Was on Twitter recently and @_ndsmith posted about putting the entire Strong’s Concordance into a SQLite database. I replied that I was sure that it was something that had been done before, but hey, these kinds of projects can be used beyond just technical experiments?
So, developers. What can you do with this: SQLite/Python Database
Maybe you’ve got a project or two that you’ve been doing that was pretty much a fun exercise (we’ve got one), if you put it out there, what can people do with it?
From November 29th – December 31, 2011, we are completely waiving the $750 per app setup fee for the first 1,000 churches, ministries, or 501c3 non-profits to sign up. You will still need to pay the monthly hosting fee, but we’ve even reduced that for this limited-time offer! You can choose either option: iPhone and iPad only or iPhone, iPad, and Android. You get a better value if you choose all three platforms, and for this limited time, we’ve also slashed the price if you go ahead and pay for a full year of hosting up front! Seriously, if your church is considering an app, you will not find a better deal than this.
Pricing is as follows:
- iPhone/iPad app: $30/month or $300/year
- Android app: $30/month or $300/year
- iPhone/iPad AND Android apps: $50/month or $500/year
- And NO setup cost.
So, if you’ve already gotten your ducks in a row concerning what it is that you want from a mobile application (see the recommended reading links below), you just need to step up towards ROAR’s invitation and get that applicaation built.
If you haven’t gotten your mobile app plans moving forward, and development was the sticky point, definitley take advantage of this offering and finish 2011/begin 2012 on a capable mobile foot.
Sign up now before the 1000 slots are taken up.
NOTE: You do need to pay for the 1st month’s hosting fees for the application in order to get the church/ministry application built for free. You can also choose to pay for the entire year, and the free application offer also applies.
About ROAR
Learn more about ROAR’s mobile app development, CMS solutions, their pricing models, and their FAQs at their website.
Recommended Readings
Do make sure to have these articles in your reading list as they will come in handy as you work with ROAR or any other mobile application developers/service providers. The better prepared that you are, they more effective your mobile solution will be.
Take advantage of this partnership between ROAR and MMM while this offer lasts.
The bar has been raised. If he can do it, and this kid is self-motivated and has a family/community supporting his efforts, what is stopping you or your church from investing in youth of this age to produce similar results?
As long as they learn a skill that advances what they will be able to do later, what they build isn’t as important as them getting the chance to learn how to build.
If you, or your church, has been doing similar, point us to the projects/results. We’d love to share in commending youth (or seniors) in these efforts.
What are some of those apps? Here are a few:
Look again at these. There’s not a throwing away of the Scripture, but an asking of digital tools to enhance behaviors that are already happening, and in some cases would happen better if mobile/web was in the midst of the behavior.
We see something like this happening with the popularity of reading plans with YouVersion. Why is a reading plan effective? It doesn’t try to give you the entire Bible at once. There’s a flow to the use (each day/week/month you open it, you see some progress). There’s an invitation to connect your progress to an online community (catering to encouragement and esteem). Note the mix – literally Joshua 1:8 and Deuteronomy 6:6-9 happening in practice. Reading plans, as YouVersion has enabled them, allows the believer to keep enough of the contents of the Bible in front of their routine that it is almost a compulsion to live what you are reading and meditating on.
What does this look like then beyond reading plans? Look at the applicaitions mentioned above (I know, lots of looking back), engage with a piece of Scripture and then persuade the person engaged to go “heads-up” (to steal a page from Microsoft’s Windows Phone marketing message).
Something interesting happened when I updated my iPad to iOS5 – I didn’t reload any Bible applications. Not a one. And not because I don’t like them (ok, I have my moments), but because I’ve found the use of this iPad to be such a blank canvas for creation and computing that I’ve modeled my use of it to consume and produce that which looks like the text that my immediate communities are already familiar with. That means I’m drawing, I’m creating tools to teach, I’m coding, etc. I’m developing a behavior of digital living where the Bible has to be applied in order for the tool to demonstrate appropriate use. That doesn’t mean that my use of ESPN Scorecenter will always look like any of the characteristics of the church, crucifixion/resurrection, or even judgement. But, it does mean that even in that app, I’m subjugating the entire digital experience under the same mandate that was given to the rest of creation (Genesis 1:28-30).
