I would like to see a lot more iPhone apps that entertain, encourage, and educate from a confessional perspective. To that end, I would like to encourage anyone who’s interested to start developing some apps and I’d be willing to help to the best of my abilities. One book I can recommend on the subject that I just finished reading is Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps. It’s not an iPhone programming book, it’s about how to design the look and feel of and interaction with an iPhone app. It’s the first technical book I’ve read from cover-to-cover in a while.

What follows are the download statistics for the first full week that “Cwirla” was available. I have no idea what they mean. I’m just surprised that France and China were 2nd and 3rd in downloads.

I’m guessing most small churches aren’t very high tech. My church is in the heart of Silicon Valley and it could be in the tundra of Alaska for all its tech savvy. But, like most churches, it did jump on the WWW bandwagon a number of years back and has a web site, email, etc. The problem is that the hosting company we use is a rip-off. It’s so bad, I would consider it a stewardship issue to continue to use them.

I use DreamHost to host this and a couple of other sites and for $10 a month for unlimited bandwidth and storage, it’s great. I’ve had some outages and problems, but I don’t run a business on this plan so I don’t have any complaints. I’m now in the process of moving all the churches stuff over. What I just discovered is that DreamHost provides FREE HOSTING to any organization that can present a letter from the IRS showing that it is a 501(c)(3). I’m just about to send off the letter I got from the church office.

So, if your church is paying for hosting, go checkout http://dreamhost.com/hosting-nonprofit.html.

Update: The approval came through in less than an hour. Free hosting for Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, hurray!

I have this idea that video games can be used as a tool to spread the Gospel. I really don’t know if it’s possible. The medium of video games lends itself to choice, control, and interaction as opposed to words which convey linearity, specificity, and propositional truth. Looking at these attributes, you can see why words are the optimal medium for transmitting the Christian faith as Lutherans confess it. Choice, control, and interaction are not primary concerns when we speak of the faith, so video games may be a completely incompatible medium for proclaiming the Gospel. I’ve made several feeble attempts (here, here, and here ) but they certainly don’t convey Law and Gospel in any sense. I am not going to stop trying, I’m just not laboring under any illusions.

That being said, I will say definitively that video games don’t belong in the divine service. “Of course,” you say, “Who would ever do something like that?” Well, here’s a blog post where the author talks about his idea for using an interactive experience to reinforce the message of a sermon. The tool is in its early stages of development and is implemented as a video clip, but the author sees its future as a fully developed interactive environment. The post has a video clip for how it was used in a “worship service.” This is crazy! It utterly and completely takes our focus off of Christ and what He has done and has us concerned about our experiences. If I were a fundamentalist, I’d say this was proof that video games are tools of the devil. Used in this way, they are completely turning us from Christ. (Since, I’m not a fundamentalist, I’ll say that sinful man has turned these gifts from God against Him.)

The other thing that caught my eye was that this was done at Lutheran Church of Hope. I did some digging and they appear to be an ELCA congregation but that doesn’t excuse them from obscuring the Gospel gifts uncovered by the reformers. I wish they would drop the “Lutheran” part of their name so the casual onlooker doesn’t confuse them with confessional Lutherans. My sinful side thinks they kept the Lutheran prefix because churchofhope.org was already taken.

So here’s the game I’ve been working on since the start of the year. It’s a little rough, and I’m no Ed McMahon, but I hope someone finds it enjoyable.

If you want to embed it in your site, copy and paste:
<embed src=”http://joyfulgames.com/LutheranInquisition.swf” width=”600″ height=”400″ />

Update: I moved the game to my other blog. http://joyfulgames.com/2009/04/07/lutheran-inquisition-episode-1

One of my other sites, Wittenberg Media, was mentioned in the listener email section. Paul in Baghdad mentioned that he listened to the 10 part series on the historic liturgy. I’m glad he found it useful and here’s the clip:

I really would like to update that site more often. I think the old shows are timeless. Maybe once a week would be a good start. We’ll see if I can squeeze it in.

For any Mac fans out there, MacHeist has a great bundle of software for $39.

The bundle include

• iSale – eBay auction manager
• Pictureque – Simple photo touchups
• Sous Chef – Recipe manager with access to shared online recipes
• World of Goo – Very fun game
• PhoneView – Access information on your iPhone or iPod Touch that isn’t easily accessible (SMS and call logs, etc.)
• LittleSnapper – Screenshot capture and organizing software
• Acorn – Simple photo effects
• Kinemac – 3D animation creation
• WireTap Studio – Capture, organize, and edit audio.
• BoinxTV (Locked) – Event video recording
• The Hit List (Locked) – GTD/Task/List manager
• Espresso (Locked) – Web editor

25% of the sale amount is donated to various charities. The locked applications mean that you will receive a license for the product if/when a certain dollar amount has been donated to the charities.

Here is the segment where I was Jeff’s pick for blog of the week. Jeff starts reading my post at about 3:30.

As usual, I feel pretty much out of step with many of those in the tech. industry. Google announced that they are against California Proposition No. 8. The proposition would prevent same-sex marriages. Google’s position is that this would infringe on people’s personal lives and eliminate the fundamental right of anyone to marry the person they love.

First off, marriage is not a private act. Even if you don’t believe that it was instituted by God, it is at least a governmental institution. I’m really at a loss to understand how something that requires a government issued license is a private act.

Next, nobody has the fundamental right to marry the person they love. What if the person you love doesn’t love you, is already married, is related to you, or a child? Do you still have a right to marry the person you love?

When you don’t understand what marriage is you sound silly, even if you are as smart as the people at Google.

We started using Blockbuster’s alternative to NetFlix less than a year ago and it was great. For the same price as NetFlix, you also got unlimited in-store rentals. If I didn’t have a movie my daughter wanted to watch, I could just swap one of the DVD’s for one at the store. Blockbuster had NetFlix beat by a mile.

Then a few months ago, they bumped the subscription price up a dollar and limited the in-store swaps to 5 per month. I thought about switching back to NetFlix, but I thought the 5 rentals might be worth it. A funny thing happened, I almost never went back to the store. The 5 rental limit had put up a giant barrier. I now had to consider if I had used up my 5 rentals and when my billing period was up, etc. This mental exercise caused me to simply stop using the option.

Last month, Blockbuster bumped the price another dollar and kept the 5 rental limit so I just switched plans to the “no in-store rental” plan and have the same service and price as if I were using NetFlix.

In a few short months, Blockbuster took me from being a big fan to considering switching back to NetFlix or no service at all.