As a independent developer of a small app targeting a niche audience, a new version of iOS is a mixed blessing. It is always accompanied by some fantastic new features which will inevitably make my app work better – but at the same time, there are costs associated with upgrading to make use of them. Finding the time to redesign an app from scratch to work nicely with iOS7 is no mean feat when you have a full time job as well. And then there’s that age old dilemma: do I drop support for older iOS versions and devices in order to make the most of the new features? Apple has a way of always making this decision more urgent than it would otherwise be: when the iPhone 5 came out with it’s 4″ screen, you could only target that if you were running a version of XCode that no longer supported the older armv6 devices like the original iPods and iPhones; likewise, you can’t compile arm64 code for the new iPhone 5S if your app still targets iOS5, like mine does.

But according to The Next Web, Apple has made a small but significant change to the App Store which would significantly reduce the stress involved in these decisions: users of outdated iOS versions will apparently now get the option to download older versions of an app which still supports their hardware. This has the potential to be HUGE, and we could well see a surge in developers targeting the latest features since they no longer have to worry about all of the users who will no longer be able to download their app as a result.

Well played Apple.

Update: Simon Maddox has pointed out that this can also prove to be a support nightmare, since out-of-date versions that don’t play nicely with your current APIs are now hanging around forever. But to some extent, this would have been the case anyway – I still have plenty of out-of-date apps running on my iOS5 iPad.

(Please note: this blog post is now very old… and whilst a lot of the information about import and export via Dropbox still works perfectly well, the best way to sync data between two devices is to go to the app’s “Settings” page and tap the “Create an online account/sign in” button to connect via the cloud)

Actually… getting more *IN* to PrayerMate

For many people, one of the things that stops them using PrayerMate more is the challenge of actually getting their prayer points into the app. Typing on a mobile is slow and cumbersome, and perhaps you already have lots of prayers in another system that you wouldn’t want to have to enter all over again.

With the newly released PrayerMate 3.1.0, getting your data into PrayerMate is easier than ever, with a little help from the wonderful Dropbox. Here are three ways that Dropbox can help you.

1. Migrations and backup

One key use of Dropbox is to allow you to backup your PrayerMate data, so that you can import it again later in the case of a lost or reset phone, or migrating it to a second device. Under the app’s main “Settings” menu within PrayerMate (accessible whilst praying), hit the “Export data” / “Export to Dropbox” button. Depending on your device, you may then be given the option to export “via Dropbox” or “via another app” – try “via Dropbox” and if that doesn’t work then try via another app instead (and if you have the Dropbox app installed, this should even come up as one of the options). The first time you use it you’ll be prompted for your Dropbox credentials, and then it will save your entire database into a special folder within your Dropbox called “Apps/PrayerMate” as a .json file with today’s date. You can then import this again later, or on another device, using the “Import from Dropbox” button.

When you import, it will look for existing categories and subjects with the same name and reuse them where possible, so in theory you could import more than once without causing duplication. However, it is not going to prove a very satisfying experience trying to use this to continually keep two devices in sync with each other. I’m working on a proper solution to the syncing issue as a matter of priority (Update: this is now live via the “Create an online account/sign in” option in the settings menu).

2. Importing new data

Whilst the first point was all about moving existing data around, Dropbox is also very useful for getting completely new data into PrayerMate. If you place any text file with a “.txt” extension in your “Apps/PrayerMate” Dropbox folder, then you can use that to create a new subject. Hit the “Import data” button under the app’s main “Settings” page, and you should see your .txt file listed. When you tap it, it will then begin the process of creating a new subject with the same name as your .txt file (underscores ‘_’ will be replaced with spaces) and the contents of the text file will be used to populate the description.

There’s also now an “Import all” button. Hit this, then choose one of your categories, and it will load in all of the .txt files in the current directory and create one subject for each. You can create sub-folders within your Dropbox, one per category, if you want a little more control – then just use “Import all” within specific sub-folders.

3. Adding PDF attachments

If you’re anything like me, you’re constantly being sent prayer letters as PDFs that you read once then promptly forget. Now, if you add them to the “Apps/PrayerMate” folder within your Dropbox, when you hit “Import data” you will see those PDF files listed with a paperclip icon. Once you select the file you want, you’ll be asked to pick one of your subjects, and it will attach that PDF file to that subject. When you’re praying you’ll then see a “PDF” button which you can tap to view it fullscreen.

