LDS Media Talk

About one million Portuguese-speaking members of the Church can now study the LDS triple combination on the Internet in their native tongue. The Portuguese version of the LDS Scriptures Internet Edition was just released.

The Portuguese version has footnotes, study helps, maps, photographs, and the ability to mark scriptures. Extensive proofreading was done to ensure the accuracy of the text. The Portuguese text version of the scriptures joins the downloadable compressed audio files that were placed online in 2007.

In an effort to help more members have access to the scriptures for personal study as well as lesson preparation, the Church has previously placed English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish versions of the triple online at scriptures.lds.org. The LDS scriptures in more than two dozen languages are currently being converted for use online.

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According Horowitz Associates, 6 out of 10 high speed Internet users watch or download online video at least once a week and 86% do so on a monthly basis. News and user-generated, non-professional content are the most often viewed genres, followed by movie previews and trailers, music videos, and previews or segments of TV shows.

While television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content, weekly viewing of full episodes doubled from last year, with 16% of high speed Internet users watching TV online on a weekly basis. 70% say they do so because they missed the episode on TV. 18% watch them again after having watched them on TV. 13% of Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV.

See the Center for Media Research for more statistics.

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In 2008 and 2009, the book Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith will be used on second and third Sundays for Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society class instruction. This book is available online in multiple languages and in multiple media formats, such as text, PDF (original layout), audio, American Sign Language video, Braille, and multiple reader formats for handheld devices.

The language materials are listed on the language pages. In addition to being listed on the Lesson Manuals page, we have also created a single page that shows all the English formats.

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Elder M. Russell Ballard urged graduating students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii today to use the Internet, blogs, and other forms of new media to contribute to a national conversation about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Elder Ballard asked the students to “join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration.”

He explained that conversations about the Church would take place whether or not Church members decided to participate in them. “We cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches,” he said. Church leaders “can’t answer every question, satisfy every inquiry and respond to every inaccuracy that exists.”

He said students should consider sharing their views on blogs, responding to online news reports, and using new media in other ways. Read his full talk Using New Media to Support the Work of the Church.

Read related stories at the Newsroom, particularly the Additional Resources listed on the right of that page

For more ideas on using modern technology to share the gospel, see the category Sharing the Gospel on this blog.

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The religion known in the past 30 years for its cutting-edge public service ads on the family has now redefined ways to share its message in “Truth Restored,” a major multimedia campaign. The ads from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the “Mormons”) feature recent converts who share — unscripted and in their own words — their conversion experiences.

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We encourage you to try test podcasts of general conference and give us your feedback. The audio link is http://feeds.lds.org/ldsgccomplete_eng and the video is http://feeds.lds.org/ldsgccomplete_eng_mp4.

You can also subscribe via iTunes by clicking Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast in the iTunes window, then enter the Web URLs above. If this test is successful, we hope to begin providing podcasts to the public by next conference, as well as additional RSS feeds.

You may also be interested to look at ScriptureCast.net which is a site created by a member that allows people to create custom podcasts of the scriptures. It has been recently updated to include the October General Conference as one of the sources. At the site, you can create a podcast which will feed you General Conference talks at a rate you specify. You can, for example, review one talk per week, or listen to talks at a rate which will have you finish by the next General Conference. If you like this functionality, please submit feedback on the site, and also leave a comment here.

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The proceedings of the 177th Semiannual General Conference are available on LDS.org in many formats and languages.

• In English, online text is available, as well as audio and video files in various formats (MP3, Windows Media 8, Windows Media 9, and QuickTime) for all sessions and speakers.

• For Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Cantonese, and Mandarin, MP3 audio files are available for complete sessions and by speaker.

To access these materials, go to
http://www.lds.org/conference/oct2007/archive/0,21150,7842-1,00.html
and select a language.

To read more about when additional conference materials will be available, go to
http://www.lds.org/conference-info/0,21082,7841-1,00.html

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With Church members so geographically spread and speaking such diverse languages, distributing the words of the prophets to everyone is becoming more complex and more important than ever. Enabling people to hear the message in their own language will help them strengthen their faith, The Internet is an increasingly useful distribution channel the Church uses to reach a worldwide audience both during and after general conference.

Live Streaming

Live online streaming of October general conference proceedings (with the exception of the priesthood session) will be available in both audio and video formats.

Video streaming will be available in English, Portuguese, and Spanish through the video player available at byu.tv. The player will work on all known PC and Macintosh browsers with a broadband Internet connection. Visiting the links above will connect the user to whatever the current live video feed is.

