LDS Media Talk

LDS.org provides a simple program that let you enter an address anywhere in the world and find the nearest LDS meetinghouse (place of worship). We are pleased to announce an upgrade to this program, which can be accessed beginning today through many links on LDS.org and Mormon.org, as well as directly at maps.lds.org.

This upgraded program provides many new features not available previously, including:

• A more visual, dynamic user experience. You can enter an address or simply point to a location on a map.
• On the map, you can switch between road, satellite, or aerial views. You can also zoom in or out and drag the map around.
• You can switch between Google and Microsoft maps to get the best map for a given location.
• When you search for a location, results are provided in two categories: “Closest Meetinghouses” shows the three meetinghouse locations physically nearest to your location. “Assigned Congregations” displays a list of available congregations you may attend for the selected location, such as language-specific wards/branches, Young Single Adult (YSA) units, and Student wards.
• You can select a ward/branch and get additional contact information (such as phone numbers), go to the unit Web site, or get driving directions.
• In places where accurate street information does not exist, you can locate meetinghouse chapels by using the “Place Marker” on the map to select the location rather than typing an address.
• Maps.lds.org also works on mobile devices through a simplified user interface.
• If you find a data error, you can report it directly using the Feedback button on the page.
• With each new selection, information on the page changes without reloading, thus speeding up response time.
• When you find a location, you can send a link to it to a friend.
• You can access the program directly at maps.lds.org.

Please feel free to try this new program and share it with your friends and neighbors.  Feedback, suggestions, and corrections to the data are welcomed and encouraged by using the Feedback link on the application.

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There is an interesting article in today’s USA Today about religious podcasts.

• “…podcast technology is opening the doors to a wider variety of religious teaching than ever before, available on demand and delivered automatically to the computers of a growing number of Americans hungry for spirituality.”
• Even small churches can use podcasts to reach large audiences. More than 1 million sermons are accessed monthly from SermonAudio.com, a site that small churches can use to distribute their sermons. The site is now branching out to allow people to access their sermon library of nearly 170,000 sermons by iPhones and iPods.
• “A survey last year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more people used the Internet to look for religious and spiritual information than to download music, participate in online auctions or visit adult websites.”
• GodTube, a Christian alternative to YouTube, has about 2 million users a month. It plans to launch a program that will allow churches to set up their own social networking home pages and post slide shows and audio.
• Experts expect that the easy access to religious teaching from podcasts probably won’t keep people from church, just as TV and radio didn’t hurt church attendance.
• In some cases, a good podcast might be better than a traditional passive church experience. If a person goes to church and passively listens to a talking head give a sermon, then leaves, a podcast experience might be more engaging.
• WorshipIdeas offers tips for contemporary church worship leaders.

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This news from Reuters today:

AT&T plans to end its dwindling pay phone business by the end of 2008, as more consumers use mobile phones.The move affects AT&T pay phones in the company’s previous 13-state service area. BellSouth has already exited the pay phone business in its 9-state area.

Pay phones in the United States have declined across the industry from about 2.6 million phones in 1998 to an estimated 1 million phones today.

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I’ve spent the last few months trying to decide what to do with my 3-year-old mobile phone and my 7-year-old iPAQ Pocket PC. (You’d think if I’m ldsWebguy techno-geek, I’d have newer gadgets, wouldn’t you?) They are both failing, and I’m tired of carrying two gadgets and trying to keep contacts manually in sync between these two devices, not to mention between my contacts and calendar on my laptop.

I tried a Blackberry for a month, but decided that I didn’t really need (or want) to have e-mail tethered to my hip 24×7. To answer most of my e-mail, I need to access information on my laptop and compose a more thoughtful response than what is convenient with two thumbs on a Blackberry. Besides, I wanted other applications that need Windows Mobile to run.

So I bought a Samsung SCH-i760 with Windows Mobile 6, WiFi, and a large QWERTY keyboard. It’s ok, but I’m not delighted. It has a lot of nice features–but clunky ways to access them. You can only program certain things into the function buttons. You can only get to certain things from the keypad. And for other things, you have to use the stylus and the touch screen. And so many clicks to perform tasks! I wish Microsoft would learn something about user experience from Apple. And I wish Apple would learn something about reliable hardware from the PC world. My 6-month old iPod just died–I used it about 12 times. No one in my family has owned an Apple product that has lasted a full year. Microsoft gets you to buy the latest OS by making new software is not backward compatible. Apple makes sure you buy their latest gadget by building in a chip that self-destructs in your current product just as a new product launches. They make sure you won’t feel too bad about your old gadget dying, by making the next product just flashy enough (with twice the memory) so you’ll want to buy it anyway.

