Long time no write.   There have been some interesting developments in the LDS iPhone community as of late.  One that I am most excited about is an app that will allow you to stream the audio on your iPhone or iTouch, even over 3G!

A brother in the church developed an app called ooTunes.  It actually streams A TON of radio stations, but one of them will be Conference.  Check out the website, or subscribe to this blog that he created just for this project.  The app does cost $4, but I am always for supporting brothers in the gospel that are working to make LDS resources available, and I hope you will be as well.

One awesome thing he is doing though, is offering the app for free for the first 40 people (is there even that many of you out there?) that write a comment on his blog or send him an email.  It only works for 4 weeks… but hey… that get’s you through conference!  Check out this post for more info.

If you would like to support him, but just can’t swing it right now, there is a free alternative to try out called FStream that should work as well.

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!!

I have noticed over the past couple of months that I am getting a lot of traffic on this site from searches for “LDS Spiritual Thoughts” and related searches, even though that is only a small portion of what I write about.

With that in mind, my sweet wife and I have created another website dedicated soley to LDS Spiritual Thoughts.  I won’t be posting any more spiritual thoughts on this site, but focus on technology and it’s use in the gospel.  Go check it out!

LDSSpiritualThoughts.com - "Spiritual Thoughts to Brighten your Day"

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Charles R. Swindoll

There is a live vote going on right now on MSNBC.com.  It’s not scientific or anything, but I think it is a chance to make our voices heard.  The question is simply:

“Should the motto “In God We Trust” be removed from U.S. currency? “

a. Yes. It’s a violation of the principle of separation of church and state.

b. No. The motto has historical and patriotic significance and does nothing to establish a state religion.

Right now, with over 11 million votes, it’s a landslide in favor of No (85% to 15%).  Interesting.  Add your vote below!

Live Vote: Should ‘In God We Trust’ be yanked? – Faith- msnbc.com.

“You don’t find many churches making theatrical films. You especially don’t find many churches making films starring Kirk Cameron about a firefighter in a crumbling marriage addicted to online porn.”

via ‘Fireproof’ is still generating heat – CNN.com.

This is from the same folks that made “Facing the Giants,”  another movie I really loved.  Has anyone seen this yet?  I  I looks like a great video for Valentine’s Day, and every day as we think about our marriages and making them stronger.  Here is a trailer:

Here is a great video from the Church just for your Valentine’s Day!

As some of you may have noticed MormonTechie was down the beginning of this week for a couple of days.  There were some problems with my old web host, and I ended up migrating to a new hosting solution.  Although it was up and running, I felt prompted repeatedly to move to a solution that didn’t require me to keep it updated and running.

So last night I took the time to migrate to a wordpress.com instance.  If you are reading this, then everything was successful.  They have a nice function that allows me to keep my old domain name so everything should be the same for y’all.

Anyway, this should keep me updated much easier.  That way I can focus more on content and less on the tech side of things.

As part of the process I had to install a new theme… what do you think?

• Mormons Made Simple

– This is a great site put together by a brother that works for google (Douglas Hatch I believe his name is). Anyway, it has some great resources and it looks like even more are coming. Keep an eye on this!!

• YouTube – Attending a Mormon Church Service – Made Simple

– Oh, this is awesome! A brother put together a REALLY awesome video to send to people that are going to go to church. Amazing!