Comments on: Glo: Don’t just read the Bible – Experience it! #bibleglo

By: Jean Whitnall leaves Hodder and Tom Wright returns to academia « UKCBD: The Christian Bookshops Blog

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:35:05 +0000

[...] NIV, news has emerged that NIV arch-critic, Bishop Tom Wright — who describes the NIV as “a visibly and demonstrably flawed translation” — is also preparing to move on, retiring as Bishop of Durham to return to academia and pursue [...]

By: Phil Groom

Phil Groom — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:28:21 +0000

Just discovered Hodder's Glo installation help and contact details page: might be useful for anyone else running into problems...

By: Phil Groom

Phil Groom — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:29:32 +0000

Helpful review of Glo here: Software Review: Glo Bible Software from Zondervan

By: Andrew Lacey

Andrew Lacey — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:07:16 +0000

Just a note to say that Jean from Hodder took the time to phone me today (Saturday) and that was much appreciated. We had only ordered the ‘presenter packs’ and it seems there have been difficulties with the packs- so the single software packs have released to the likes of STL but not the associated cardboard & plastic presenters. So Jean is sensibly going to release the singles to us, and the cardboard & plastic will follow in due course.

In terms of loading, we shall just have to wait & see- certainly, it seems that our old PC we use for displaying software to customers will probably NOT be suitable. But, then, maybe someone is looking for a Commodore 64 for a museum exhibit….the tape drive still works, if anyone wants to make me an offer?!

I also stand gently corrected- it seems that the Hodder office was, indeed, short when I phoned on Thursday morning but this was due to holidays and illness, and it wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve suffered that problem…..

By: Ian Metcalfe

Ian Metcalfe — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:47:01 +0000

Our apologies – clearly various teething troubles!

Glo does take a while to load (though it’s much smoother and quicker now than when I was loading it on my laptop a couple of months back) – but it’s so good once you’ve got it loaded that we do think it’s worth it.

There are a few reasons for the time it currently takes to load up:

* This is brand new tech which Microsoft hadn’t even finished before Immersion turned up wanting to use it – so some of the updates are Microsoft-driven improvements to the way it all works (it’s pretty amazing for the Christian world to be leading the way with something like this!)
* There are 3 DVDs with a total of 18GB of data to be loaded up, and since one of the key benefits is that you don’t need to have the disks in to run it, all 18GB needs to get onto your hard disk. (I’m not 100% about my maths but I reckon if it takes an hour and a half to load the DVD parts your DVD drive is running at an average of 10x standard speed)
* Lastly, Immersion are continually adding and refining the content, and this too takes time to upload – including the British text NIV which they have been racing to get ready in time, since we only had our first meeting with them in the summer.

(NB. They’re after more British-sourced content too so if you have particular suggestions of what would work well do feed that through.)

And the counterpacks are coming soon…

Ian

Ian Metcalfe
Publisher, Bibles and Digital
Hodder & Stoughton

By: Phil Groom

Phil Groom — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:27:16 +0000

Our stock – from Hodder – arrived on Monday. Or rather, some of it: I’ve ordered a couple of the 4 packs with fancy counter display + some of the individual units. Glad I ordered both: the individual units arrived, but no sign of the display packs yet.

Checking just now, both STL and Bookpoint say they have the individual units in stock. Good to see STL have updated the price to £49.99.

Now waiting for them to bring out a Mac edition, but not holding my breath…

By: Andrew Lacey

Andrew Lacey — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:53:17 +0000

Oh dear….. one of my pet hates seems to be raising it’s head…. software that takes a much time & frustration to load… I, too, would be interested to hear of any experiences…

Out of interest, we thought we would be smart and order direct from Hodder, and GLO would be the first in the UK to have ‘glo’. And, of course, they haven’t arrived (although our mega-order of ‘glo’ badges has- customers are queuing up to buy them at £60 a time….). So, when I got the email from Biblica to say THEY had ‘glo’ in, I thinks “Ah ha! where’s MY stock!! It takes STL that long to process things through the warehouse there must be something wrong!!!” And being a pro-active retail manager, I got on the blower to Hodder Faith Sales to be informed by an answer phone that there was no-one there to take the call due to holidays- and recommending (in case of urgent query) I phone the number which I had just called. Surely this must be Hodders major product launch of the year- if not the decade?!

Not a very auspicious beginning, Hodder!

PS what a speed of response from Ken Keim, though….. he must be sitting somewhere in the States frantically googling ‘glo’ to see what people are saying about his software!! Can we have your mobile, please?

By: Ken Keim

Ken Keim — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:47:15 +0000

Hi Geoff,

This is Ken with Immersion Digital, the company who created Glo. I’m really sorry to hear you had a tough time with installation. We’ve had a good rate of installation success, but a handful have had trouble. We want you to have the best experience possible. If you or your customers run into further technical issues, please email glosupport@immersiondigital.com and they can quickly (and remotely) help to fix your issues.

glosupport@immersiondigital.com

By: Geoff wallace

Geoff wallace — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:49:42 +0000

GLO has arrived. In order to be able to demonstrate this to customers I have got a copy for the shop so I tried loading it on my laptop. This is a new laptop running Vista with loads of disc space and memory. In total it took several hours to load it, especially with all the additional programs that I had to install and then loads of updates to download. It would seem that the shipped programme is already out of date and I wonder why they haven’t used an up to date version?. By the time it finally loaded and was ready to run it was bedtime.
So this morning I have loaded it on my shop PC (It runs XP with 3GB of memory and a Pentium 4 processor and a fast 8MG broadband connection). Here is the progress. The computer was not doing anything else:
9.05 Start. Needs .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Update
9.15 have to restart after this is installed
9.18 start again. It finds a new version of GLO updater. Do I accept licence
9.22 System not running the latest Direct X End User Runtime frames. Install
9.26 SQL Server Compact – Install
9.27 Finally ready to install . Extracting CAB number 1 to 10
9.50 Insert Disc 2. Extracting CAB 1 to 11 from Disc 2
10.31 Insert Disc 3. Extracting CAB number 1 to 9 from Disc 3
10.54 Downloading updates 1 of 8 and extracting
11.03 ready to run. Press ok. But it finds an update for NIV(B) Bible Translation
11.04 Finally ready to open the start screen

I used it for a few minutes before I clicked something and got a fatal error

So my experience with loading is that this must take the record for a programme to load. 2 hours!!!

My problem – I feel I will need to warn customers how long it takes to install.

Does anyone else have experience with this?

By: Phil Groom

Phil Groom — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:08:35 +0000

I’m sure you could challenge it: prior usage and long established… ’twould be very, very sad if ever it came to that, though.

Biblica: indeed; and they’ll be receiving royalties on Glo, of course, as the owners of the NIV. It would be interesting to know what those royalties are worth: presumably not enough to rescue STL UK from its current woes?