When we move to that paradigm – this idea of the Bible as applied to digital spaces – what then are the more notable effects to those things online and offline can we see? Well, when your small groups start talking about their prayer chains and the testimonies from them, let me know 
A friend and I were talking about a project he and his company were working on and while it was great that they were working on it, I had to be direct and ask him, “why are you building another Bible applicaiton?” According to he and his team, having a Bible application would put them on equal footing with other companies in this space who have applications and have (apparently) made the successful transition from a PC-based product model to a mobile/web-based one.
I shook my head at his flawed logic. “You don’t run to where the puck is, you run to where it would be,” I told him (quoting Wayne Gretzky). The problem with their approach, and many within this mobile ministry (#mobmin) space who are looking for their innovative solution to take the religious world/church/tech world by storm, is that they keep looking to copying current products in order to make a dent or shift in perception. That’s just not how this works.
For this group, I asked why didn’t they go the route that other Bible applicaiton companies haven’t gone, but that very few secular companies would dare go: the Boston Globe/Boston responsive web, subscription web approach (several articles talked about this)? He looked at me with disdain, as he heard some about that project, but didn’t know how far reaching that it went. You see, their team is savy enough to build something like that, but their company isn’t visionary enough to figure out why that works.
Hence the title of this article: the age of bible applications is over; it is now the age of bible as applied in digital spaces.
Am I saying that there is no need for any company to create, recreate, or innovate on top of the paradigm of reading, searching, bookmarking, and collections with Bible apps? No. But, I am saying that if you are a content publisher who bases your content on any of those Bible app paradigms, then you are better off pushing your energies towards developing a product somewhere else besides “let start with a Bible app.”
Antoine: you aren’t even a developer, how can you say such things?
Easy actually. Go have a conversation with someone. Tell me, did you start in the Bible or was the conversation dipping in and out of the Bible at various points with other contexts as the backbone to the conversation? I’ll address a recent conversation from a coffeeshop. The pastor/missionary and I started talking because I asked about his wide-margin NASB that he was carrying. The conversation went into church history quickly from that, then into cultural perspectives of various regions of the USA. Would a Bible app have helped there, or an application that was able to search on topics related to church history which also referenced Bible verses, noted authors, theological paradigms, and denominational statements of faith that added context to the situation. Of course, innovation here would be turning on said app while in the conversation and as it “listened” it would pull a Google/Britiannica/Wikipedia/Wolfgram Alpha and search then display all of the relevant content streams, statistics, and opinions available online or in accessible scholarly collections. If you will a Shazamm for Biblical conversations.
It prbably makes sense why I can say that you can bend beyond Bible applications when I phrase the context like that right? But that’s called research and analysis, specifically, anlaysis of cultural behaviors of communication that rarely go into the development of these kinds of applications (this is how reports like Mobile Lens 2011 were framed). And that’s why we end up with a situation such as what I described with my friend at the start of this article. If you want your product(s) to be of earthly good, then you have to move beyond the age of simply offering just the text. Develop an app that engages the application of Biblical (religious) knowledge first, and then grounds the user in a growing (maturing) understanding of Scripture, church history, and culture as they grow in faith and knowledge.
Anyone want to bet on “Bible as Applied” being the space in which faith-based/religious apps show the most potential for growth in the coming years against simply offering the text in increasingly siloed services?
For as much as I would like to get away from the app-centric culture of mobile, there’s something to be gained for that focused window into a task that opens up an opportunity.
