iMary app joins mobile industry
By Evan Boudreau, The Catholic Register
March 31, 2012
Mother Mary has gone mobile in the form of an app on iTunes.
To coincide with the release of the VisionTV documentary “Our Lady,” Tell Tale Productions has released an iMary app that locates all 83 Marian shrines across Canada.
- Download the app on iTunes now
“These two productions kind of evolved together as sister productions,” said Tell Tale Productions’ president Edward Peill. “There are a number of apps for the rosary and there are a number of apps available for devotions and there are probably a number of apps for the calendar. We decided to combine all of these into one package so you wouldn’t need three or four apps.”
Selling for $4.99 with a portion of profits going to charity, the iMary app provides an interactive map, with a “near me” function, to direct users to Marian shrines.
“We started kicking around ideas of what will complement the film and what doesn’t exist already,” he said. “We found that there wasn’t one full list of shrines in Canada. It just didn’t exist anywhere, not in a data base, not in a book. At least, not that we could turn up.”
Giving life to the app, the makers used images of stained glass from Halifax’s Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basillica and St. Patrick’s Church. In addition, several Canadians were commissioned to compose original artwork.
“We really wanted this to be an elegant app,” said Peill, adding development took more than a year.
Now that the app is in circulation, Peill is appealing to users to contribute photos of shrines to the iMary Facebook group. Select photos will be added to the app.
“When people go and visit the shrines near them, and if we don’t have a photo — because getting a photo from every single one was more than we could do, that’s a huge undertaking — what we’re hoping is that people will send us photos and then we’ll update.”
While the app is currently limited to iPhone users, an Android version compatible with Blackberry is expected for the summer.
If there is demand, Peill intends to produce follow-up apps, such as American and European versions, as well as expanding into a multi-language platform. With more then a 1,000 Marian shrines worldwide it is expected to take three to four years before the global iMary project is complete.