Ever since I switched to this new Android phone, I’ve been trying to look for some good Catholic apps that resemble what my Apple-loving friends have on their devices. I must say the Android App Market is rather disappointing when compared to the iTunes App Store. But thanks to the recent upgrade on the AppBrain app/site, I discovered quite a handful of cool Catholic apps that can be downloaded and installed directly from my web browser. Let me  review a couple of them here.

iBreviary

One of the most popular Catholic apps on iTunes App Store has finally arrived on the Android App Market. The iBreviary is developed by an Italian priest, Father Paolo Padrini. The app has sections for the Breviary, Reading of the Day and Prayers, and is wonderful for Catholics to be able to keep up with their daily devotions while on the go.

Evangelizo – Daily Gospel

This app is developed by the folks behind evangelizo.org, and reflects the corresponding Gospel and Readings sections on dailygospel.org. There’s also a Saints section and an additional Prayers section hidden in the menu. You can also choose between the Ordinary Roman, Extaordinary Roman, Maronite, Melkite and Armenian Liturgical Calendars.

Lectio Divina

Lectio Divina stands for Divine Reading in Latin. The Lectio Divina app for Android consults the Catholic liturgical texts (readings, psalms, gospel) taken from universalis.org, and the lives of saints for each day or a date chosen.

Sincere Prayer

The Sincere Prayer app contains 4 major sections: Prayers and Verses, Prayer Journal, Daily Readings, Mobile Rosary. Worth mentioning is the Daily Readings section which contains links to various websites and podcasts where you can get your daily readings.

Mobile Prayerbook

This app offers a collection of Catholic prayers for you to take on the go. There’s also a Catechism section, which is great for folks who want the Catechism at their finger tips.  The user interface on this app is rather simple when compared to the others mentioned here, but still, it gets the job done. There are also separate apps available for Mobile Litanies and Mobile Rosary.

Catholic Mass Daily Readings

I had an earlier version of this app installed on my phone, where there were only daily mass readings and a prayer section. The latest update now has Liturgy of the Hours (Lauds and Vespers) as well as a Rosary section. Sadly I had problems updating to the new version, after I uninstalled the older version. So now I’m between a rock and a hard place. I tried contacting the developer directly via email, but he wasn’t very helpful, and has since stopped responding to my email. I’ve yet to see the latest version for myself, but the print screens and description from the developer’s blog look promising. At least for the short time that I had the earlier version on my phone, I had quite enjoyed it. I do hope to be able to install this on my phone once again.

All the apps mentioned are available free on AppBrain. Some of these apps are location specific, so you may not see it on the Android App Market. There are also some paid apps such as the iMissal that I’m not able to review here since I do not have access to paid apps here in Singapore. If you know of some good Catholic apps for Android, please let me know!

As mentioned in my previous post, I recently bought a new Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini that’s powered by Google’s Android OS. I’ve had it a little over a week now, and I’ve been discovering more and more new stuff to play with!

Like Apple iPhone’s iTunes App Store, there’s also an Android Market available on the phone, where I can search for and download apps. Currently, only selected free apps are supported in the Singapore version, which is fine since I’m a bit of a cheap-skate who prefers free than paid. But certain premium apps that I’d like to own permanently is only available as time-limited free trials in the Android Market, which gets frustrating sometimes. Luckily, with the sudden surge in manufacturers putting out new Android phones, and more and more people taking notice of the Android OS, more and more developers are producing fun and cool apps for this relatively new mobile platform. Here’s some of the apps I have on my phone right now.

I’ll like to highlight some of my favorite apps here, but I’ll probably have to do it in parts since, as you can see, I’ve got quite a few.

Today’s main focus will be on touchscreen keyboards for Android. We’re all used to the traditional T9 and QWERTY keyboard layouts on the phone, but typing on the phone is still quite a challenge when you’re using the touchscreen instead of a physical keyboard, particularly on the QWERTY layout, where the keys are much more cramped. Recently, there has been a new trend of keyboards where all you have to do is to slide or swipe your finger from one letter to another without lifting it up to form a complete word. The more common and popular ones which I’ll list here are the SlideIT keyboard, the ShapeWriter keyboard and the Swype keyboard. Something to note here is that these keyboards are not exclusive to the Android platform alone, most if not all of them are available for the iPhone and Windows Mobile as well.