Overall, I’m glad I merged by mobile phone with my PDA.  I just wish it were more user-friendly. But hey, that’s an excuse to buy the next product that will be just one tiny step better, right?

Just today’s ramblings…

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Parents: Be careful that the toys you buy for your child this Christmas don’t have unlimited Internet access, or he/she could easily (an innocently) view pornography.

Wireless handheld devices, such as video cell phones, iPods, iPhones, PDAs, and PlayStations and other video game consoles are now conduits for all the good stuff–and all the pornography–available on the Internet.

The Religious Alliance Against Pornography and the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, of which the LDS Church is a member, has sent a strongly-worded warning letter to congregations across the United States. Here are key points from their warning:

• Lots of wireless gadgets are commonly put in the hands of children and youth and many of these devices are capable of accessing anything on the Internet.
• Don’t expect government or the wireless industry to protect your children. Companies are just now developing filters for wireless devices, and only T-Mobile, AT&T and Alltel provide any kind of Internet blocking tool.
• Wireless companies do not intend to warn parents at the time of purchase about the dangers of Internet pornography.

“Let’s be very clear. Wireless technology is not the enemy. Rather, the danger lies in the perverse misuse of the technology and the fact that safeguards are limited in both availability and reliability.”

The letter warns that every child will be impacted directly or indirectly because:
“Pornographers are continually on the offensive and are determined to seduce those not seeking pornography and force their immorality on us. They have learned how to manipulate innocent people from good sites to pornographic sites.
“Every child will have some peers or friends of peers that are plugged into the Internet through a wireless device (video mobile phone, PDA, video iPod, iPhone, PlayStation).
“Pornographic material is powerfully addictive and because those peers who will be impacted, will talk about it, and will offer access to the material.
“Young people and children are often more computer literate than their parents and grandparents and are inquisitive about sexual things.
“Children and youth are already putting pressure on their parents to have video mobile phones, etc. that can access the Internet. That pressure will increase significantly as the video mobile phone industry explodes. Within a matter of months almost every mobile phone will have Internet and picture capacity and we know that the wireless industry will produce a massive advertising campaign because they make their large profits through monthly Internet fees. Peer pressure to not be left behind will intensify.
“If your children don’t succeed with you in getting the Internet, some of their friends or peers will succeed with their parents. When they discover pornographic material, including its addictive nature and how it impacts their hormones, they will share it with others. Knowledge is power and they will become an ‘In Group’.
“When (not if) your child sees that material, because you have trained them in the Christian faith, he/she will likely be attracted and repulsed at the same time. Often the revulsion will wane and the titillation will come back and make it more difficult to say, ‘No’ consistently over a long period of time.”

Read more excerpts from the letter in the Church News of November 17, 2007.

For more information, see the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families or my previous blogs on wise/safe use of the Internet.

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According to the PEW Internet and American Life Project: “A growing number of Americans rely solely on a cell phone for their telephone service, and many more are considering giving up their landline phones.”

In my post of June 14th, I reported that 11% of US adults now use only a mobile phone to place phone calls. But it’s even greater than I thought.

Government statistics as of December 2006 showed that at least 12.8% of US households have only a cell phone and no landline telephone. Given the growth rate from the previous periods, that number today is probably around 15%.

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According to a recent study, 11% of US adults now use only a mobile phone to place phone calls and 17% only use mobile and the Internet (VoIP).

So, where is this heading? If you look at the 18-to-29-year-old group, a full third of them use only a mobile phone or the Internet for their calls. One telling statistic is that mobile-phone-only users tended to be male and better educated, but less affluent than the general adult population.

In addition to phone calls, there are other factors driving mobile use, such as text messaging, picture sharing, watching video, and listening to music.

Learn more at eMarketer.

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This year, banks and wireless service providers are rolling out products that will let customers check their account balances, pay bills, transfer money and receive alerts about deposits and payments by mobile phone.

By the end of 2007, TowerGroup expects that eight of the 10 largest banks will offer mobile banking and bill payment of some kind. They believe that up to 25% of existing Internet banking customers will adopt mobile banking. See eMarketer for more information.

But don’t hold your breath yet. Some surveys show that only 8% of online consumers who own a cellphone are interested in mobile browsing to check their account balances. This whole mobile world is still new, and it’s anybody’s guess how far (and it what direction) it will go.

