Another great resource for web and mobile-based resources for evangelism and community buidling through the Gospel can be found at the Internet Evangelism Day website.

While IE Day doesn’t happen until April, there are still tons of reasons to be involved and to note the tons of resources provided. Of note, IE Day exists to:

• Explain the strategies needed to use the web for evangelism, along with showcase examples, and demonstrate the many ways you could be involved. One surprising fact: you do not need to be technically gifted to do web evangelism.
• and, Enable you to communicate these truths to others, by providing free downloads: PowerPoint, video clips, drama scripts, handouts, etc. These enable churches and other groups to build a web evangelism focus program into a service or other activities.

Then again, you don’t have to take my word for it, there’s a YouTube video that explains more:

And an entire website of resources and media that you can use to help web/mobile enable your evangelistic efforts. Check out the Internet Evangelism Day website to learn more.

Imagine, if you will, that you bought a cloud-enabled toaster. And that one day, you got a sudden in-home upgrade to three toast slots from two. Then, just as suddenly, the new feature addition was rolled back. So you were left with two slots and some smushed toast. And then your toaster decided it wanted to start serving orange juice…

The quote above is from an article at GigaOM where a Harvard Law professor (Jonathan Zittrain) questioned the value of closed platforms on cloud-enabled services. The article points to cloud computing and some mobile devices, but I want to highlight one area in particular – Bible software – as the closed platform that’s more likely to burn people, rather than keep them openly nourished.

I was told once that the current model of Bible software (dedicated readers and an inability to take books from one reader platform to another) is needed for the industry to survive. But I have never believed this. Personally, I think its a cop-out to a model of business that just doesn’t fit the intentions of the Internet as a medium for commerce and information sharing. Its a hearken back to the times when there was only one source for learning and others needed to be approved by Rome to carry the scroll… teaching was a whole other certification process.

And yet this is where we are. Logos on desktop and web and mobile. YouVersion web and mobile. Laridian mobile and mobile and mobile some more. Palm Bible+ on one mobile. And on and on. Publishers enable this through collecting licensee fees from developers and users alike (you didn’t think you were actually getting the Bible did you; you are purchasing a license to read it, not own it). The market allows this, and we sit by because…

The features within these applications are chosen on the basis of need and market targeting. Some applications are more academic and have features befitting those audiences, others have features more for casual reading, and others still are a hodge-podge of features with no clear audience or goal. Regardless of the feature, they all serve the Bread of the Word. The same bread (content) in most cases. And yet, unlike the bread in your toaster, you can’t just go to your neighbor’s house and use their open source toaster to read your WordSearch-branded bread. You must toast it by WordSearch’s toaster only. To me that’s closed, and makes absoutely no sense given the intelligence and innovation that these Bible companies have at their disposal towards creating something… open, innovative, not necessarly free, but definitely sharable.

At some point, Amazon Kindle owners are going to want to move on past Amazon’s system of ebooks and use others (Borders, Barnes and Nobles, an independent bookseller, etc.) And it will take all manners of governmental, private, and public pressure to get Amazon to open up. But nothing will change until those who are effected most will want to change it.

Which is why I think that for all the truth in the point that Bible software should be open to any device, any platform, at any time – where users purchase a license and can use it legally anywhere – we aren’t going anywhere. At the intersection of faith and mobile technology, developers and users alike have forgotten to leave the cross (chains of locked platforms and marketing models) behind, and resurrect to something shared and usable by all. Nothing at all like how Jesus example was/is, nothing at all like moving forward past a locked intersection.

And that’s ok, we have to protect the way things were – its only toast right?

Post-Script:: Eight (8) hours after composing this post, the Wall Street Journal published this article; I’m totally not the only one with these feelings about ebooks. This is a major issue that needs to be addressed by the entire industry, not just in the religious texts realm. The question is really simple though: is the Body going to be a point of innovation in technology here, or are we going to continue to follow the secular world with something we could do a lot better given our spiritual insight? I would hope innovation comes from the Body here, but I’ve been burnt by that expectation many times before.

Additional Comments on Original Post

Just a question to throw out there: how many of you lead or attend a church/organization meeting in which someone has an accessiblity need (and I mean anything from reprints of materials, to sign language, to special accomodiations)? Have you used any type of mobile device or service to aid your ability to be more accessible, and if so, what are those tools?

