In previous editions of Catholic Geek we’ve talked about how going mobile with your faith can enhance your spiritual life. This week we’ll take a closer look at how Apple’s ultimate accessory the iPhone (and also, its non-phone sibling, the iPod Touch) can help you bring together a complete mobile Catholic Geek experience for those of you lucky enough to have one.

Podcasts – the iPhone makes a great MP3 player and has fantastic support for podcasts. There’s a large range of great Catholic podcasts available – see http://www.catholic.geek.nz/Blog/?p=57 for some starter podcasts to tune into.

Mobile Internet – one of the iPhone’s biggest strengths is the mobile browser. Mobile Safari is fantastic for browsing the mobile internet, and is also very capable of handling full web pages too! Check out http://www.sacredspace.ie/mobile/en for a great mobile reflection website we’ve talked about before.

App store – this is potentially the “killer” application for the iPhone. The App store provides a great resource for expanding your iPhone’s capabilities, and there’s a fantastic range of Catholic applications available in the store. There’s a good mix of both free and paid applications. Some of the better applications are:

• RC Calendar – a free application from the publishers of Universalis (http:// www.universalis.com), this is a comprehensive calendar that links through to the Universalis website to give you the daily Mass readings and the Liturgy of the Hours. The paid for application Universalis gives you a self-contained version of this, which is great if you don’t have a mobile internet connection.

• iMissal – This great app lets you turn your bulky Roman Missal into a svelte iPhone app, meaning you’ll always have your Missal handy! http://bit.ly/O6zXX

With all these tools at your disposal, you can make your iPhone your ultimate Catholic companion!

Do you have your own favourite device you’d like the team at Catholic Geek to investigate? Get in contact with us at www.catholic.geek.nz and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue!

Long-time readers of Catholic.geek may already be familiar with Father Roderick Vonhögen. For those who are new here, though, we’ll bring you up to speed.

Fr Roderick is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 2005, he helped launch a revolution in Catholic media with the creation of the first episode of the Catholic Insider podcast. In the first episode, he was outside St Peter’s Basilica as thousands of Catholics said farewell to the late Pope John Paul II. Fr Roderick’s first episode was a “soundseeing tour” of the surroundings, including interviewing some of the young students who had come to farewell the late pontiff.

To say that things took off from there would be quite an understatement. Fr Roderick was soon launching a number of new podcasts – such as the award-winning Daily Breakfast – and it wasn’t long before he was starting a new organisation to take things to the next level. He is the CEO and founder of the Star Quest Production Network which now has over a dozen different video and audio programmes regularly providing free episodes on everything from health and fitness to news and entertainment.

One of the reasons why we’re talking about Fr Roderick in this column is that he is coming to New Zealand in September to speak at the NZ Catholic lecture. He’ll also be appearing as a guest on the 15th Station – New Zealand’s first Catholic podcast network, and one which was directly inspired by the work of SQPN.

We encourage everyone reading this to come along to the “New Media for New Apostles” lecture on September 15 to meet Fr Roderick and hear more about his amazing work in transforming Catholic new media.