Electric Prayer

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

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 online Kindle e-book service

Posted by universalis on 18 December 2012

To get a Universalis e-book, you open the Universalis program on your computer and ask it to make the e-book you want.

This is quite straightforward, but it does mean installing software, and some people find that process confusing. So we’re happy to announce that you can now create Kindle e-books on our web site without needing to download and install a program.  Amazon will deliver your e-book wirelessly straight onto your Kindle.

Here is the link to the new service.

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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 »

Changing the colour of the rubrics in Word – II

Posted by universalis on 5 October 2012

The last post described how to change the colour of the rubrics in Word.

Here is a much less intellectual way of changing the colour of the rubrics. I find it rather more fiddly, because of Word’s awkward user interface for searching and replacing. All the same, it provides a general answer to the question “How do I change the colour of all text that is not black?”. The basic technique will also work in word processors other than Word.

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Changing the colour of the rubrics in Word – I

Posted by universalis on 5 October 2012

Many people print out pages from Universalis by pasting them into Microsoft Word. One user has asked me for a way to make the rubrics darker, because they come out pale gold on his printer. So here is a way of changing the colour of the rubrics. I’ve used Word 2002 for this, but I expect that other versions will be similar.

I’m assuming that you have the Universalis program for Windows and you have copied a page from it by pressing Ctrl+C and have pasted it into a Word document.

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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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New font sizes on the iPhone/iPad

Posted by universalis on 19 July 2012

The latest version of Universalis and Catholic Calendar for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch is now available on the iTunes App Store. It changes the way that large fonts are handled so as to make life easier for the people who need them.

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Send to Kindle

Posted by universalis on 30 April 2012

Some people want to use the Universalis downloads to create e-books for the Amazon Kindle but are daunted by the last step: transferring the e-book to the Kindle itself.

One of our users has alerted us to the new Send to Kindle program which Amazon have made available for Windows (and soon, they claim, for the Mac as well).

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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 »