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!

I often will find an awesome YouTube video that I want to share in a class I am teaching…. but how do I get it downloaded? Unless you are one of the lucky few, you don’t have an internet connection at church. I hope this post will give you some ideas of things that have worked for me.

NOTE: YouTube has said that they are working toward putting download options on all Video’s, but for now they are only on certain popular ones. So hopefully one day, this won’t be important.

Downloading YouTube Videos:

The easiest way to download a YouTube video is the following:

• Go to this website: http://keepvid.com/
• Enter the URL in the top part: ie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM3mlgLAlMs
• Click the Download button to the right. Look to the bottom and click the download button under High Quality. Wahla!

You can play the video it downloads with Quicktime, which if it doesn’t play on your computer, you can download for free here.

Downloading other Online Streaming Video’s

Sometime you run across video’s from other sites you want to download. There is a nice Firefox Extension you can install that will look for the media on each page and allow you to download it. It is called SoThink Web Video Downloader for Firefox.

For those that might not be familiar with Firefox, it is a web browser like Internet Explorer or Safari and can be downloaded for free here.

After it is installed, you will see a little icon in the top right next to the google bar. Browse to the video you want to download and then click on the icon. It will have a URL in there of the video download. Right click on that and select Download.

The download will be in .flv flash format. You can watch that using Quicktime or VLC Media Player.

Conclusion

This is just two of dozens of ways to get videos offline. You should keep in mind that this is an area that is constantly changing. Google may change the way Video’s are online tomorrow and it might stop working. Sometimes it just will download the sound, and no video. It isn’t an exact science, and unless there is a Download option right next to the Video, there will probably always be the possiblity of problems. That being said, it does work mostly!

Feel free to share other ideas and tools you have used in the comments. Once you have it local, you can then put it on a DVD if you have software for that, or just bring a laptop to class to show the video. Good luck and happy teaching!!

A couple of weeks ago I came across a great new website from Doug Hatch called EQ Idea Exchange (EQIdeaExchange.com).  Doug is a Elder’s quorum president in Silicon Valley and has put together a lot of his resources that help him out in managing his quorum.  I was an Elder’s quorum president in a former life and I have to tell you the resources he has there are awesome!!  Here is the area’s. 

• Quorum Organization
• Presidency Meeting 
• Home Teaching
• Proclaim the Gospel
• Perfect the Saints
• Redeem the dead
• Activities and Service
• Quorum Meetings
• EQ Lessons
• PPI Interviews (This is VERY useful) 
• Visits
• Tools and Tricks
• Other

I think there are some AMAZING things out there that independent developers are doing for the church.  The HT/VT reporting system is one, ReadTheScriptures.com is another.  Well, there are a couple of problems with independent developers: money and policy. 

I am writing this post as a sounding board (and I hope you will add your comments) for a problem I see in hopes that it will encourage some discussion and hopefully some answers.  If nothing else, it will make us a bit more aware of

Money

Perhaps this is one of the biggest ones.  People that do this out of their own time and money are often left with shouldering the burden of keeping it up to date.  It is often a single person who just wants to do some good.  Sometimes they ask for donations. 

ReadTheScriptures.com is a great example of this.  Wayne and Deann Dixon are just wonderful members of the church who just want to help people do their daily scripture study.  They have committed to keep the service free, but asked for contributions. 

To help offset some of their costs they have put Google AdSense in certain locations on their page.  They probably won’t make a lot of money off of these ads, but it is something none the less.

The Problem:  Some of the Google Ads will advertise anti-mormon literature.  To some extent you can control that in adsense, but to a large extent you can’t.  They could take the ad’s off, but then they have to shoulder the burden again. 

Real Life Example

My Mom recently forwarded a link to ReadTheScriptures to a bunch of people she knew in the church.  She thought it was a good idea, but soon received an e-mail from a brother who thought that the site was being funded by anti-mormon people because of the ad’s on the page.  She did her best to reply to it… but the damage was surely done.

Contribute!

I, for one, would pay for a service like ReadTheScriptures.  But I can imagine their position.  Charging people for the word of God… hmmm… doesn’t sound very good.  But the service is what they provide.

I guess, the bottom line is… send them contributions.  They will never ask for it… but they certainly deserve our support!

Policy

This one is a bit more hairy.  What is appropriate use of personal information?  I think a lot of the hesitancy to do anything with the information we have about members.  The HT/VT fiasco is a good example of that.

This past week I also ran into that in my ward.  After I created a ward map (and secured it), I got two responses from the ward leadership I shared it with.  First, COOL!  How can I do that.  That would be so useful.  And second… don’t pass that on to anyone! 

The information came from the ward website, where it is already available to ward members, but now it can’t be passed onto those same members in a different form?

Don’t get me wrong.  I understand to some extent.  I wouldn’t want to make a map like that public.¹  That could lead to all SORTS of problems from other religions with persecution that is still alive and well, but then there are privacy issues.

Conclusion

I guess I don’t really have the answers, I mostly just want to start the conversation. 

Perhaps a possible solution is to build a developer’s backend into the ward/stake websites.  Something like an API that would allow those who want to develop modules to do so within a controlled environment that stakes/wards could (and would be encouraged to ) implement within their own stakes/wards.  Maybe something like a Joomla CMS instance.  Then allow people to develop modules that could be added on. 

The technology tools (and TALENT) is certainly there to do this type of stuff…

1. As a sidenote, I put it on one of my own servers and secured it with passwords.[↩]

Here in North Carolina we have wards in our Stake that are far away from the Stake Center.  Every stake conference they have to drive leave super early to get to conference on time and the parking/seating in our stake building is usually far from enough. 

Well, yesterday I came across this post on the LDSTech Forums.  Apparently there is a stake that has invested in Slingbox ($200) that allows them to broadcast their stake conference over the internet to other buildings.  We already have internet in our buildings for the family history center, so that wouldn’t be an additional cost. 

They are also doing text overlay for hymns and projecting that on powerpoint to save on paper copies.

Finally, the invested in a nice remote controlled camera that is mounted on a wall in the chapel so people won’t walk in front of the camera any more.  Great ideas!