AMCP Tech Blog

I just got a chance to try out eBible, thanks to David Russell, - a new way of studying the Bible. There is no doubt in my mind that it would be very difficult to fully and truly explain the Bible, but the developers at eBible did a great job at doing just that. The large fonts and easily read text are great to use. Instead of presenting the concept of the Bible in a confusing way, they have a simple user interface that allows users to easily search the Bible, get answers about the Bible, and find Bible-related gifts. I'm actually surprised such as service wasn't created earlier. It also allows you to compare the five translations of the Bible offered. By selecting which version you would like to view using a drop-down menu, you can switch between different versions with ease. Currently, eBible offers five translations of the Bible:

• The King James Version
• The New King James Version
• The New Century Version
• The New American Standard Bible
• And The Message

eBible is centered around search - The user enters a search term and is given results in a Google-like fashion. In-fact, the homepage has a simple and inviting Google-like search box and the most popular search terms in tag form below. Although the tags are meant to help visitors get started, I find that they take the neat look away from the homepage. eBible offers four types of searches, including the Bible, Answers, Products, and Tags. When on a search results page, a top-mount search box is still there inviting you to re-search a topic to your heart's content. eBible is also great for searching by topics. To your left is a screenshot of the eBible homepage complete with the most popular tags and search box.

eBible's business model is based upon a diversity of advertising, including Google Adsense-like advertisements in the search results; Since eBible is based around searching for Scriptures in the Bible. What's great about their advertisements is a fact that you won't even notice them after using the product for an hour. You'll never see an advertisement when you're actually using eBible at its most simple level - Reading the Bible within eBible. However, as you use other features of eBible, such as the Answers or Products area, you'll notice that there are more text-link advertisement visible (I also noticed that eBible is using CrossConnector, a great Christian Web 2.0 advertising service).

The company that is developing eBible, GodSpeed, also offers a version of eBible for PDAs that works with Palm OS and Pocket PC-based PDAs. The eBible website doesn't mention this product, so I don't think this project is as related to eBible as much as the name suggests. I think that this product was developed before eBible because it looks much more older and more established than eBible; eBible maybe GodSpeed's way of expanding into the 'Web to create a successful Web-based product: eBible.

While I may enjoy reading the Catholic Bible, it would be great if they could expand the service into different religions so other people could enjoy the great features and ease of use of eBible. For example, having a Koran addition would be great for Islams (Allah-forbid it be in English - No pun intended), and a pure Jewish version (The Jewish Torah is the first five books of the Catholic Old Testament). If you're interested in learning more about eBible, they have a weblog that they post news about updates on. Currently, I only have 3 invites to give away. If you would like an invite to eBible, leave your name and e-mail address in the comments below and when I run out of invites, I'll ask that you save 1 to invite the next person in line (In the comments).

Although I've reviewed this product to death, I feel this is a great 'Web-based product. Purely excellent. For a Roman Catholic like me, it makes it very easy to look up certain parts of the Bible efficiently. I'm grateful that people take the time to create such a great search engine for the Bible while combining great commentary. Watch out for this product folks, it's the Bible gone Web 2.0!