I recently began developing in Wordpress MU for big project at work.  I found out real quick that there are not nearly the free resources available out there, nor the forum helps as regular wordpress installs.  It didn’t take too long before I stumbled across WMPUDev.org.  They have a ton of AMAZING plugins that got me up and going really quick.  Check them out if you are looking to do any development with Wordpress MU.

I have been so busy as of late that I have not had the chance to post too often on here.  Sorry about that!

Well, yesterday I was introduced to one of the finest LDS resources I have ever seen!

OpenLDS.com

Their whole goal is to aggregate all the awesome LDS resources that are available out there on the internet (which is a LOT!)  You can take a look at the banner above to see how they split it all up so you can easily find what you are looking for!  My favorite part is certainly the Church Leaders section.   You can go there and find all sorts of great information about each church leader and links off to the things they have written and said in all of the different media formats that are available.  Check it out!

• Monday Morning

– This is a mission president’s blog, and he mentions some custom software they wrote to analyze the numbers for the week… very interesting. Another great example of technology and the gospel.

• How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education | Fast Company

– This is a fantastic article about opening up education to all people… and even better… one of the guys featured is a professor from BYU, David Wiley! Go Brother Wiley!

• SquareTwo Homepage

– Great new website to help folks figure out why we believe what we believe and articulate that to others.

“The purpose of SquareTwo is to develop the finest online journal of LDS thought concerning the important issues of the world today, whether those be international issues, domestic issues, ethical issues, technological issues, etc. “

I came across a great new app that I love.  It is called LDS News.  I like to read all about things going on in the church and have lots of feeds in my google reader, but this just put’s them together in one nice app… my little Mormon news channel!

I sent the developer some ideas:

• Add Google Reader / Twitter Share options
• Add ability to add our own feeds

Below is a some information about the app.

“LDS News is an RSS news reader supporting feeds from multiple sources plus provides easy access to the three Church YouTube Channels as well as integrated YouTube support for LDS.org Home Page video releases.

Primary features include 17 services from which to choose:

• 5 Church news feeds:

• LDSChurchNews.com – “Authorized News Web site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

• MormonTimes.com – “For and about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Provided by The Deseret News.

• LDS.org News Around the Church – LDS Church news from around the world often referencing outside sources.

• LDS.org Home Page – The latest postings on the home page of LDS.org including the latest videos.

• LDS.org Newsroom – “The Official Resource for News Media, Opinion Leaders, and the Public.” Usually a subset of News Around the Church stories.

• 5 Gems — Daily messages of inspiration from Church leaders:

• Daily

• Family

• Young Single Adult

• Youth

• Church History

• 4 Deseret News feeds:

• Utah stories – May be of interest to members of the Church.

• BYU Sports – For those who may want to follow BYU sports stories…

• U of U Sports – …and/or University of Utah sports stories…

• Utah State Sports – …and/or Utah State sports stories.

• 3 YouTube Channels:

• Mormon Messages – “An official channel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Includes basic beliefs, inspiring stories, and messages of hope.”

• New Era Messages – “An official channel of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From the New Era, a magazine for Mormon teens.”

• LDS Public Affairs – “Videos from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

• Arrange the selected services in your preferred order.

• Indicates when the most recent story or Gem was posted.

• All times and dates displayed in your local time zone.

• MormonTimes – Affair-proofing your marriage, Part I

– Another great read I enjoyed… I have found myself thinking most of the things on the list of attitudes that I am immune from the danger of infidelity.

• MormonTimes – Seven-foot jumpers better than 1-foot jumpers

– Great article for working to be better people. Loved this!

• Hey, Where’s Twitter For Families?

– Great question… all of these great tools out there can be applied to families… this would be great!

New iPhone App Scripture Type App from DP Stuff

Price: $0.99

“Scripture Scramble is a game that will test your knowledge of the wisdom found in the book of Proverbs. In the game, one of hundreds of proverbs from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) will be displayed with two key words missing. The letters of those words will be scrambled at the bottom of the screen. Unscramble the letters in order to solve the puzzle and reveal the ancient keys to wisdom that are still relevant today. Why play mindless games that produce no real benefit? This game will not only entertain, but will help you to learn the scriptures! And as the proverb says, ‘A wise man will hear and increase in learning.’”

Although this app is only designed for proverbs, I emailed the developer and asked him about expanding it, or creating a separate one for LDS scripture mastery.  Great tool for memorization and helping to learn scriptures better!

The developers were also so kind as to give me a couple of promo codes for free to pass along.  If you would like a free copy, email me and I’ll hook you up.

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• YouTube – The Women in Our Lives

– Great new MormonMessages Video about the wonderful women in our lives – from President Hinckley

• SocialSafe: Get Your Facebook Data Out of Facebook

– So many families are using Facebook to connect… and many are using it as their primary means of photo backup… but what happens if… This is a great service (and cheap) that allows you to get your pictures and friends back out of Facebook. I hope they have the ability to back up your status updates, comments and so forth. That is an important part of who we are today!

• iWise

– Alright… this is just an awesome app… lots of quotes, and categories… links to move video. What a great resource!

• Official Google Blog: Audio care packages for service members with Google Voice

– What a fantastic idea to connect families that have folks over seas.

• Mormons in the USA

– A good summary of all the recent findings about Mormons.

• Georeference members info

– For those that have had this question, I had to do the same thing, and I used Mapalist.com. It allows you to keep download the data and map to a local computer so it is not online somewhere. It works great too!

• Family Safety with Technology Fireside

– This is also a fantastic idea. As we all know, technology is fantastic for moving the work along, but we need to inform our kids, and adults, and teach them how to keep themselves safe from predators, pornography, and other dangerous materials.

• Calendar App for Facebook

– What a great idea! We should so have some facebook developers working to interface the ward information with facebook! That would especially be useful for the youth!