Before I get into the tedious specifics, let me get right to the main announcement.
Daniel Bartholomew and I are very excited to introduce you to ScriptureLog.
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ScriptureLog
Scripturelog is a free, open source plugin for the popular WordPress blogging platform that turns WordPress into a collaborative online LDS scripture study journal.
The plugin installs volumes of scripture into WordPress as hierarchical, inter-linking pages of books, chapters, and verses. Once the pages are installed, you can use the built-in features of WordPress by yourself or in collaboration with others to read the scriptures, take notes, and discuss the gospel.
Many of you will remember that about 6 months ago, after getting booted from the most popular LDS Blogs portal, I started a portal for LDS Blogs at NothingWavering.org focusing on more mainstream and orthodox Mormon blogs.
Unexpected changes at my employment, and in our family, prevented me from pursuing further feature developments as I had planned. But things are finally moving along now.
With Nothing Wavering I always wanted to attempt more transparency and community feedback than is available at most other LDS blog portals. Finally, I am pleased to announce the new Nothing Wavering Blog where you can keep up with new features and blogs being added to the portal, as well as give your feedback. Please consider subscribing to the blog’s RSS Feed or Email List to to keep up with what is happening with the portal, since I will not be discussing it much here at Sixteen Small Stones.
Today on the popular technology blog, TechCrunch, Michael Arrington posted the following map provided by Elizabeth Churchill, who he describes as the principal research scientist at Yahoo!.
The map represents data gathered from the popular photo sharing website Flickr.com, which is owned by Yahoo!. Flickr allows users to upload their photos and make their albums public, so that the pictures may be viewed by anyone, or make them private, so that they may only be viewed by limited friends or family. The map shows the privacy settings for a sample of 1,000,000 users in 2005. Green spots show users who have chosen to make their photos public. Red spots represent users who have chosen to keep their photos private.
Arrington comments about what the map reveals:
The US is widely public except for users who seem to be hovering around Utah, and varies by state. Europe, by contrast, is largely private, and more so as you move north. The Middle East is wide open. South East Asia is mixed. India is private.
(emphasis added)
The LDS Church is now offering official audio and video Podcasts of general conference! Now you can receive individual talks in your feedreader, iTunes, or podcatcher (I use Google Reader).
Official Audio Feed
Official Video Feed
During recent sessions of conference I have been linking to the Podcast available through KSL.com. The KSL podcast is great because the sessions become available very quickly, usually before the subsequent session has started. However, the feed from KSL is very poorly managed. This last conference it worked fine for the Saturday sessions, but none of the Sunday sessions ever were posted. It makes me wonder if the feed is being generated by hand and someone forgot to update it.
In any case, extrapolating from the naming of the mp3 files for Saturday sessions, I was able to guess the names of the Sunday session mp3 files, which did in fact exist shortly after each session, and link to them from my blog.
The advantage of the official feeds from lds.org is that they will likely be better maintained, and that they offer individual mp3s of each talk rather than semi-sessional mp3s like the KSL feed.
I wonder if the new official feeds will update as quickly as the KSL feed? It would be great if the mp3 for each talk posted shortly after the talk completed.
I apologize for two tech related posts in a row, but this was just too good to not share.
I was reading an interesting article on a usability design method they call “Paper Prototyping” and the first comment on the article was pure geek gold. In order to truly appreciate it let me give you the context first.
Paper Prototyping is a inexpensive, low-tech method of brainstorming, or of testing the usability of proposed designs for a software interface. Basically, you print out the various aspects of the proposed user interface on paper or cards. You cut out individual elements of the interface design with a pair of scissors if necessary. Then you sit down with the end user and you take the place of the computer. The user then interacts with the paper prototype, and you show them what would happen by laying down different sections to show how the interface changes and displays data.
So here is the golden comment by one Mantari Damacy:
It is like a role playing game, except, for using a computer!
PLAYER: “Okay, I save my file.”
GM: [dice clatters, looks up chart] Okay, you try to save your file, A new window pops up on the screen that indicates a general I/O error, but gives no specific details.
PLAYER: “Oh no! I open up the case, and pull the boot disc off of the IDE controller!”
GM: Okay. [dice clatters] Well, you manage to open up the case without tripping the power, but you’re not familiar with the internal workings of this machine. You can’t locate any IDE drives…
Awesome! I can just imagine a prototyping session ending with the following exchange between the designer and user:
“Sinus supremus!”
