User of Logos Bible Software will usually swear by it as one of the best digital Bible study programs available. Logos has been aggressive in getting their large library of available digital Bible study and general Christian content onto many platforms (PC, Mac, iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone with a possible Android app coming too). They have previously had an online Library at Library.logos.com. Now they are working on a limited version of their Logos Bible Software for the cloud at Biblia.com.

Biblia.com is still in beta. Two of the best features are not yet functional. So that means at present it is useful for Bible and Commentary reading as well as search. But a version of their online library will hopefully be coming. And if they can get the Passage and Word Study Guides up and running too, that would make this a great solution for when you cannot access your Logos BIble Software. For those who are not owners of a Logos package you can read the Bible and a pair of basic commentaries – really just one but a book for the NT and one for the OT.

There are two pains (see above – left for Bible and right for Commentary). Along the far left is the Home key and tabs for Library (not functioning in beta10), Search (functional) and a tab with icons of people, which I assume will be for social interaction of some kind. From Home type in a reference and two links show up below the box (see below). One will search the entire library and the other will search just the open books.

At the top of the two pains are drop down boxes (see above) which are used to select which resource you want to display in that pain (if you sign in with your Logos account you will see much more content).

If you want to share what you are studying click on the Share button above the pane. A popup showing a hypertext link to that spot will be in the box. You could just copy it and paste it into something or you can click on the various buttons to share the verse with that service (Facebook, Google Buzz, Twitter or Email).

I am excited about what Biblia can become. Try it out as they develop this great resource, especially if you are a Logos user.

Reading this blog will prove to you that I love Bible software. Part of the reason is I use it in my day job as a pastor. But I’m also a tech junkie!

The only problem with good Bible software is that it often is expensive. Before you free software producers or fans comment, I am not saying all good Bible software is expensive. Some great programs are free or very inexpensive, especially in the mobile sphere.

As someone who has been using Bible software for nearly two decades and been covering it for many years, I have heard all the arguments for and against charging for Bible software.

Free Software Proponents

The Bible is not owned by any one person. If a Christian truly loves God and his church he should give away his services. After all you cannot out give God. Software is only bits/bytes and not a real tangible product, so it should be free since the recipient isn’t really getting a thing. Also the cost to produce one copy is the same as it is to produce a thousand copies of the software itself. Only the delivery mechanism costs money and in the case of downloads, that cost is negligible.

Pay Software Proponents

A servant is worthy of his hire. How can a person produce good quality software without receiving something to cover his living expenses or her costs of development (computers, software to code with, advertising, paying publishers for content, electricity, food, clothing, shelter, etc)? And if one charges for software he or she can also offer quality support or training for the software to people who are not skilled enough to figure out how to use it on their own.

What’s the Answer?

There may be other arguments in both camps, but those are most of the common ones. So who is right? Put another way, “Should Bible software be free or should it be pay?” The answer is a resounding YES!

It is true that some people have a calling to help the church and Christians by producing tools to help study the Word, learn about discipleship via eBooks, and organize their personal Bible related content like sermons and Bible studies, notes, highlighting and bookmarks and Christian writings in computer software tools. Just like a pastor is called to a full-time vocation of preaching and teaching and caring for the flock, a software developer is called to write software. In order to do that the person will have to be paid or have a way of providing for him or herself. In some cases, people have made enough money in another career that they can take care of those provisions themselves. In the case of e-Sword developer Rick Myers, he used to say on his web site that God had blessed him in the computer industry so now he is donating his time and talents to producing his great and free Bible software. For him and people like him, Bible software should be free and only the resources that cost too much for him to provide are pay software.

In the case of Logos Bible Software, the engine to read their content is actually free. To get all the use of their tools you will have to pay for one of their packages. For them, and companies or individual programmers like them, they have chosen to offer some free content and some pay content. It works making them one of the largest Bible software companies around.

Finally, there is the model of great products like BibleWorks, PC Study Bible, QuickVerse, Laridian PocketBible and more. They charge for their software and for much of their content. Sometimes you can find free books to add onto their packages. The result is a base of users who love their products and keep them in business.

