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.
It is amazing to see how technology has changed how we communicate beyond our immediate friends and family in just the last few years. Now whole movements can be launched and efforts coordinated between people who haven’t ever met in person. The Gay Marriage proposition in California (Prop 8) has really sparked a lot of emotion both by those for and those against it, to the point where the millions of us outside the state of California are learning more about the issue and how it might affect us locally. (Yes, don’t think that because you live outside of California that it can’t affect you!)
Even if you don’t agree with the proposition or understand the issue, here are a few good sites that will help you learn more about what is at stake and what you can do about it:
I posted an article on Thursday regarding the multimedia options available for the LDS community. While the streaming video technology is still relatively new, video, audio, and transcription downloads are readily available within a short time of their original presentation. The "official" transcription from lds.org takes a few days because it is reviewed for spelling and grammar, since this becomes the permanent record of the talk. Here are a few resources available for obtaining Conference talks:
Deseret News (local newspaper) - summaries of each talk, audio & text transcripts
KSL Television - video, audio, and news stories related to LDS community
LDS.org - official site for LDS Church General Conference, includes video, audio, and transcripts.
As an aside for those who really enjoy listening to the inspiring music between talks, the download files for individual talks at LDS.org don’t include the music, but the full sessions do. If you use an MP3 editing tool, you can extract just the music and save them to separate MP3 files. When the General Conference audio files are released on CD to LDS Distribution Centers, you can also use these to save the music to separate files. (I haven’t compared the differences between these to see how the quality of download vs CD files compare)
[EDIT] Here is an open source utility which can split MP3 files without decoding them. Since the audio is encoded when it creates the original MP3 file, if your utility decodes it first before splitting it, there will be a loss in quality of the recording.
I have heard from some people who have compared the CDs of Conference with the MP3 files, and they have said that the CD quality is much higher. That makes sense, since most downloads are created at a reduced bit rate to reduce the download size.
I don’t know about you, but I have been surprised lately with the availability of online multimedia content. I’m not just talking about the popularity of YouTube with user-contributed content or downloading music from the Apple iTunes Store. I’m talking about traditional media entities offering professionally written content on their web sites. Radio stations such as National Public Radio (NPR) not only have recorded podcasts of their broadcasts, but regularly suggest additional content for their listeners to find on their web site. Do you hate missing the KSL Greenhouse Show on Saturdays? Like many other sites, you don’t have to miss it if you subscribe to a podcast on the station web site. Offering a mix of traditional and new media sources, here are the top sources for online news, ranked by the number of visitors (from Ars Technica):
Yahoo News
MSNBC
CNN
AOL News
New York Times
Gannett
ABC News
Google News
USA Today
CBS News
While most of these sites are offering short video and/or audio clips, some media sites are now offering premium content that they normally reserve for television or radio (together with new advertising). Did anyone see the NCAA Basketball finals on CBS.com? Did you miss seeing who was eliminated from American Idol on Fox? (you can also see their recent performances on their web site)
Most of these sites are using Adobe Flash streaming technology (like YouTube), but others are starting to use HD video plugins such as those created by American Fork, Utah company, Move Networks, including ABC, Discovery, FOX, ESPN, and Oprah.com. BYU Television, also using Move Networks’ HD video plugin, is one of the first stations that has around the clock broadcasting content on their site. In comparison, the lds.org site will host transcripts, video, and audio downloads of LDS General Conference once they become available, but BYU.tv promises to include live HD video of for all morning and afternoon sessions. LDS Church members in Utah may not appreciate how rare it is to be able to watch Conference in your own home around the world as it is being broadcast.
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.
For years the use of technology to communicate about religion has been more on a grass roots level. It was done all time, but religious leaders were risk averse to providing their own content. Now we are seeing it more and more as these leaders have come to recognize the importance of using this medium of the internet.
With the success of mormon.org and similar sites, the LDS Church has continued to try new things… even if they are “old hat” to those who frequent YouTube. The video on this site (http://specialmagazine.lds.org/) is the latest expansion into what the LDS Church has done in this area.
In my 