Religious things you can do with a tablet computer

PC World says that laptops are on the way out and tablet computers are in. In fact this year expect the market to be flooded with all sorts of tablets.

Part of the marketing strategy to ensure more people get tablets are the downloadable applet freebies. The freebies especially on Android range from GPS navigation, teach yourself partial differential equations to  Bible and Mass readings.

The Bible is now available via an applet. For Catholics the Mass Reading applet is of supreme practicality since you can download

1) the Mass readings for the day
2) the traditional Catholic prayers
3) the Stations of the Cross
4) the Liturgy of the Hours.
5) the Order of the Mass
6) the Bible in its Catholic edition
7) facts about the day's Patron Saint

Since a tablet is incongruous compared to a laptop, you can bring it to Mass instead of a thick prayer book tome.

I did try to use my tablet during Sunday Mass (not to play frivolous games, but to use the Mass Readings applet) but people thought I was playing PSP 2!

So I had to turn it off. Nonetheless, the time will come when this would be more acceptable to a lot of people.  Parish priests complain of people using cell phones at Mass but will they complain about tablets? It depends on what the tablets are used for during Mass!

If you need an Icon for religious reflection, you can also download it together with the prayers! I haven't found the applet for the Book of Common Prayer but I suppose it is out there in cyberspace.

The age of religious applets has arrived! There are even ecumenical prayer applets which cater not only to Catholics but to non-Catholics as well. Non Christians have their own applets. Muslims have an applet about the Quran and Buddhists too about their prayer cycles. Now who was the one who said that the Singularity will erase faith?