This week the LDS Church has launched a beta for the new meeting house locator at http://beta.maps.lds.org. The current site at http://www.lds.org/basicbeliefs/meetinghouse has been adequate, but the new site utilizes both Microsoft and Google mapping technologies to provide the kind of mapping experience that most of us have come to expect from online maps. Here are a few features that really seemed to stand out, beyond the expected address lookup, mapping, and directions:
Ability to switch between Google and Microsoft maps. Some locations are more current with one map versus the other.
Ability to switch to Microsoft 3D view of the current location if Virtual Earth 3D is installed (also in beta)
Even if you don’t know the address or your address isn’t found, you can use your mouse to place a marker on the map to identify your location.
Not only will the application return the closest meeting locations, congregations and times, but it will provide a local contact name and number if you have questions.
I noticed a few bugs switching between maps, particularly when my connection was running slow, but for a beta launch it looks very promising!
The LDS Church has received great appreciation for its efforts from Hurricane Katrina. President Henry B. Eyring even mentioned a personal phone call from Pres George W. Bush to Gordon B. Hinckley at a recent multi-Stake Conference address, admiring the quick and effective efforts of local church members. But even the best organizations would be amiss if they didn’t take advantage of what they may learn from others.
With thousands of people affected by the Sichuan, China earthquake, Google China staff members rolled up their sleeves and joined other rescue organizations.
At the request of the government, we obtained new satellite images of Sichuan province (Earth KML) to help them better focus their recovery efforts. We developed and launched a “lost loved one” search based on our Custom Search Engine (CSE). To populate the CSE index, hundreds of Googlers worked around the clock looking through published tables, hospital records, news reports, and community sites. We tuned our Chinese news search, video search, image search, blog search, and oneboxes. We also partnered to build community sites, and launched both homepage promotions and a map-based information page. Google China has an extremely dedicated and passionate team and I am deeply honored to work alongside them.
Google has also set up a donation page so that you can donate directly towards recovery efforts. Similarly, donations can be made on the LDS Philanthropies donation page for any of the humanitarian projects around the world or using a donation slip at your local congregation.
Ars Technica has documented the efforts of various organizations to remove confidential documents from Wikileaks.org, including both the LDS Church and the Church of Scientology. Apparently Wikileaks.org has posted a copy of the LDS Handbook of Instruction, which is not available to general church membership rather only to Bishops and Stake Presidents in the Church.
The Mormons clearly "get" the Internet in some sense (you can chat online with a missionary, for instance), but they appear determined to follow in the footsteps of groups like Bank Julius Baer that have managed to draw widespread attention to confidential documents without managing to have them removed from Wikileaks.
Wikipedia.org entries related to LDS Church doctrine or history are often the target of anti-Mormon commentary, but LDS members and the general public have been good about removing such inaccuracies. Hopefully there will be some options available for similar action with Wikileaks.
After looking into the story about the Catholic church’s concerns about LDS baptism a bit more, it sounds to me like the Catholic church doesn’t really understand the LDS doctrine of baptism and hasn’t taken the time to research or ask about it. From Catholic World News,
The Catholic Church objects to the Mormon practice of "rebaptism" for two reasons: first because baptism is permanent, and cannot be repeated; second because the "baptism" practiced by Mormons is invalid, since the faithful are not baptized "in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."
The Catholic officials quoted here haven’t looked at the exact wording of the LDS baptismal ordinance from D&C 20:73
Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
OK… we have "Holy Ghost" here instead of "Holy Spirit"… but looking the actually wording of the Catholic baptismal prayer from the Catholic Encyclopedia we get…
I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Hmmm… if we are concerned with actual wording, the Catholic news source doesn’t even know exact Catholic doctrine, much less LDS doctrine.
What may be a blow to LDS Church efforts to digitize and index historical records, the Vatican has sent a letter to diocese around the world to not share parish records with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. From the Deseret News (May 4),
… the Vatican had "grave reservations" about the LDS Church’s practice of posthumous baptisms by proxy, a practice in which the names of the deceased are baptized into the LDS faith so that they may be united in the afterlife with LDS families, if they so choose.
The LDS Church has not made a statement yet regarding this issue.
Church spokesman Mike Otterson said the church may have more to say on the subject later in the week and that LDS officials had not yet made contact with Vatican representatives about the issue.
After having several instances where Jewish individuals have escalated concerns regarding LDS baptism of Jewish holocaust victims (see Deseret News, Dec 19 2006), this could also impact the Church’s relations with other organized religions.
From ldswebguy comes a quote from Elder M. Russell Ballard, dated April 19, 2008, as presented to the Brigham Young University Management Society in Washington, D.C.,
If a national conversation is going on about the Church, are you going to be an active participant or a silent observer?
Church leaders must not be reluctant to participate in public discussion. Where appropriate, we will engage with the media whether it’s the traditional, mainstream media or the new media of the Internet. But Church leaders can’t do it all, especially at the grass-roots, community level. While we do speak authoritatively for the Church, we look to our responsible and faithful members to engage personally with blogs, to write thoughtful, online letters to news organizations, and to act in other ways to correct the record with their own opinions.
I think that it is amazing how far the LDS Church has come with regards to the use of technology and in particular in how it encourages internet use. Those of us who have been involved in technology has seen the potential for years, but now it is really hitting the mainstream church members. It has become not only an accepted channel, but one of the primary channels for communicating to the public about what we as a Church believes.
Much the same way that various site have used GoogleMaps to create their own web content, the LDS Church has released an API to the scriptures so that this data can be redistributed and utilized for other applications. I’m excited to see more and more of these kinds of services being offered by the Church.
There is a lot of interest in the community to offer scriptures services. Here are a few that I have found:
In my last post, I mentioned that people who frequent YouTube may not know about the current efforts of the LDS Church. But did you know that the Church has a channel on YouTube since October 2007?
Elder Russell M. Nelson, one of the apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Introduces JesusChrist.lds.org, a new website about the Savior Jesus Christ.
This week the LDS Church has launched a beta for the new meeting house locator at http://beta.maps.lds.org. The current site at http://www.lds.org/basicbeliefs/meetinghouse has been adequate, but the new site utilizes both Microsoft and Google mapping technologies to provide the kind of mapping experience that most of us have come to expect from online maps. Here are a few features that really seemed to stand out, beyond the expected address lookup, mapping, and directions:
In my