Watch Olive Tree on YouTube, learn BibleReader’s newest features
Dec 8th
We’d like to welcome you to Olive Tree’s YouTube Channel, the home for BibleReader demo videos.
Have you ever wished someone could sit down and walk you through how to use BibleReader’s more advanced features, like morphological searches? Our demo videos are designed to do just that. These demonstrations are created by our engineers and book formatters—the people who know BibleReader best—and they contain explanations and walk-throughs of BibleReader’s features, from basic to advanced. There are already 14 demo videos posted, and more will be added periodically.
You’ll find demos on advanced topics . . .
. . . and learn how to adjust the little things to make your bible-reading experience just right.
You can watch general demos for a BibleReader overview . . .
. . . and new users can get started with the basics.
We recently introduced Olive Tree University on BibleReader for iPhone, a collection of tips and information to help familiarize users with BibleReader’s newest features. Many of the same demonstration videos are available through Olive Tree University, directly on your iPhone.
Visit us on YouTube at www.youtube.com/OliveTreeBible, and learn more!
Prize Winners from ETS and SBL
Dec 2nd
If you met the Olive Tree crew at the ETS or SBL meetings, you saw that signing up for the Olive Tree Newsletter at those meetings gave you a chance to win a free iPod Touch, preloaded with Olive Tree resources. Well, the winners have now been chosen.
Congratulations to our winners!
- From the ETS drawing: Doug Powell of Tennessee
- From the SBL drawing: Kathy Barett Dawson of North Carolina
We hope each of you enjoy your iPod Touch, and the Olive Tree resources we provide with it.
And we video-recorded both drawings using an iPhone, in case you were wondering how we spend our time at the office.
Drew and Sarah draw the ETS winner
Drew and Stephen J draw the SBL winner
Blog Comments
Dec 1st
We have enabled comments on the Olive Tree blog! We are going to enable comments for a trial period on our blog. We currently interact with users through technical support, the forums, and twitter. If the spam load gets too high or we are not able to provide adequate responses we will have to turn off comments.
Stephen
Bible Software Shootout Presentation
Nov 24th
Olive Tree was proud to perform in SBL’s Bible Software Shootout, a friendly competition that pitted Bible software contenders like Logos, Bible Works, Accordance, and SESB against each other, showcasing each software’s ability to perform detailed original language research.
To see Olive Tree’s presentation from SBL’s Bible Software Shootout, click here to read the presentation (.pdf), especially if you use BibleReader’s Greek and Hebrew tools.
Many thanks to everyone who stopped by the Olive Tree booth at ETS and SBL. Engineers Stephen J (@stephenljohnson) and David T (@dtrotzjr) and original language specialists Drayton B and Steven C (@steventcummings) enjoyed meeting you! Meeting our users makes a big difference for us. You can read David T’s blog post about his ETS experience to learn why.
Thanks also to those of you who signed up for the Olive Tree Newsletter and entered the ETS/SBL prize drawings. We’ll announce the winners of our drawing for a free iPod Touch, preloaded with Olive Tree resources, soon!
“Olive Tree University” is Live on iPhone BibleReader
Nov 19th
New in BibleReader 4 for iPhone, we’ve released a library of instructional videos to teach you about BibleReader’s features. Learning your way around BibleReader has never been easier!
From the main reading screen, touch Menu (bottom right), then touch Olive Tree University in the pop-up menu. You’ll see a list of instructional features that begins with “What’s New in This Version”. It opens a short instructional video that demonstrates all the new additions to the latest BibleReader release for iPhone.
Watch this video to learn about
- new original languages support, including parsing, glosses, and lexical information for Greek and Hebrew texts. Take advantage of our highly advanced search function and learn how to search by morphological code.
- online backup for notes. By syncing notes with your EverNote account, you can keep a backup of notes in your Bible and access it on your device or on your desktop.
- new display and navigation customization to make pop-up reference windows even more useful.
Olive Tree University is new in version 4.10 of BibleReader for iPhone. Version 4.10 has been submitted to Apple, and Apple has approved the upgrade for some BibleReader Apps, but others are still in the approval process. If you haven’t yet been notified that an upgrade is available for your BibleReader App, be patient—you will soon!
Visit Olive Tree at ETS/SBL Conferences This Week
Nov 17th
Are you planning to attend one or both of these meetings? If so, come visit Olive Tree at our display booth:
ETS – Evangelical Theological Society, New Orleans, November 18-20
Olive Tree Booth # 100
SBL – Society of Biblical Literature, New Orleans, November 21-24
Olive Tree Booth # 808
We’ll be happy to give you a demo of our latest BibleReader release on iPhone, which implements new features especially for original languages. We’ve also released an entire bookshelf’s worth of original language texts, tools, and resources for iPhone, including
- Greek New Testament (NA27) with Mounce’s Morphology and UBS Dictionary,
- LXX (Septuaginta) with Parsing and LEH Lexicon, and
- BHS (Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia) with Westminster Morphology and BDB Lexicon.
Engineers Stephen J (@stephenljohnson) and David T (@dtrotzjr) and original language specialists Drayton B and Steven C (@steventcummings) will be happy to show you around these new resources.
And if you’re interested in seeing the best of BibleReader software for Greek and Hebrew study, be sure to watch Olive Tree in SBL’s Bible Software Shootout. Side-by-side with Bible software peers like Logos, Bible Works, Accordance, and SESB, Olive Tree will demonstrate how our software answers real-world research questions, like:
I want to study a part of speech, e.g., demonstrative pronouns or interjections. How do I get all of the lemmas for that part of speech, get all the occurrences of those lemmas, and the results organized in such a way that I could write an article/monograph on that part of speech from the data?