SlideIT keyboard

This is the first “slide” keyboard I’ve tried and I took to it like fish to water. I loved it! It’s snappy and smart enough to figure out words from the doodles that I draw on the screen, even very long and complicated words. I found myself typing much faster with this than on the default T9 keyboard. There’s even a Graffiti feature that let’s you draw numbers and special symbols. Pretty cool! Here’s a video of the SlideIT keyboard in action.

The only couple of gripes I have with it is that the capitalization isn’t too smart. It also a bit of a hassle to input numbers and special characters as I’ll have to touch one of the shortcut keys to switch to the numeric/special character layout.

The free version available on the Android Market is time-limited to 30 days, and like I’m unable to get the paid version anywhere. The guys from Dasur, the company behind the SlideIT product have said in reply to my query, that the Android paid version will be available for sale on the website soon.

ShapeWriter keyboard

Since I couldn’t get a paid version of SlideIT, I decided to search for other options out there. I discovered ShapeWriter, which is a free alternative. The look and feel is similar, but ShapeWriter has smarter capitalization, and the number pad is much cuter. Entering special characters on ShapeWriter is also much easier as all you need to do is to long touch the key to access the special character behind. I’ve read about some complains about ShapeWriter’s accuracy on some forums, but I have no issues with it so far. Here’s a video of ShapeWriter in action.

ShapeWriter has announced that they plan to take the ShapeWriter keyboard off the Android Market on June 20th 2010 for an indefinite period of time. Users are strongly urged to download the latest Version 3.0.9, which does not expire. So if you have an Android device and are thinking of finding a free alternative to replace your current touchscreen keyboard, now is the time!

Swype keyboard

This 3rd and last keyboard that I’m featuring here is a little special, because it is the only which I’ve not had a chance to try hands-on. I signed up for the close beta on their website, and was  invited. However, I was unable to install the keyboard ultimately as it says that the screen size of my X10 Mini is not supported. How disappointing.

Nonetheless, this is by far the most popular slide/swipe keyboard out in the market today. Here’s a video of Swype in action.

I hope you’ve found this short review helpful. More next time!

image courtesy of Sony Ericsson

I’m typing this post from my brand new X10 Mini. I’ve had it for 2 days and I’m totally loving it! This is the miniature version of Sony Ericsson’s flagship Android phone, the Xperia X10. It currently runs on Android 1.6, an older version of Google’s popular phone operating system. Although it’s 2 versions behind the latest version 2.2, this phone still packs punches.

Like Apple’s iPhone, the X10 Mini is fully touch-screen and features tons of apps to keep one entertained, most of which a downloadable from the Android Market, Google’s equivalent of Apple’s iTunes App Store. Although there aren’t as many apps developed for Android as compared to the iPhone, most of the essential stuff (for me at least) are there. One of these essentials is this WordPress app that I’m typing this post in. Pretty cool huh?

Well, that’s all for now. More on my new phone another day, when I find time to sit in front of the computer. Bye!

If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know that I’m planning to sign up for the 3-day online trial for Sirius Internet Radio. All this so that I can catch the special appearance of Dan Klass on Father Dave Dwyer’s Busted Halo Show on Sirius 159 (The Catholic Channel), as well as listen to Greg and Jennifer’s The Catholic’s Next Door on the same channel. Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve signed up, and started listening. And yes, the secret is already out, so I can finally mention the host and the name of the “mystery” show which Dan was scheduled to appear on. (more on my comments of show at the end of this post )

Let me first say that ever since I discovered podcasts, I’ve practically stopped listening to radio altogether, except when my MP3 player runs out of juice/podcasts. I rarely listen to internet radio anyway, because most of the time, the sound quality is not as good, and the audio can get choppy at times. Besides, I was starting to find the radio content available rather boring. However, Sirius has turned out to be quite the “ear-opener”. Sirius has a wide selection of content. From various genres of pure, commercial-free music, to comedy. From sports to talkshows. From politics to religion. What I loved the most was being able to get religious, and particularly Catholic, content 24 hours a day, everyday! This isn’t something I can get with my local radio stations. I had a blast switching between The Catholic Channel and EWTN and the various music channels. I was so engrossed with the great content I’m getting, that I listened all the way into the wee hours of the night. I think if it wasn’t for all the backlog of podcasts I have to listen, and the 12-hour time difference, I really would consider paying the US$12.95/month subscription fee.

