Now there’s an app to help live an examined life!

The phrase “an unexamined life is not worth living,” came from Socrates. With it he meant we live our day to day lives, never questioning our motivations, never thinking about why we strive for certain things, why some things anger us, and why some things bring out feelings of love and compassion. WIthout examining our lives, we stagnate, always feeling the same thing, always falling into the same patterns, always failing to evolve beyond our greed, envy, anger, and jealousy.

Now, iDeeds has been released to try and change that. The premise is simple – each day, it randomly draws one deed, either good or bad, and assigns you the task of trying to either observe those deeds or trying to change your perspective. There are 9 ‘good deeds’ and 16 ‘bad deeds’, each based on Galatians 5 in the Bible. While the deeds are from a Biblical source, the app is for Believers and non-believers alike as the concept of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for most of those deeds is fairly well established.

Once you have your deed for the day, start watching your life for that one thing – you don’t have to watch every aspect of your life for every possible good or bad deed, just focus on that one deed for the day. Slow, you’ll learn to improve your day by doing more of the good deeds, and less of the bad deeds.

Stuck on trying to understand the relevance of one of the deeds the app pulls for the day? No problem – along with the names of the deeds there are definitions of each deed, both in biblical context and day to day life context.

iDeeds is designed as a stand alone app, but when used in association with our Fruit of the Spirit app you’ve got a powerful set of tools for living a more fulfilling, examined life!

$0.99 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

iDeeds Title Page

Deed of the day (iPad)

Deed descriptions (iPad)

Deed of the day (iPhone)

Deed definitions (iPhone)

Space Pirate & Hero Aston West Comes to the iPhone & iPad!

Noted Author T. M. Hunter has teamed up with ResAliens Press and Midnight Ryder Technologies to bring 10 stories from his Aston West universe to iOS devices! Stories included in the collection are:

• A Thankful Heart
• Conventional Wisdom
• Ever Dark
• Lifeline
• Little White Lies
• Obedience
• Profit And Loss
• Redemption
• Shell Games
• Tresspass

The app is a great way for Aston West fans to get more of their favorite hero on the go, and an excellent way for readers who’ve never met Aston West, space pirate, to jump into his incredible universe!

This also marks the first collaborative iPhone / iPad publishing effort with ResAliens Press – look for more great projects coming soon, including ResAliens Magazine!

$1.99 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

iPad Cover

The index of stories for the iPad version

In story interface is kept clean and simple!

So what is The Story of Gamer Zone?  Ages ago, a LAN Gaming center was opened at Harry & Broadway in Wichita, Kansas. For two years Gamer Zone was a gamer gathering point.

This is the story of Gamer Zone’s rise and eventual fall. It’s told from my perspective – the guy who took the most hours behind the counter, the guy who took responsability, and eventually the guy who took the fall.  It covers all the successes and failures we, as a team had.  It also covers the aftermath of such a failure.

There’s more than one way to look at the book – it’s either a historical account of a business, or it’s a learning tool.  Take your pick.  It’s geeky in some places, but the focus is on the business aspects, not the video games that were involved.

Originally, it was being written as a blog on what happened, and how to avoid making those mistakes.  About 18,000 words into The Story of Gamer Zone’s blog version, I realized I had long since surpassed the original goal of a blog and was moving into the territory of writing a book.

And so it is now – The Story of Gamer Zone has a print version.  The print version had major cleanups compaired to the much lower quality blog version.  At the moment, the blog version is still on here and the first two chapters are available for free reading (which includes all the bad grammar, spelling errors, horrible editing… well, you get the idea.  It was a blog.)

The Story of Gamer Zone, signed book:  $20.00

The Story of Gamer Zone is now also available through the App Store as a stand alone eBook!  Simple and intuitive – swipe left or right to changes pages, and tap in the center to bring up the table of content.  And if the text isn’t big enough, tap the magnifier in the upper right hand corner to change text size!

And not only is it the full book, it’s frequently updated with new content – The Story of Gamer Zone continues with content that didn’t make the original cut, more stories, and more business lessons learned!

The Story of Gamer Zone, the iPad / iPhone App:  $1.99

Creativity for writers now comes as an app!

Jill Dearman’s highly acclaimed “Bang The Keys” book comes to life in a new iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch app! It’s not a copy of the book – it’s an accessory to the book that helps writers with real world exercises they can carry with them anywhere.

Any place you can sit down for a few minutes is a great place to write. Jill’s app takes that extra few minutes to guide you through exercises you perform right in the app to spur further creativity. Rethink your characters, change the viewpoint of scenes, and dig into the mind of your character or story more deeply than you ever thought possible!

