The Catholic Directory App: I'm impressed!

Find the Tech Talk Tuesday archive here.

Now that I'm reviewing apps, I'm paying even closer attention to them and always looking for something to write about. (Ah, the lovely paradox of the writing life: you want to write, and then you need to find topics!)

I found this one quite by accident. I was doing something for our parish website when I clicked on our old Catholic Web site to make sure it had a link to our new site.

After I downloaded the Catholic Directory app (it's FREE!), I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only does it offer a pretty comprehensive way of finding a parish anywhere in the United States and in many places around the world, it's also pretty easy to use.

After you select how you want to find a church, you have the option to bookmark a church (so, for example, if you are in an area you'll probably be traveling to again or if you particularly love a church). The bookmarking wasn't as spelled out as I would have liked (bet that will come in a future update), but is linked to clicking and leaving notes about a parish church, such as confession times.

What makes this app really worth your time (if, like me, you don't travel a lot and MassTimes.org works for what you need), though, is the readings and Mass videos functionality. See those buttons on the bottom of the screen? Unfortunately, I couldn't find screen shots that show you the link to the readings (which includes the saint of the day) or the Mass videos screens.

Click on the readings button, and you get the day's readings, each as a separate clickable button, as well as information about the saint of the day.

Click Mass videos and there are links to videos provided by CatholicTV for daily Masses. VERY cool.

I recommend this app--it's useful and easy to use.