This past Saturday, I kept up with the Bible Software Shootout as many who were in attendance were tweeting about the happenings. One thing I can say about whatever that was happening there, it looks like a lot of the major software developers really got the point that the user interface of a Bible application means nothing if people cannot simplyget in the Book.

This attetion to user interface design is totally a by produt of the impact that the iPhone has made on the entire computing industry. That’s not to say that many software products and services don’t suffer through feature-itis. Many do and will continue to. But, it is to say that there are some areas where people are getting it, and one of them just happens to be within the realm of mobile bible software.

So let me ask you this simple question: when you are ready to read a verse/passage in your Bible, how many steps does it take between you thinking about it and you getting there? How many steps after you’ve gotten to that verse/passage does it take for you to do the next thing (meditate, journal/bookmark, send it to a friend, etc.)? Its these kinds of questions that software developers think about often when they are developing the software that you like. And you know something, there are a lot of answers that they come up with. The simplest one though is always the hardest to pull off – keeping your eyes in the text.

This is something that paper books have a lock on. Its easy, you read, highlight, pull another book from the side to make a note, but the text is still there. No matter where you go, you must face the book in order to engage the text. The user interface is that simple.

And so here’s my challenge and exortation to those who were at that challenge, and those who are developing other software Bible solutions: What can you do with your product to keep a person’s eyes in the text of Scripture while still offering the featurs that enable you to differentitate from your competitors? Because if you can do that, then it won’t matter what version(s) you offer, or even the cost of your product. People will be drawn to the text – and therefore to engaging with God. Drawing people to Him, will bring in the sales and solutions you seek.

I ran across this site while looking at something over at Wap Review the other week and after going through the site, have to say that its a solid resource for those of you looking for mobile web-oriented resources.

Coders.mobi is a collection of posts which speak primarly from the angle of developing mobile wesbites that follow the (dot)mobi standard. (dot)mobi is the – more or less – W3C standard for creating websites based around mobile content. And while there are some standards and best practices, much of this information is either hard to figure out, or harder to come by. Coders.mobi looks to put this information within one area and using a blog-based format so that items are easy to reference and search as needed.

So check out Coders.mobi, and be sure to interact with the author there for content that you are looking for – mobile video practices, mobile site development tools, analytics, etc. I’ll pull in items from there here from time to time as much of that information will be very helpful to those who read and use MMM as a resource.

Here’s one of those times where I wish that I was invited to take part inside of an event that would have been able to have a significant impact into the way that we use biblical software.

Specifically, I’m talking about the Bible Software Shootout that took place this weekend at the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Conference. The website This Lamp has provided theonly> report of the event that I have seen – this despite the many tweets on the event which were very incoherent and disjointed. Here’s a snippet about a surprising entry into the field:

…Although Olive Tree could not perform every aspect of the last two challenges, what they could do was very impressive, indeed. The representatives from Olive Tree showed that their “pocket” software can be used for very serious work if someone is so inclined to do so…

Now, without getting into the details too much, each participant was to use their software to complete 5 tasks, and then document the steps they went through. It seems (from This Lamp’s reporting) that only Accordance was able to do this successfully, the others (Logos Systems, Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible, Bible Works, and Olive Tree) missed on one or several points.

It would also seem that not just the tasks, but also process documentation was a difficult piece to address. We’ve talked about it some here in terms of designing a Bible UI around the user, not so much around the features. And it would seem that some of the applications got caught up into the latter.

Another few things I noticed from this report were in those that were not present: Laridian, Word Search, Sword, and a few others. I would have thought that this would have been more about getting as many platforms here as possible for evaluation, not just those with certain name or reputation recognition. Nevertheless, there now seems to be some metric for some of these software platforms to be measured against in respect to academic (I refuse to use the word serious) biblical study on computing devices.

Check out the rest of the post at This Lamp, and be sure to give some feedback to your Bible software platform of choice if you would see these features better developed for what you’ve paid for. This will only make the field better for all, and hopefully, better students of the Word.

Other Posts on the Software Bible Shootout:

• OliveTree’s Presentation at SBL
• #SBL (via Twitter Search)
• Report via Resources for Biblical Studies

Post Edit Note: If you’ve got a report from the Software Bible Shootout, post a link to it in this comment and I’ll link it to this main post.

