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Interview: GMPSoft
September 16, 2004
This has been an exciting week for the dedicated crew over at GMPSoft. They’ve launched Bible With You version 6 and introducted Bible Images With You as well. I had the opportunity to chat with George Georgiev, GMPSoft’s CEO as well; read on to find out a little more about how the company got started, as well as how they get ideas for some of their products.
Thank you for agreeing to this interview, I’m sure my readers will be glad to know more about your company and its products. Could you please tell us a bit about how GMPSoft was founded?
GMPSoft was founded with the humble investments of several enthusiasts passionate to provide the Christian community PDA users with quality Bible study products and resources.
In the realization of the products we put all our potential and professionalism to work, seeing this not just as a business, but also as fulfilling our part of the Great Commission relaying on the mighty power of God for that.
Actually, this vision is included in the name of our company, GMPSoft, which stands for ‘God is My Power’ – inspired by Deuteronomy 8:18.
Bible With You has some of the strongest study resources I’ve seen in a handheld format, with Strong’s numbers, Greek/Hebrew references, etc. Are your products primarily focused on the academic Christian market, such as pastors and seminary students?
The way our products are designed and structured allow us reach the whole variety of Christian PDA users – from lay people to scholars.
The Bible With You reader itself is free and there is also a free license option for some Bible versions, which is ideal for anyone interested in just reading the Bible.
For those who actively study the Bible, like pastors, Bible study groups, etc., we offer Bible translations with Strong’s numbers and Hebrew/Greek Lexicons, as well as additional study books as commentaries, notes and cross references. Especially helpful for deeper studies are the powerful search mechanisms provided by Bible Concordance With You.
The academic audience may benefit by Bible With You for the Greek New Testament (Nestle-Aland 27 edition) having all the punctuation and accents included.
One of my favorite features in Bible With You is the splitscreen mode that allows the user to view two Bible translations at once. How did that particular feature come about?
The first version of Bible With You reader provided almost non of the existing PDA Bible reader’s features, and this was intentional. Our desire was not to copy the patterns of the other similar applications, but rather listen to our customers and create products that best fit their needs. With each new version of Bible With You after careful research we added the features our customers had asked us for. In fact, about 90% of the features that the application now presents came as a result of our customers’ suggestions.
This is how not only the split screen mode, but also features like reading mode, ribbons, Graffiti Navigation System, cross references, commentaries, pop-up windows came to light.
You have a very generous frequent buyer program. What is the rationale behind giving so much back to your customers?
As I said in the beginning, our goal is not just making business or profiting by the software we sell, but rather motivate Christians to read and study the Bible. Our promotion programs, I believe, are doing a good job for placing the Bible and other Bible study resources into the hands of our customers and for expanding God’s Kingdom.
All of your applications so far have been Christian. Do you have any plans to write other types of software?
GMPSoft is a Christian software company but we are opened to working on other projects and resources that are in line with the Christian values and standards.
Besides further development of our Bible-related products in terms of functionality and resources offered we plan to use our know-how for other projects like dictionaries, encyclopedias, guides and so on.
Do you have any plans to release Pocket PC or Smartphone versions of Bible With You or any of your other products? Or do you plan to focus on the Palm OS market for the forseeable future?
Yes, besides our plans to reach as much as possible the Palm OS Christian market, we are already working on the Pocket PC version of Bible With You. I am pleased to announce to the PocketGoddess readers that the work on it is in a very advanced and ready for testing stage.
Editor’s Note: The Pocket PC version was released just last week.
Are there any interesting tidbits or sneak peeks at upcoming releases that you can share with PocketGoddess readers?
Well, there are a number of pleasant surprises coming. We at GMPSoft are firmly determined to confront the saying “Christian means poor quality and old technology”. The fast developing PDA technology has already made it possible for dictionaries to talk encyclopedias to provide illustrations and so on and we are going to be in pace with that and provide PDA Christian community with some fresh and innovative solutions that are going to make their handhelds even more effective assistants in their Bible study.
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. It’s obvious that you have a lot of exciting ideas, and I look forward to seeing what GMPSoft does in the future.