Sign up to Dropbox here or download PrayerMate here.

For the past six months I have slowly been chipping away on a major new update to the PrayerMate app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Today I am thrilled to announce that v3.0 is now live on the App Store – and though I say this every time, it really is the most exciting version yet! Here is an overview of the new features you’ll find.

Subscribe to online prayer diaries

Until now, PrayerMate has focussed on letting you enter your own personal prayer points. Now, in addition to that, you can also browse a gallery of prayer feeds from organisations such as Open Doors, who provide bulletins from the persecuted church around the world; UCCF The Christian Unions; Christians in Sport; Church Society; and a number of local churches. The PrayerMate app will then automatically download new content every time it is published, helping you be faithful in prayer for the organisations you care about.

Any church or organisation can request to be added to the gallery – all you need is an iCal feed (if you’re using Google Calendar) or if that’s not possible, then an RSS feed (as generated by most popular blogging platforms). Alternatively, there is also a new companion website, http://www.prayermate.net/, which makes it incredibly easy for churches to publish their prayer points online by simply copying and pasting from your church bulletin or newsletter.

New features for new users

I’ve made a few tweaks to make it easier for new users to get up and running more quickly: improved default data, including a few tips on using the app; a link to the “getting started” blog post; and a new “Quick add” feature that lets you create lots of subjects in one go by simply selecting entries from your address book. Linking a subject to an address book entry will now also pull in any associated images from that contact.

Send SMS messages whilst praying

Once you have linked a subject to a contact in your address book, you can now send both emails and SMS text messages to that person whilst praying for them by pressing and holding on their card.

Improved Dropbox syncing

Whilst this version of the app does not yet support continually keeping two devices in sync automatically, it does pave the way for that functionality in the next major update (I promise that this is top of my list of priorities!) It does, however, improve the Dropbox import/export functionality so that it no longer duplicates your data each time you use it, but will reuse existing categories and subjects as long as the names have not been altered.

And in case you hadn’t noticed it, PrayerMate now also has a shiny new logo, designed by the wonderful Dan Gould.

If you’ve found PrayerMate helpful, and you live in the UK, please consider nominating it for the Christian New Media Awards so that even more people can hear about it.

At Hubbub, we help small independent shops compete with the supermarkets, because we believe this leads to thriving local communities. There was a great article on A List Apart this week taking that same principle as a metaphor for businesses on the web:

I am happy with my small shopkeeper status. I talk and write about bootstrapping because I want to show other developers that there is a sane and achievable route to launching a product, a route that doesn’t involve chasing funding rounds or becoming beholden to a board of investors. I love the fact that decisions for my product can be made by the two of us, based on the discussions we have with our customers. If we had investors hoping for a return on their investment, it would be a very different product by now, and I don’t think a better one.

I think it is important for those of us succeeding at this to talk about it.

I found the article fascinating on the back of a year working at Hubbub, but also as an independent developer essentially running my own software company on the side. This has been a fantastic year for my PrayerMate app, and in many ways, I feel like I’m only just getting started, with some seriously major updates coming up in the next few months. Being a one-man team has its drawbacks, but I also love being able to build a product that I want to use myself without being beholden to anybody else’s agenda for what features I should be adding, and without the pressure of it being my primary source of income (not that I wouldn’t love to be able to devote more time to it if sales picked up enough!)

I had something of a realisation this morning as I was firing off a quick text message to my wife. My first draft read “I hope today isn’t too stressful for you” – as parents of a teeny tiny little baby, there are many reasons why the day might turn out to be pretty hard work. Then I remembered the Bible study we did at church the other week on Ephesians 3:14-21, looking at the apostle Paul’s prayer for the Ephesian church. Paul’s prayer could have read “I bow my knees before the Father and pray that he would stop bad stuff happening to you and that your life would be stress-free and straightforward”. Thankfully he didn’t, and what a rebuke to me that has been:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

It’s generally fairly easy to spot the more crass forms of the Prosperity Gospel when it rears its head: the idea that if you obey God then he will abundantly bless you right here and now. But I realised that it’s all too easy for the same spirit to creep into our prayers without even realising it. How often do we treat God like a genie whose sole purpose is to make our lives easier?

