This should probably turn into a segment in our Future Trends series (Publishing, Software, Hardware), but I’ve got to do a bit more digging before making some more definitive positioning statements. One thing is for sure, there are some trends in regards to data formats that I see a bit clearer after doing some updates to our Mobile Bibles page, and it could end up being a win-win for a lot of folks – especially users.

A Short History of Files

Years ago, I got involved with the Palm Bible+ project as the webmaster and a user. As one of the few free Bible applications (at that time), Bible+ used to get all kinds of requests for Bibles in various languages. This was usually easy to do with a bit of programming on the part of the user, but you usually ended up with a Bible that would only work with that application.

In a similar fashion, there was the eSword application and Bibles created for it.  This application were also free to distribute  and worked across several desktop PC platforms. In the years since initially running into the eSword project, there’s been several updates to the file format, including the use of the STEP format, and the creating of a Windows Mobile client to also read these texts.

On the other side of the Bible+ project was the move to DRM texts. The original developer of the Palm Bible Reader made steps to create a version of the Bible reader that would accept copyrighted texts. The Bible+ project grew out of this, yet it was clear at this point that there would need to be two methods for handling Biblical text/media.

The Dollar Items

Of course, not everything can be for free, and as we’ve chatted about here several times, the issue of Bible formatting is a sensitive one for those publishers and developers involved.

There is a clear line though towards Bible formats and what becomes needed to be paid for. For example, there has always been numerous versions of the Bible available for free – but, it had not been until recently (past three years) that you’d be able to find some of the more modern translations available for free.  These were (rightly) tied to an application, and coded to work specifically with that body of text.

This works well when you are talking about the audience of readers whom are invested into reading the text – those people who are new to the faith, or who only see the Bible for a casual reading/reference work will place a different value to it, and therefore look at the cost of it to them differently.

Not everything can be free, and not everything will fly off the shelves priced too far away. There’s got to be some kind of answer to this issue, and maybe it is near the actual formats that are used in various Bible applications.

What I Noticed

When looking at the Mobile Bibles page, I noticed a few things. The Bible+ Project was originally just for one platform, and the Bibles created for it can now be read in PalmOS Classic, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, and Maemo/MeeGo. Bibles made for the eSword environment also are supported on several platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux, Maemo, Maemo/MeeGo, and some previous Windows Mobile devices).

And that’s the free stuff. When you get to the paid Bibles, there’s compatiability for everything from Java-based handsets, to iOS (iPad, iPhone), Android, Symbian, and BlackBerry mobile devices.

A newer approach is being taken on by Logos, with the Biblia API project. Here, its not so much the actual reading environment that is being pressed, but you are given content, and have the ability (through license agreement) to use that content in a manner that works best for you. So here, you are using both new and old texts, free and paid texts, in a connected space, over a browser, or a customized (for the platform) application. So far, other companies aren’t going this route, but I do postulate that this would be the eventual end of much of the content that we deal with Biblically when consistent connectivity (QoS) isn’t in question.

In effect, everything is covered by two approaches to Bible formats:

• Leveraging the existing content, older translations, and multi-lingual needs created for platforms that still have a large user base, but the users may have moved to newer devices and don’t want to purchase their initial downloaded investments
• Utilizing proprietary formats which are advantageous for newer translations, free and purchase systems, and leverage the exposed connectivity features of newer mobile platforms and/or wireless access levels of users

I think that we still need to get to a point of seeing one commonly used Bible format, with the sharing, purchasing, etc. components handled by device/user tokens. And we might get there. Looking at just what is available now, and how the needs of those looking for Bibles are being addressed, it looks like we might essentially get there – but with users needing to pay as much attention to the reading platform, as much as they do the text itself.

At least that’s what it looks like on our Mobile Bibles page. I’ll probably tweak this page even more later when more of these associations are noticed. Besides making it easier for you to find a reader, it might help you make better decisions about how to manage your digital Biblical assets before the next major change hits several more software/development companies in this space.