Bang The Keys has 36 exercises to get your juices flowing. Not only that, you can complete each exercise multiple times – this gives you the opportunity to:

• Explore the same story multiple times – why restrict yourself to thinking about just your main character?
• Explore your writing as you progress – great for new writers, Bang The Keys allows you to review all of your works to get a feel for how your writing style progresses!
• Explore all your stories – have a story you want to write, but just can’t quite ‘break through’ your main character?  Use the exercises, and as time goes on you’ll get to know all of your characters intimately!

$2.99 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

Quickly look through the exercises and find which ones you've done before, and get started! (iPad)

In exercise - a clean, simple, distraction free writing area (iPad)

Browsing completed exercises on the iPhone / iPod Touch

The clean writing interface makes working on an iPhone or iPod Touch a usable option!

Browsing exercises on the iPhone / iPod Touch

The iPhone / iPod Touch title screen for Bang The Keys!

Now there’s an app to help improve your life!

Fruit of the Spirit is an app for Believers and non-believers alike, based upon the bible passage in Galatians 5 that details a number of good deeds (Fruits of the Spirit) and bad deeds (Works of the Flesh) that should be guides for our life.

Using the app is simple – open it up on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, and check off your good deeds and bad deeds for the day. At the end of the day, fill out the journal entry (or even edit it as you go throughout the day.) The deeds are tracked and saved for later. All of your bad deeds and good deeds for the day are combined together to produce a ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ score – a quick guide number to work from for seeing how things are going.

So what about later? Click on the arrows at the top of the screen to flip back and forth between days, and read your notes. Cool, but not geeky enough for our tastes – so click on the Graphs tab, and suddenly the data you entered comes to life on a graph. Initially you’ll see your ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ score graphed for the current month (just tap the arrows to switch between months), giving you a quick overview of the patterns in your month.

You can also look at each specific deed – click the checkboxes below the graph to compare, for instance, your days that contained anger with the days your Fruit of the Spirit score was low. Wonder what happened that day? Just touch on the data point for the graph, and it springs you to that day where you can review your journal entry (iPad only – the iPhone / iPod Touch screen is a little small for the data points when looking at a month at a time.)

Now you can being to see patterns in your life – what are the things you’re exposed to that make you frequently anger? What good things happen that helped you to perform deeds of kindness to others? What changes in your life really helped you experience more self-control in your life?

For once, there’s finally a way to see your life’s patterns exposed!

While Fruit of the Spirit is based on a Bible passage commonly known to most Believers, the app is designed for anyone who’s interested finding and eliminating negative patterns in their life, while finding ways to improve the positive patterns. The app does not preach or tell you how to live your life – instead, it allows you to determine how you feel your life should be led, and embrace it!

$1.99 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch

So what are the Fruits of the Spirit and Works of the Flesh, if you’re not familiar with the Bible verse?

Good Deeds (Fruits of the Spirit)

• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Kindness
• Goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-Control

Bad Deeds (Works of the Flesh)

• Immorality
• Impurity
• Depravity
• Idolatry
• Sorcery
• Hostilities
• Strife
• Jealousy
• Anger (or Outburst of Anger)
• Rivalries
• Dissention
• Factions
• Envying
• Murder
• Drunkenness
• Carousing

The app makes no pre-concieved notion as to what all of those mean – it’s up to you, the user, to decide what they mean for you!  There are quite a few reasons for that – first, among Believers the meaning of those can be slightly (or even majorly) different between denominations – some groups have more strict interpretations than others.  Murder, for instance, is translated as to think someone dead – an act of extreme anger, not necessarily the physical act of killing someone!

Second, this is also for non-Believers, too.  So, for instance, ‘Idolatry’ may have no meaning whatsoever!  So the interpretation is left to the user – bad deeds, based on the names given, are often considered to be bad deeds no matter what your beliefs are.

That said – the 1.1 version will also contain a guide for a ‘possible definition’ of each of these items.  It’s entirely up to the user to decide if you wish to follow the definitions work for you or not.

As for the Bible verses themselves – it’s Galatians 5: 17-23 (the King James Version is quoted here, which varies in translation from more modern versions like the New English Testament )

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are [these]; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told [you] in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

The main interface - simply click on each of the deeds! (iPad version)

The graphing interface - it's simple to compare all the deeds in your life!

A screenshot of the various deeds (iPad version)

The main interface on the iPhone and iPod Touch

Even on the iPhone and iPod Touch it's easy to get a good look at what's going on! (Shown in landscape mode)

Another shot of the graph interface on the iPhone & iPod Touch, in portrait mode

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