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Happy Fourth!

Most of you are probably aware by now that we have a Video Podcast in iTunes, Lighting the Lamp. Since we announced it back in May we've added several new episodes including one dedicated to the ESV Study Bible, and are currently in a multi-part series on Commands and Symbols.

Last week Apple released the newest evolution of their iPhone, the 3Gs, along with the 3.0 OS. One of the many enhancements now available in the OS is the ability to subscribe to, and download a Podcast directly from the iPhone (or iPod Touch).

For those who have an iPhone or iPod Touch, here's a few quick steps to help you subscribe to our Podcast. From the home screen touch the iTunes icon. After launching, touch the Search icon at the bottom of the screen and type in 'Lighting the Lamp' (or Accordance Bible; Bible Software, etc.), ours will be the top on the list.

From here you can browse the different episodes, and download those you are interested in.

After the download just hit play and that long wait at the dentist office, flight delay, or break from class will be filled with the joy of learning to master your favorite Mac Bible software!

If you've already taken advantage of the Podcast and have enjoyed them, why not let others know…add a comment or review in iTunes to help spread the word.

Also, for those who don't use iTunes we have also created a page on our main site that gives a description of each episode with links to download.

We rely on personal recommendations to draw new users to Accordance, and we are grateful to everyone who, for sheer love of Accordance, encourages everyone within reach to get it for themselves. But some people are a little shy when it comes to recommending a product. Some teachers use Accordance to prepare their lessons, but never mention Accordance in the class. Some students get great marks for assignments done with Accordance, but never let on to their friends. You know who you are...

So here's an incentive to Get the Word Out — our new referral rewards program. For a limited time only we will reward you with a $10 credit on your account for every new user who orders at least an Introductory level from us and mentions your name. And you'll get an extra $50 bonus if you recruit 10 new users: a total of $150 to spend on Accordance products.

This promotion will be good for the month of July, so we encourage you to spread the word. Since we are posting this in June, you will have a few days head start working on your rewards. Get started now!

Remember: the new user must mention your name when he/she places the order for Accordance at the Introductory level or above. Now is the time to Get the Word Out, and let everyone know the value of Accordance!

Greg Willson, a friend of mine whose musical stylings can be heard on our latest demos and podcasts, mentioned me on Twitter a couple weeks ago and described me as an "Accordance Beast." He might have meant that I am grossly uncivilized, but I took it to mean that he sees me as something of an Accordance power user. I tweeted back that I liked the label and asked jokingly if I could get it printed on a T-shirt.

Yesterday, one of my Father's Day presents was a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Accordance Beast"! It was a wonderful surprise, and proof positive that I have an extremely cool family. I'm proudly wearing it today, and I might just wear it at the next Accordance training seminar I teach. I just need to work out more consistently so my pecs will look appropriately beastly when I wear it!

While I won't give you my T-shirt, I am happy to share my Accordance Beast title with other Accordance users. If you too would like to be an Accordance beast, you can go a long way toward becoming one by taking advantage of our free training videos and subscribing to our Lighting the Lamp podcast. Get involved with our user forums where you can learn from other Accordance beasts. If we offer a training seminar in your area, be sure to attend, or offer to host one. We want you to become Accordance power users . . . er, I mean beasts.

Eric Lee Welch, self-proclaimed Accordance bird-dog, has apparently been having some fun with our Twitter campaign to encourage people to "Complete the Switch."

In case you're not on Twitter or have not been following accordancebible, here are some of the playful exhortations we've tweeted so far:

Don't settle for leeks and onions when you can have milk and honey. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Don't put your hand to the plow and look back. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Don't turn aside from the joy set before you. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Don't be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

You died to Windows, how can you live in it any longer? Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Go out from Windows and be separate. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Do not be unequally yoked with Windows Bible software. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Eric and others have retweeted some of these, and we hope others will do the same, but Eric has actually gone so far as to begin writing his own. In response to the tweet about going out from Windows and being separate, Eric reminded us:

Jezebel's last experience using windows ended in a fatal crash. I bet she wishes she would have completed the switch.

