This blog is new. But rather than waste a bunch of words welcoming you to our new blog, let’s just get down to business and talk about some products that are going to be coming out soon.
Normally we don’t talk about what may or may not be under development, but I don’t think it will hurt anything to mention these. Don’t bother writing to ask when they’ll be released or what the status is. They’ll be released when they’re done.
Nuevo Versión Internacional
One of our most frequent requests is for a Spanish Bible. We’re working on a couple Spanish translations right now for our PocketBible program for Windows Mobile Pocket PC. The first one you’ll see is the NVI, which is from the same people who translated the NIV in English.
PocketBible is being updated to accommodate Spanish Bible book names everywhere English names are currently used. So your search results and any links within the Spanish Bible will use names like “Génesis”, “Éxodo”, and “Levítico”.
Like all our Bibles, the NVI will include the Prefacio and Glosario sections, as well as the Tabla de Pesas, Medidas y Monedas. Words in the Bible text that are discussed in the Glosario will be hyperlinked to the appropriate entry.
Since Bible bookmarks and notes in PocketBible are “universal” your existing bookmarks and notes will appear in the NVI. Sorry, we can’t translate them to Spanish for you, but if you’re using the NVI we figure you can handle that.
New American Bible
Another frequent request is the New American (Catholic) Bible. We’ve been working on this for quite some time. The text wasn’t in very good shape when we got it, so we’ve put a lot of time into cleaning it up.
You’ll see the NAB first in PocketBible for Windows Mobile. One of the interesting things about the NAB is that in many places the verses are “scrambled”. For example, as you’re reading along in Isaiah 14, you’ll find two verses from chapter 8 (vss 21 and 22) inserted in the middle of 14:25. Then in chapter 40 you’ll see 41:6,7 inserted after 40:20.
The NAB contains those books known among Protestants as the Apocrypha or deuterocannonical books. We’ve published the NRSV, which also contains these books, so they don’t generally present a problem to PocketBible. However, the NAB integrates a couple of them into other books. So the NAB version of Daniel contains the book the NRSV calls “Azariah” as Daniel 3:24-90. Daniel 3:25 in the NRSV is thus Daniel 3:91. The NRSV books of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon are chapters 13 and 14 of Daniel in the NAB.
Because PocketBible is able to synchronize scrolling between Bibles and transfer your notes and bookmarks to other Bibles, all of these idiosyncrasies (and there are hundreds of them) have to be identified and built into our program. So when you’re scrolling the NAB and NIV side-by-side in PocketBible you’ll always see the right verse, even if the verse number is different. As an exercise for the reader, try that with the other Bible software available for Pocket PC. I think you’ll be surprised. (In fact, try it in your Windows desktop Bible software and you may be surprised there as well.)
NET Bible
Finally, the last new product I want to mention is the NET Bible. This Bible is known for its extensive notes, which will all be included in the PocketBible version of the NET Bible.
We haven’t announced any release dates, nor our specific plans for releasing these Bibles on any platform other than Pocket PC. We just thought you’d enjoy finding out about them now that we have this cool new blog as a vehicle to communicate with you.
Hi Craig. I’ve used MB for many years now. However, due to more flexibility with my company systems, I am thinking I may move some of my daily use software to an iPod platform to take advantage of the expanding products as well. I especially like the ESV and DailyReader. Will these be available on the iPod any time soon? Thanks for your great products!
The iPod isn’t really a general computing platform like Palm and Pocket PC. It can play MP3′s and it hasa limited ability to display text files with limited hyperlinking. We take advantage of these features to give you our NLT iPocketBible product.
The text of the NLT is broken up into pieces that are no bigger than the 4K limit of the iPod, and since you can only have 1000 files, that means you can’t have the entire NLT Bible text on your iPod at any one time.
We may do other titles in a similar way on the iPod but it’s not something you can use as a general replacement for a PDA. It’s more of a glorified MP3 player, but it’s not very glorious once you move beyond just playing MP3′s.
Craig
I love your My Bible products on my Palm. I have been using them for years. I do have a request. Could you port your products over to XP and/or linux. I believe you would find a great market out there. Over the past several years laptops have increasing become less costly and more useful. Also, some of us baby boomers can’t see as well and need larger screens and font sizes!
Excellent job on PB esp the new version. Really enjoy using it. Agree with comment above about community pricing of libronix and this may be a way of finding and funding dev of new products for laridian.
Notice you have both NIV and TNIV, are there any plans of producing the NIrV, which would be ideal for using with both children/youth and also work with international students.
Thanks for all your great work!
Last I checked the NIrV wasn’t available in the US, but it’s been a while. There’s not really any demand for it.
Craig
My Pastor reads from the Contemporary English Version (CEV)and I have come to enjoy the translation. When I found Laridian I was very hopeful that this version would be available and it is not. I am hoping that this will be avaiable in the near future. Are there any plans for this bible version?
Gaylotta
Craig,
Did you notice that Crosswire Open Source Project is working on Greek and Hebrew flashcards for mobile phones?
Roger
No.
