This made the rounds on a few blogs last week, but I just took the time to check it out this weekend… Wow. Glo is an interactive digital Bible experience that is designed to be “more efficient and effective than a paper Bible, at home or on the go.” Not only has somebody finally taken the time to develop a beautiful UI for some Bible software, but this is the first time I’ve seen a product that encourages you to explore and dig deeper into God’s Word just by its nature.
Check out the video below, because it really needs to be seen in motion to be appreciated. The combination of a beautiful Bible-reading interface combined with high-def multimedia would be an awesome product to experience via the touch sensitive monitors that are increasingly more common in the marketplace. Can you imagine having a couple of Surface-like tables running this in your church lobby? ::drool::
Products like this, YouVersion (and its iPhone app) are changing the way people consume and experience scripture. So, where do things go from here? Do you enjoy experiences like these, or do you prefer a good ‘ole leather bound book for your study times?
I like what they’re trying to do, but I’m not sure about it. I think it would be great for bible study and class preparation. I was thinking about how cool it would be to show some of that stuff to a bible class - like the locations of the cities in Revelation. For devotional reading, though, I don’t think this will replace my bible. Sitting on the porch and looking out at what God has made will always impact me more than images on a screen.
What I would like, though, is a way to get the text to be more interactive. The power of the web is the ability for everyone to comment. What if there were an online bible that had notes in a wiki format? Might be cool.
What your describing is pretty much YouVersion.com. You should definitely check it out if you haven’t already.
I’m kind of with you on the study part. My wife bought a Kindle 2 for me earlier this year, and I absolutely adored it for months, until I realized how much I missed having a shelf full of real books (I have since sold the eBook reader). I love reading the Bible on my iPhone when I’m out and about, but I absorb the most when I’ve got my trusty beat-up study Bible in my favorite reading spot.
That said, I still want this software on a Surface enabled table