My first taste of Sirius last night was Greg and Jennifer’s The Catholic’s Next Door. They were talking about what to wear and what not wear for mass. Great show! Very much like an extension of their Rosary Army Podcast. I’ve got another 2 days left on the trial to listen to this, and I’m sure I’ll miss the show after that. Hmm.. maybe I should try to extend my trial.. somehow.

And now about Busted Halo Show. I’ve been actively reminding folks on Plurk to listen to the show on 23rd Sep 2008 at 8:20pm EST to catch Dan’s special appearance. Of course, Murphy had to have his way. I wasn’t able to get to the computer the whole morning (Singapore is 12 hours ahead of US eastern time), and when I finally had the sense to check my email on my mobile phone, I saw that Dan had emailed me at around 5:20am my time (5:20pm EST) to inform me that his appearance has been brought forward to 7:20pm EST so that Father Dave’s producer Robyn could be around when he was on. Great, I missed the show AND I didn’t update the rest of the world in time. Doh!

Luckily, I realized there’s a rerun of the show at 3am EST (3pm Singapore). BUT I have a meeting scheduled at 3pm, which mean I’ll probably miss the first hour or so of the show, thus missing Dan’s appearance AGAIN! Bummer! Thanks to some picky customer with what they claimed was a program bug, my product leader excused me from the meeting so I could look into the problem. I was happily desk-bound again, and all ready to tune into Sirius on the office computer.

The show was fantastic! Apparently, all the hush-hush was because Dan was suppose to be a surprise guest on Father Dave’s show. Father has absolutely no idea who Robyn has invited onto the show, except that he’s someone from his past. In attempt to fish information from Robyn and the rest, Father Dave prepares a list of hilarious questions about the mystery guest’s identity. Obviously, Father was pleasantly surprised to hear Dan’s voice over the phone. It was quite a “radio moment“.

Like I mentioned previously, Dan and Father Dave were ex-classmates. What I didn’t know was that they co-hosted a morning show on WJPZ called Crazy Morning Crew, back in the days when they were both studying in Syracuse University. Father Dave was then known as “Happy Dave” and Dan Klass was known as “Danny the K“. They recalled the good old days of college radio, school plays, skipping classes *gasp*, and where their friends are now. It was fun-filled show, and I was grateful for being able to catch the rerun ultimately. If you visit TheBitterestPill.com, you’ll see an old photo of the Crazy Morning Crew.

All these days of setting up the new blog at WordPress has led me to writing up this brief review on some of the wonderful plugins which I’ve found extremely useful.

If you’re like me, and have tons of social media sites you have to update all the time, you probably make use of the service Ping.fm. Ever wondered how you can notify Ping.fm whenever you publish a new post on your blog? PingPress.fm is the answer! PingPress.fm is a WordPress plugin that allows you to spread your wonderful blog to 10+ social networks via Ping.fm. You can set it up to update as a “Status“, a “Micro Blog” or a “Blog Post“, or all 3, and have different formats for each. I’ve been using this plugin to help notify my friends across Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc of new blog entries. You’ll have to tweak the settings of the plugin and the settings over at Ping.fm a little, or you may end up with multiple posts (like me )

Ever had the problem categorizing/tagging multiple posts? Currently, you have to edit each post and update the categories and tags post by post. With the Batch Categories plugin, you can now mass update the tags and categories of multiple posts!

If you want to display links to your various social network accounts, but don’t want to clutter up you sidebar, you might want to consider the Social Links plugin. Now you can display a neat little widget with icons representing and linking to all of your social network accounts.

Well, that’s all for now. Meanwhile, I’ll be on the lookout for more helpful WordPress plugins to share with you. If you have some favorites of your own which you’ll like to share, please feel free to let me know.