Stephen J.
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Posts by Stephen J.
Olive Tree at Bible Tech 2008
January 16, 2008
by Stephen J.
in Uncategorized
We are very excited to be attending and presenting at this year’s Bible Technology Conference in Seattle, WA on January 25th and 26th. Bible Tech 2008 is a conference that will explore the intersection of Bible and technology. If you are passionate about the Bible and technology or just want to meet some of the people working in this field we would encourage you to attend Bible Tech 2008. You can find out more information here.
Olive Tree will be giving two presentations at this years Bible Tech. The President and CEO of Olive Tree (Drew Haninger) will talking about “Electronic Publishing and Bible Software in a Fast-Moving Mobile Landscape.” The handheld mobile technology including PDA’s, Smartphones, and cell phones is in constant motion with the rapidly increasing number of platforms on the market. How does a publisher of Biblical content keep up? How do they decide which platforms are worth supporting now, and which ones it would be better to just wait and see how they mature? For mobile electronic publishers today there is a potential quagmire of platforms, operating systems, screen sizes, user interface paradigms, software delivery methods, and publisher permissions. Mr. Haninger will touch on some of the different methods of approaching this rapidly changing market. In addition, he will present a quick overview of many handheld technologies and platforms such as Palm, Pocket PC, Smartphone, Blackberry, iPod, iPhone, etc.
I will also be presenting at this years Bible Tech. My talk is on “The Challenges and Future of Bible Software in a Mobile World”. Developing Bible Software for mobile devices is a challenging endeavor. Much of the development time is spent on the logistics of developing for mobile devices. I will discuss many of these challenges and offer some insight for how to address some of these challenges. Mobile technology is moving forward at a frenzied pace. What does the future have in store for Bible software in the mobile world? Will these same challenges be around in five or ten years?
We are excited to meet and talk with others in the area of Bible and technology. We hope to see you there. If you come to Bible Tech 2008 please come and find myself or Drew. We would love to talk with you about mobile Bible software.
Stephen
Olive Tree at ETS/SBL 2007
November 21, 2007
by Stephen J.
in Uncategorized
We are back from the national conferences for ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) and SBL (Society of Biblical Literature). We had a great time at both of these conferences.
The highlight of the conference for me was meeting and talking with Olive Tree users. We had a great response to the early release of the Unicode Hebrew with BDB. The Unicode Hebrew will be available on our web site within a few weeks. I upgraded numorous people to the new Unicode Hebrew. It was fun seeing their excitement when they saw how amazing the new Hebrew looks! We got many oohs and ahhs over the new Unicode Hebrew. For more information on the Unicode Hebrew you can read these blog articles http://www.olivetreeblog.com/2007/08/02/hebrew-and-aramaic-developments/ and http://www.olivetreeblog.com/2007/08/29/unicode-on-palm/.
While at the conferences we talked with many publishers about electronic publication of their content in the Olive Tree format. We made some good contacts and started the ball rolling on a number of projects.
The most common question we got was, “Do/Will you support the iPhone?”. In February Apple will be releasing a development kit for developing native iPhone applications. Once this development kit is available we will be able to better investigate what will be involved in porting the BibleReader to the iPhone. After we have better information about porting the BibleReader to the iPhone we will make a decision about supporting the iPhone.
Here is a picture of myself, Drayton, and Drew in the Olive Tree booth at SBL. I am on the left, Drayton is in the middle, and Drew is on the right.
For those of you state side, have a great Thanksgiving Holiday!
-Stephen
Early Release of Unicode HMT Available at ETS/SBL
November 12, 2007
by Stephen J.
in Uncategorized
This week we are headed to beautiful San Diego, CA for the Evangelical Theological Society’s (ETS) national conference and for the Society of Biblical Literature’s (SBL) national conference. We would love for you to come by our booth at ETS and/or at SBL. We will be at booth 517 at ETS and booth 419 at SBL. We will have an early release version’s of the new Unicode HMT available for sale at both of these conferences. For those who have already purchased the HMT you can drop by our booth and we will upgrade your files for free 
Stephen
Update to Windows Mobile Soft Keys
October 26, 2007
We have made an update to how the Windows Mobile soft keys work if you enable the soft keys (you can enable this option in Menu->Options->Toolbar Options). When you enable the soft keys, the main toolbar is replaced by a left and right soft key. You can customize what commands appear under the left soft key menu by changing the commands for the primary toolbar in the “Toolbar Options”.
This feature is nice for one-handed navigation because now you can access all of the commands on the toolbar through the soft key menu system.
You can download a beta version of the BibleReader with this updated feature from http://www.olivetree.com/download/beta/palmppc/.
- Stephen
New Features for One Handed Navigation
October 4, 2007
Many of you may remember my post about one handed navigation on Palm from the start of the summer. I am pleased to say that we have added more one handed navigation features to both Palm and Pocket PC I have three main ways that I use the BibleReader. I use the BibleReader for reading, following along in church/Bible studies, and studying the Bible. When I am reading or following along in church I typically don’t have my stylus out. Having to pull it out is distracting and too cumbersome for performing a simple task. This is where one handed navigation is a life saver. You can now use most features of the BibleReader without using a stylus
The new one handed navigation features are in version 3.69.228 and above of the BibleReader. You can download this version from the beta web site http://www.olivetree.com/download/beta/palmppc/.
The big new feature that we added for one handed navigation is “5-way navigation of hyperlinks”. This feature lets you select hyperlinks (including publisher notes) using the 5-way arrow pad. There are two options that you can enable with this feature. You can have the left/right arrows navigate hyperlinks and/or you can have the up/down arrows navigate the hyperlinks. Palm users can find these options the Menu->Options->Preferences and then select “Scrolling” from the drop down in the upper right corner. Windows Mobile (Pocket PC) users can find these preference in the “Scrolling Preferences”.
If you choose to have the up/down arrows navigate the hyperlinks then when you click on the down arrow it will put a dotted box around the next hyperlink on the screen. If there are no more hyperlinks on the screen then it will do the scrolling behavior for the down arrow. You can click on the center button to follow a hyperlink. For books like CWSB and Gramcord that have lots of hyperlinks it can be helpful to enable both the up/down and left/right arrows to navigate hyperlinks. When you have both options selected clicking on the down arrow will go to the hyperlink below the hyperlink with the box around it.
When you are just reading having the arrow keys constantly highlighting hyperlinks can be annoying. You don’t want to have to go to the options every time to turn this feature on/off since that would defeat the purpose of being able to quickly select a hyperlink without pulling out your stylus. We added a shortcut called “Toggle 5Way Hyperlink”. You can assign this shortcut to a hardware key on your device. You can use this shortcut to turn the 5-way navigation of hyperlinks on and off.
On Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition and Windows Mobile 6 Professional (Windows Mobile devices with soft keys) we have added another toolbar that makes one-handed navigation much easier. In the toolbar options you can enable the option to “Use Windows Mobile 5 & 6 Soft Keys”. This will make the main toolbar be two buttons that work with the left and right soft keys. With this toolbar you can easily access all of the BibleReader features without having to use the stylus to access the toolbar.
As if that wasn’t enough we have also fixed up the 5-way navigation on many of the Windows Mobile BibleReader dialog boxes. Now you can use your 5-way keys to navigate dialog boxes like the search screen.
There are other one handed navigation features in the Palm and Windows Mobile BibleReader. You can read about some of them in the blog one handed navigation on Palm. Many of the features talked about in that blog article also apply to the Windows Mobile BibleReader.
-Stephen
Olive Tree at BibleTech 2008
September 27, 2007
This January Olive Tree will be giving two talks at BibleTech 2008. According to the BibleTech website, BibleTech is a conference that explores the intersection of Bible study and technology. This two-day conference is designed for publishers, programmers, webmasters, educators, bloggers and anyone interested in using technology to improve Bible study. BibleTech 2008 is an opportunity to meet others who share your interests and hear from industry leaders.
Drew Haninger (President, CEO, of Olive Tree) will be talking about “Electronic Publishing and Bible Software in a Fast-Moving Mobile Landscape.” I will be talking about “The Challenges and Future of Bible Software in a Mobile World”.
There will be a number of other very interesting talks given at BibleTech 2008. If you are passionate about the intersection of Bible study and technology I would recommend attechend BibleTech 2008 in Seattle, WA on January 25th and 26th.
Stephen