So what would it mean to resist this kind of “Prosperity Prayer Life”? What would a more Ephesians 3-style prayer look like? In the end I decided to send this to my wife: “I hope you know God’s grace through the challenges of today”. God’s desire isn’t to make our lives as easy as possible. God’s desire is to make us more like Christ, and he will use the struggles and the stresses of each moment to achieve it. Like gold, we are refined through the fire, not by sitting around on a comfy sofa.

Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians was that through everything, they might be given supernatural grace to more deeply understand God’s love for them. How much richer our prayer lives would be if we shared that same desire for one another! Next time you’re wondering how you can pray for me, feel free to pray Ephesians 3. It may not be what I would have asked for, but it’s certainly what I need!

If you’re a PrayerMate user, why not create an “Ephesians 3” index card that appears at the start of each session, reminding you how you could be praying for each of the people that you’ll be praying for that day? To do this, create a new category, make sure that it is “Pinned” so that it appears every session, and change the order of your categories to make sure your new one is at the start of the list. Add a single subject, and perhaps you could copy and paste the passage from Bible Gateway.

Goosey, goosey gander,
Wither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady’s chamber.
There I met an old man
Who would not say his prayers,
I took him by the left leg
And threw him down the stairs.

Perhaps Goosey should have suggested he buy himself a copy of PrayerMate instead?

A good friend of mine who has a real gift for tracking down little-heard-of Christian books that turn out to be total gold dust recently presented my wife and I with a copy of “The Upper Room” by J.C.Ryle, the one-time Bishop of Liverpool (a bishop who believed the gospel – they do exist!!) He had bookmarked a carefully chosen chapter titled “The Duties of Parents”, which so far has been inspiring and daunting in equal measures. One duty in particular stood out as especially germain to this blog: “VI. Train them to a habit of prayer”. Allow me to quote:

Prayer is the very life-breath of true religion. It is one of the first evidences that a man is born again… Prayer was the distinguishing mark of the Lord’s people in the day that there began to be a separation between them and the world. “Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 4v26).

Prayer is the peculiarity of all real Christians now. They pray,-for they tell God their wants, their feelings, their desires, their fears; and mean what they say. The nominal Christian may repeat prayers, and good prayers too, but he goes no further.

Prayer is the turning-point in a man’s soul. Our ministry is unprofitable, and our labour is vain, till you are brought to your knees. Till then, we have no hope about you.

Prayer is one great secret of spiritual prosperity. When there is much private communion with God, your soul will grow like the grass after rain; when there is little, all will be at a standstill, you will barely keep your soul alive. Show me a growing Christian, a going forward Christian, a strong Christian, a flourishing Christian, and sure am I, he is one that speaks often with his Lord. He asks much, and he has much. He tells Jesus everything, and so he always knows how to act.

Prayer is the mightiest engine God has placed in our hands. It is the best weapon to use in every difficulty, and the surest remedy in every trouble. It is the key that unlocks the treasury of promises, and the hand that draws forth grace and help in time of need. It is the silver trumpet God commands us to sound in all our necessity, and it is the cry He has promised always to attend to, even as a loving mother to the voice of her child.

Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God. It is within reach of all,- the sick, the aged, the infirm, the paralytic, the blind, the poor, the unlearned, -all can pray. It avails you nothing to plead want of memory, and want of learning, and want of books, and want of scholarship in this matter. So long as you have a tongue to tell your soul’s state, you may and ought to pray. Those words, “Ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4v2), will be a fearful condemnation to many in the day of judgement.

I for one feel really challenged by all that. But also really encouraged that prayer doesn’t have to be this really complicated thing- it’s just a talking to God and asking him for the things we need. Let’s resolve to be people who pray. And if you’ve not tried it already, may I recommend to you a handy little app for iOS called PrayerMate which you might find useful in getting going in a habit of prayer!

