The weblog of Olive Tree Bible Software
Meet us at the Christian Book Expo (Dallas, TX)
Mar 18th
The Christian Book Expo is this weekend! If you live in or near the Dallas, TX area, stop by the Christian Book Expo and visit Olive Tree at Booth #420.
BibleReader for iPhone now has split screen features. Come see it in action! You can also see a short video here on split screens on iPhone.
Olive Tree Bible Software, Booth #420
Christian Book Expo, Dallas, TX, March 19-21, 2009
sponsored by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association
follow Olive Tree’s Twitter postings of the Book Expo at twitter.com/OliveTreeBible
Split Screens in iPhone BibleReader version 4.06
Mar 16th
Here is a video demonstrating the new split screen feature in the iPhone BibleReader version 4.06.
How to use the ESV Study Bible on the iPhone BibleReader
Mar 6th
Here is a short video showing how to use the ESV Study Bible on Olive Tree’s iPhone BibleReader.
Olive Tree is Hiring
Mar 2nd
Olive Tree is looking for people with a passion for mobile Bible software. See our job postings at http://www.olivetree.com/careers.php.
Stephen
Help Direct Olive Tree’s BlackBerry BibleReader
Feb 19th
See this blog post for how Olive Tree decides where to spend engineering time.
We would like your help to direct where we should spend our time in the BlackBerry BibleReader.
Click here to take the survey.
Stephen
Help Direct Olive Tree’s iPhone BibleReader
Feb 12th
We are so excited about the level of enthusiasm and interested in Olive Tree’s iPhone BibleReader! We gets lots of excited users asking us when will feature XYZ be in the iPhone BibleReader. I want to explain a little about how our engineering process works and then give you a chance to help us decide what features to include.
Most engineering teams follow an established work process that was established for a 6-36 month time period with milestone deliverables throughout that process. Most of the time the schedulers underestimated the amount of time the project would take and so the engineering team is almost always behind schedule. (As a side note I usually way underestimate the amount of time something would take. Most projects look “easy” until I am faced with the reality of making something that barely works into production level quality.)
At Olive Tree we take a different approach to scheduling. We know what we are currently working on, we know what we will work on next, and we have a list of things to work on after that. The list is only partially prioritized. When it is time to pick the next item to work on we look a number of factors like what people have been requesting, what we feel is important, what we need to publish certain books, etc to decide what to do next. This allows us to be flexible and quickly change our engineering to meet demands, market shifts, and capture opportunities with vendors or publishers.
This does mean that it will difficult for us to say when we will have feature XYZ done since we don’t actually know ourselves. We do know if that feature appears higher on the to do list that means it will get done sooner, but we haven’t actually scheduled that feature for engineering yet.
We had one of these meetings today for picking the next features. There are so many important features to work on we wanted to get more of your feedback to help us decide. We created a survey you can fill out to help us decide what you would like to see us work on next.
Click here to fill out the survey.
Thank you for your support, help, and enthusiasm!
Stephen Johnson
Senior Software Engineer
Over 180 Titles in the iPhone Library!
Jan 22nd
As we’re fond of mentioning in the Olive Tree newsletter, we post new items to the BibleReader 4.0 library almost every week.
We’ve now got over 180 titles for you to choose from when you browse the titles available for iPhone, ranging from commentaries and cross-references to eBooks and daily devotionals, and, of course, Bibles. Many different translations are available, including Bibles in different languages–like Spanish, French, and German, and even Albanian and Norwegian. We know that Olive Tree users speak many, many different languages and live all over the world. We hope you can find something in the Olive Tree library that suits your Bible-reading needs!
Two of our most exciting new titles are Bibles in Greek and Hebrew—perfect for original language scholars and anyone else who wants to read the Bible in the first languages it was written in. Check out BHS/HMT (Hebrew Old Testament) and GNT NA27 (Greek New Testament) for iPhone to see what we mean. Below are screenshots from each:
**For BlackBerry users—don’t lose heart! While these two original language titles are not yet available on BlackBerry, we are working hard to resolve font issues and hope to make them available later this year.
Systematic Theology, now for iPhone and BlackBerry
Jan 13th
If you’ve been following Olive Tree news, you know that one of our biggest goals for 2009 is getting more of the 500+ title Olive Tree library converted for use with BibleReader 4.0–the BibleReader program that runs on iPhone and newer BlackBerry devices. There are currently over 160 titles available for BibleReader 4.0, and new ones are added almost daily.
