I was very excited about the Glo Bible software package when it was released (for PC). It promised a massive amount of audio-visual material, a great atlas and the NIV Bible. I struggled for days to get it installed on a school computer, and after hours of support from the company simply had to give up. They stated that they simple had never designed it to operate in a corporate environment (shortsighted).
I was gob smacked to then find that they have released a free Glo Bible app. You will find it if you search for "glo bible" in the App Store, but it has been named Bible + for some reason. As we are currently facing a steep bill for installing the NIV on each of our machines using the Olive Tree system, I was then even more astonished to find out they were giving the NIV away free.
How is this possible? I can only guess that the real clue is where the text resides. From watching how the content loads, I'm guessing that all of the content is actually downloaded "as needed" from the web. This means the product is not actually an installed Bible at all, but a portal to online resources. It then becomes no different to going to www.biblegateway.com where you can view a free NIV as well.
Still, the layout is fresh and fairly flexible, the atlas is really good, there are lots of linked pictures, and the outstanding interactive visual resources. I was struck by the re-creation of the tabernacle, allowing 360 degree viewing as though you were standing in the courtyard with information and closer views on most of the key features.
When iOS 5 launches (within the next month) all of this can be simply put up in a classroom from a teacher iPad using either a VGA adapter or Apple TV.
It is very hard to argue with free NIV and great resources, providing that you are 'net connected. At the least this will be installed alongside Olive Tree on our classroom set.
Andrew Lack
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