Nicely put. If you know someone whose Bible study is marred by unexpected crashes and color-wheels-of-death requiring force-quits, be sure to encourage them to Complete the Switch. After all, nobody wants to end up like Jezebel!

Even better than his cautionary tale from 2 Kings was Eric's call to action from the book of Joshua:

"Choose this day whom you will serve... as for me and my mouse..." Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

I love it! Eric clearly has a gift, and we hope he'll keep them coming. If you've got a great idea for exhorting people to "Complete the Switch to Mac" by switching to Accordance, we'd encourage you to get in on the act as well.

In fact, some other users are even dreaming up switcher commercials along the lines of Apple's "Hello, I'm a Mac" ads. Any amateur film-makers out there? ;-)

One of the more intriguing relationships of the Protestant Reformation was the friendship which developed between Philip Melanchthon and John Calvin. Melanchthon was a protege of Luther's and played a central role in systematizing Lutheran theology. Likewise, Calvin's Institutes quickly became one of the clearest and most popular expressions of Protestant theology. Calvin expressed his admiration of Melanchthon in the dedication to one of his commentaries, and Melanchthon paid Calvin the honor of nicknaming him "The Theologian."

This year marks the quincentennial, or 500th anniversary, of Calvin's birth, and we're honoring the occasion by offering a sale on his works and the works of his fellow "theologians." Many of those works are included in the Standard and Premier levels of the Library, but if you don't already have them, you can unlock them at a reduced price. You can also save on add-ons like Grudem's Systematic Theology, Piper's Sermon Manuscript Library, and commentaries by MacArthur and Stott.

You'll find all the details of the sale here.

As part of our new Complete the Switch promotion, we've put together a little Twitter marketing campaign. Once each day, we'll be unveiling a new humorous "tweet" with a Biblical exhortation to Complete the Switch. You can keep up with them by following accordancebible or accordanceguy, and if you enjoy them, we would appreciate you retweeting them. Here are the two we've unveiled so far:

Don't settle for leeks and onions when you can have milk and honey. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

Don't put your hand to the plow and look back. Complete the Switch to Mac! http://bit.ly/DjHQy #macbible

These could also be used in an email or forum signature, collected and posted on a blog, or disseminated however you like. It's all meant to get a laugh while getting the word out about Accordance. Enjoy!

These days, a lot of people are switching from PCs to Macs, and those who depend on Bible study software are trying to weigh their options. If these Mac switchers haven't yet heard of Accordance, they'll soon find their options to be frustratingly limited.

That's why I'm pleased to announce our new Complete the Switch promotion. We've devoted a section of our website to making our case for why Mac switchers should also switch to Accordance for Bible study. There you'll find testimonials, relevant links, even Complete the Switch web banners you can include on your own websites and blog pages. (I'm quite pleased with the way the small banner looks on my family blog).

Please check out our Complete the Switch promotion, and be sure to point people there the next time they want advice about Bible software for their Mac.

Way back on March 1, 2006, I wrote a blog post entitled "Why We Don't Bother to Count". In that post, I explained that while other developers advertise the number of electronic books they offer, we don't even bother to count them.

Why don't we go around quoting the number of books we have to offer? There are several reasons.

1. The quantity of books in your library doesn't matter nearly as much as the quality. I have no less than 17 Greek lexicons and dictionaries in my Accordance library. Guess how many I regularly consult? Two! If I had the other fifteen and didn't have the two I most value, I wouldn't be bragging that I have fifteen Greek lexicons; I would be wishing I had the two I really need!

2. The total number is meaningless to me unless I need everything. Accordance's offerings are so varied that no one person will want them all. If I only know English, the number of foreign-language resources a Bible program offers is irrelevant to me. If I'm not a scholar, the number of high-end research tools is irrelevant to me. If I am a scholar, I may not care how many classic devotional resources are available. Whatever the total number of available books, the important thing is the total number which is of interest to you.