We’re in the midst of university mission season at the moment here in Britain. Last week was the London-wide UCCF mission, this week it’s Imperial’s turn. It’s not uncommon that you have periods like this where you want to pray for something intensively, and then eventually whatever it is comes to an end and no longer needs that kind of focussed prayer (though of course it’s always worth praying for follow up after a mission!)

I’ve found PrayerMate really useful in my own attempts to pray for some of these missions, and so I thought I’d write up a quick tutorial on how to use it in this way.

Step 1: Creating a prayer card

Before we can do anything else, we need to create a card for our mission week. Tap the “+” button in the top left of the home screen. We’ll give it a name, “Mission Week”, and click the “Tap here to add details…” button as well if you want to type in a fuller description to guide your prayers.

Step 2: Praying for it every day

By default, PrayerMate will just show you a subject every few days, after you’ve finished praying through all of the other subjects in the same category. For our intense mission week, focus, we want to temporarily change this.

The easiest way I’ve found is to schedule it to appear every single day of the week:

Tap the “Scheduling Mode” button, and select “Day of the Week”. When presented with a list of week days, tap each one until it is ticked. PrayerMate prioritises day-of-the-week subjects over those with a “default” scheduling mode, so this will make sure you’re almost guaranteed to see it each day from now on.

Step 3: Auto-archiving at the end of the week

Optionally, if you want, you can specify an auto-archive date at the end of the mission week. This will tell PrayerMate to move your subject to the “archive” once that date is reached. It won’t be deleted altogether, but it will mean that this subject won’t appear any more in any new prayer sessions.

Have you got a tip or trick that’s helped you to pray using PrayerMate? Send it in to prayermate at geero.net or tweet @PrayerMateApp so that it can help other people too.

I am thrilled to announce yesterday’s release of PrayerMate 2.1 on the App Store. This is a significant new release with many changes, both visible and under the hood, as well as a significant number of bug fixes. Here’s a run down on some of the new feature:

Attach PDF Prayer Letters to Items

This was actually the idea that first inspired PrayerMate way back when. My inbox often seems full of prayer letters from mission partners, that if I’m totally honest I often just read once and then rarely look at again. Well, now if I open them up on my iPod using Safari, I can use the “Open with…” button to get them into PrayerMate and attach them to one of the items there. In a prayer session, when I get to that item, there’ll be a little envelope icon – tap that and it will open the PDF full screen, and I can zoom in, scroll around, etc. Hopefully in the future you’ll be able to import these from Dropbox too, but that’s a way off yet.

Support for iPhone 5

Inevitably I’ve had a few eager iPhone 5 users wondering when I would support the new bigger screen size, and now here it is. Sadly, because of the way Apple has organised things, this also means dropping support for the oldest (armv6) devices and iOS 3 – things like the original iPhone, as well as the first and second generation iPod Touches. This was a tough call, which is why I have deliberated for so long, but it looks like there are now very few users of these old devices, so if you’re one of them, I’m really sorry but I’m not sure I had much choice.

New “Menu” Card

I was a bit unsure about this one at first, but the more I’ve used it myself the more I’ve come to love this. Now when you start praying, before all of your actual prayer cards, you’ll see a new one labelled “Today’s Prayers”. This will list all of the items that will be prayed for in this new session.

A little tip on this: my wife finds it really helpful to close and reopen PrayerMate in order to take another peek at this card after she’s prayed – so that she knows if she needs to email anybody to get up-to-date information on how she can be praying. She finds it so helpful that I might see if I can incorporate this formally into the app, but we’ll see. If you think that would be useful – do let me know!

Day of the Month Scheduling

PrayerMate has long supported scheduling cards to appear on a certain date or a certain day of the week, and now you can schedule them to appear on certain days of the month as well (e.g. the 1st of every month, or the 15th and 30th).

Integrated Email Support

I’ve added two new features related to email.

The first is to let you email the person you are praying for from within the app. Often when you’re praying  for someone, it makes you really want to get in touch to let them know you were thinking of them. Now if you press and hold on the card, you’ll get an “Email contact” button. This will work for all subjects, but if you’ve explicitly linked it to a contact in your address book then it will be able to pre-fill the email address for you as well.