Audio streaming is available through the LDS.org broadcast page in more than 60 languages.

Downloadable Audio Archives

English MP3 audio files will be available within two weeks of the broadcast. MP3 files of additional languages will follow the conference by six weeks.

Audio files of April 2007 general conference were available to members in 79 languages the following June. The number of languages represented a significant increase over previous conferences, and we hope to repeat the accomplishment this conference. All the files were captured during the live interpretation of conference and converted into MP3 form. For access to the archives of past conferences visit the LDS.org Broadcast page.

Text

The official text of each conference talk is also made available online. English text is available the Thursday after conference. Text in 27 languages is available within four weeks of the broadcast. Braille is available within six weeks. Online PDF versions of the Liahona in 11 languages will be available by the first week of November.

(Read the list of languages available.)

All Formats

For more information on the availability of general conference materials online; in print; and on CD, audiocassette, and DVD, visit lds.org/conference-info.

To find out what is available from general conference by language, click on General Conference in the LDS.org Gospel Library.

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According to the Oct 1st issue of RCR Wireless News, the digital smiley face is 25 years old. Scott E. Fahlman claims he was the first person to put a colon, hyphen, and right parenthesis together to form a horizontal smiley face. Mr. Fahlman is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. See what higher education can do?

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You may be interested in the following from VentureBeat by Eric Eldon:

Religious-themed social networks may be among the more under-appreciated of web sites.

Today, Comscore released numbers showing GodTube, a YouTube for Christians, to be the fastest growing site on the internet in August. It grew 973 percent and ranked among the top 1000 web properties by unique visitors — the same month it officially launched, as Mashable’s Kristen Nicole points out.

GodTube lets users, preferably Christians, upload, share and comment on videos.

Meanwhile, JewTube — yes, a YouTube for Jews — is facing a trademark lawsuit from Google.

We noticed the growth of religious social networks back in August, especially the fast growth of two Facebook applications, Bible Verses and Daily Bible Verse.

Today, we checked back in with Adoholic, our data source. Both apps have more than doubled their number of total users. But only a few thousand Facebook users are active with Daily Bible Verse daily, and only around 25,000 are active on Bible Verses.

Both apps allow user to prominently feature Bible Verses on their profile pages: If the measure of success is souls saved not user engaged, these apps are headed down the right path.

Daily Bible Verse, owned by a Christian social network called MyChurch.org, recently announced it had over more than 10,000 churches on its network.

Other funded religious social networks include CircleBuilder, a site designed more broadly for faith-based groups , and Oikos. As one Oikos developer said last month: “We’ve harnessed the power of Web 2.0 to create a Flash-based environment that has never been seen before in the Christian community.”

Question is, will MC Hammer get into the religious act with his new startup, the forthcoming DanceJam? After all, this author saw him perform a Christian concert (that included “Can’t Touch This”) at a revival service in Albany, Oregon, in 2001.

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We are pleased to announce that audio files of the April General Conference are now available online in 79 languages. The listing of languages can be found by navigating from the LDS.org home page to Gospel Library, then General Conference, or directly here.

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On Monday, media titan Rupert Murdoch wrote a letter published at Forbes.com to explain how media is evolving. He’s the majority shareholder and chief executive of News Corporation, that owns 20th Century Fox, HarperCollins, Fox Broadcasting, dozens of prestigious newspapers and magazines, and MySpace.

User Interaction

Murdock said “People’s expectations of media have undergone a revolution. They are no longer content to be a passive audience; they insist on being participants, on creating their own material and finding others who will want to read, listen and watch.”

Have you thought about building a community around your online content? Users want to comment and add their own ideas about your content. Is there a way to establish a forum for comments on your Web site? People could post their faith-promoting experiences, ideas, and testimonies. If you make it easy to use, it will draw more users because they will want to contribute and see other users’ comments.

Quality of Content

Murdock also states that the quality of online content “is more important than ever, because the marketplace is more ruthlessly competitive.” The content we publish must be valuable to our users. More isn’t better. Better is better. Don’t just publish “flashy toys.” The content or services must offer more value to your readers. After you publish good content, you need to keep working at it, making it more focused, impactful, relevant, and current.

Murdock concludes his letter with “The future of media is a future of relentless experimentation and innovation, accelerating change, and—for those who embrace the new ways in which consumers are connecting with each other—enormous potential.”

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