Incidentally, that's one reason we don't try to put together huge one-size-fits-all packages of material. We have our Library collection for English Bible study resources, and our Scholar's collection for Greek and Hebrew texts and tools. If you want both, you can save a lot of money by bundling these packages together, but we do our best not to force you to buy stuff you don't need just to get the stuff you do. Again, it's not the number of books you have that matters, but the number you regularly use.

3. There's no real objective way to give an accurate count. I discussed this problem at length in that previous blog post. When dealing with electronic resources, what constitutes a "book"? We offer 58 volumes of Word Biblical Commentary in two Accordance modules, and we list it on our website as one product. Does that count as one book, two books, or 58 books? Or what about Matthew Henry's Commentary? I have seen it available in print either in 6 volumes, or in one massive volume with ridiculously tiny print. Do we count that as six "books" or one "book"?

Then there are the resources which are not technically books, like journals and magazines. The Theological Journal Library contains more than twenty-five different journals and a combined 550 years worth of issues. Depending on how many issues each journal published per year, there may be as many as 2000 different issues contained in that one product. Do we count the Theological Journal Library as 25-plus books, 550 books, or roughly 2000 books?

What about little paper-back Bible study guides like the Zondervan Discipleship series? This one module contains eight separate Bible study guides which are each about fifty pages in print. Should that count as one book or eight books? It's certainly eight separate "titles."

With no clear standard for how electronic books should be counted, and no clear idea how our competitors are counting, it becomes virtually impossible to offer a true apples-to-apples comparison. I recently took the time to count our available modules the way I think the other guys may be counting, and I came up with an estimate of about 1500 books. Frankly, I suspect I'm still being too conservative, and I could potentially give an even higher number. But what is the point? Now I'm just playing the numbers game and emphasizing a quantity which, as I explained above, is ultimately meaningless.

So aside from that last paragraph, you won't see us playing the numbers game. "More is better" is certainly an easy argument to grasp, but on closer inspection, it falls flat. Windows PCs have more available software, but folks are finally figuring out that it's better to have one Mac program you can use than to have 10 Windows programs you can't. The local buffet offers you more calories per dollar than the fine steakhouse, but most of us prefer a good meal to cheap indigestion. Other programs may offer more total books than Accordance does, but if you want quality resources, powerful features, a streamlined interface, and stellar support, Accordance is clearly number 1.

Over the past few months, I've been playing around with Twitter. At first I thought it was the ultimate form of navel-gazing. And indeed it is in the case of people who post the mundane minutiae of their personal lives. Yet for all its faddishness and inherent narcissism, Twitter is an incredible medium for spreading news and information. Twitter is essentially a huge and open word-of-mouth-referral network, and since we've always relied heavily on the word of mouth recommendations of our users, Twitter represents a great opportunity for us to expose more people to Accordance.

Our official Twitter account is accordancebible, where you'll find "tweets" about Accordance news items, blog posts, Bible software discussions, etc. My personal Twitter account is accordanceguy, which I basically just use to converse with people about Accordance. accordancebible is really where the action is.

Speaking of action and word of mouth advertising, I've been repeatedly impressed with how those who "follow" accordancebible respond to requests for Bible software recommendations. If someone in the Twitterverse asks what Bible software people recommend, we'll usually pass that question along to our followers. Suddenly, Accordance users seem to come out of the woodwork to recommend Accordance to the original questioner. So rapid and enthusiastic are the responses of our Twitter followers that I've given them a nickname: the Accordance Bird Dogs.

Why Bird Dogs? Because whenever anyone "tweets" about Bible software, they start "barking" about Accordance.

So thanks to all you "bird dogs" who are spreading the word about Accordance throughout the "Twitterverse." And for those of you who have not yet started to "tweet," thanks for the more traditional ways you tell people about Accordance. We rely heavily on your recommendations, and you have always made us look good.