If anyone did not receive the "software update available" email that went out last week, please note that we have posted a new version, 3.44, to the web site. Also the App store just released 1.0.7 software for the iPhone "Life Compass" app.

These updates add Period 5 and Period 6 (1944 onward) support to Flying Stars so it now shows chart types for a wider range of buildings. All updates are free to our customers. As always, thanks for staying in touch with us and sharing your experiences with Fortune Compass.

Blessings, -steve-

I received an email from a customer that truly warmed my heart. He said:

Just had an amazing experience, Steve. I set Life Compass to point to health, recently. Long story short, I had an encouraging outcome to a somewhat critical health event. Sample of one but I do feel better correlating that event with Feng Shui.

After contemplating his wonderful success, I offered this perspective:

Thats truly wonderful. Many powerful forces are aligned for you when you allow your mind, beliefs, understanding and available wisdom to help.

It has been my personal experience that Qi is always ready to help us. She is just waiting for us to do our part by asking for help and making the changes that are presented to us.

Wishing you the best success and outcomes for your hearts desire. Blessings, -steve-

Happy New Year! Actually, lets talk about some of the many definitions for the "New Year". According to a fascinating Wikipedia article the Roman calendar had the new year begin in March, at least until Julius Caesar assumed power in January. Hence the (not so) surprising change to January 1st.

With the expansion of Western culture to the rest of the world during the twentieth century, the January 1 date became universal in nature, even in countries with their own New Year celebrations such as China and India.

Chinese New Year however is celebrated on the Lunar New Year and the "new year" as in first day of a year is the Solar New Year in Feng Shui calculations.

My point is: Happy New Year! If you miss January 1, you can celebrate again on January 28th (Solar New Year) or February 14 (Lunar Year, the second new moon after the winter solstice).

So, blessing to everyone for a wonderful New Year..... times 3!

I had the pleasure of giving a brief radio interview on CJBK News-talk 1290 in London, Ontario this afternoon. "London in the Afternoon" co-host Mike Stubbs asked me about the Fortune Compass as a unique holiday gift. He and Al Coombs discovered us on by searching the web and decided to call me and see if I would like to talk on their show. "Sure", I said. We had a fun back-and-forth about Feng Shui, rearranging furniture, and finding good Qi. I enjoyed them and appreciate their offer to share the Fortune Compass story with our Canadian friends. Blessings, -steve-

Our Life Compass iPhone app is a success! We've received mostly 5-star reviews and people are finding Life Compass to be easy and fun to use. Thank you to all our customers and friends for making us successful.

We launched a PR campaign last Friday talking about what the iPhone app does and how you can use it to find good personal Qi energy as well as help with 'house hunting' to find a perfect home or business space. The press release is available here.

We send Blessings and Best Wishes to everyone for a perfect Thanksgiving Holiday. -steve and tisha-

One of our affiliates, Nicola Elizabeth Jones of feng-shui-design-consultancy.com address this question in her recent newsletter as follow:

Compass School Feng Shui is a set of numerology calculations used to analyse orientation, location and time, none of which are psychic or intuitive.

You can read her well written full article here. With best wishes, -steve-

Today was exciting for us as our "Life Compass" iPhone app was released for sale in the Apple App store. This app requires an iPhone 3GS (the newest model) as that is the only Apple hardware with a compass sensor. Older 3G and original iPhones models do not have a compass.

Here is a comparison between the app features and the Life Compass version:



You can read more about the iPhone app here and can buy the Life Compass app from the iTunes store here.

As always, we love to hear from our customers so please let us know what you think, and any ideas or suggestions you have for us to include in future versions.

Blessings, --steve-

Social networks like Facebook make the internet "fun" again, and actually are changing the world - I believe. For example, Twitter has provided vital real-time information about natural disasters and helped gather like-minded people together. And Facebook brings families and new friends together around shared interests and community even when we live many time-zones and miles apart.

We're happy to be adding our voices to the Facebook community and making it easy for you to share your thoughts and experiences with the Life Compass through our FB group.

We invite you to become a fan of the Life Compass and add your energy and thoughts to the community. Together, we are making the world a better place! Blessings and Thanks, -steve-

Apple recently released their latest update to the Mac OS X, 10.6, referred to as "Snow Leopard". Some of our customers have noted problems updating their Fortune Compass software after installing this on their Mac. We posted a new updater on our web site that fixes some issues (uses the latest Java 1.6 and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Java).

However there is a confusing alert dialog that appears when you power on a Fortune Compass attached to your Mac. This dialog did not appear in previous versions of OS X, and based on some other postings from unhappy Mac users for lots of reasons, might be changed by Apple in the future! In any event, if you get "A new network interface has been detected" alert, simply click on "Network Preferences" in that alert, then click on "Apply" in the Network preference panel that appears. Full details can be found in this document on our support page.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft has released the long awaited Windows 7 this past weekend..... so there will probably be updates needed to our documentation for the Windows install process too, we'll just have to see. If you are a windows user, the latest documentation with links to any necessary device drivers can be found here.

Sending you Success for all your computer interactions! -steve-

We are proud to introduce the newest Fortune Compass model, the Life Compass. This model incorporates all of the previous "Advanced" premium features (such as Eight Mansions/Ba Zhai and Flying Stars, and increases storage to eight friends and associates). Best of all, this is a free upgrade to our current Personal and Advanced model users! Just go to our Updates page and your compass will be updated..