One of our recent additions to the BibleReader 4.0 library was a particularly important work: Systematic Theology, by Dr. Wayne Grudem.Throughout history, systematic theology has been organized around the “big” topics of Christian faith: the Word of God, salvation and redemption, and Jesus Christ.
Building a systematic theology, then, must begin with collecting and understanding all the relevant passages in the Bible on various topics, and summarizing their teachings clearly. Dr. Wayne Grudem, professor of Bible and theology at Phoenix Seminary, past president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and member of the Translation Oversight Committee for the English Standard Version of the Bible, does just that.
In Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Dr. Grudem offers a contemporary approach, clearly explaining the scriptural basis for important Christian doctrines, keeping specialized vocabulary and technical terms to a minimum, and addressing topics of current interest to the church. He writes in a friendly tone that appeals to the emotions and the spirit–not just the intellect. He also takes an approach that includes the whole life of faith, offering frequent applications to modern liviing and resources for worship with each theological topic.
Systematic Theology comes with the complete text of the ESV Bible—the Bible translation that Dr. Grudem himself helped to translate—as well as bibliographies with each chapter that cross-reference subjects to a wide range of other systematic theology texts.
It’s our pleasure to offer Systematic Theology, along with over 160 other titles, new for iPhone and BlackBerry! Check out the complete list on OliveTree.com.
ESV Study Bible Available – Just a Few Days Left for Coupon Special
Dec 31st
The Olive Tree version of the ESV Study Bible brings a wealth of resources to your mobile device. We’re excited to make this product available for the iPhone, BlackBerry with Storage Card, Windows Mobile Pocket PC (Professional & Classic), and Palm platforms.
A Great Value
Olive Tree is able to offer this incredible resource at $29.95, a significant discount over the suggested retail price of the hard copy. In addition, if you purchase your ESV Study Bible from the Olive Tree website by January 4, 2009, you can take advantage of our currently running coupon which will give you an additional 15% in savings (please note that this discount isn’t available to purchases made on the iTunes store or other Olive Tree outlets).
Navigating the Notes in the ESV Study Bible
If you’ve purchased the ESV Study Bible offered by Olive Tree, you can enjoy the rich, deep features of the ESV Study Bible notes by selecting ESVSB from the commentaries category of your BibleReader. You can then use the verse chooser to quickly navigate to the Study Bible notes for any location in the bible.
Table of Contents – Get’s You Where You Want to Go!
Some of the main features of this Bible, however, aren’t tied to specific verses in the text. So Olive Tree has provided quick access to the wealth of articles, maps, and charts with a new drill-down table of contents, a first for Olive Tree and featured in this product. Palm and Windows Mobile users can access these features by opening the verse chooser and unchecking the verse mode box at the bottom of the screen. IPhone users will find the table of contents button at the bottom of their verse chooser as well. Our BlackBerry with Storage Card users can access the table of contents directly from the main menu within the BibleReader when the ESVSB is onscreen.
We hope you enjoy this great product, and that it will enhance your study of God’s Word!
Thinking about… ESV Study Bible
Nov 12th
OK, I admit it…I’m a total geek when it comes to study Bibles. I love them! The more features, the better. That’s why I’m so excited that Olive Tree will be releasing the ESV Study Bible from Crossway, due in December. I got to see a demonstration of the beta product on the iPhone and am very impressed!
There is an incredible wealth of information in this Bible. In addition to the ESV Bible there are over 20,000 text notes, 50 articles, 80,000 cross references, more than 200 charts, and a wealth of illustrations. The publishers say that it is the equivalent to a 20-volume research library, and I believe them! In addition to all the cross references and notes, the book introductions are thorough and cover every topic I need to bring me up to speed about the author, the text, the themes, the arrangement, the text’s significance, and the timeframe of its writing. The thing that impressed me most in the BibleReader version of the ESV Study Bible was the ability to drill down through the table of contents. The very complexity of the book introductions is one of the features of this Bible, but translating that information to your mobile device means that those introductions can run to many, many screens of information. While all of that information is great, it may not be relevant to what you need at the moment. Now, instead of having to scroll through everything to get to, say, the illustrated timeline for a book, you can drill down through the table of contents and in just a few short clicks the BibleReader takes you straight there! Another feature of this Bible is the study notes located throughout the text. These have been made available in commentary format, which means they can be easily accessed from wherever you are in the Bible.
I’m told that the Olive Tree BibleReader ESV Study Bible will be available on the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile Professional and Windows Mobile Classic (Pocket PC) Platforms. Be sure to watch for it soon.