Thank you to everyone who attended the LDSTech Broadcast today on "Getting Digital Media into Meetinghouses Through Mobile Devices." The broadcast was well attended, with a lively question and answer session.
Date: Friday, January 4, 2013 Time: 12:00pm Mountain Time Topic: Getting Digital Media into Meetinghouses
The Church produces an abundant amount of video content. For example, the new Youth curriculum, Come, Follow Me, has numerous videos as resource options for lessons; the Leadership Training Library, the Mormon Channel, the Video, Audio, and Images section of LDS.org, and other sites all have abundant video resources as well.
However, getting video into meetinghouses poses a challenge. Many meetinghouses have wireless Internet, but the bandwidth is too low to support streams from multiple users, especially during peak hours. Teachers who rely on the Internet to stream videos during lessons will find that the videos pause, buffer, and stop — leading to a poor classroom experience.
Lesson Schedules 2.0 was released today. The 2.0 release includes content for all 2013 classes, including the new 2013 youth curriculum, Come Follow Me.
The 2013 youth curriculum has a more flexible, question-based format. When you set up a lesson schedule in the 2013 Come Follow Me curriculum, you can select a question you want to discuss. The question links to resources online for that topic.
The LDSTech Forum software has upgraded to phpBB instead of vBulletin. This is the first major forum software update since the forums were first implemented in 2007.
To view the LDSTech Forum, click Forum on the top navigation bar. The new forum software has a number of advantages:
Better forum filters
You can select four main filters to view the latest forum activity: View Unanswered Posts, View Unread Posts, View New Posts, and View Active Topics. These options appear near the top, above the list of subforums. Especially helpful for forum moderators, these filters help you better monitor forum activity.
Gospel Library for Android allows you to study the scriptures, general conference, magazines, manuals, and other publications on your Android smartphone or tablet device.
The following three screencasts will help you become more familiar with the Gospel Library app.
The next LDSTech broadcast, scheduled for Friday, December 7 at 12:00pm MDT, will cover Technology Manager, a web-based tool designed to help stake and district technology specialists manage Meetinghouse Firewalls and Internet connectivity.
Technology Manager helps improve self-service options and increases the ability of technology specialists to effectively manage meetinghouse networks.
The 881W Firewall is required to take advantage of most features being added to this tool.
The Church History group is looking for a MarkLogic developer to help them with various applications. The Church History group has previously developed applications such as Church History and Joseph Smith Papers.
The Church service missionary will work on MarkLogic doing XML and XQuery.
Required Skills
CS Bachelors or equivalent experience.
2 yrs. Enterprise web application engineering experience.
Java, Javascript, XHTML, CSS3, XML, XSLT, Web Services (REST)
XQuery (Marklogic), Responsive design, mobile web, LESS
It would also be helpful to know Eclipse, GIT, and agile methodology, but this is not required.
Application Process
If you're interested in this position, complete the LDSTech Church Service Missionary form here. When you fill out the form, reference the desire to work on Church History MarkLogic applications.
If you have specific questions, contact Michael Cobbley for more details at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Gospel Library for Android Version 2.3 was released today. If you already have Gospel Library installed on your Android device, you should be prompted to install the update. The following new features are included in Gospel Library Version 2.3.
Study Notebook for Viewing All Annotations
Although you could make annotations previously on Gospel Library content, version 2.3 introduces a Study Notebook view that consolidates all your highlights, links, notes, journal entries, and tags in one view.
To view the Study Notebook, tap the App Home button , and then tap Study Notebook.
This consolidated view of all your annotations is similar to the Notes and Journal view on LDS.org.
As long as you're logged in with your LDS Account, all of your annotations sync to LDS.org, and likewise, your annotations on LDS.org sync to your Gospel Library app.
Since LDS Tools for iOS version 2.1.1 was released on October 19, 2012, many users have been unable to update their LDS Tools data on Sundays.
We have been working on a fix and ask for your patience as we work to address this issue. We will be releasing LDS Tools for iOS version 2.1.2 to the app store in the next week or so, which should resolve this issue.
In the meantime, this issue will likely occur again this next Sunday, November 11. To avoid potential issues, plan to update your LDS Tools data prior to Sunday.
November 10, 2012 Update
We just released 2.1.2 to the app store. Here are the release notes for 2.1.2:
Resolved issues that were preventing the app from successfully syncing on Sundays
Added a new feature to preserve current data when performing a sync in case the sync isn’t successful
Added support for the following languages: Chinese, French, Japanese, and Korean
Resolved a few issues that were causing the app to crash occasionally
The next LDSTech broadcast, scheduled for Friday, November 2 at 12:00pm MDT, will focus on the Gospel Topics Explorer.
The Church publishes topic-based content in a multitude of locations and formats, but these topics generally stand alone, creating duplication and impeding gospel study.
The Gospel Topics Explorer is a prototype application that consolidates a variety of topic-based content published by the Church. This content can be searched using regular keywords or navigated graphically. The relationships between topics can also be explored to deepen the study experience.
The Gospel Topics Explorer is designed to address the gaps in gospel topics and form a foundation for future gospel study tools that will help users guide their personal study, prepare talks and lessons, and fulfill callings.
The broadcast on Friday will provide an overview and demonstration of the Gospel Topics Explorer prototype, with opportunities for questions and answers. You can attend the broadcast either online or in person at the Riverton Office Building. Stewart Shelline, a solutions manager in ICS, will give the broadcast.
How to Attend
To attend the LDSTech broadcast, go to the LDSTech Broadcast page during the time of the broadcast and click the Watch Now button. If you live or work near Riverton, Utah, you can also come to the Riverton Office Building (ground floor, Zion room) to watch the broadcast in person.
Each broadcast is recorded, so if you miss one, you can re-watch the recording at any time. In fact, if you arrive late to the broadcast, you can rewind the broadcast and play it from the beginning.
Asking Questions
During the broadcast, remote viewers can ask questions through Twitter. If you don’t already have a Twitter account, you can sign up for one at Twitter.com. When you ask a question, include the hashtag #ldstech in your tweet. For more information, see Twitter and LDSTech.
, and then tap Study Notebook.