Any word on NET Bible yet? It’s been 10 months. I’ve gotton so frustrated with O****T***’s frequent missing and broken notes, I’ve given up on using it.
I’m not surprised that “O****T***” has problems with their version of the NET Bible. It’s one of the most challenging texts we’ve ever faced. It’s a real mess. We’re persuing a plan that should speed this along, but there’s no fixed ship date in what’s turned out to be our most frustrating Bible ever.
This is why we don’t talk about products before they’re ready to ship. Lesson learned (again).
I too would like to put in my thanks to you all for your hard work over the years. I started with the programme I think when it first came available, and have kept up with it and grown with it in content and in faith over the years. That being said, Craig, I believe you underestimate your crowd here, and even if you had to charge us large dollars (50-60 range) for Greek or Hebrew texts, we (I) would be gratefully willing to pay it.
As a traveling speaker, I find I can almost do without my laptop and use my PPC for everything, except… Without being able to cheque my Greek and Hebrew, my confidence in what I say is not up to snuff and so I still drag around my laptop with PCStudyBible, or if I am electrically challenged where I am going (using a solar charger with the PPC is expedient, with the laptop is painful), the texts themselves. Please, I reread through the entire thread here, and know the full arguments, but please have mercy on us, and produce the Hebrew and Greek.
Yours ever hopeful,
Jeff Hamilton
As an English user of Laridian products, I wonder when you are going to offer the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)?
We’ve been offering the NRSV for PocketBible for almost ten years.
We don’t have it for MyBible because it includes the apocrypha and MyBible wasn’t written to accommodate the apocrypha.
I have all the major versions like NIV, NASB, NKJV, NLT. Would really love to have NRSV for MyBible. Any remote plan at all to have NRSV for MyBible?
We haven’t announced any plans with respect to the NRSV and MyBible.
Comments like “MyBible wasn’t written to accommodate …” make me wonder if MyBible is a real product for laridian anymore. They wrote the program and should be able to say something like “MyBible doesn’t accommodate … yet but we are working on it” There is a certain finality to the way the above comment was written that makes me sad/mad/frustrated.
I used MyBible for years on a Palm III and Sony Clie. I switched to the PPC (Dell v51) and stayed with Laridian. I re-bought all of the works I had on my Palm. I absolutely hated the PPC version of the software but allowed them to talk me into keeping it when I asked for my money back. I figured it was better than nothing.
I just switched back to Palm, primarily for MyBible. It would be a real shame to allow the product to simply die. I too would like to see the NRSV + Apocrypha. The likelihood of MyBible 5.0, though feels slim.
If I am wrong, please say so. I would love to have something to hope for…
I can’t find the comment to which you’re referring when you say, “MyBible wasn’t written to accommodate…” so I can’t respond to your particular concern but I can clarify your understanding of the state of MyBible.
First, MyBible was not written by Laridian, despite your statement to the contrary. It was written by David Fedor, who at the time was in developer relations at Palm. We acquired the marketing rights and only recently have acquired full rights to the program. You should note that the blog post to which you’re replying is a year and a half old, so when I say in one of the comments above that we don’t have control over its development, that statement is no longer true.
Second there are many things that MyBible was not written to accommodate. It can’t handle Bibles that contain the apocrypha. It can’t handle Greek and Hebrew. It has limits on the size of notes and the number of bookmarks it can store. Sure, these are features that we can now work on (now that we have full access to the code) but some of them are so tightly woven into the code that it’s non-trivial to fix them.
While all this has been going on, the Palm operating system has stagnated and sales of Palm devices has slowed to a trickle. There doesn’t appear to be anything significant planned by Palm for 2008. We’re currently working on a MyBible update to support synchronization with our desktop program, but we’re working with a shrinking audience.
We continue to ship new content for the Palm. We just released some new devotionals, and we’ve released new Bible reference materials in the last 6 months. We aren’t “allowing the product to simply die” as you fear, but you have to understand that Palm isn’t the same platform as when you left it for PPC.
So to summarize, we have someone working full-time on MyBible right now. We haven’t made any announcements related to a MyBible 5, but we have been talking here on the blog about the synchronization update for several weeks. We don’t consider MyBible a dead product at all. It still represents an appropriate percentage of our sales. We’re as frustrated as you probably are with the lack of innovation going on at Palm, and with the move toward smartphones that have smaller screens, less memory, less third-party software capability, and less powerful processors than the PDAs that got us into this business.
Hope this helps.
I really appreciate the reply. Someone once said that you should never write a note when you are frustrated. That would have been wise advice had I headed it
I recognize that the Palm platform is loosing ground and even Palm themselves have pretty much lost interest. I bought a T|X knowing that it would probably be the last device that they produced. I do truly understand where you are at. Selfishly, it is still frustrating.
I do hope you will consider a 5.0 release and that you will consider adding support for the NRSV and apocrypha. Baring that the NRSV w/o the apocrypha would be a help. The note I was referring to was the one you wrote on 8/22/07.
I think the next device I buy will probably be an Android based phone with lots of memory and horsepower. That is only a year or so out so you may want to start coding now
God Bless
Paul