And to think, I’m not even touching (yet) audio Bibles 😉

This past weekend, I got a chance to sit with friends and family, and entertained the usual question of “what device(s) am I carrying around?” This question is one part normal for how I’ve been, but in another space gives me some impressions of how computing technologies are making their ways around the lives of others.

One of the more common sentiments heard this weekend was this realization that conventional PCs are being replaced by one or more different types of computing devices. For example, one friend has recently run into issues with his home router, and himself had been using a Palm Pre Plus to get his email and communicate with people. He’d gotten tired of his wife asking for his mobile for email/games/browsing, and she soon also adapted the use of a Palm Pre Plus. Now, their laptop sits mostly unused, and they manage most of their digital lives on smartphones.

Another friend was looking at the iPad as a potential netbook/laptop replacement, but in our conversations, realized that their actual computer use didn’t need something to change so drastically. They wanted the flexibility of a tablet, but only for occasional reading sessions. Usually, they were out and about and a mobile that could connect to Wi-Fi was a better proposition for them. I brought up the option of the iPod Touch and various ebook readers such as the Kindle and NookColor which are lower priced than the iPad, and offer closer to how they wanted to use these devices.

Essentially, what I’m seeing is that the PC as a traditional platform (keyboard, monitor, desk, and siloed from other people), is falling away as the primary definition. For many, computing is only as relevant as the information that they need at that point. And whether this is directions, books, or music, the definition of computing is less about what numbers and data you are crunching, and more about access.

I know that for me, my paradigm shifted a long time ago. Now seeing others coming to that same realization that computing is defined by them – and then the technology – is pretty neat, and offers lessons towards other aspects of computing which might also end up being redefined.

When we look around the Body towards what people are doing with mobile tech, it is always refreshing to see local communities stretching their use of tech in global-touching manners.

Wes Allen, a brother that I was blessed to meet in person at BibleTech 2009, has recently written a post about how his church is connecting with missionaries in Thailand via Skype. Here’s a snippet:

On October 31 Central Baptist Church of Riverton-Palmyra marked the last week of the World Mission Offering by having a missionary come and share with us during worship. This isn’t that unusual a practice. After all, churches have been bringing in missionaries as guest speakers for centuries. What marked this conversation as “different,” was the location of our guest speaker, Kit Ripley. She was literally on the other side of the globe, in Thailand. What made this conversation was the advent of free video conferencing over broadband Internet – pioneered by software like Skype…

Read the rest at ABCNJ.

As we have seen with this tech over several years, the ability to connect with one another doesn’t always need to start and end with the physical presence. There are moments where going virtual are more cost and time effective, and can open doors to other ways of empowering our communities and one another to use the tools at our disposal for the cause of the Gospel.

Besides Skype, are you taking advantage of virtual conferencing solutions to connect groups across distances? How have those relationships been challenged or strengthened in using these technologies?

Today, I’ll be in Charlotte speaking on a panel at Central Piedmont Community College’s GeekFest. The panel is titled Diverse STEM Professionals: Identifying Barriers and Sharing Strategies for Success.

Here’s the description of what to expect:

Companies understand the value of diversity in fields where tasks require innovation; however, recent studies show a significant decrease in the number of women, persons with disabilities, and under-represented minorities in STEM professions. This session is an opportunity for CPCC students to participate in a guided, informal panel discussion with area STEM professionals who come from traditionally underrepresented populations.

Panelists will discuss topics such as how they have broken barriers to advancement, the role of collaboration in career success, the importance of a desire to learn, taking appropriate risks, and how to balance work & family life. In this session, these professionals will also share exciting details about how a career in STEM gives you an opportunity to work daily on the forefront of innovation.

This panel will be taking place in room LV1302 at Central Piedmont Community College’s Levine Campus in Matthews NC (map).

The GeekFest will actually be going on the entire day. Visit their website for details about the other panels and events that are going on today. You can also follow the hashtag #GeekFest on Twitter/FB to check out the happenings and back-chat that will be going on throughout the day.