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Mobile Web

I attended several sessions at the International Worldwide Web 2007 Conference on the mobile Web and how cell phones and other handheld devices will become a greater means of accessing the Web over time, especially in developing countries. We saw demonstrations of increasing use of cell phones in developing countries to perform valuable tasks. Internet access points are increasing in rural areas. Internet kiosks (on bicycles with laptops powered by batteries, solar panels, and pedal power) circulate among some rural villages. Cell phone browsers and applications are improving greatly. I also had a good conversation with the head of the W3C Mobile Initiative about the future use of the .mobi domain to gather more information to decide which .mobi domains the Church ought to obtain.

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The following are the standards for all new audio and video we provide on Church sites. (Not all current media files meet these standards, but all new media we create will meet these standards.)Downloadable Audio: MP3 with an ID3 tag version of 2.3 or newer.

• Talks and music – Stereo at 128k Bit/s 44.1 kHz.
• Talks only – Stereo at 64k Bit/s 44.1 kHz.
• Music only – Stereo at 128k Bit/s 44.1 kHz.

Streaming Audio: Windows Media Audio

• Talks – Mono with a 16k compression rate.
• Music – Stereo with a 96k compression rate.

Downloadable and Streaming Video:

• Windows Media 8 300K (320×240). Broadcast archives include 56k version.
• Windows Media 11 MBR (640×480). This is a multi-bit Rate (56k, 300k, 1MB) that allows multiple quality levels in the same file.
• QuickTime h.264 (.mp4) (640×480). 1MB compression.
• Mpeg 2 VOB. This format is for purposes of copying to a DVD to be played through DVD players. It will be provided only on specific products that are also distributed as DVDs.
• Note: American Sign Language (ASL) will be encoded as QuickTime only.

We believe these standards provide an acceptable experience for both broadband and dial-up users.

You comments are welcomed.

Note: This post replaces the standards previously stated in Standard Formats for Audio and Video on Church Web Sites.

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In several previous posts, I’ve commented about very low-cost mobile phones for the world.

If you weren’t at the Consumer Electronics Show that ended Thursday in Las Vegas, you probably didn’t see Motorola CEO Ed Zander ride onto the stage for his keynote speech on a bike armed with a mobile phone battery recharger. Motorola’s answer to developing nations’ power problems: a recharger people can use while riding a bike to the market or to work.

Zander also announced plans for a new online music initiative, a mobile e-mail service that syncs with Microsoft Outlook, and plans to put Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 software on Motorola handsets.

While other mobile companies are focusing on more and more expensive handsets with cameras and music players, Motorola is targeting emerging markets with cheap handsets with fewer frills. Motorola won the first contest from the Global System for Mobile Communications to supply a low-cost handset under $30 to emerging markets. But they have a HUGE market. India adds 6 million new mobile users a month, and China adds 5 million a month.

“We’re now 2 billion subscribers out of a world population of 7 billion,” Zander said. “It took us 20 years to reach the first billion. It took us three years to get the second billion, and it’s only going to take us two years to get the third billion.”

Read more at Infoworld.

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I just read the new Gartner report “Mobile Collaboration Will Be Driven by Consumer Technologies and Behaviors.” Smart phones already have keyboards and fully functional HTML Web browsers. The price of cell phones is dropping dramatically, while at the same time, their capabilities are increasing. The mobile phone is becoming a fully-functional computer in your hand.

But it’s more than that, because mobile devices also have a basic knowledge of their location from the network, and GPS and other location-sensing technologies will become increasingly common during the next five years. This will allow people to get location-specific information. For example, a person standing outside a restaurant can look up reviews left by previous customers commenting on the service.

Add to that our ability later this year to let Web users log in, and tie their identity to their membership record. Imagine…

• An endowed member traveling could get on his cell phone the directions to the nearest temple, a list of the session starting times, information on whether clothing rental is available, and the times the cafeteria is open.
• A nonmember (or member traveling in an unknown city) could get on his cell phone the address of the closest meetinghouse and times of the next sacrament meeting.
• A temple engineer who is having a problem with a piece of equipment could look up the maintenance manual off the Church Intranet and if that didn’t answer his question, he could take a picture of the problem with his cell phone and transmit it to an engineer at headquarters.
• A member in Japan who commutes to work two hours each way could get a podcast and listen to this week’s gospel doctrine scripture reading assignment.
• A humanitarian missionary providing emergency relief in Indonesia could share images and information with missionaries doing the same in Sri Lanka.

Just food for thought.

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Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and may others are beginning to go mobile. According to the “Mobile Social Communities” report from ABI Research, many social communities are now based on the mobile phone and other portable wireless devices in addition to computers. In a world that must constantly be in touch, you’re no longer tied to your computer; you can network over the phone 24×7.

Worldwide, there are almost 50 million members of “mobile social communities,” and projections say there will be 174 million in 5 years.

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