

However, if you’d like to say “thanks” you can do so by simply not using the priority code when you place your order. It doesn’t have the same feel-good vibe as a “donate button” but the effect is the same. And we’ll get the message. Again, we’re really moved by your response to our efforts.

Don’t Have an iPhone?

You can still take advantage of this offer. First, verify the book you want to purchase is available for your particular platform (Windows Mobile, Windows desktop, Blackberry, or Palm OS) by going to the appropriate area of our site and checking the order form. Then go to the iPhone area of our site and place your order using the priority code. If you order a book or Bible for the iPhone that is available for your platform, you’ll be able to download that version through your download account. It’s a little tricky, yes, but we don’t mind. In fact we encourage it!

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.

MotionApps and Palm have both released updates for the Pre to address compatibility issues. Further details can be found here: Classic v1.1 release is now complete.

Laridian’s MyBible 5, DailyReader, Memorize! and CountEm are all Classic Certified.

Actually, it should be “And the winners are….” We had so many great responses that we decided to choose three winners from each site. If you are one of the winners please let us know if you would like your library on CD or USB (both include the ability to download the files from the web site). Also, please make sure that we have your correct mailing address on your account (you’ll need to log into your account on our web site to make sure we have all your information).

The winner in each category will receive the Gold Library, the runner up, the Silver Library and the second runner up the Bronze Library.

Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry letting us know how you use PocketBible. This was a lot of fun to read and a great encouragement to all of us here at Laridian!

So…on to the winners!
(more…)

Here on the eve of the launch of the Palm Pre, we are pleased to announce that all four of our Palm OS programs have been Classic Certified by MotionApps. MyBible 5, DailyReader, Memorize! and CountEm are all Classic Certified. The Classic Certified Logo serves as a seal of approval letting you know that you can use the Classic Certified application with confidence.

While we have worked with MotionApps to obtain Classic Certification, we have not yet seen a Pre or experienced our products running in Classic. While we expect most of our product features to “just work”, there may be some differences or issues.
For instance, since the Pre does not use the familiar Palm HotSync, installation to the Pre for use within Classic is different. Likewise, data synchronization with PocketBible for Windows may not be supported or may require some extra effort on your part.

Since these products are designed for the Palm Operating System, some issues related to using our products under Classic may not be addressed.

In order to support installation to the Pre, we are now  providing our Palm OS products in “.zip” format, in addition to the Windows Setup program and “.sit” formats that we have previously supplied. The .zip format allows anyone easy access to the Palm “.prc” and “.pdb” files that are installed to a device. (In fact, Windows power users may prefer the zip file and manual install when installing to an older Palm OS device as well.)

MyBible, DailyReader, Memorize! and CountEm were all updated earlier this afternoon to include the Classic certification. If you’ve previously downloaded our programs, you may want to download the updated versions made available earlier this afternoon.

Over the next few days, we’ll be updating our Web site with additional information on using and installing our programs with the Pre. Watch www.laridian.com/palm for details. And who knows, we may write another blog article or two.

Registered owners of MyBible 5, DailyReader, Memorize! and CountEm may download the updated, Classic Certified versions without cost. If you enjoy these programs in Classic, please consider buying additional Laridian content to use on your Pre.

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.

Laridian is announcing our first “How Do You Use PocketBible” contest. (If you use MyBible or iPocketBible or Noah…feel free to enter as well, it’s just easier to say “PocketBible” instead of “PocketBible, MyBible, iPocketBible and/or Noah.”) It’s simple to enter and you can enter three different places (but you can only win once).

Each winner will receive PocketBible for Windows Gold Edition on a USB drive. That’s a $199.99 prize! You can enter at all three places, but you can only win once.

Blog site: Leave a comment right here on this blog post (we will not read any entries sent via email). Laridian staff will go through and pick our favorite as the winner. We will only read the first entry from each person, so it will not help you to post more than once…just make your first post really good!

Facebook: Our fans on Facebook can leave a comment on our wall. The winner on Facebook will be the person with the most “Like” clicks on their comment (so get your friends to vote for your post). This one will be more difficult than the blog site as there is a restriction to the number of characters you may use (Facebook restriction, not a Laridian restriction). Again…only the first comment will count (if you don’t like your comment, delete it and comment again). You will not win if there is more than one comment from your account.
Facebook is not letting up click “Like” when people post to the fan page. Laridian staff will pick the winner for Facebook as well as for Twitter and the blog. Sorry for the confusion.
Update (6May09): Facebook is now allowing you to click the “Like” link under the wall post on the PocketBible fan site, so…for now…we are going back to the original idea. You pick the winner on Facebook by telling us who’s post you like. Click away!

Twitter: This will be the most difficult. Be creative! Twitter PocketBible with your 140 character description of how you use PocketBible. Laridian staff will pick our favorite. And like the blog site and Facebook, we will only read the first Tweet from each person…so make it good.

We’re excited to see the different ways that people are using PocketBible. So join the fun! You could win $199.99 worth of Bible software on a USB drive!

Enter by May 22, 2009. We will announce the winners at the end of May.

Monday morning (April 20th) between 1 AM and 5 AM EDT, we will be performing maintenance on one of our servers.

During that time we will temporarily take down our blog, support site and list server.

If all goes according to plan, the server will be back up before the start of the business day on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Maybe you don’t Facebook, but you Twitter. Maybe you Facebook and Twitter. Maybe you just can’t get enough of Laridian and PocketBible (and/or iPocketBible, MyBible and Noah). If any of this describes you you’ll be happy to know that you can now follow us on Twitter too!

Click the image to go to our Twitter page and start following us.

Are you on Facebook? Are you a fan of PocketBible (or iPocketBible or MyBible or Noah)? If you can say “Yes!” or even “Sort of…” to both of those we have news for you. PocketBible has a fan page on Facebook! Let all your friends know that you are a fan of PocketBible (or one of its siblings) by joining our fan page today! Who knows you might even find a special offer now and then just for our fans.

Click the Facebook icon to go right to our fan page.

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.

We just released two titles that will probably not be making the email schedule over the next couple of months, but I wanted to let you know about them anyway.

The NIV Study Bible Notes (2008 edition) for PocketBible for Windows
	Yes, it is finally available for PocketBible for Windows thanks to our friends over at Zondervan. You can now have the NIV Study Bible Notes on your Windows Desktop as well as your Windows Mobile, Palm or iPhone. If you have already purchased the NIV Study Bible Notes (2008 edition) for a different Laridian platform and you own PocketBible for Windows then this version will automatically be added to your download page. If you haven’t yet purchased either the NIVSBN or PocketBible for Windows you can click the link below and get the program for $26.99 (regularly $29.99) and the notes for $11.99 (regularly $14.99). To purchase the NIV Study Bible Notes (2008 edition) for Windows click here.
IVP New Testament Commentary: Mark
	I know some of you have been waiting for this one for a while. It is available by itself or as part of the complete 20 vol collection. If you have purchased the complete collection previously you simply need to download the updated file from you download page. We are now offering Mark (by itself) at an introductory price of $7.99. If you would like to purchase the complete set of commentaries click the platform link below to receive a 10% discount. To purchase IVP NT Commentary: Mark by itself for $7.99 click your preferred platform: Windows | Windows Mobile | iPhone (subscription based) To purchase the complete IVP NT Commentary set for $116.99 (regularly $129.99) click your preferred platform: Windows | Windows Mobile | iPhone (subscription based)

These discounts are available to you if you use priority code 090123BLG (already built into the links).
This priority code expires 2/23/09!

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!