For example, the thumbnail on this post. I’d been using the NET Bible on my Nokia N8 since it’s basically a simple “web” app – it’s simply a collection of static webpages arranged as a site and isn’t in need of me loading any thing more than my browser. However, this “package” was really meant for PCs, larger screens, and mouse-driven input. I wanted to change that and so I started exploring what that could look like (first) in wireframe sketches and later a prototype. Nothing has come of it so far, but it has let me stretch my UX muscles a bit.
Then there are those opportunities that come from others such as the one posted this summer by Dave Bourgeios for aN application that would help people create, gather, and manage small group connections – if you will, something like taking cell groups and adding a communications manager component to it that’s usable from a mobile. Now, (at the time of this writing) I’m not sure of the status of this project, but it again points to some of those opportunities that are out there which might not be big hits, but are nonetheless usable and useful.
As you walk into the weekend, probably with a mobile device or several near you, pay attention to the opportunities that lie right next to you. You never know, someone might also be thinking about it as well and will connect with you to push it through.
Update: Speaking of opportunities: just took a quick look at AppGeyser (AppGeyser.com, @AppGeyser) and built a quick MMM Android app. Download it and give us your feedback.
While we’ve talked in the past about the considerations you should taken when looking to build a mobile application or mobile website, we’ve not had for sometime a post that leads you down a few simple steps to having an app (ignoring website for the moment) for your ministry. The below items are strictly high level and may not apply to all ministries in the same manner – however, this should at least give you a starting point from which to build and market a mobile application experience for your ministry.
Step 1: Collect and Organize Your Content
Figure out what it is that should be in your mobile app. Whether its sermons, announcements, videos, music, or all of the able, you need to know what’s going in the app (and why it deserves to be there).
Create a small organizational chart that lists where these will be in relationship to how someone will use it. For example:
Your outline might be a touch more in-depth than this, which is fine. The key is making sure that you at least know what’s going into your application and at a high level what you will be building.
One of the things that I like to do at this step is to use either a physical whiteboard or my iPad to create a general wireframe of what it is that the app should look and function like – sometimes including points to other systems that feed into the application.
You may decide that you want something other than a Bible/sermon/brochure app – that’s a good thing. Outline your expectations and what should be in there as well.
Step 2: Figure Out Your Mobile Platforms
There are several mobile platforms out there, and its very hard for any ministry to support them all. I recommend that you do some kind of survey (informal is just fine) toward figuring out the kinds of mobile devices that people have to which you will be creating this application for.
This doesn’t mean that you will only target one platform (such as Apple, Google, BlackBerry, etc.), but it does mean that you have an idea of what your potential use base will be.
You may also need to do additional research on mobile applications and many other parts of the mobile industry. We’ve got a list of resources that can help you get started (warning, its a lot of reading).
Now, here’s the important point, if you/your ministry is making the statement they want to support every platform *no questions asked,* then you need to stop thinking about an application at this point and point your energies towards making your website work best for mobile devices.
Step 3: Build or Buy
For the next step, you need to figure out if you are going to build the application from scratch, or purchase a application service-platform with which you’ll use to build your application.
Our list of mobile website and mobile application services
If you have decided that you will build your application from scratch, and your outline for what you want to offer looks like our example above, this is the type of team that you want to have in place for the least amount of fuss:
This is optimal. This isn’t always what happens, and in many cases one person carries many of the hats mentioned here. The bigger the expanse of the application however, the more these specific points need to be taken into account.
If you’ve decided that you will build your application from a template (application-creation service), these are some of the items and people that you’d need:
Step 4: Build the Application
At this point, its just a matter of getting the code, graphics, and media together into something that nearly-works.
Its in this step that you are testing the application. The developer(s) should be testing as they go along, your test grip should have some kind of structured testing script that they are using. Don’t over-do the testing, but also don’t be afraid to take the medicine either. If something isn’t working, this is the time to figure that out.
If you are working with an application-creation service, they might also offer consulting services to help you through this part of creating your application.
