Category Archives: Apps and Software

Awestruck’s “Life on the Rock” appearance!

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I watched on You Tube an episode of EWTN’s show, “Life on the Rock,” which featured the guys behind a new and growing Catholic Social Network, “Awestruck.”

A little bit about Awestruck (from the network’s “About” page):

“The main-stream media is not in the business of promoting the Church nor the message of the Gospel. Giant social networks like Facebook, because of their necessarily inclusive approach, often overstep the mark by tolerating and even promoting content radically opposed to the faith and to good morals. For example: Vimeo and Tumblr are infested with porn and repeated attempts to close a number of hate groups on Facebook have not been successful. This situation calls for a niche social network dedicated to celebrating the faith and promoting the Church. A trusted space where Catholics can feel “at home”, discover trusted Catholic content through our feeds, and have the tools to easily share this content to networks outside of Awestruck. That’s Awestruck in a nutshell.”

The place also has a lot of useful tools and functions for Catholic bloggers and organizations. I’ve written about that here: Awestruck for Catholic Bloggers

I highly recommend and strongly suggest that if you’re Catholic, join up! If you had before, but didn’t do much with it, try again! The place has evolved from what it looked like a few months ago, site functions and navigation are very good. It is a great place to meet and interact with Catholics from around the world! Right here: Awestruck.

The video is here:

And: My Profile.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Awestruck for Catholic Bloggers

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If you are a Catholic blogger, the Awestruck Catholic Social Network offers some interesting tools. I mentioned ACSN before: Awestruck Network USA Tour 2014 Regarding these blogging tools, to quote from their site:

“We created Awestruck to serve the Catholic blogosphere as best we can. A useful feature is the creative freedom we offer catholic bloggers through our network, namely, full access to our blogging platform. Our Bloggers Dashboard allows users to run a WordPress blog directly on Awestruck.

For those communicators who use various platforms to produce content e.g. Pinterest Boards / Tumblr or Facebook Pages, WordPress or Blogger sites, Awestruck can be a powerful tool to aggregate their content. Activity on third party networks, upon request, can be automatically syndicated to an Awestruck user profile. Bloggers, tell us what your URL is and if you’re in sync with the Church we’ll sync your feed. Links to all aggregated content point directly to the source. With linked sites we display only a snippet of the source content, together with a thumbnail, in order to showcase the original site. In fact, Awestruck actively seeks out the best publicly syndicated feeds and aggregates them in an effort to promote the Catholic blogosphere and help consolidate its members (who are very often isolated and disconnected).

And for others who can benefit from Awestruck’s network: “No longer a single site, Awestruck consists of various sites networked together through a customizable social stream. One login gives you access to all sites on the network. Think of a site as a lens through which you choose to view the network. Choose one lens or flip between as many as you please. Each lens (site) has a unique menu, highlights specific groups and aggregates related feeds. Sites distinguish themselves regionally or thematically and new sites will be added to serve new interests and communities.

If you’re getting your news and opinions of the Church from predominantly secular sources the odds are that you are not following the international Catholic blogosphere – communicators who make it their mission through their blogs to provide a Catholic perspective on anything from politics to sport to beer to craft.”

Beer? Catholics blog about beer? What I can tell ya about beer… oh, nevermind 😉 So, if you’re a Catholic blogger, or want to be one, or you just love the entire holy lot of us, Awestruck can help you sort it all out!

Note: Both Sober Catholic and its sister blog, The Four Last Things, are aggregated on Awestruck and are a part of the “Scribes” site. I do not use their Blogger Dashboard as I prefer to self-host. Getting my stuff aggregated involves a simple message to Norm (the dude who heads the network) with your blog’s URL. I also included the URL for my blogs’ RSS feed, although he didn’t ask for it.

Check it out!

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Mental Health App for people in alcohol or addiction recovery

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I discovered an interesting piece of software that might be very useful for anyone currently suffering or recovering from alcoholism and other addictions, or who have been sober and clean for a long time. It is developed for people with mental health concerns, or who are just interested in tracking their overall mental well-being. But I poked around the various functions, and feel that people in recovery can make good use of this, too.

It is called “Optimism”, and it is free for Macs, PCs, the iPhone (I guess no Android, yet) and can also be used just on the web.

(Via Optimism Apps.)

The following screenshots show some of the software’s usefulness (more screenshots and even a user manual can be found on the project’s website).

This first one depicts the Main page (what you should see when opening the app):

OptimismMainPageMainEntries

Along the left hand side you can see a panel entitled “Core Data.” This can be customized, like so:

MainPageCoreDataCustomize

Back to the Main page: there is a “Notes” button you can click on, and open up a window to write notes for the day, perhaps something like journal entries or random thoughts. The option to do this is just next to the “Main Entries” button along the right hand side of the app, this is what the “Notes” function looks like after clicking on that tab:

OptimismMainPageMainEntriesNotes

It is free. If you download the software, there are references to a trial version if you use the syncing functions. However, the website makes note that as of April 2012, it is free, for all versions. The developers intend to earn money through marketing it to clinicians and other medical personnel. For “ordinary” people, it is free. I guess not all of the software’s documentation has been updated.

I like this! I wish I was able to make use of this, or something like it, when I sobered up in 2002. According to the site, they’ve been making software since 2007. I wish I knew about it then!!

So, go ahead and download it and see how you can make use of it on your recovery path. Perhaps comment on this post what you think.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)