There have been so many updates to YouVersion.com in the past week that I will barely be able to contain them in this one post. Since you all have been a big part of the community that made YouVersion.com possible, I wanted to be sure to bring you up to speed on the development. It’s an unusually long post, so hang with me.
We are thrilled that The Bible is becoming more accessible, engaging more people, and creating more conversation about God’s Word than ever before.
As many of you know, we recently launched the Bible App for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Since the launch in July, we have seen 287,000 people download and install the app on their iPhone/iPod. More importantly, these users have spent more than 30 million minutes reading the Bible! For the record, that completely blows away any of my initial expectations. Yesterday, a significant new update (v1.2) was released for the Bible App that adds the following features and enhancements:
+ Localization: the application now is localized to English (en), Spanish (es), French (fr), German (de).
+ New translations: mentioned in detail below.
+ Book divisions: the books area is separated into key sections.
+ Share: you can now simply share a verse with a friend via email, and also notify a friend about the application.
+ Settings: within the settings area, you can change your font size in the Bible reader, and adjust to a low light version for simple reading in a dark place.
+ Improved speed and performance and a new user interface.
+ We also made an OOPS and accidentally released a little code that doesn’t work yet, but reveals what is coming in the next release - the ability to access several of the translations when your iPhone or iPod touch is offline (the number one most requested feature).
Remember, even if you do not have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can still easily access http://m.youversion.com from any web enabled phone (that includes the Blackberry).
Additionally, in the last week we have added many new translations in multiple languages to YouVersion.com. You can now choose from one of 31 different Bible translations available in 16 different languages. All of those translations can be accessed via your computer, mobile phone and via the Bible App. Below is a comprehensive list of the translations that are currently available.
English:
- American Standard Version
- Amplified Bible
- Contemporary English Version
- English Standard Version
- Holman Christian Standard Bible
- King James Version
- New American Standard Bible
- New Century Version
- New International Version
- New King James Version
- Today’s New International Version
- The Message
- World English Bible
Spanish:
- La Biblia de las Americas
- Nueva Biblia de los Hispanos
- Reina-Valera Antigua
German:
- Elberfelder Bibel
- Luther Bible 1545
French:
- Louis Segond
Swedish:
- Svenska 1917
Chinese:
- Chinese Union Version Simplified
- Chinese Union Version Traditional
Bulgarian:
- Bulgarian 1940
Dutch:
- Statenvertaling
Finnish:
- Finnish 1938
Hungarian:
- Károli 1590
Indonesian:
- Terjemahan Baru
Norwegian:
- Det Norsk Bibelselskap 1930
Portuguese:
- Almeida Atualizada
Romanian:
- Romanian Cornilescu 1928
Russian:
- Бытие 1
I know that some of you have been patiently waiting on the NLT. The good news is that we have worked out an agreement with Tyndale, but we have had some technical challenges on the implementation that we hope will be worked out very very soon. Stay tuned.
NEED YOU: We could really use your help to continue to extend this Bible tool to more parts of the world. We need people to help us localize (translate) the website, mobile site, and Bible App in to other languages. The Bible App is currently localized in English, Spanish, French, and German and we hope to soon extend those languages to the YouVersion.com website too. If you are fluent in multiple languages or know someone who is and would like to volunteer to help us translate several English words/phrases into Korean, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese, Russian, Romanian, Dutch, Polish or Italian, please email me or leave a comment below. Others of you can help us spread the word by contributing content, sharing it with your friends and social networks, linking to it from your blog/website, or using it as a tool to engage your church with Scripture.
Sorry about the long post…we are obviously excited about getting tons of people more engaged in The Bible. For everyone from the cautious explorer to the passionate follower, the Bible is life changing.
If you have any questions about YouVersion, future features, additional translations, languages, suggestions, even complaints (not really)….we’d love to hear them. Feel free to comment below.
Tags: Bible, iPhone, iPod Touch
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