Step 5: Promote Your Application
No matter if you have built the application from scratch, or used an application-creation service, you need to now let people know that there’s an application available from your ministry.
First, use the communication channels that you always use for announcements (during service, in the bulletin, on social networking services, etc.). That’s the easiest and least expensive way to get some attention for your application. If you do this quietly (“going viral”), then you might also catch som issues that might have been missed in the formal testing rounds.
Second, connect with media outlets that cover ministry and technology applications and ask if they would be open to reviewing or republishing the press release about your new application. In many cases, this opens new audiences for your ministry, while also allowing you a glimpse into what other people might think of your ministry offering (feedback is always good).
Third, use your application in public. Outside of contemplative or video applications, there are very few reasons not to fire up your ministry app when waiting in the line at the bank or at the doctor. Bonus points if your ministry’s senior leadership doesn’t just use the application to posture the project, but genuinely enjoys engaging your ministry resources in this manner.
Step 6: Update and Enhance
Things don’t end when you have released the application. Back in your testing queue, you most likely found things that were “better left to version 2.” Taken advantage of that information and get to work on version 2 of your application. You don’t need as large a team as you had the first time around to add those iterations, but it does help if you can keep your testing team(s) engaged.
Help! This is too much!
It is totally understandable that these steps are a bit more involved than simply opening the app store and saying “create me an app.” If you want it done right, you’ll do these, and similar steps in order to make sure that not only you create a great application, but that the experience of using it follows the expectations that you have.
If you find that you are having trouble in getting through these steps, MMM offers consulting services to help you and your ministry get through these moments. Contact us to set up a free, initial consultation (our rates afterward are reasonable for both the knowledge and niche that is mobile ministry software). If you are a developer or development company looking to get connected to ministries who need an app or mobile service, we can get you connected, drop us a line.
And now you can move forward making your ministry and your mobile application to being the best experience that it should be, and a solid representation of Christ to your community and the world.
So, how do your mobile ministry practices address those who might be disabled or have restricted access due to physical, psychological, or political disabilities? For example, you built that mobile app for your church’s content, but are you relying on Apple/Google/RIM/Nokia/MS to have accessibility controls so they can navigate to your content, or have you designed high contrast, voice-powered interfaces that are independent of whatever the platform may or may not do?
Regard these words from technokitten in a recent post:
It’s not that big a deal, right? I can still do everything I used to be able to do. I only need glasses for a smidgeon of my time. And it can’t be that big a deal when we’re talking technology? Or so you’d think. My experience with mobile devices and my not-quite-as-good-as-it-used-to-be eyesight is pretty appalling:
- Going to a website on my phone and being forced to view the mobile version where the font is fixed and is too small (only by 1 or 2pts) to read without my glasses. Why can’t I zoom in or increase the font size?
- Going to a mobile site where having squinted at the article I’m reading, only to find that I can adjust the font size right at the bottom. That should be at the top, no? There’s little point in struggling to read the page only to find at the bottom, I could have made it a whole lot easier for myself.
- But neither of those are as bad as the app situation. Oh my word. That is simply horrid and a frustration. And I’m speaking having used apps regularly on Android, Windows Phone 7, Nokia N95 and N8, Android and Palm Pre II. Why can’t I increase a font size in an app? Why does the font have to be so small in the first place?
And this is from a person who is simply speaking of her accessibility needs which tend to happen to us all as we simply age. I know from close relationships just how much even mild disabilities are ignored in computing – and more so when it comes to religious applications and connected services.
Now, you can take the approach that this isn’t your fight. But, you’d have a hard time finding your efforts ministering to much of anyone if you do. Sure, you meet the goals of building something via mobile, but you miss the point of “a love that serves” over simply having a talent (1 Corinithians 12-14).