If questions like these spark your interest—because of your academic work or your personal study—watch Olive Tree perform at the Shootout, and see how Olive Tree’s latest tools can help you in your own Greek and Hebrew study:
Bible Software Shootout
Saturday, November 21
4:00 – 6:30 p.m.
Rhythms Ballroom 3-SH, at SBL
We’ll also post this presentation on our website later, so everyone can take advantage of the information presented by Drayton and Stephen J.
Fall News: 3 New Betas and 2 Conferences
Nov 5th
Is everyone’s fall this busy? We’ve barely squeezed in time to Twitter, let alone write blog posts about
- our new beta for Android. Anyone who’s been watching the growing strength of the Android operating system will understand our glee over completing this beta! Right now, it works on Android 1.6. We hope to have beta builds for 1.5 and 2.0 up by Friday. Keep an eye on OliveTree.com/m. When we complete a new build, it’ll be available there.
- our new beta BibleReader for BlackBerry. Check it out for a bunch of new features, including a redesigned library and catalog, and new visual toolbars! Easy to download from OliveTree.com/m, and even easier to use.
- our new beta for Symbian 60-5. This runs on Nokia phones like the N97 and 5800. So, all you Nokia users who’ve been asking us about BibleReader for Symbian, go to OliveTree.com/m and download it! Let us know how it works for you.
- preparing for ETS and SBL annual meetings. If you’re planning to attend either meeting (or if you live in New Orleans and want to stop by), be sure to come visit our table. We love meeting our users, and we’ll have some new original language features and resources to demo for you.
A few words about OliveTree.com/m:
The page is made for mobile browsers (the web browser on your smartphone).
If BibleReader for your platform/device has been updated, you can always come to OliveTree.com/m to download and install the latest version.
All the beta versions mentioned above are available on OliveTree.com/m too, so visit us there if you want to try a beta build for a new device!
2009 Chatlos Bible Conference
Oct 8th
Monday, September 28, Olive Tree had the privilege of being a part of the 2009 Chatlos Bible Conference at New York Theological Seminary in New York City. The title of the conference was “Linking Sense to Sound and Sight: Bible Study and Technology”.
The conference had a unique structure with the morning consisting of lectures presented by leading biblical scholars speaking about the modes of communication in biblical and post-biblical times. The afternoon sessions were presentations by leading bible software companies, including Olive Tree. Each presenter shared how our companies are working to build on the ever-shifting ground of technology and the study of the Bible.
With advances in technology occurring at such a rapid pace, every area of life is being affected. This includes church life, academics, and the study of the Bible. This conference attempted to present participants both with a philosophical framework and practical tools to address this change. Olive Tree’s BibleReader was just the tool for many of the participants.
Dr. Jin Han, and the NYTS folks extended such warm kindness to the presenters and made the conference a distinct pleasure to be a part of. And, he introduced many of us to our first taste of authentic Korean cuisine! It was something we all thoroughly enjoyed and won’t be forgetting any time soon.
Matt Hudson works for Olive Tree Bible Software as an eBook Architect. He received his M.Div. from Beeson Divinity School and lives in Knoxville, TN.
iPhone BibleReader In-App Purchases and Price Change
Oct 2nd
We are adding In-Application purchases to iPhone BibleReader. This will let you purchase books directly from within BibleReader using your iTunes account. In-Application Purchases will make the process of purchasing books much easier. Apple requires that all applications with In-Application Purchase be for sale. To meet this requirement we are going to start changing $.99 for BibleReader. We have submitted a new app called BibleReader Free that has all of the features of BibleReader without In-Application Purchases and will remain free. We choose to make BibleReader $.99 instead of adding a new app for this since this will give everyone who has already downloaded BibleReader the update for free.
Currently Amplified Bible for BibleReader has the In-Application Purchase. The rest of the iPhone BibleReader apps will have this functionality with version 4.09. The In-Application Purchasing requires each book to be approved by Apple for each reader. Most of the books are still in the Apple review process.
Stephen
Edited to Add: Since this post, Apple has changed some of their requirements, and no longer requires apps with in-app purchasing to be for sale. At this time, BibleReader and BibleReader – Free both allow in-app purchasing. BibleReader – Free comes with the ASV and KJV Bibles. BibleReader comes with the ASV and KJV Bibles, plus Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible and the Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary. Features and functionality for BibleReader and BibleReader – Free are the same, unless their version numbers are different. (Different version numbers occur when Olive Tree has submitted a software update that has been approved for one app but not the other. Usually, the second app is simply waiting for update approval and will be updated shortly to the newest software version.) Updated 8/30/2010.
Help us test our new server!
Oct 1st
As you know, OliveTree.com is up and running on our new server! Behind the scenes, of course, we’re still hard at work fixing bugs we’ve discovered, resolving problems that come up, and continuing to test all the areas of OliveTree.com to make sure they work they way they should.
We’d like to invite you to participate in our process of testing!
There’s a special Olive Tree 22% discount coupon available now through Monday, October 5. This is a very limited time offer, but we want to make it available to test how our discount processes are working. The coupon code for this offer is:
TryOliveTree2009
You can also learn more about how to use coupons at OliveTree.com. If you try this coupon, here’s what we want to know from you:
- Does it work?
- Did you have any difficulties along the way?
- Anything else you’d like to report about your OliveTree.com experience?
If it works, great! Enjoy your titles! If it doesn’t work, please contact us and let us know, either by emailing support@olivetree.com or filling out a support ticket here.
We hope that using the coupon will be a simple, streamlined process, but don’t worry—we’ll make sure you get the 22% discount on your order no matter what.
And if you notice any other problems at any time, feel free to contact us immediately, either by email or support ticket, or by sending us a reply on Twitter @OliveTreeBible.