I am very excited to share with you my first iPhone and iPad app. It’s called iAccomplish and it addresses that sense you can get at the end of the day when you’ve been working so hard but you feel like you’ve accomplished nothing.

iAccomplish lets you write down everything you do during the day, label those activities with a category, and then slide your finger to rate how much you enjoyed a particular activity and how “competent” you felt over it.

Once you’ve added enough accomplishments, you can start to detect patterns, like where you’re spending most of your time, when you’re most productive (Tuesday mornings, for example) and, of course, how much you really do get done every day. You can then use this data to make changes in your lifestyle or priorities, if you’re so inclined.

iAccomplish is not just a cute little app. It’s based on solid principles from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and I’ve worked closely with a number of CBT professionals to make sure the app really helps people feel better from a clinical perspective.

The main reason I developed this app is that I have personally used CBT and it’s been tremendously valuable in my life. Back when I was doing CBT, it was all written down on pen and paper (or in a Word or Excel file). My aim was to move CBT into the iPhone age, with all of the number crunching a mobile device can do on the fly.

The app is also very timely: although the benefits of CBT can be realized at any time of the year, the pressures of balancing work and family commitments during the holiday season (not to mention gift giving and shopping) can exacerbate the feeling that days have gone by without having achieved anything tangible. Once into the New Year, CBT can help maintain calm as work responsibilities return.

iAccomplish is priced at $1.99 for both the iPhone and iPad versions. But I am so excited about the potential for the app to help you get through the stress of the holiday season that I am offering it for only $.99 until the end of December. This is not a gimmick – it’s a full copy of the app with no strings attached.

If you have an iPhone or iPad (or both), I would be delighted if you’d download a copy and tell me what you think. And please leave (positive!) feedback on the app store.

And if you like it (or if you don’t have an iPhone but you think it’s a great idea anyway), I would be so grateful if you would forward this blog post to 10 of your friends (and ask them to do the same).

There’s lots more at the website: iaccomplishapp.com, including an article that tells the “story” behind the app. It would be perfect for a newspaper or tech blog to run, so feel free to send it along if you have a good contact.

The page to buy the app from iTunes is here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iaccomplish/id481310763.

I wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season. I hope that iAccomplish will become an essential part in your surviving December…and that you’ll use it for years to come!

I’ve written in the past both about eBooks and sex, two of my favorite subjects. My stated position on eBooks is that they will supplant printed books entirely within 20 years, probably less; newspapers and magazines will be entirely digital as early as 5 years from now. My recent article on sex explored how premarital relations can fit into an Orthodox Jewish perspective.

eBooks and sex came together this past weekend over a Shabbat meal when I was asked to explain my contention that Jewish law will ultimately bend to allow digital readers to be used on Shabbat and holidays.

A quick recap of my post from last year: what happens, I asked, when most reading goes electronic and it will no longer be possible to buy a printed newspaper or the latest paperback to read on Saturday afternoon when turning on an off electricity is forbidden by halacha?

While there will still be printed material for the more ultra-Orthodox community, it will comprise religious texts and newspapers. The more modern community will be left without a print option for Haaretz…or The New York Times.

The subject is particularly relevant this week as Apple is strongly rumored to be releasing its long-awaited and much drooled for tablet computer on Thursday. The “iSlate” (or whatever it will ultimately be called) could, if not entirely ushering in a new era in digital reading, at least give it a serious kick in the pants.

To wit: at this month’s Consumer Electronic Show, there was, for the first time, an entire pavilion just for e-Readers. Devices that have already been announced include the Plastic Logic Que, the EnTourage eDGe (yes I capitalized that correctly), two devices from Samsung, the Booken CyBook Orizon, the iRiver Story, and Hearst’s Skiff which is focused entirely on newspapers, including dynamically targeted ads. And all that that doesn’t include already shipping products like the industry-leading Amazon Kindle, the Sony E-Reader, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

It seems we may have already reached the tipping point.

Now, when it comes to using e-Readers on Shabbat, there are a number of options. Certainly we could see the Tzomet Institute, which has already created weekend-friendly telephones and other devices that can be used on Shabbat, applying its know-how to e-Readers. But with the plethora of non-observant choices in the digital reader market, religious consumers may be reluctant to forego their iSlate for a frumSlate.

In my previous article, I suggested that another approach might be to re-think the entire concept of why electricity was forbidden on Shabbat and holidays in the first place. There is at least one rabbinic authority who ruled that there was no prohibition against turning on a light if it doesn’t heat a metal filament until it glows (I go into much greater detail in the article, including why that same rabbi said that electricity should nevertheless be avoided otherwise “the masses (may) err and turn on incandescent lights on Shabbat”).

Now, here’s where eBooks tie in with sex. Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld wrote her doctorate on sexuality in the Orthodox Jewish world. Speaking in October in Jerusalem, Rosenfeld – while not condoning sex outside of marriage – suggested that there may be paths towards leniency in times of need (for which religious singles, who now often remain unmarried until well into their 30s, may qualify).

Taboos against relations (from touching to intercourse) are dropping, in practice if not in published responsa. I posit that the same thing will happen with e-Readers. When faced with a choice between a page of gemara and the next Dan Brown bestseller (OK, maybe that should be prohibited on Shabbat), many religious Jews will opt for the latter.

The main question may turn out to be: will it be clandestine or public? Will the observant community come out of the closet and bring their Kindles to shul? Will the rabbi, instead of saying, “please turn to page 152,” instruct congregants to “enter 152 and click ‘go?’” Will the e-Reader bark commands as you scroll (“stand here, now bow, take three steps backward!”)

Or will the march of e-Reading technology simply serve to widen the gap between those who observe halacha to the letter of the law and the more flexible modern masses? Already young people from non-haredi streams are fleeing observance with increasing rapidity. Can Jewish practice change to keep up with the times? Will this time be different than the schisms that in the last century pushed apart Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and all the rest?

Or put another way: will the quest for a faster, smaller hard drive generate the same attraction as an insatiable sex drive? Stay tuned…