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Olive Tree is now releasing material in a format for the iPod! We started by posting 8 FREE Bibles and are working on eBooks and devotionals. The format for the Bible is very basic but easy to use. It is organized by book, chapter, and verse. By clicking on a book of the Bible you will be brought to a screen with chapter selection. After clicking on the chapter you wish to view, you will be brought to a verse menu for this chapter. Finally, by clicking on the verse you want to view, you will be brought right to this verse. One thing to note is that the iPod only allows 1000 4 kb notes. Therefore, the whole Bible will not fit on the iPod. Once you have downloaded the Bible you want, you can delete any books of the Bible to have just the ones you want on your iPod. We are hoping the iPhone has the same notes feature with the same formatting. If this is the case, we will release all this material for the iPhone as well! If you bring your iPod with you to work, school, or anywhere else like I do, this material could be a very valuable resource for you. You can read Scripture wherever you are! Anywyay, I think this could be a really cool thing.

You can download the Bibles for you iPod from Olive Tree’s iPod beta web page.

  For those of you who don’t know what BookExpo America (BEA) is, let me give you a quick summary. BEA is the third largest book fair in the world, and combines the largest selection of English language titles on the planet with special industry and author events and unparalleled educational content to create a dynamic environment for networking, sourcing and relationship building. It’s main purpose? To fuel the passion for books and spark new ideas for publishers, booksellers, librarians and rights professionals from around the world.

Just shy of two weeks ago, Olive Tree was one of the many companies present at this book fair. You might wonder what Olive Tree Bible Software was doing at a book fair? The answer is simple - we were working on licensing more products that we can make available for you to install to your PDA or Smartphone device! As an electronic publisher, Olive Tree works with other publishing companies to acheive permissions for Bibles, study tools, devotionals, and Christian eBooks. We then get eText for those books, convert them to the Olive Tree format, and post them on our website for you to download! So that’s how things work in the realm of electronic publishing…

While we were there we met with many publishers and made great progress in moving forward with more resources for handheld platforms. More new products are always around the corner!

~ K

It’s already a busy summer here at Olive Tree! This last week we posted more new products, and I thought you might be interested to know what a couple of them were. Also, in case you haven’t noticed, many of the new commentaries that we have been releasing are now supported on Windows Mobile Smartphone and Symbian devices - the study tools available on these platforms are increasing!

Here’s a couple of the new products we’ve recently posted:

C.A. Coates Commentary and Articles
Available for Palm OS, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Smartphone, and Symbian phones!

This collection of C.A. Coates’ ministry contains 37 volumes of his commentary and articles. We made this excellent resource simple and easy to use by adding in the Table of Contents Chooser, which makes navigation to a particular location in these 37 volumes easy and quick.

NET Bible® First Edition, free version
Available with limited notes for Palm OS and Pocket PC.
Available with no notes for Windows Mobile Smartphone and Symbian phones.

The NET Bible® is a modern translation of the Bible based entirely on the original languages. The full version, available for Palm OS and Pocket PC, includes almost 60,000 translator notes from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, as well as more than 700 references to scholarly works.

How Biblical Languages Work
Available for Palm OS and Pocket PC.

This eBook is an excellent resource for study of Greek and Hebrew. It serves as an engaging introduction to these languages, and makes learning Greek and Hebrew much easier.

I hope you check out these and our other new releases soon - enjoy!

~ K

With the release of a new beta version of our software, we at Olive Tree are always curious to see what kind of user feedback we will have. The latest beta version of the Palm BibleReader was no exception. And with this reader, we were even more expectant, because there are some really neat features that we added this time, as you probably read about in an earlier blog post. Sure enough, the user comments have been coming in, and we wanted to share a couple with you. Here’s what one avid Olive Tree user wrote in to tell us:

Thanks for not leaving out Palm users on all of the wonderful new features that you have just released. The new beta is incredible. The new search options are second-to-none and the secondary toolbar is just AMAZING! I have never seen a company so dedicated to constant improvement of their products. I am so glad that I am a customer of Olivetree. Thank you for being so attentive to the requests of your customers.

Today we also came across an article recently posted on PalmAddicts that gives a good discussion of Bible software for Palm devices, and talks in particular about OliveTree’s BibleReader software, our frequent updates, and some of the new features we’ve just recently added. Here’s a quick look at what this article discusses:

Recently (in about the last 2 years), Olive Tree improved their BibleReader by leaps and bounds! So much so that it is now the most used Bible reading program on my Palm device … I carry 12 different translations of the Bible with me, including a French Bible. It has commentaries, cross reference links, life application notes and a dictionary … Navigation through the Bible and searches are very easy to do. There are a variety of choices for programming your hard keys for certain tasks while using BibleReader. They put a high importance on you being able to customize the program to do whatever you want … The best part about Olive Tree is that their basic reader and a few of the most basic Bibles come absolutely free!

You can read this full article at:
http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2007/05/bible_software_.html

So if you’re a Palm user, why don’t you download our new beta reader and checkout these new features for yourself!  

~ K

We have added a secondary customizable toolbar to the Palm OS beta BibleReader. You can choose what buttons you want on this toolbar and where this toolbar should be placed. When you don’t want the toolbar visible you can even hide it using the blue arrow button on the top of the toolbar. We have had many requests for a popup highlighting palette so that you would not have to always go to the highlighting preference screen each time you want to change your highlighting color. You can now do this with the secondary toolbar. First, go to the secondary toolbar preferences (Menu->Preferences->Secondary Toolbar). Second, remove the buttons from the secondary toolbar that you do not want. Finally, select the highlight colors from the drop down list that you want and click on Add. Now you can use the secondary toolbar to easily highlight with the colors that you want and you can hide the toolbar when you just want to read text.