The Personal model has been replaced by the improved Life Compass model, which is now value priced at US$199.00, making all this great Feng Shui available to even more people.

The latest documentation on the Life Compass can be downloaded here. We wish you great blessings and prosperity. -steve-

With great enthusiasm we can now let everyone know we are shipping our Tianren Tong Chinese Feng Shui compass product.

We have also begun advertising it in a Los Angeles area Chinese newspaper, the Epoc Times. Adverts will run on various days this month. If you have friends that would like to receive the paper they should check it out.

Here is our current ad:

Best wishes for your continued success, heath, spiritual growth and fantastic relationships! -steve-

We are pleased to introduce our newest product, the Tianren Tong (天人通) Fortune Compass. Tianren Tong means "Device that Connects Heaven and Humanity", a wonderful name that was given by Master Wang.

The 天人通 Fortune Compass is a personal Feng Shui astrologer and interpreter device that fits in your pocket. The Fortune Compass is based on the traditional Eastern science of assessing personal characteristics, containing a database of individual interpretations with over 17,200 entries. It displays calculator screens for Minggua, Bazhai, Xuankong Feixing, and Bazi plus an accurate internal electronic compass to show you exactly where the Qi is coming from. The database synthesizes a wealth of personal information from different systems of knowledge for the first time. It was created exclusively for the Fortune Compass by a team of renowned Feng Shui masters in Southwest China.

The Bazi charts displayed on this device show more than raw data. They provide interpretations as well as advice about:
• Personal strengths and weaknesses
• Health challenges
• Optimum careers
• Personal characteristics
• Character matches for work
• Character matches for love relationships
• Elements to tonify
• Plus 14 other categories

What makes the Fortune Compass unique is that calculating and interpreting your personal Bazi data does not require hiring a professional. The solution is always right in your pocket.
Interpretations are displayed in three ways:
• Text, in Chinese
• Circular compass having one or more pointers indicating directions to face the desk or bed
• Square compass screen that refers to geographic areas relative to where your Father was born

The new Tianren Tong Fortune Compass is shipping in September, priced at US$299.00

Many people have asked questions about whether Daylight Savings Time (DST) should be accounted for when setting a person's birth hour. So I asked an expert to answer. Dr. Heiner Fruehauf wrote

I most definitely recommend offsetting for daylight savings time (as it is a "political" time that has nothing to do with the real cycles of the universe).

That explaination makes perfect sense to me. The Universe isn't subject to "political whims" when considering cyclical time over thousands of years. Heck, DST has only been around since invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, a mere 235 years ago. In fact most countries and states only adopted DST after 1970.

So, thank you Dr. Fruehauf for answering this important question. YES! Remove the "DST" adjustment if born in the summer time to get the correct time of birth!

Had a fun extended family breakfast last weekend, with about nine people ranging from 6 years old to, oh, much older! We got talking about personalities and so I pulled out my Fortune Compass Professional and put everybody's birthdate in. Looking at the Ba Zi (Four Pillars) you can tell lots of things about someone's personality. And sharing that around the breakfast table was lots of fun!

For example, the Earth Branch Year shows the celestial animal and element (such as Yang Fire Horse), while the Heaven Stem Day revels the essence of your inherent nature (such as Yin Wood).

There many sites that give simple explanations of the twelve Chinese animals that make for fun sharing with a group. My daughter had her iPhone with her, so she looked up the interpretation for each of us as we ate.

Its a great conversation starter, and the family's laughter and follow on comments evidenced they found it downright insightful too.

Ba Zi is a deep and complex science with detailed interpretations best done by skilled professionals.... but you can have a lot of fun with friends by sharing their Year Animal and Day Element. Who knows.... everybody might learn something new about themselves as well as each other!

I've been traveling quite a bit recently, both for business and pleasure. The common denominator is hotel rooms instead of home-sweet-home. Since I always carry my Fortune Compass with me, I thought I'd pass along some tips that help make my travels a bit more comfortable and easy. Perhaps they can be of use to you too?

(1) Getting better sleep - so what can you do when the hotel bed is in a challenging direction? Move the bed? Well, perhaps not. But how about move yourself? WHAT? Yes, I often will sleep diagonally in the bed to get better Chi while sleeping. Once in a while the only good option is to move the pillows to the foot of the bed and sleep backwards. Works great, especially you have a king bed and are all by your self... otherwise your partner may have an opinion!

(2) Set up your computer - here I often get more bold about rearranging the furniture if needed. Often I will move the hotel-supplied desk away from a wall and/or move the chair around to a different side. Hey.... its all about the trip bringing business success or new relationships, right? Usually I remember to put things back before checkout. If not, perhaps the next guest will have the same Gua number and like what I did!

(3) Meetings and Dinners - oh yeah, just a quick click of the Fortune button to the 8-direction compass shows where I should sit to activate the Chi for my intended goals.

Always pack your Fortune Compass, and keep it close to hand while traveling. It really makes travel easier. And for some reason, people like me a lot more when I've had a good night's sleep!

Happy Summer and Blessings, -steve-