The Bible of Many Colors

http://BibleOfManyColors.com
William McDermot

Two versions in the Google Play Store:
* Gratis, with advertising.
* US$1.99, no advertising.

Rating: 1/10 (Unmodified score: 1.525/100)

In a blog post that has long since migrated to /dev/null, Kevin Purcell divided biblical software into three groups:
* Bible Reading programs;
* Public Domain programs;
* Bible Study programs;

This program falls solidly in the Bible Reading program class.

The app does two things:
* Download PDF files, which are then read by the PDF reader on one’s device;
* Deliver advertisements to the user;

In 2014, the mobile apps industry generated US$35,000,000 in revenue,(^1) of which US$3,500,000 was from in-app advertising. The median developer receives US$400 per year, from all revenue sources in the mobile app industry(^2).

The developer frankly states that the point of in-app advertising, is to generate revenue, to cover the cost of developing this Bible version. I suspect more revenue would be generated by offering it on Kindle Select, for US$2.99. Or, if one wants to stay in the realm of Biblical software, peddle it to FaithLife, Laridian, Olive Tree, and the other organizations that sell resources for their Biblical software.

Back around 2004, in The e-Sword Utility Program FAQ, I mused about a Bible translation that colourized every word in the Bible that was spoken by somebody, or something. Jim Albright wrote the first version of Dramatizer in 2001, and last updated it in 2010. (Source code is at http://code.google.com/p/dramatizer/ until Google shuts down Google Code, which is scheduled for sometime in 2016.) Dramatizer doesn’t colourize words for one, but it does generate a worksheet that can be fed into a python script, that will colourize the Biblical text. (Dramatizer is Windows only. Dramatizer won’t run under WINE. After spending about ten minutes looking at the code, I concluded that it would be easier to rewrite the program in Python, than try to figure out what to change, so it would run under WINE.)

In the explanation of how the Bible of Many Colors came about, William McDermott claims it took him nine years to generate this Bible. In essence, the text is underlined in the colour of the individual that is speaking, and highlighted in the colour of the individual being referred to.
As such, this version would be a useful item, if it was a resource in one’s Biblical software.

As a stand alone app, all it does, is make it easier for malware to infect one’s device, through the advertising that it displays. (The only delivery mode of malware that has higher ROI than Internet advertising, is targeted phishing.)


^1: The Comprehensive App Economic Blog 2014. http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/

^2: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/.a/6a00e0097e337c883301b7c7ffda55970b-pi.