Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  A spiritual connection (19 Mar 2005) Catholics can sign up for daily inspirational text messages from the pope simply by texting “Pope On” to a special number (53141 in Ireland, for example). The Irish Jesuits offer a service called Sacred Space, accessible via smartphone, which encourages users to spend ten minutes reflecting on a specially chosen scripture for the day. In Taiwan, limited-edition phones made by Okwap, a local handset-maker, offer Matsu wallpaper and religious ringtones, along with a less tangible feature—each one has been specially blessed at a temple to Matsu. And Muslims around the world can use the F7100 handset, launched last July by LG of South Korea, both to remind them of prayer times (the phone has an alarm system that works in 500 cities) and to find the direction of Mecca using the handset's built-in “Mecca indicator” compass. Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3713955 Read 66 more articles from Economist sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Behind the digital divide     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy