Bible-2-Go - The Word comes to your palmtop

Now available for your Treo, Zondervan Publishing's "Zondervan NIV Study Bible Suite."

Works with Palm OS and Windows Mobile operating systems and includes Zondervan's New International Version Study Bible and five other translations.

Bonus: 20,000 contextual footnotes and 100,000 hyperlinked cross-references.

$30 here.

Here's Tim Gnatek's New York Times story, which appeared December 2.

A New Bible, Palmtop Version, Can Keep Track of Studies

Bible readers who study scripture on hand-held devices have a new version - in fact, six versions in one - to consider for their palmtop library.

Zondervan Publishing, Laridian Electronic Publishing and Mobile Digital Media have together released the Zondervan NIV Study Bible Suite, software for the Palm OS and Windows Mobile operating systems that includes Zondervan's New International Version Study Bible, a popular edition of a 1978 translation that presented the text of the Bible in contemporary language.

The Zondervan software also presents 20,000 contextual footnotes and 100,000 hyperlinked cross-references.

Readers can add notes, highlight text and bookmark particular passages, or customize their screens for font, size or color (setting it to display the words of Jesus in red type, for example).

Besides the New International Version, the program includes five other translations: the American Standard and King James versions, Young's Literal Translation, Darby's New Translation and the World English Bible. Switching among versions is a quick affair, making it useful for in-depth passage comparison.

With the $30 software suite (available from the publishers and online at sites like www.handango.com) comes two programs for Bible learning: a tool allows readers to collect, memorize and review passages, while a daily reader helps plan study goals.