Or, you can take the approach of getting up to speed on what you can do, even going as far as entering contests such as the Vodafone Foundation Smart Accessabiliy Awards. Its really up to you. The testimony of what you address though will be clear in time (Matthew 25:31-45).
What Mobile Bible Apps Do Well
Its well agreed, even when comparing leading Bible apps to other eBook readers/applications, that Bible applications are well developed for their target. From the handling of notes, to offering different views to compare content. Bible apps seem to run in the lead in respect to having the kind of user experience (UX) that is responsive to many of the needs of the Bible reader.
Footnotes, cross-references, and some even integrate image support better than you’d see on the Nook, Kindle, or other electronic reading devices. Add to that, an large body of content (usually priced appropriately), and you basically have a niche in mobile Bible apps that can pretty much sustain itself – for a little while longer at least.
And then you just have availability. Just look at our Bible apps listing – there’s at least one Bible app (and therefore several Bibles and other religious literature) available for nearly any mobile device. There are even SMS and audio-only options for those folks that would prefer something a bit more responsive to those reading and learning styles. I’ve been around mobile devices and software for a very long time, I don’t know of any genre outside of games that covers such a diverse range of devices and usage types.
What Mobile Bible Apps Don’t Do So Well
Where mobile Bible apps falter, and this is true for just about anything attached to the publishing world, is in two specific areas: access and consistency.
In respect to access, we still have the situation with Bible applications that content is locked to specific applications. Though we are getting better with this – just recently, we saw the release of Simple Bible Pro for HP webOS devices which uses Laridian’s licensed content. Instead of a situation such as a single vendor needing to making an application for (and then support) various mobile platforms, another company has made the application, and there was some cross-licensing able to be done here. This doesn’t happen enough, and therefore Bible software companies are dealing with access the hard way – building platform-centric silos. And in most cases aren’t even taking advantage of respective platform strengths when doing so.
Then there’s consistency. I’ll let Kevin Purcell from Christian Computing Magazine take it form here:
…While all of these are good apps, they have one thing in common. They lag behind their iPad/iPhone counterparts running on iOS in features and sometimes in stability. Let’s take Olive Tree Bible Reader as an example. The iOS version is rock solid and has a lot of great features. It has split screen capability and markup features like book bookmarks and notes. The most recent stable Android version only recently added some of these features, but not all of the iOS features are present yet. Logos has a good iOS app. They haven’t even re-leased an Android version yet, but do have a public beta (see link above). Their beta is little more than a book reader. You cannot compare translations, there is no Passage Guide or Word Study Guide and like the iOS version it has no note taking feature, bookmarking or highlighting. Laridian’s Android app is an alpha, not even a beta. I downloaded it and they have a great start, but it is definitely missing most of the great features of the iPhone version…
Read the rest of his July 2011 article (PDF)
Feature parity is important whether you are doing simple reading, or diving into a more in-depth study with your community. This aspect really hits folks who move to another mobile device and have gotten used ot a specific feature.
How Then to Raise the Bar
This is the part where you make the call. Being that mobile Bible apps have this base, where do they need to improve or become better in your perspective? Let’s hear what you have to say, and maybe the voices can get some of these excellent companies to consider tweaking their offerings in that direction.
Mobify empowers marketers and developers to create amazing mobile web experiences. Tap to learn more
9(unknown*no*no*1)&guid=ON&x_utmac=MO-16595840-1){kind=small}
[Video] On the Scene w/LaRosa Johnson of Wordsearch/LifeWay
Friday, April 13th, 2012LaRosa Johnson has been a longtime friend to MMM, and has even contributed a few posts here. He and I recently connected for some fellowship and that turned into a small clip of him sharing some of what he does with Wordsearch Corp (now a subsidiary of Lifeway Publishing) and his mobile activities.
Tags: Android, bible software, development, LifeWay, Logos, Mobile in Analytics/Marketing/Development, mobile in moment, tablet PC, Video, Wordsearch
Posted in Commentary, Social Engagement | No Comments »