Electric Prayer

The Liturgy of the Hours, the Mass, and other things.

Archive for the ‘Downloadable Universalis’ Category

Giving Universalis for Christmas

Posted by universalis on 18 December 2012

People quite often ask us how to give Universalis as a present. So here is a brief explanation.

Apps and programs

The Universalis apps for iOS (iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch) and Android cost £9.99. To give an app as a gift, visit the App Store or Google Play or Amazon and check the relevant store for details of how to give an app as a gift. Your gift will, of course, only work on iOS or Android, whichever you purchase it for.

The Universalis programs for the Mac and Windows use a Universalis registration code, which costs £19.99 (and also gives free access to the iOS and Android versions so that they don’t have to be bought separately). You can buy a registration code here. After you’ve made the purchase, please send us an email to tell us who the recipient is, so that we can update our database accordingly. Then send the registration code to your friend, who can download and install the Universalis program and then use the registration code to activate it.

E-books

A lot of people are getting (or giving) e-book readers this Christmas.

An e-book is just like a paper book, only with bytes. It begins at the beginning, it is divided into chapters, it goes on to the end, and it stops. Universalis is more than this, because it goes on for ever, with every day different from the one before. There is no way to squeeze infinitely many chapters into an e-book.

So here is how we do it (after a trial period): you buy a registration code for £19.99 and you create your own e-books, free. Each e-book covers a certain period (a month and a year are the most popular), and when that period is over you throw the e-book away and make yourself a new one. It doesn’t cost anything. You can read all about Universalis e-books here.

How does this work with gifts? There are two main ways.

  1. Give your friend a registration code. He can then install the Universalis program and make the e-books for himself.
  2. Create the e-books for your friend and send them to him by email. For some people this is part of their Christmas routine: along with your Christmas card for 2012 I send you your Universalis e-book for 2013.

Just remember that Universalis e-books are for private use by the owner. They aren’t meant to be copied and shared out, any more than ordinary books or e-books are. So if you are using Universalis yourself and you are also creating e-books for two retired priest friends of yours, please make sure you have bought three registration codes, not one. We don’t insist that you keep on switching codes depending on whose e-book you are creating, but it’s important to keep the overall numbers right all the same.

 

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New Mass Today page in e-books

Posted by universalis on 18 December 2012

The Mass Today page in Universalis combines the Order of Mass with the readings and prayers for the day. So far, it has only been available in the Universalis downloads. Now we are happy to announce that it is available in e-books as well.

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Universalis on Android

Posted by universalis on 22 October 2012

A version of the Catholic Calendar application is now available for phones and tablets running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and above. It includes the full Universalis content for the whole of 2012. Please download it, try it out, and let us know what you think.

The app is available on Google Play. Because it contains the whole of Universalis for 2012, we’ve called it “Universalis 2012” rather than just “Catholic Calendar”.

Future developments

We will soon make the application available through the Amazon Appstore.

We will not be supporting versions of Android before 4.0.

We will release the paid-for Universalis app for Android before the end of 2012.

Posted in Downloadable Universalis | 14 Comments »

Universalis bug on iOS 6 corrected

Posted by universalis on 22 September 2012

A bug has been reported in Universalis on iOS 6. It affects iPhones and iPods only, not iPads. The effect of the bug is that in the calendar display every day is blank. The days are there, and they work, but they have no text.

This bug has been corrected. An update for the Universalis app will be available from the App Store on Monday 22 October, and the App Store application on your device should offer it to you automatically then. (The corresponding update for Catholic Calendar has been available since 11 October).

Meanwhile this post describes a way round the bug.

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The new Mass Today page

Posted by universalis on 23 April 2012

Every day, Universalis has the Readings at Mass. Universalis also has the Order of Mass. It was time we combined the two.

The new Mass Today page in Universalis shows you the whole of Mass for today, both the parts that never change and the parts that change from day to day – not just the readings, but the prayers and antiphons. It means that you can follow Mass from beginning to end without having to flip from one page to another.

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Posted in Downloadable Universalis | 7 Comments »

Technical support questions

Posted by universalis on 16 April 2012

We got a question earlier today:

“I have been a Universalis user for several years, but this week – every day the Mass reading is the same – Isaiah for the first reading, Psalm 89 for the response, a second reading from revelation and Luke 4:16-21 for the Gospel,. The readings are correct on your website, but the download – nope. I’ve gone back and forth, closed and re-opened – always the same thing. I used to download a month at a time, but this year downloaded the whole year – but I have lots of memory.”

This is the kind of technical support question it is impossible to answer. It may help you to get help quickly (if you ever need it) if I list the reasons:

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Posted in Downloadable Universalis | 7 Comments »

The English Ordinariate

Posted by universalis on 12 April 2012

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was established in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI to allow Anglicans to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church whilst retaining much of their heritage and traditions.

The Ordinariate has its own calendar, which differs from the English one in including more English saints (many of whom are in fact already celebrated in some Catholic dioceses), and also in giving different names to the “Sundays of the Year”, although the liturgy for those Sundays does not change.

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Posted in Downloadable Universalis, The Universalis site | 1 Comment »

Universalis in New Zealand

Posted by universalis on 30 March 2012

A reader has pointed out to us this article in CathNews New Zealand.

Posted in Downloadable Universalis, e-books | 2 Comments »

Universalis on Linux

Posted by universalis on 30 January 2012

There are versions for the downloadable Universalis program for Windows and for Mac, but there is no specific version for Linux. However, some people have reported success in using the Windows download on Linux (see the earlier blog post). Today I have received an email from another user:

I don’t run Windows or Apple Mac but instead use Ubuntu Linux.  Linux has a Windows emulator program called Wine and I tried your program using this emulator.  It works perfectly.

I’d just thought I would let you know in case you get any queries form other Linux users.

We don’t support running the Windows Universalis on Linux, in that if you have a problem with it then there is nothing we can do to help. On the other hand we are very happy to hear that it does work and we encourage you to try it. We will certainly not do anything intentionally to stop it working in the future.

It has been suggested that we should mention Linux on the Universalis web page. We feel we can’t do this because it might make people think that Universalis on Linux is supported, which it isn’t. But we’re still glad to hear that it seems to work.

Posted in Downloadable Universalis | 1 Comment »

Where has the Invitatory gone?

Posted by universalis on 8 December 2011

A few versions ago, we changed the iPhone version of Universalis so that the Invitatory is part of each Hour rather than a separate page. We did this partly to remove the need to jump around and find it and partly because we needed extra space in the Hours list for the “Order of Mass” page.

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Posted in Downloadable Universalis | 2 Comments »