Believe it or not, but I’ve not written a post in a few weeks. Ususally, I get on a writing spurt and do anywhere from 3 to 6 posts all at once and then queue them to appear at a relatively standard time. Usually speaking, this works well because there are themes and threads between posts that I see which would be beneficial, and it gives some room for the “life outside of MMM” that I tend to have.

The problem lately is that life outside of MMM has been getting in the way of MMM. And I’ve had this constant thought of doing a good deal more here. Since the VSN conference, I’ve had the literal question/challenge of “what could I do if I had more time and resources to devote to producing the kind of content that seems to keep MMM set apart from others sites? Truthfully, I’d not only jump at it, but I’d also beg God for the help to make sure that I’d not get burnt out by it.

You see, passions are a funny thing. If not measured, we will pour ourselves into something, and then when the time comes to show forth growth or more fruit, we will be too spent to do something of value. That’s the fork of my road with MMM as I write this (at the end of a rest-filled Saturday). I see the passions that have gone into this resource, and see very clearly the areas that need attention. However, I’m also tasked with living out much of what’s written here. Its a dual role that’s a good bit harder than it would appear to some.

The challenge though is a good one. It keeps my knees dirty (so to speak). I’ve got to have those moments of resting in Him, prayer, and worship/yielding in complete devotion. After that, having a queue full of articles, a smattering of meetings and conference calls, and the releasing of wisdom/insight towards mobile becomes easier. But only when I’m not so stretched through myself that I’m too tired to abide in Him.

Behind the curtain of MMM, this is a bit of what makes this place tick. And – again – I’ll admit, there’s a lot of work yet to be done. But only as God gives the grace to do it, and life allows for moments such as these to peel back and see what’s ahead. Thanks for visiting and I hope that you can keep this site and all those that contribute here in your prayers.

This week, I received notice that my presentation topic Mobile’s Christ-Led Encounters was accepted and therefore I’ll be representing MMM as a presenter at the BibleTech 2010 Conference in San Jose, CA.

I’m pretty excited about the opportunity, and hope to build on the topic and technology exploration done both at BibleTech and the Visual Story Network’s conferences. Here’s the submitted abstrat, as to the topic direction, you will want to be there for this one:

Mobile has now taken place within the regular consciousness of most mainstream thought. From sociology to psychology, transportation to entertainment, Facebook to the Good Book, mobile is now at the tip of every tongue in being that next great area. Mobile though suffers from the same growing pains that every other media suffers from when its new – specifically, what’s its relevance. Within the Body, we see many examples of mobile taking root as an engagement, evangelistic, and opportunistic medium. Within this topic, we will look at some of these areas that mobile has taken root in, as well as exploring some areas that have not yet been explored.

For more information and to register, visit the BibleTech 2010 Conference website. Hope to see you there

Last week, Tomi Ahonen published a pretty extensive post detailing the regional breakdown of mobile across industralized and developing nations. Lots of number, long post, but best quoted piece is:

…By every measure, mobile is the giant, the only giant, and the other technologies are the lilliputs. If you intend to communicate with prospective customers in the Developing World today, then you cannot think of mobile as the ‘fourth screen’ and consider possibly including it in your communication mix, as we still can think in the Industrialized World, as a luxury today. No, in the Developing World mobile is the first screen – and obviously, for as many as 1.8 billion people – one quarter of the planet – it is the ONLY screen. These 1.8 billion people do not have a PC, not a TV, not even FM radio, but they have a live, active mobile phone account. Out of all 3 billion people in the Developing World who have some kind of connection, a massive 60% have no other way to connect, than their mobile phone…

Yep, just like everything else in the Body, you have to have the same perspective of the people that you are speaking to in order to have a ministry that walks in step with their heart’s condition (1 Cor. 12-14).

So read the post, then just make sure that you are walking in the regional and cultural understanding of these mobile-booming times.

Additional impressions by Tomi from 3GSM Asia.

Kevin Purcell put together an early impressions review of the new Logos iPhone Application over at his website about a week ago. We are just getting to it now, but if you are considering the Logos iPhone App, then I definitely recommend this read. Here’s a snippet.

…The other good thing about the Logos iPhone app is the overall interface. It is nice. It opens to the Home screen which lists reading plans and news information. Tap on Library and there are two lists, the bookshelf (pictured above) and the library. It is a little confusing to have a library tab on the library page. I wish they had made it more obvious that the bookshelf is the most used books while the library tab is all available books. Titles like Favorites and All would be more explanatory…

Read the rest of the review at Kevin Purcell’s website.