We are in the process of testing some new features on our website, and are looking for some outside testing. The basic changes we’ve made:

1. You can customize the website to be “device dependent” so that you can browse olivetree.com just based on your device and the features and products that will work for you.
2. You can now build your own software bundle, and get discounts accordingly. This new discount system is already in place, and the discounts will apply to any purchases you make, once you turn on the testing mode for the site.

If you are interested in helping us test these exciting new changes, go to the link below and read the instructions there to get started. Please send all comments, suggestions, and feedback to beta02@olivetree.com.

http://www.olivetree.com/store/dd_beta.php

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!
~ K

We have added a new way to view search results on the new beta Pocket PC BibleReader which you can download here. You can now view your search results as a book on the main screen. Viewing search results as a book in the main screen has a number of advantages.

 
1. Greek and Hebrew search results display in Greek and Hebrew fonts (see screen shot).
2. You can more easily look at verses for the search results since you can work your way down the list clicking on the verse hyperlinks. You no longer have to reopen the search results list to find the next result you are interested in look at.
3. There are options for how to display the search results. For example, you can choose to display the entire verse instead of just the context around the search result.
4. There are no limits on the number of search results.
5. You can open the search results as an eBook in your library and the search results will open to where you where last reading.

You can turn on search results in the main screen by selecting the “Display Options” button in the lower left corner of the search screen and then checking the “Display Search Results In Main Screen” checkbox. This screen also has the options for how the search results are formated.

In case you Palm users thought we were ignoring you with this new feature, don’t worry we are currently implementing this feature on Palm OS! See the screen shot (also notice the customizable secondary toolbar). These features will be in the next beta version for Palm OS This screen shot gives an example of some of the other formating options for the search results.

For months I have enjoyed Amy Carmichael’s daily devotional Edges of His Ways on my PDA. The selections are penetrating and comforting expressions of the author’s genuine experiences of the Lord. Olive Tree has now added three more books by this endearing writer — If, Mimosa, and Gold Cord.

As a young woman called by the Lord, Amy Carmichael journeyed from Ireland to India around 1900. Born out of her many years of abiding in Christ in faithful service to the people of south India, a community of believers called Dohnavur Fellowship thrives to this day. Amy’s many books reflect her rich faith and love for the Lord and His Body, wrought through the fires of suffering.

If is a series of pithy conditional sentences that cut to the heart of what it means to be a Christian. This little book is all about the real essence of Calvary love, reminiscent of 1 Corinthians 13. As readers, we would do well to take each small portion and ponder it, confessing our lack of this genuine love and asking the Lord to be our All, as only He can be.

Mimosa is a the remarkable true story of a young Hindu girl who visited Dohnavur with her father and older sister, and, despite only a few minutes time in fellowship with Amy and others, received a personal revelation that God is love. For years little Mimosa had no further contact with Amy and Dohnavur, and she didn’t even know that the God she served and loved had a name, Jesus. Carried by God’s love through experiences of persecution, ostracism, toil, and personal loss, Mimosa grew closer and closer to her Lord; then, finally, as a grown woman, mature and wise, she returned to Dohnavur and told her story, to the astonishment of Amy and the rest. This book is so touching, and the story so beautifully told, that I have had trouble keeping a copy because I always want to give it away for someone else to enjoy.

Gold Cord is the story of Dohnavur Fellowship. A gold cord, in contrast to wood, hay, and stubble, is Amy’s symbol for the bond of love that unites this group of believers and, according to the author’s hope, extends to her readers.

I trust you will enjoy all of these wonderful writings by Amy Carmichael.

Did you ever wish someone could take you back to Bible times to view in detail the lives of outstanding figures in the Scriptures, like Moses, David, and Paul? F. B. Meyer has done that, and Olive Tree is happy to announce the publication for your PDA or smartphone of three new eBook Bible biographies by this outstanding writer and dear man of God. These include Moses, David, and Paul, and there are more on the way.

Having thoroughly enjoyed all of these books, I can’t say enough about how much I benefited from reading them. Every point the author makes is rooted in the Bible, and yet I found myself saying frequently, “I never thought of that before!” Surprisingly vivid descriptive details are interwoven with the narrative. Relevant historical elements are pointed out to enhance understanding.

Most importantly, though true biographies, these books are devotional in character. They draw a reader’s heart to Christ, and they help explain our experience of the Lord as it is portrayed in the lives of Moses, David, Paul and the other characters that surround them. It is not too much to say that these books are life-changing, for one comes away with a sweeter, deeper appreciation of the love and sovereignty of God viewed again and again in the lives of these saints.

If you’re a familiar customer of Olive Tree’s, then you have probably found that we offer a wide range of Bible study tools that you can install to your Palm or Pocket PC device and take with you so you can study the Word anytime, anywhere. One of the newest additions to our commentary collection is the Bible Knowledge Commentary. A new favorite among Olive Tree users, we wanted to make special mention of this commentary for all those interested in staying abreast of the ever-growing collection of study tools available.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary is a useful tool for a wide spectrum of Bible students, from the beginner, who will find it easy to understand and easy to use, to the advanced, who will find it consistently thorough and reliable. The readable style, combined with careful scholarship, make this a Bible study aid its users will add to their “most-used” shelf of books.

~ K