The second is to let you email the details of an item from within the app to anybody you like. I’ve started using PrayerMate to record my small group’s prayer points each week, and now once you’ve filled in the details, on the edit subject page there’s a button to “Email these details”, so I can send them to everybody in the group. Quick tip: set up a contact “group” in your address book (this needs to be done on Mac OS X / Windows and then synced across, I believe) – this at least let’s you quickly skim through each member of a group and easily select all of their names.

Bug Fixes Galore

But PrayerMate 2.1 wasn’t just all about adding new stuff, it also includes a significant number of little tweaks and bug fixes, largely based on the invaluable feedback of my wonderful users. If you ever experience a glitch, please don’t hesitate to get in touch, or even if you just have a thought about something that would make the app even better – there’s a “Send Feedback” button on the very final page when you’ve finished praying (the one after the blessing) and I read every email I get and I love hearing from people. PrayerMate is also on Twitter now: @PrayerMateApp.

Here are some of the fixes:

• Fixed a problem on the “Edit details” page that made scrolling and editing impossible in landscape mode
• When editing details, the cursor now defaults to the top of the card rather than the bottom
• Restored some missing photos, and make sure they survive updates in the future
• Addressed some problems with Dropbox import and export

PrayerMate is my app for iPhone and iPod Touch that is designed to help you stay faithful in prayer for the people and causes that matter to you. Today a new version went live on the App Store, version 1.3. It adds a couple of new features that I’m really excited about: scheduled prayer requests, and auto-archiving.

Scheduled Prayer Requests

Each day PrayerMate will pick a selection of prayer requests from your library for you to pray through. Traditionally it just picked whichever subjects you haven’t prayed for in a while. But we all know that there are certain things you just want to pray for at specific times – maybe you want to pray for the Sunday service every Sunday morning, or you want to pray for your friend on the morning of their job interview.

PrayerMate 1.3 allows you to do both of these things using scheduled prayer requests. When you enter a subject, you can choose the “scheduling mode”: either “Default”, which behaves as normal; “Day of the Week”, which lets you pick one or more days of the week on which you wish to pray for this subject; or “Date”, which lets you pick a specific date from a calendar.

For those who want to go a bit deeper into how it works, here are a few of the under-the-hood details: every day, PrayerMate will begin by looking for dated requests scheduled for today (e.g. 20th February). If there’s any space left for extra requests, it will then proceed to look up requests scheduled for the current day of the week (Monday). It will then fill up any remaining allocation using unscheduled requests, in the same order as they’ve always appeared. It’s your responsibility to make sure you don’t have so many dated or “day-of-the-week” requests that there’s never any space left for unscheduled requests.

PrayerMate gives you a little bit of flexibility on dated requests – if you don’t fire up the app on a given day, any scheduled prayer requests that you missed will show up for up to a week afterwards.

Auto-Archiving

A related for separate feature is “auto-archived” prayer requests. Very often we want to pray for things which are time sensitive, and which cease to be relevant once a particular date has passed. With the new auto-archiving feature, you can tell PrayerMate to automatically move a subject to the archive after a certain date.

For example, if your friend is on a short term mission trip until Friday 16th March, create a new subject with 16th March in the auto-archive field, and on the 17th that subject will automatically get moved to the archive so that you no longer see it.

Get it on the app store today

The last few days have been very exciting ones for my PrayerMate iPhone prayer app . Firstly, it got nominated for “Best Use of Mobile Web” by Premier Radio’s Christian New Media Awards 2011 – a real honour! And secondly, it was blogged about by Tim Challies, top Christian blogger and author of a book I am a huge fan of – The Next Story.

Tim was generally positive although wisely is still somewhat reserved about the whole concept of an iPhone prayer app. Here’s a brief extract of what he had to say:

“For 7 days I relied on the app to guide me. And I have to say that I was quite impressed. It ended up being a very useful aid. I was genuinely surprised by this…
I am rather surprised to find myself enjoying the app, and still using it 2 weeks later. I doubt I will end up continuing to use it in the long term, though perhaps I will be surprised. I remain kind of suspicious of it and suspicious of the very idea of using an app to help me pray. I haven’t thought through all of the potential implications, but at least on a pragmatic level, it delivers what it promises.”

You can buy PrayerMate on the App Store for £1.99.