catholic

The Jesuit Conference today announced the release of the Jesuit App, a mobile app that lets people find Jesuit locations in the US, see Jesuit news, and view Jesuit prayers and spiritual works.

The Jesuit Conference hired me a few months ago to build this app for them, and it's the third iOS app I've built, and the second Android App. I built the app on top of the open source Catholic Diocese App, and hope to continue making that project more flexible, and even easier for Catholic Dioceses and organizations to adopt for their own great mobile apps.

A few days ago, I noticed the latest Where is Matt? video on YouTube. In these videos, Matt is shown in various locations around the world, dancing in various exotic and urban locations, often with natives.

The videos are extremely simple, don’t require tons of professional equipment, crews, or even much more planning than “where to next?” Matt speaks quite a bit about how he’s made these videos, who’s helped sponsor him, and more on his site and elsewhere (he recently did an AMA (‘I am A’) on Reddit about his videos and life).

All of his videos are full of positive images, positive emotions, and seem to touch just about everybody who watches them.

Many Catholic PR people, journalists, and marketing specialists have told me that it’s hard to get people’s attention with positive news, and I agree with that, to a point.

Sarah Reinhard is starting a new column, Tech Talks, on CatholicMom.com, where she interviews Catholics in tech (like myself). I was excited to be asked to participate in the first interview: Catholic Techie Jeff Geerling.

Speaking of tech-related things, this weekend I worked almost a full day on porting the Catholic Diocese App over to Android, and I'm getting pretty close. I have most of the functionality working, but there are quite a few rough edges. More to come!

I've posted all the photos I took at this year's Mass of Priestly Ordination at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Flickr:

Congratulations to all five men who were ordained; we'll be praying for you!