Go Bible was launched four and half years ago by Jolon Faichney in Queensland, Australia. He began programming version 1.0 in August 2003. Since then it has progressed in leaps and bounds. The current version 2.2.6 is now available from the main Go Bible website.
I first came across Go Bible just over a year ago, in March 2007, shortly after being given a Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone as a belated Christmas gift from my wife and children. One of the first things I did was to search the internet looking for free Bible software for mobiles. The moment I installed the King James Version of the whole Bible, I was seriously impressed by the quality, functionality, speed and ease of use of the Go Bible application.
When I found that Jolon had also made a developer kit called Go Bible Creator, my curiosity was heightened even further. It wasn't long before I too was having a go at making a Go Bible version for an existing Bible translation, namely the Albanian Bible, using the ThML file from CCEL downloaded using ThML Reader.
Since then I have spent many happy hours working on porting various Bible versions and translations to the Java ME mobile phone platform, and researching all sorts of topics related to Bibles, copyrights, mobile phones, Unicode, file formats, conversion software, editors, XML, languages, scripts, fonts, glyphs, ligatures, punctuation, etc. The list keeps growing. Much of the knowledge gained along the way has been posted as topics in the Go Bible Forum.
The idea of starting this team blog is quite recent. It is intended as a means to share our vision for using mobile phones to bring the Word of God to more and more people throughout every nation, and thereby help to fulfil the Great Commission of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
The aim is for this blog to be more about people, relationships and ideas than merely a focus on the technology involved. Free and accessible Bible software can only go so far to help build the Kingdom of God. It is hoped that being a team blog, it will not end up being a monologue written by just one team member. Moreover, the team itself is not exclusive! If you are already involved as a user of Go Bible Creator, or even as a software developer contributing to improving Go Bible source code, then we'd like to hear from you. If you share the same aims, then join the team, and help spread the vision.