“Zero charisma!”
“Sinus supremus!”
“Zero charisma!”
Today my company has arranged for me to attend the first Utah Open Source Conference .
I will be posting my notes on the sessions I attend in a subsequent post when I get a moment. However, it may have to wait until after the Weird Al Yankovic concert at the State Fair tonight.
Over the last couple of years I have been approached by various individuals looking for a programmer to develop an LDS blog portal.
There are, of course, already a couple of popular portals for keeping up with blogging by LDS members, but there have sometimes been those who are dissatisfied with the blog selection. Some feel that too many apostate and borderline apostate blogs are included, while others don’t feel they are included enough.
Well now anyone can, with a very small amount of effort, create and host his or her own public or private LDS blog portal.
I am not really interested in maintaining my own LDS blog portal to compete with existing portals, even though the code upon which the most popular of these, ldsblogs.org, is available for free from its creator, Russ Johnston.
However, I do have an interest in new technology, and as a personal challenge, I wondered if I might be able to create a near clone of his portal, using only XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript in conjunction with the nifty new Google Ajax Feed API .
I’ve linked to it already in my Recommended Links list in the sidebar, but I wanted to draw additional attention to the mesmerizing new computing platform from Microsoft: Microsoft Surface.
The idea is that that users interact with the computer through muti-touch surface displays where you can interact with objects by touching them.
To see what I mean, go and watch the video on the PopularMechanics website right now:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html
I was checking out the impressive new www.mormon.org website, with its streaming videos and live missionary chat, and had an idea for some new technological directions for church web content.
The “user created content” aspect of web 2.0 has received a lot of attention among modern web companies. YouTube, Digg, and Blogs are all poster children of this new era. The first official public web forum of the LDS church is a great example of how the church is experimenting with tapping into that resource.
The LDS church has created an exciting new official website for LDS technology at ldstech.lds.org . Not only does it have information about upcoming technology use in the church, but it sports a forum where those interested in technology and the church can participate and interact.
They are also holding a free Tech Talk in Provo on Tuesday January 23rd for system engineers, software developers and testers, interaction designers, and other techies to discuss how the church uses technology to build the kingdom.
In the Republican Primary elections back in June, I had my first experience voting using Utah County’s new electronic voting machines. The process itself was smooth and voting using the machines was easy to understand and even pleasant.
However, my experience as a computer programmer has taught me a healthy distrust of technology and of people using technology.
Implementing proper security in any system takes an exceptional amount of effort, and even then, hackers are unbelievably resourceful and will often find ways to infiltrate the system despite a well implemented security process. What a lot of people unfamiliar with the topic don’t realize is that hackers excel at not only software engineering, but at what we call Social Engineering, or manipulating people using their expectations of technology.
I have been performing puppetry with my troupe, Maxed Out Puppetry, for about eight years now. We perform fairly frequently at various venues in Utah county, and periodically in the Salt Lake valley. This Friday, September 1st, we will be performing for at the acclaimed Timpanogos Storytelling Festival at 5:30pm for about 45 minutes.
In order to help those interested, I’ve added an embedded Google Calendar to the blog sidebar on the right that displays upcoming events where I will be performing with my troupe.
For those of you who have not yet discovered, or don’t care to discover the wonders of Feeds and Feed Readers, I have added an email subscription service near the top of the sidebar to help you to effortlessly stay aware of new content on Sixteen Small Stones.
A few of the videos produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been released for free on Google Video.
Members of the church can now help spread the message of the Gospel by displaying watchable videos about the Restoration right on their own websites and in their blog posts. Anyone who visits your blog can learn more about the gospel simply by clicking on the play video button and it will play right there on your page.
Like this:
You can place the video on your blog in a few simple steps:
Sixteen Small Stones is now integrated with Facebook using Facebook Connect. Now anyone with a Facebook account can leave comments on my articles here without having to create a new account and remember yet another password.
Just click the Facebook button in the comments section of any post and approve Sixteen Small Stones for use with your facebook account, and you will be able to leave a comment on any article whenever you are logged into Facebook.
First time comments will still be subject to moderation, but once your first comment has been approved, you should be able to comment at will.
Let me know what you think and if you have any trouble with it.