These aren’t the only events that you’ll see MMM a part of. If you’ve got an idea for an event, or would like to engage in training/consulting via MMM, take a look at our calendar* and pitch us an idea.

*Due to the nature of some projects, not every event MMM engages in will be exposed on this calendar. Items on this calendar that can be exposed are and are cleared with attending parties.

Composed in Evernote, this is a doc that I’ve been working on for a week or so. Hope it comes out nice.

Am sitting is a car at the moment talking about the kiosk project and some of the issues that relate to how the bible publishing industry can move forward. We know for certain that publishing the way that is has been going for the last 50-100 years isn’t going to continue in the face of advancements made digitally. From content distribution to monetization, there are questions to be addressed and none of them will endear easy answers.

Ownership and Access

The common perception of ownership is that of sovereignty and domain. When you purchase a product, you take responsibility of it’s upkeep and any additional service to fix or improve the initially purchased product is done for an additional fee.

Access is the ability to get to content, but not necessarily the ability to change or maintain it. Access usually has additional rules around it such as copying, sharing, and forwarded distribution. In some cases, access might be tied to another service agreement which allows for updates to the content (product) and some kinds of maintenance.

To be blunt, there has never been a model of publishing where we have owned the Bible. Access is granted through agreements we enter into with publishing houses. Distributors may also have a slice of this access pie, but it all ends up in the same equation – you don’t own your biblical material, you are granted access.

Access and Publishing

With that said, the publishing industry would seem to have an excellent heads-up on some of the upcoming trends in this information economy. They have the intent, the content, and the understanding of the marketplace to continue with this model for some time longer. Truly, there are many persons who don’t have access to the Bible or it’s associated materials who would prove to be solid markets for publishing houses to pursue.

Yet, as I look at the world around me, the question about information isn’t ownership, it is access. If I have the access to the source, when I need it, does it make sense to continue to purchase access in silos (books, applications, audio formats)?

The kiosk proposes that someone only needs to know where a central content distribution area is. The internet proposes that you only need to know the website, or at the very least be connected to a person who does have the access and will share it (that link) with you. To a publisher, how does their model of selling success make sense in the light of such changes in the receiving method?

Publishing’s Opportunity to Change

There have been a lot of calls for publishing to change. We’ve gotten into the fray here with our series item The Future of (Biblical) Publishing. And it is true to an extent that publishers are facing the moment of change, thing is, they still hold the cards (content). Therefore, anything that looks like change to them has to ultimately work in their benefit.

Monday Note recently posted an article in a similar scope to MMM’s and came to a similar conclusion:

“Coming back to the subject of this column, the shift from paid-for files to rights for books or digital contents won’t come easily. As a telco exec told me last week: ‘It took centuries to convince people their money was more secure in a bank than under a mattress; convincing them they should trade ownership for access rights will take some time’.”

Publishing’s opportunity to change isn’t just a matter of changing to a digital-enabled economy, but being a literal agent of behavioral change for authors/consumers. But, if I were a publisher, how could I go about changing something that was so embedded into the way we think/use content?

Or, is it us who need to change our viewpoint of what really is the reality of ownership, and modify our perceptions and use to that in light of publishing’s hold on content?

It has been a good while since looking at how I’ve been getting along with my iPad, and there has been some changes since that piece about not having books on my iPad. Here are some things that I’m doing right now with my iPad:

Reading, Reading, and Reading

As I said then, and have often talked about on Twitter, I use my iPad primarly for reading. There are two silos in which I do this reading, the Mobile Safari web browser and the Amazon Kindle application. In respect to Safari, I am in places such as websites and Google Reader. There’s a lot that happens in Google Reader.

