Apple released their new publishing tool called iBooks Author and it is designed to allow for the production of iBook textbooks. We thought about it and quickly realized that we should put our number one best selling “textbook” of all time, the Small Catechism, into an iBook edition. This edition will feature all of Luther’s catechism hymns, a complete audio recording of the Catechism and a complete sung version of the text of the Catechism. Pretty awesome. Here’s an early proof of how it will look, a screenshot from my iPad. Enjoy.

I expect this to be out in a couple months. And, no, there is no Android version of the Catechism like this. Somebody tell Google to get cracking on their own iBooks software! Click on the image to see the 1080 version.

Quick update and report on the success of the newly released iPhone App version of the Pastoral Care Companion.

After only being live and available in Apple’s iTunes store for only a day, already more than 100 people have purchased it, and the reviews are very positive. You can get it here.

Couple things in response to some questions/feedback.

(1) A fully optimized version of the App for the iPad will be prepared and ready as soon as possible, we did not want to hold off releasing the iPhone App, but the full iPad version is coming soon. If you purchased the iPhone App, you will get the iPad optimized version as part of a free update.

(2) We are aware of a bug in the App that prevents it from working on iPod/iTouch units, that fix is being uploaded to the iTunes store today and Apple should approve it in a few days, and again, if you purchased the App, this will be an update for free.

Thanks for your positive and enthusiastic reception of this App!

PastoralCare — The Pastoral Care Companion App is available now in the iTunes store, and the Android version is coming soon, early next year. You can now purchase and download the Pastoral Care App. It is loaded with features that you are really going to enjoying having. It has all the features and content, and even more, than the book, at half the price of the book. With the PastoralCare you can carry this volume with you wherever you take your phone. It requires no Internet connection and is completely self-contained on your iPhone.

Read more about it and buy it here, in the iTunes store.

Here is the full description of the App:

The most comprehensive collection of resources for the pastoral care of Christian individuals, families, and communities.

PastoralCare provides easy-to-navigate rites and resources for the care of people in times of sickness and distress, joy and celebration. Psalms, Scripture readings, prayers, hymn texts, and commentaries are woven together and applied to more than 60 different situations to uplift and support God’s people. PastoralCare is the ideal app for all pastors, ministers, elders, and caregivers. The prayers, hymns, and readings in PastoralCare make this a perfect devotional app for everyone.

FEATURES
* 18 visitation rites
* 63 care resources in 8 categories
- At the time of birth
- Ministering to the sick
- At the time of death
- Times of spiritual distress
- Home and family
- Vocation
- Times of celebration
- Miscellaneous situations
* Scripture readings
* Psalms with optional chant marks and 8 music and audio tones for singing
* Complete church year calendar with readings and prayers for all Sundays and festivals
* 27 pastor’s prayers of preparation
* 19 seasonal proper prefaces
* 125 additional prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings
* 171 best-loved hymns with complete texts
* Select hymns and liturgical texts in German and Spanish

TECHNICAL FEATURES
* Dates for Sundays, feasts, and festivals generated according to the dynamic calendar
* 8 Psalm tones include music and audio of pipe organ accompaniment
* Bookmarking capabilities to organize your resources
* Add and review notes with phone number and address highlighting
* Easy to navigate
* Fully searchable
* Small, medium, and large font sizes
* Night reading mode
* Three-Year and One-Year Lectionaries included

Free, yes, that’s right, free….apps, for both iOS and Android.

Get the free iOS version of the Echoes of the Hammer game here.

Get the free Android version, here.

I’m happy to announce that as of today there are sixteen Arch Books on the iTunes store, in iPad app format. This is a first for us and, these are among the very few, if not only, Bible story books for children available on the iPad, period. You can take a look at all sixteen titles available by looking at Concordia Publishing House’s Apps in the iTunes store. Here’s the link. Here’s a screen shot from the iTunes store. These are really cool apps. The child can listen and watch as the book is read to them, or…you can record  your own voice reading the book to the child. The bright, beautiful iPad display is really quite stunning and Arch books are a perfect fit for this platform. Here’s a screen shot, following the screen shot is another showing all sixteen titles presently available.

Do you know about PrayNow, the only Lutheran prayer and devotional app available for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod? No, you say? Well, let me introduce you to it. And, let me also assure Droid folks that we are working on a Droid version of it, which we anticipate releasing later this year. I continue to bump into folks on the Internet who have not heard of PrayNow and they are delighted to discover it. It is such a wonderful tool for daily prayer. And, for only $8.99, it offers you a wealth of content, for the entire year, with multiple choices for daily orders of prayers and an abundant treasure of daily readings in the Psalms, OT and NT, with a devotional writing from a pastor or other Christian teacher and theologian through the ages. You can buy it from the iTunes store.

I’m happy to report that PrayNow 2.0 is available in the iTunes store. Owners of PrayNow 1.0 will receive 2.0 for free. As of right now, the auto-update/sync feature in iTunes is not working, but I’ve heard from a couple owners who were able to download it for free, manually.

PrayNow fully supports the iPad and features complete integration of the daily readings in the daily prayer orders. Enjoy! Read more about it, and buy it, here.

I had the joy today of reviewing a beta of the next version of the very popular PrayNow iPhone App. We are rolling out a major update that will make it fully native on the iPad, and will add great new features, the best of which is populating Matins, Vespers and Compline with the days propers and readings and writing and prayer! Awesome. Also, note taking functionality and more extensive bookmarking is being added.

Here are several screen shots. As always if you click through a couple times, you will see the actual size images as they were captured on my iPad.

Screen Shot #1: Here is how PrayNow 2.0 displays readings in horizontal columns, on the iPad.

Screen Shot #2: Here is how PrayNow 2.0 displays the readings for the day within Matins, and will do the same for Vespers and Compline.

Screen Shot #3: Here is how PrayNow 2.0 displays the readings for the day when you choose to display in large print typesize

I was rather stunned today to read a review of our newly released iPhone app called “PrayNow” which is a version of the Treasury of Daily Prayer. The review actually was not a review about the app at all, but a scathing attack on the notion that Lutherans would ever consider actually using the historic prayer offices of Matins and Vespers and follow any sort of formal, regular life of prayer and meditation on God’s Word. The reviewer, rather oddly, had very nice things to say about yours truly and this blog, but then proceeded to vent his spleen. Sadly, this is probably not an atypical opinion among so-called “conservative” LCMS Lutherans and other such Americanized Lutherans. Well, read it for yourself and weep at the fact that this is the legacy that has developed in The LCMS over the past 75 years. We do not even recognize historic Lutheranism! Short response: “Sir, you are woefully and sad rather totally misinformed. Lutherans never threw out a regular, ordered life of prayer and continued to use Matins and Vespers and a planned reading of Scripture and all the historic prayers, canticles and such. We had a Reformation, sir, not a revolution. It was a conservative reformation of the Church, not a mutiny against the church catholic.” Here’s the “review” from the iTunes store, which I have to post here as a screen shot. Click through on it a couple of times to enlarge it to read it more easily. “Benny,” if you would care to reveal your true identity and defend your assertions, please do so.