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I started Hosted Apache Solr almost 10 years ago, in late 2008, so I could more easily host Apache Solr search indexes for my Drupal websites. I realized I could also host search indexes for other Drupal websites too, if I added some basic account management features and a PayPal subscription plan—so I built a small subscription management service on top of my then-Drupal 6-based Midwestern Mac website and started selling a few Solr subscriptions.

Back then, the latest and greatest Solr version was 1.4, and now-popular automation tools like Chef and Ansible didn't even exist. So when a customer signed up for a new subscription, the pipeline for building and managing the customer's search index went like this:

Original Hosted Apache Solr architecture, circa 2009.

I was disheartened by the following news story from the St. Louis Post Dispatch: 'Mormons: 1. Indonesians: 0' debate post by STL Catholic exec causes stir.

The story notes that Alderwoman Lyda Krewson, a Democrat in the 28th ward in St. Louis, tweeted a comment made by an employee of the Archdiocese of St. Louis on the employee's personal Facebook wall—which is set to private, and only accessible/visible to the employee's friends. (Note that the same employee has a public Twitter account that she uses for public communications).

There's a new blog in town: thiscatholicgirl, by friend and former co-worker @ESWesthoff in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. She's witty, funny, and has good insight.

While I'm on the topic of new things, I can't forget to mention that I've been brushing up a bunch of new reviews of microphones and audio devices, and I'm hoping to start testing the iPhone 5 with as many audio gadgets as I can to supplement my article External Microphones for iPhone 5, 4S, iPad and iPod Touch Audio input. More to come!

Frank R. O'Brien, owner of O'Brien Industrial Holdings, has filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Health and Human Services because the recent contraception mandate violates his right to freedom of religious belief.

CBS News reports:

The lawsuit marks the first legal challenge to the HHS mandate from a private business owner and his company. Until now, only religious organizations or institutions have brought lawsuits challenging the mandate. ...

I'd be remiss to not mention a very well-written article in the Denver Catholic Register by Julie Filby: Catholic apps make faith aids mobile.

In the article, Julie does a great job explaining apps and their growing prominence in the lives of the faithful, along with some tips from Mark Hart and I:

Today’s technology offers Catholics many tools for praying, communicating and learning about their faith. One such tool comes in the form of “apps.” [...]

While members of the younger generation used to be the primary users of apps, driving sales and popularity; today all age groups are using them.

This market is still a moving target, and I'm anticipating some great new apps for the faithful—as well as some great updates to old ones—in the coming months. In fact, thanks to the generosity of @kliftonjk, I have two Android devices on which I'm developing an Android version of Catholic News Live!

I didn't have much time today to post this earlier (I was driving home from a trip which took me through five states in six days, and had to do this on the road), but this afternoon I was on the excellent 'Catholics Next Door' radio show on the Sirius XM Catholic Channel.

I was happy to speak with Greg and Jennifer Willits about flockNote, about parish communications, and about helping Catholic organizations get connected to their flock in various ways.

Then I continued driving home from Chicago :)

I don't know if they have an online archive of their shows, but if I can find a link to the audio at some point, I'll try to provide it. I'm also not too familiar with satellite radio, since I've never subscribed (Pandora + free radio has worked for my musical tastes), so I don't know if there are any rebroadcasts or ways of listening to past shows...

Does it surprise anybody that the only woman interviewed in Fox 2 KTVI's video about the Hooters/Catholic Charities fundraising event objected to the event?

What, might I ask, do women think about the fact that the exploitation of the female body is the primary money-maker for Hooters?

Related:

• Do the Ends Justify the Means?
• No Reason for Catholic Charities to Support Hooters

See what I had to say about Reeder, the best RSS reader for the Mac, on my personal blog »

Reeder [on the Mac App Store].

Reeder, the new best RSS reader for Mac, is finally out of beta! It's only $9.99, on the Mac App Store.

I used NetNewsWire back in the early '00s, but it has become a complicated beast, and after learning about Reeder beta 1 a few months ago, I was an instant convert.

Reeder is great, because all I ever do is arrow-down through news stories, glance over ones I might be interested, press 'B' to open the really interesting articles in my browser, and then press 'A' then 'return' to mark all stories as read.