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Introducing YouVersion Live

We’re thrilled to introduce a brand new concept for YouVersion.com. It’s called “YouVersion Live” and it brings a new level of interaction to the communication of God’s truth and love.

YouVersion Live is a free service that will give pastors, conference speakers, teachers, and group leaders the ability to share content and real-time feedback on mobile devices during live events, services, and more. Here’s an idea of how a church leader could use YouVersion Live…

A pastor would love to be able to get his congregation more involved in his message, ask questions and get answers, survey the room with a simple poll, give them an easy and natural way to take notes on his talking points, and maybe even give them a follow-up thought with a blog post or YouTube video as they’re leaving. And, in a perfect world, they’d be able to keep all that information in a place they look every day so they can refresh themselves on what he spoke about.

When YouVersion Live launches, this pastor will be able to do all this (and a little more) by simply dragging and dropping in a super-simple dashboard on YouVersion.com. During a service, his congregation will pull out their web-enabled phones, open up YouVersion (either on the mobile website or a native application), read the Bible, take notes, ask questions, submit prayer requests, answer polls, find links to external content (event details, blog posts, videos, etc), and give online. Before they leave, they’ll be able to send all that great content to themselves (or a friend) via email for future reference.

With YouVersion Live, a pastor can offer his congregation a rich and engaging way to experience the Bible and his message. Plus, with millions of people already using YouVersion on their phones, he’s got a head start towards telling his congregation about this new tool.

We’ll be talking more about YouVersion Live over the next several weeks, so stay tuned for more information and announcements!

Screenshots:

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YouVersion Now Available on Android!

We are excited to announce the debut of the YouVersion Bible App for the Android Mobile Phone…also know as the Google Phone. Users of the Android Mobile Phone can download it now for free from Google’s built-in App Store called Android Market. The Bible App, which is also available for Blackberry, iPhone, and web-enabled mobile phones, includes many of the features you’re familiar with from YouVersion.com, like the reader, search, daily reading, bookmarking, and user contributions. Here’s a quick look:

Android Views

You can choose from 40 different translations and 21 languages in the Bible App. Now, the ease of use you’ve come to expect from YouVersion.com is at your fingertips on your Android Mobile phone. Explore Scripture, expand your perspective, and experience community—all for free—by downloading the Bible App today.

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YouVersion Update 2.0.3

Update 2.0.3 was pushed out earlier this week…you might have already seen some of the amazing new features and fixes. Here is the punch list of new features and updates:

Features:

  • Implement a new widget in the Reader, it’s an audio Bible with many translations to choose from and is powered by Faith Comes by Hearing.
  • Implement short URLs (read.ly), this can be seen in the Link to Reference widget in the Reader.
  • URL has been setup at http://www.youversion.com/download that will take anyone who visits the URL from their Blackberry, iPhone or Android device straight to the correct place to download the app for their phone. If you’re coming from a mobile device not listed, it sends you to m.youversion.com automatically.
  • Book, chapter and version pickers in the Reader now scroll down to the position you are currently at when opened.
  • If you search for a reference (ex John 3:16) it will now take you straight to the Reader. If you do this while on the Reader page, there is no page refresh it just loads the chapter/verse up instantly.
  • You can also do a search for reference on the mobile site (m.youversion.com) to jump straight to a chapter/verse. This makes navigation on the mobile site much easier now.

Changes/Improvements:

  • All HTMLs sent from YouVersion.com (sign up, invite, following, etc) are in plain text instead of HTML emails, this makes it easier to read on a mobile device.
  • Parallel reading has been greatly improved. We now only sync the right side with the left, so if you’re scrolling the left side, the right side will attempt to sync but if you start scrolling the right it stays independent. The main reason for doing this was to cut down on some of the erratic behavior that can start to happen in certain situations (screen sizes, etc). It has made the Parallel mode a lot more stable and usable.

Bugs Fixed:

  • Duplication of “likes” on your Likes page.
  • Sometimes after removing a “like” it would still show up on your Likes page.
  • If you “liked” something in the Reader, it wouldn’t show up on the individual contribution page for that item that you had liked it, thereby presenting you with another “Like” button but then throwing an error.
  • Sometimes switching versions it would not line back up to the verse you were on in the previous version.
  • When in Reader and highlighting verses, if only one contribution was found for the verse(s) highlighted there would be a navigation error that made it impossible to view the contribution content.
  • Now you can type just the book name in the Reader input field (ex Genesis) and it will take you to Genesis 1:1, before it would throw an error.
  • Bug in Safari on Community page where display formatting would get messed up under certain orders of contributions, likes, bookmarks, etc.
  • Links in Daily Reading RSS feed now go to the right location.
  • HTML code for the last badge on the Badges page was the code for the one above it, this has been fixed.
  • Many other minor bug fixes.

Look for a few blog posts in the near future highlighting some of these new features! Thanks again for your support, and Happy YouVersion’ing!

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YouVersion 2.0.2

Update 2.0.2 was pushed early this afternoon with the following features/fixes:

  • Now you can create/edit journal entries in Bible reader page
  • Invite your friends – step-by-step process to invite friends across your social networks
  • Post YouVersion badges and search bars on your site from the Badges page
  • When you press the bookmark/tag/like button and have no verse selected – top verse is highlighted
  • Fixed minor sign in bug
  • Page through contributions in widget with next/previous button
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YouVersion Mobile 2.0!!

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If you haven’t checked out the new look of m.youversion.com, now would be a good time! YouVersion mobile has undergone a significant redesign, offering you access to your profile while also putting you one click away from the Bible Reader! Some of the other features include:

  • Sign-up for a new account,
  • Sign-in and access your profile,
  • View contributions and users profile,
  • Add a new journal entry tied to scripture,
  • And view all the translations and versions  available to YouVersion web users.

Access YouVersion mobile from any web enabled phone and engage in Scripture like never before, utilizing the YouVersion community’s contributions and adding your own thoughts to the scripture text via the journal.

[NOTICE: IE 6 users will be automatically redirected to m.youversion.com – to access the full site we recommend downloading IE 7 or Mozilla Firefox to access the full site.]