Voice of the Customer

TMCnet - The World's Largest Communications and Technology Community
New Coverage :  Asterisk  |  Call Center Outsourcing  |  Call Recording  |  SIP Trunking  |  Hosted Exchange  |  PBX
Webinars
Channels by Topic
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend
Voice of the Customer Featured Article Archive

TMCNet: New program rethinks Bible for digital age: Glo makes use of technological advances [The Blade, Toledo, Ohio]

[November 07, 2009]

New program rethinks Bible for digital age: Glo makes use of technological advances [The Blade, Toledo, Ohio]

(Blade (Toledo, OH) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 7--After years of transforming the Bible for the digital age, Nelson Saba and the team at Immersion Digital reached a point where they had to put a name on their concept.

"We didn't want a name that would explain what the software is because most likely you would associate it with the wrong thing," Mr. Saba said in an interview.

People have their own definitions of such popular computer words as "multimedia," "digital," and "software," he said, and those words and definitions don't really capture the heart of what they've created.

So the Immersion team and its publishing partner, Zondervan, came up with the name Glo, a "nonword" that implies light and illumination and "a lamp unto my feet," he said.

They describe their product as "The Bible for the Digital World." "We kind of took the route of YouTube and Google today. What does Google mean? Well Google is Google. We tried to think of a word that doesn't mean much of anything, and over time we want that word to mean us. Glo is Glo." Some key features separate Glo from other Bibles that take a paper version and simply turn it into pixels.

One is the unique interface that allows the user to search and study the Bible through a single or any combination of five "lenses" -- the Bible text (in the New International Version), a timeline, an atlas, topical points, and media.

Each lens adds a level of filtering until they come up with the specific results.

As an example of how these lenses can be used, Mr. Saba said they can be combined to search for such a specific target as Jesus' words spoken in Jerusalem during Passion week and recorded in the Gospel of John.

The multimedia components include 7,500 encyclopedia articles, 3.5 hours of high-definition video, 2,400 high-resolution photos, 700 pieces of artwork, 500 virtual tours with 360-degree views, and nearly 150 maps.

Glo's atlas is reminiscent of the popular Google Earth program in which the user sees the world from space and then zooms into a specific location. Adding the time line lens will filter the atlas' view so the user can look at ancient or modern Jerusalem, for example.

Clicking on a specific place or landmark such as Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock will bring up a 360-degree tour when available.

"We're not just digititizing the Bible. We are creating a product with layers of functionality that will make Glo relevant and engaging to a generation that has grown up in the digital world," Mr. Saba said.

He said Glo's market demographic is broad.

"It pretty much goes from 25 all the way to 55," he said. "The way we define our product is that it's a busters' product for the buster generation but it is a boomer-friendly product." Boomers "consume technology at surprisingly very, very high levels," he said.

Glo also includes a feature called MyGlo that lets the user add his or her own notes about verses or photos, sort of like writing in the margins of a paper Bible.

Plans for Glo updates will let the user store the MyGlo notes "in the cloud," Mr. Saba said, referring to an internet site, where they will be replicated across all of the owners' digital platforms -- from a laptop to a desktop to a smart phone, for example.

And another update will allow the person to post his or her notes, along with the Glo verse or artwork, on a personal blog.

The program requires some serious computing power -- Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7; 1 to 2 gigabytes of RAM depending on the operating system; a dual core processor, video graphics card, and 18 gigabytes of hard-drive space.

"We pushed the envelope in terms of innovation, and there's always a tradeoff," Mr. Saba said.

But he said it will run on most computers sold within the last three years, and worked fine when tested on new low-end laptops and desktops that sell in the $400 range.

Glo is now available only for PCs but an Apple version is due out soon. The list price is $79.99, but is being discounted for between $50 and $60 at many retail outlets.

More information is available online at bibleglo.com.

- David Yonke To see more of The Blade, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.toledoblade.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

[ Back To Voice of the Customer Community's Homepage ]
› Return to Voice of the Customer Home

FOLLOW US

FREE Voice of the Customer eNewsletter

Subscribe Now

Featured White Papers

  • Seven Best Practices for Speech Analytics: Speech analytics is valuable for identifying issues in the contact center. However, limiting its use to the contact center only considers a portion of all customer interactions and subsequently only reveals a small part of the voice of the customer. This paper discusses how organizations can optimize their Speech Analytics implementation strategy to realize the promise of this exciting technology.
  • Understanding the Voice of the Customer: Today's contact centers involve a sea of information that must be captured, processed, and distributed on a daily basis. Effective use of this information enables companies to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive and customer centric marketplace. An overwhelming percentage of the information that circulates in a contact center's audio recordings, documents, web pages, and emails is unstructured in that it resides outside of a normal structured database and cannot be managed efficiently. These unstructured items contain valuable information, yet this information historically has been difficult to organize, categorize, and access.
View All ›

Case Studies

  • Aflac: Aflac, the leading provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance turned to Autonomy to help them automate the process of monitoring their contact center agent for quality and compliance. The company now has a system that can offer continued improvement in agent quality and productivity while enhancing the customer experience. ...
  • Avaya: Avaya, a global leader in business communications, inherited 880 websites as well as numerous intranets and extranets when it was spun off from Lucent Technologies. The sheer volume and diversity of the sites and the over 500 content creators resulted in inefficient content distribution rife with divergent branding, messaging, and product information. ...
View All ›

Video Showcase

    Interview with Autonomy: Rich Tehrani interviews Simon Hayhurst, SVP of Autonomy

Featured Events

  • Multichannel Analytics with Autonomy Explore: In today's world of constant connectivity there are a variety of direct and indirect channels of communication between an enterprise (or a brand) and its customers. 80% of these valuable interactions are generated in a human-friendly, unstructured format across multiple touchpoints and channels. With this ever growing mountain of information how do you extract the emerging trends and topics of interest to the enterprise? ...
  • SES Chicago 2011: Marketers and SEO professionals attend SES Chicago each year to network and learn about topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more. The conference offers 70+ sessions, intensive training workshops, and an expo floor packed with companies that can help you grow your business. While you're at it, network with peers and leading industry vendors. Programmed by the SES advisory board, you can be assured - SES content really is king! ...
View All ›
 
Share
 
| More
RSS-XML alerts
Print this page
E-mail this page to a friend