The Amazon Kindle application has been both good and bad. Good in the respect that it is no more complicated to read there than it would be in a browser. Bad in that I’ve really had to figure out what electronic texts actually work best from the vantage point of the Kindle application/service. For example, I’ve got handle on looking at Kindle for reference books, but for the longer-form non-fiction reads (currently reading Philip Jenkins’s The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity), I am up and down about purchasing them via Kindle. These are the kinds of books that normally I’ll reference and/or lend out, and there just aren’t enough people around me with a Kindle or lendable electronic book platform to do this with.

Collaborating and (Nearly) Creating

One of the experiments that seems to be going ok in some areas, and not so well in others is this idea of using the iPad as a collaborative platform. In this respect, I am using my iPad for several projects that I/MMM am working on.

For one project, I am using the iPad as a project management and research assistant. To this end, I’m learning how to use GoodReader, Evernote, Dropbox, and Google Docs in a synchronous relationship. GoodReader and DropBox help me deal with issues of file transfer and managing paperless PDFs (yea for that). Evernote plays the role of a notepad and really comes close to what I think a document management app should look like for the iPad. What it is missing in terms of collaboration, Google Docs takes up – though I’m more just in a reading mode with all but the spreadsheets end of things for now.

For another project, I’ve been using the iPad for speaker/presenter notes, and soon will be using it more in concert with my mobile to do the entire presentation.

The Social Networking Secretary

Part of making sure that MMM is abreast of data and opportunity means staying attuned to a few social networking sites. There’s the Twitter client on mine to handle that aspect, and then I use websites to handle the rest. What is neat is that I now have this flow where I get a notification on my mobile about something (LinkedIn/Twitter add, etc.) and if I am resting, I don’t pick up the phone to see what it is, I just move over to that section on the iPad and look at it there.

At the same time, there’s notable fatigue that I get in using social networks on the iPad, so I’m never there very long before moving off those apps/sites and onto something a bit better. Flipboard has been a revelation (I could see a picture bible using this format) and has really helped me to look into other topics that will eventually be areas that mobile ministry efforts will have to address.

Digging in the Word

In respect to the Bible, I have mostly stuck with YouVersion. Mainly because I’ve not had a need to do any in-depth studies, and also that the general interface of YouVersion works well when I’m sharing the reading with other people. I only use a few translations when doing readings, and connectivity doesn’t matter as much (yea, I need to share more notes and bookmarks, I’ll get there).

I have recently downloaded Logos’s Bible Reader for iPad. Am a lot late in checking it out, but I needed to know why I’d need to look at another Bible reader and a moment came up where I needed more. I needed to do some contextual lookups of a statement made by a minor prophet and this wasn’t possible in the other Bible reader. Therefore, I’m in the midst of checking out Logos. I’ll have some fuller impressions in a few weeks, but so far, I like how well its tuned to studying the text – besides just reading. But, if you choose to read, the way in which the UI gets out of the way is awesome.

I’d still like to see something like an Evernote-plugin that could take my notes from Evernote and link them to a Bible reader/service. I write a lot of reflections, and being able to start at the reference, and then link into the application would be something very innovative. I get that we use the same behavioral metaphors for digital bibles, but they aren’t yet taking advantage of the digital paradigm enough for me.

Evangelism’s Weird Leanings

The iPad is weird. I’ve entertained two very different sides of discussions since having one. There is the side of people who see it as a magical device – they are impressed at how easy it is to use and how hard normal PCs look and act like after playing with it. To these folks, it causes conflicting thoughts as well, because as the iPad is neat, some have admitted that it makes computer technology seem even more idolatrous than ever before (touching the digital versus having a layer between you and digital with the traditional paradigm).

The other side of conversations have been those people who see the iPad (and its iPhone forbearer) as primarily a Western/developed-nation experience. This is true to some degree, but the larger picture is being missed. The iPad, as with smartphones before, are a technology that doesn’t need legacy computer leanings to find relevance. The speed at which the world has moved to touch-gesture interfaces as normal versus one-off is something being felt everywhere. No, we don’t have iPads (yet) in the price range that makes this accessible, but we do have the need to have content on those iPads disrupting industries such that we are seeing this trickle down and across to other technologies.

