Mobile Daily Devotional

I’ve just finished the beta version of my website for an Offline Mobile RSS Feed Reader for java enabled cell phones. It’s basically a website that generates RSS Feed Reader java apps with embedded RSS feeds as content. The reason for embedded RSS feeds is to make a usable Feed Reader without the need for a GPRS or 3G data connection. Not everyone subscribes to a data package for their cell phone.

An Offline RSS Feed Reader is especially useful for those places where you cannot get a good data connection. It’s frustrating trying to surf the net using your phone when the data connection is slow or unstable. The phone browser cycle of click, wait, read a bit, click again, wait again, read a bit again … is tiring.

So, how do you read the latest RSS Feeds if the RSS Feeds are embedded with the java app? Just download the latest java app with the latest RSS feeds onto your PC and transfer it to your phone again.

Currently I have Charisma Magazine and Heartlight.org daily devotional auto-refreshed and re-generated twice a day. Just get the latest jar file from http://www.jarss.com.

The Charisma Magazine daily devotionals include the RSS feeds for:

• Around the Word in 365 Days
• By Love Transformed
• Live Extraordinarily
• Smith Wigglesworth
• Loving God
• Daily Breakthrough
• Maria Woodworth Etter
• Charisma News Online

The Heartlight.org devotionals contains:

• Heartlight Articles – Just for Women
• What Jesus Did! from Heartlight
• Heartlight Articles – Two Minute Meditations
• My Utmost for His Highest
• Heartlight Articles – Special Features
• Heartlight Articles – Just for Men
• Quotemeal from Heartlight
• Heartlight Articles – Leading in Hope
• Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
• Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
• Praying With Paul by Eldon Degge

If you’re interested to read the news, you can also pick up the BBC News and The Guardian Newspaper RSS Feed Reader at http://www.jarss.com.

Sign up for a Mobile Booklet beta tester account at http://www.mobilebooklet.com.

This short article is a response to the frequent inquiries on how to get the printed copy of Our Daily Bread. Our Daily Bread is published by RBC Ministries. To request for the printed copy of Our Daily Bread, click on either of the links below depending on where you are from:

• US or Canada – https://www.rbc.org/devotionals/our-daily-bread/order-devotional.aspx
• Rest of the World – http://rbcintl.org/order.php

This website, Mobile Daily Devotional aka fourteenfloor.com is not affiliated with the publisher of Our Daily Bread.

You can also contact RBC Ministries at:

RBC Ministries
PO Box 2222
Grand Rapids,
MI 49501
(616) 974-2210

or in Canada write to:

RBC Ministries
PO Box 1622
Windsor, ON
N9A 6Z7
(519) 979-1073

Note: Please direct all Our Daily Bread booklets requests to RBC Ministries using the links or contact information above. Hope this helps.

Will the new Apple iPhone be able to run mobile Java applications?

There’s no mention of Java support for the iPhone on Apple’s site. So, the outlook for Java support seems bleak. That’s just sad. The gorgeous iPhone screen would make it great device for reading mobile devotions or the Bible.

If Apple decides to open the iPhone for third party applications, Laridian should come up with something for the Apple iPhone. Laridian has excellent Bible software for the Palm,Pocket PCs, Windows Smartphones, iPods and BlackBerry devices. They are a well known and reputable mobile software company. Hopefully, Apple will allow them to develop Bible software for the Apple iPhone.

The iPhone will only be available in Asia in 2008. That’s a one year wait for me if I decide to get an iPhone as my next cell phone. A lot of things could happen within one year. Hopefully by then, Apple will have included support for mobile java applications on the iPhone and Laridian releases a Bible software for the iPhone.

Here are some interesting statistical information on “Google Trends on keyword search for mobile phone vs cell phone vs handphone”:http://www.google.com/trends?q=cell+phone%2C+mobile+phone%2C+handphone.

From the Google Trends statistics, people in US and Canada tend to use the term cell phone, while those in Australia and Europe uses mobile phone. Those of us in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia prefers handphone.

In the past, the term cell phone is rarely used in this site. Anyone searching for daily devotions for cell phone on Google will rarely find this site. I will start using the term cell phone in place of mobile phone in this site in order to make it easier for those looking for daily devotions on cell phone to reach here.

For those who are wondering about the January 2007 edition of Our Daily Bread for cell phone; it should be out within the next couple of days.

Anyone interested to read mobile daily devotions in Chinese, Spanish, Romanian, Filipino or other languages?

I had a few request for mobile daily devotions in languages other than English. After giving this some thought, I’ve decided to seriously look into having non-English versions of mobile daily devotions. The only problem is the issue of getting the right content.

Chinese, Hindi and Spanish content should have great appeal based on the number of native speakers of these languages according to Wikipedia. For a simple start, someone could translate or find a translation for the Twenty Cans of Success and Who I Am In Christ for the Freedom in Chirst java applications.

The file format that is used for the mobile daily devotions content is a modified version of the “RSS file format”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29. As an example, here’s the content for Who I Am In Christ.

If you’re interested to take up this task of translation or providing content for daily devotions, you can contact me using the contact form.

I’m opening my own book store! Made possible by Amazon.com’s new aStore.

Amazon.com recently started offering its associates the opportunity to open their own store with products from its huge catalog. Creating a store is a simple 5 step process:

1. Selecting your featured products
2. Add Category Pages (for the search and browsing section)
3. Edit Color and Design (including Edit Your Store Name)
4. Select Widgets (for your sidebar)
5. Finish and Get Link

I created my store in around 5 minutes.

It’s really that easy!

Here’s the link to my store Leadership Books.

My featured items are populated with books by John Maxwell. I’ve enjoyed and benefited much from his books. David Allen’s Getting Things Done is the only non-Maxwell book in the featured items.

Last month, I wrote about visitors using their mobile phones to view this site and my desire to create a mobile version of this site for them. Actually, there’s no need for me to do so, as Google has already done all the hardwork.

The Google Wireless Transcoder does a pretty decent job of transcoding websites for mobile devices. Here’s a Nokia S40 Emulator screenshot of this site after being transcoded.

You can try this out using Your mobile phone. http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=www.fourteenfloor.com.

The Google Wireless Transcoder can be used to visit your favourite sites with your mobile phone or device. Just go to http://www.google.com/gwt/n and enter your URL.

For those who are curious, here’s the list of mobile phones that visited this site for the past 5 days:

• MOT-RAZRV3xv
• Nokia6101
• Nokia6610
• Nokia6230i
• SAMSUNG-SGH-D600E
• SAMSUNG-SGH-T509
• SAMSUNG-SGH-D500
• SEC-SGHE530
• SHARP-TQ-GX15
• SIE-CX65
• SonyEricssonP910i
• SonyEricssonK300i

This site started providing Our Daily Bread, Global Prayer Digest and others for mobile phones in May 2006. The download stats so far:

*July 2006 stats is up to 27th July.

This is the stats from this site. I think a lot of people are downloading these same applications from GetJar.com. The applications have a few thousand downloads each according to their stats.

So, there you have it. The number of downloads for the past 3 months.

For the past week, this website has been having a yo-yo like experience. Dreamhost that hosts this site had a string of problems. Those problems caused this website to go offline for a few hours for a few days over the past week. For those of you who couldn’t get in this site during that period, now you know why.

The hosting has been very reliable for the past year until last week. They have been working very hard to resolve the problems and have been very open with the problems that they are facing. All this happened just as my hosting fees was due for renewal. I decided to give them another chance and renewed my hosting for another year.