The Mormon Messages channel on YouTube is an official source of information regarding the LDS Church, its practices, and teachings. A new video (ebedded below) regarding the reasons why the LDS Church builds temples has been created in order to inform the public regarding this sacred practice, including discussion by LDS and non LDS experts in ancient scriptural temple practices. I applaud this proactive approach using current technology / media solutions particularly in anticipation of questions which the public may have regarding HBO’s episode of Big Love which portrays the sacred temple ceremony on national television.
The LDS Newsroom has also published a statement regarding this episode and documented other instances when negative publicity regarding LDS Church practices have proved to have little impact on Church affairs.
The second annual FamilySearch Developers Conference will be held at BYU on March 11, 2009 in conjuction with the BYU Family History Technology Workshop and Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy Conferences, March 12-14, 2009. Those interested in more information can go to familyhistoryconferences.byu.edu/familysearchor call 1-801-422-8925.
I attended the conference last year which proved to be quite interesting, particularly to see the first generation apps written to interface with the new FamilySearch APIs. I have since been able to use products from Ohana Software http://www.ohanasoftware.com/ (Family Insight) and PHPGedview http://phpgedview.net/ which have both been written to take advantage of this new data source. Both are still relatively immature in their functionality but promising in what will soon be available to genealogists.
This year, FamilySearch will discuss version 2 of the web service APIs which promise to expand on the basic functionality available in version 1 but which proved to be limiting to 3rd party apps which attempted to provide full functionality to their users.