The point is that no one model fits everyone. If you believe that anyone producing anything for the benefit of the church, including Bible software, should give away their services, then you have a number of options to choose from. You can use those products never needing to pay once for any Bible software. But if you don’t mind paying, then you can also get some great content for a small fee sometimes or for many thousands of dollars if you are so inclined and financially blessed.

Conclusion

I can find no Biblical mandate that says all Bible software (or another other service to the Christian church) should always be free. However, there is some support for paying and providing for those who serve the church. Thank God for great people who devote their time to creating the incredible tools available to us today, sometimes for free but often for very reasonable costs. Keep it up! We need you and appreciate you greatly!!

Sorry, but this video is not working. I will redo it and upload a new one as soon as I  can get it done.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Instead of writing a review, I decided to give you a little video preview. The first three minutes I explain how the iPad fits into the Logos ecosystem. I did not show the Library.Logos.com site that much, but remember that it is part of the ecosystem.

The videos are in two parts.  Here is the first videos:

And here is part two:

 Pros:

• Potentially large library
• Works with Logos desktop application
• Syncs to other devices
• Advanced Bible study
• Reading plan tracking
• Bookmarking

Cons:

• No night reading mode
• No notes
• No highlighting
• No split screen mode
• Have to be online for many features

I’m working on a review of iPad Bible apps for Christian Computing Magazine which will be out later this month. As part of that review I am planning to do a very in depth review of the apps here as well, so that those who want more information can find it. I’ve already created a page for these, which you will see in the tabs up the upper right corner. So be looking for them.

I plan to start with the Logos app since it was one of the first in the app store.

So as they say on the idiot box … stay tuned!

If you have been following the tech news this Easter weekend you’d think that Jesus resurrection was the second most important event celebrated today. Personally, I had a ball in church proclaiming “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!” I told my wife as I was exiting the sanctuary that I felt like a kid coming off the roller coaster. “Can we go again!”

After going home and taking a holy nap to recover from the busy weekend of worship prep, I am starting a week of vacation and excited about both preaching and the iPad.

For the last week the various Digital Bible study outlets have been prepping for the iPad launch. Sadly, only a few of them made it over the finish line. But never fear because the race is not over. Some are taking the slow and steady pace approach and others the get there and get it done approach. One of those latter, sadly fell victim to the App store approval process and so wasn’t ready despite great efforts.

The ones that are available are getting in on the excitement. Logos is shining the brightest in my opinion. It is atop the store when you search for Bible and has some really good reviews. YouVersion is very popular and gets a lot of downloads from people who are not looking for a serious Bible study tool. BibleXpress is making a name for themselves, but also has the the most expensive price in the currently available apps for the iPad. HandiBible is there too with the most instances – they have the basic app, a version in Romanian, German, and The Message. holiwrit (yes it is supposed to be lowercase h) is a newcomer going after the crowd who only want a simple Bible reader. Coming soon are OliveTree, PocketBible and MantisBible.

I am excited about the future of Bible study on the iPad. The things that are net yet out may be some of the most creative and use the space most effectively. So be looking for them soon. Until then, it is a little sparce.

One sad note! I did a search for Bible in the Apple iBook app and found very little. You can get the KJV, NIV, and NRSV, but none of the other most popular translations like ESV, HCSB or NLT are there. I hope this changes. On the Kindle side publishers have had a large collection of Bibles for a long time and this helps Bible students who want to read on their iPad. There are also some commentaries and reference works available in iBooks and Kindle. I found the Expositor’s Bible Commentary in iBooks.

Logos has just announced at BibleTech the Biblia.com API. The “API provides Web, mobile,  and desktop applications with access to Bible text through web services." (http://api.biblia.com/docs/) This will allow people to produce Bible applications using this API. An API is an Application Programming Interface. So Logos is allowing others to make software that will interface with their Bible texts on the web.

In my review of Logos 4 for Christian Computing Magazine, I was critical of the move away from the traditional Reverse Interlinear. In 4.0 they replaced them with a new format. As you can see below there is a big difference.