In both cases, there’s this pull to at least see what’s possible. Most people see this space as something that won’t last long (and it might not). But there’s a challenge to the way things had been done, and a reluctance on my part to want to go back to the way things were. Certain types of friction aren’t needed, and with the iPad, doing computing easier seems to speak to people differently than even using my mobile has.

Having the iPad has in a sense turned me more into a person that pays attention to the implications of mobile and connected technologies and how we are sending and receiving Christ in these changing times. Surely, not everything will be answerable, but as we all use these more, we come up to challenges and work through them with the hope that what we learn will filter into ways that we can enable the Body to take advantage of these tools.

At least, that’s how I look at using this tech. I’ve got a lot of learning to go.

This past summer saw MMM participating in several conversations and sessions around opportunities and issues for mobile developers (with WIP Connector). More often than not, its isn’t the clearest of pictures for development when you start diving into niche arenas such as religious content. The market is indeed different, and the challenges can be pretty looming. Nevertheless, there are some consistent themes, especially in terms of getting apps to market and monetization.

This graphic, produced by Vision Mobile, makes it pretty clear the prospects for developers on the major mobile platforms. Especially as it relates to mobile software in the religious domain, paying attention to the installed base of users is just as important as just getting something developed – and you don’t want to spin your wheels learning how to develop for every platform.

Another site that offers several info-graphics towards understanding opportunities within mobile can be found at Asymco. Asymco has a ton of data and usually packs in some solid commentary around his methodologies used. Here’s one graphic that some in the Bible software industry might find interesting:

Graphic from Visualizing iPad vs Mac, via Asycmo

Now, you can find info-graphics on a ton of areas within mobile, but you will want to make sure that you are viewing it through the appropriate lens. The data shown in this post is great, but you will need to combine it with data on (world/local) religions, tech adoption (economics), and probably media (text/publishing, audio/music, and video) in order for it to make the most sense contextually.

Got some timely (really) updates for you concerning the after-sessions happening in Charlotte related to the 2010 Lausanne Congress. Here are the details:

The Park Church
The Park Church (6029 Beatties Ford Road) will be having sessions November 4th and 18th, and again on December 2nd; starting at 6:30pm (all three days). They will show selected video footage from the conference, then allow those present to break into smaller groups for dialogue on selected questions. Bishop Alexander, who personally attended the conference, will set the framework for each video, and the format we will use for discussion.

Antioch Baptist Church
Antioch Baptist Church (232 Skyland Avenue) will be having a session Thursday, November 11 from 11:30am to 12:30pm, with Dr. Celestin Musekura speaking on reconciliation.

Carmel Baptist Church
Carmel Baptist Church (1145 Pineville-Matthews Rd.) will be having its session the afternoon of November 21st from 4-7pm. The afternoon is divided into segments where the Globalink service and testimonies from attendees will offer a sampling of the Cape Town Congress experience.

As new events in and around Charlotte are added, we’ll be sure to let you know (primarily via Twitter). If you are part of the MMM audience outside of the Charlotte area, and are in knowledge of or conducting a Global Link session, send us a Google Calendar invite (mobileministrymagazine at gmail) so that we can note that on our public calendar and assist with any publication of this event meant to keep the Body connected to one another for the glory of our Lord.

For more information about the 3rd Lausanne Congress, connect via their website, Twitter, and Facebook.

It is always a good thing when the Carnival of the Mobilists (CoM) is published. A collection of the past week’s writings on mobile, the CoM is a chance to spread some of the wealth of thought and application occurring in the mobile space.

This week’s CoM is hosted over at Blog.AntoineRJWright and features pieces on recent stats, user interface/experience with tablets, and several things happening with platforms and carriers.

There’s always room for new contributors – so if you are doing anything related to mobile ministry, here’s a platform to get the word out about another influential area of mobile. Read the submission details and post schedule over at the Carnival of the Mobilists website.