You will notice in the above screen shots, the new Reverse Interlinear are displayed in a small window at the very bottom of the screen and far away from the text. The nice thing about this is that when you clicked on a word above the same word in the Interlinear was also highlighted. So despite being far apart you could still easily follow which word above was being referenced below. However, I still like the older version with all the information together in a larger window and accessible at a glance. I say that because in the new way there are only a handful of words on the screen. But in the old way you could see many.

You might, from reading this, think that the above screen shot is of the old Reverse Interlinear. But it is actually of the newest format which is available in the latest beta version from Logos 4.0 (Logos 4.0c beta 1).

In the newest version of the Reverse Interlinear, Logos has made them customizable. Notice below the Display drop down box. Click the different elements you wish to display in your new Reverse Interlinear. I love this. I don’t like having the transliterated versions of the words. I also do not use Strong’s Numbers. So removing those three elements is a big help. Finally, if you want to go back to the simple display of the text, just click on the Default button at the bottom of the menu.

This will not be available publicly until version 4.0c is released. If you don’t mind running beta software, you can get it now by downloading the beta update.

SwordSearcher, which is another e-Sword clone, has released a new version. It boasts a few new resources, including An Interpretation of the English Bible by B. H. Carroll and Expositions of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren. It adds some new markup features and beefed up search features as well. It also adds the ability to save as many different layouts as you like. There are also many reported usability enhancements.

The regular price is $59.95 for first time buyers or $24.50 if you are upgrading a previous version. There is a trial version available that gives a limited set of resources as well as 30 days to experiment with it and see if you like.

While I am a collector of Bible study software, I look at these programs the same way. e-Sword was the first and is still the best. If it doesn’t add anything that e-Sword doesn’t have, then why bother?

One of the features that it has over e-Sword is the “margin” area of the Bible window. It provides links to commentaries and resources tied to that verse. If you have used Mantis Bible on the iPhone, it has a similar feature. Or imagine the Passage Guide in Logos without having to run the guide – what if all the books were just there? The links popup when you hover over them and open in the other panes when you click them. You can select which resources are shown by clicking the buttons on the Bible panel toolbar. The search results pane also has this margin link area.

As mentioned above, Logos has something called a Passage Guide which finds all the resources about a particular passage. SwordSearcher has a rudimentary version of this, as seen below. You click on the button on the toolbar to open it (see picture – red arrow points to the button). Enter either a passage for a passage guide search or type a subject (as in the picture below) and it finds all the reference tools with entries for that subject.

SwordSearcher does not have a Notes panel like e-Sword does. But there is the capability to add your own content by creating a commentary or a book. In e-Sword you just click the notes tab in the commentary pane. With SwordSearcher you must first click the User menu and and choose either new commentary or new book. If you create a new commentary, you can add notes to verses but only after clicking the “edit this comment” link in the text window of the user created commentary. This adds a number of clicks over e-Sword, but at least it is possible if not ideal.

It is hard not to compare SwordSearcher to e-Sword. The share a common interface style. SwordSearcher has the above features that e-Sword does not have, but the new commentary feature is actually a step backwards from e-Sword, not forwards. I cannot find much else in SwordSearcher to make it worth replacing e-Sword if SwordSearcher was free. But for sixty bucks, that settles it. Give it a try and see if I am wrong. Even if you would not like to download and install it, watch the help videos to compare it.

With Gizmodo reporting over 1,000 apps in the iPhone app store devoted to the Bible, it could be hard to figure out which one is best. I did an in depth review of Bible apps in Christian Computing Magazine before I joined the Notebooks.com team. In that review I found that the three best were Laridian PocketBible, Olive Tree Bible Reader, and Mantis Bible.

As with most iPhone apps, the development cycle is swift so some of what I reported is already out of date. A new app released since that review is from Logos Bible Software and deserves a spot on the list. The most popular is YouVersion, but it does not have all the features and study tools available in the other four. All four of these are free to try. All except for YouVersion have very advanced tools for studying the Bible as well as ways of helping you set up reading plans.

Currently I am using Logos for daily reading, OliveTree for taking notes when I am in worship, and I use Mantis and PocketBible when I want to use the books I have purchased for those apps that are not available on the other two.