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Temple Prep Live Google Hangout Fireside Series

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Temple Prep Live Google Hangout

Temple Prep Live Google Hangout

I’m sure many of you are aware of the new Google+ Hangout feature, but let me explain briefly. Essentially it is a group video chat, where you can see video and hear audio from all the other participants in the chat. Google also provides a “On Air” feature which will broadcast the Hangout video and audio live on Google+, YouTube, and anywhere the video is embedded into a website. This provides the opportunity for live events to be broadcasted around the world quite easily, and for many people to participate in them, both by contributing directly with their webcam, or by just viewing the live broadcast, or viewing the recording later.

Some enterprising members, such as Sheila DuBois, have begun using Google Hangouts to broadcast live “firesides” on Sundays. I think this is an innovative use of the technology to help build up the kingdom, and allows members of the Church to connect in ways previously not possible.   [Read more…]

Sneak Preview of General Conference Liveblog

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General Conference live Twitter feed

General Conference live Twitter feed

As I noted a couple days ago, I will be liveblogging General Conference.  This year I’m going full out and changing the design of the blog just for this occasion.  I’m dimming the lights, so to speak, to make a more comfortable Conference viewing experience.  I’m including the video broadcast from the Church, a liveblog commentary, and a slick live auto-updating Twitter feed that will be following the hashtag #ldsconf, all in one place.

I hope you will join me in listening in to Conference this weekend, and adding your own thoughts and comments as we listen to the prophets of God speak to us.

And no, this is not an April Fool’s joke.  You can get a sneak preview of what the liveblog will look like at this page.  (Note that the liveblog page will become the homepage beginning Friday night.)

Don’t forget, I will also be liveblogging the Mormon Studies Conference at UVU starting Thursday morning.  Hope to see you here for that great event too.

New Ways to Read or Listen to TempleStudy.com

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RSS icon

RSS icon

I’ve updated the ways that you can read posts and subscribe to TempleStudy.com.  So you now have multiple methods of reading posts here:

I’ve also added support for Odiogo, which converts TempleStudy.com posts into audio podcasts.  It’s a computerized voice, and isn’t always pretty (because it reads every footnote and related post text), but could be useful for those who don’t have time to read, but could listen to the articles while exercising or commuting to and from work.  It could also be a way for those who are visually impaired, or have other disabilities, to access TempleStudy.com:

TempleStudy.com is also now multi-lingual!  If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will see a widget in the sidebar titled “Translate This Website.”  You can now choose from any of 40 different languages from the dropdown box, and this entire website will instantly be translated into that language.  Translation is provided by Google Translate, so it won’t be perfect, but it works.

I’ve also made a change to the homepage.  As I noted a few days ago, I changed the homepage to be a full-page embedded video of “Between Heaven and Earth.”  It is a great introduction to LDS temples and what our temple worship means to us.  I’ve changed that slightly now.  Now the video will only be displayed to new visitors to the website.  Returning visitors will not see the video.  (Thanks Naomi!)

Thanks again for everyone’s support of TempleStudy.com.  You’ve greatly blessed my life, and the lives of many others.  Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Note: If you don’t know what an RSS feed is, please see this great intro YouTube video called “RSS Feeds in Plain English.”

Listen to The Book of Mormon (and other books or blogs) from your Phone

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Do you ever find yourself away from a computer with a lot of time on your hands?  Maybe your eyes are just tired from reading too much from the computer screen.  Jott Networks has just recently introduced a new service called Jott Feeds that allows any RSS feed to be read to you over your phone.  It’s very simple:

  1. Sign up for a free account with Jott.
  2. Walk through the simple steps of adding an RSS feed to your Jott Feeds.
  3. Call the Jott number from your phone – 1-866-JOTT-123.
  4. When it asks “Who do you want to Jott?”  Say, “Jott Feeds.”
  5. When it asks “Which feed?” say the name of the feed that you assigned in step #2 (i.e. “Book of Mormon,” or “Temple Study”).
  6. In just a few seconds you will have the feed read to you over the phone by an excellent text-to-speech engine.
  7. To advance to the next post in the feed press 3.  To go back press 1.  To select another feed press 0.

I have added a TempleStudy.com Jott Feed badge in the right-hand sidebar for easily adding a Jott Feed of this site to your Jott account.  Now wherever you are at you can listen to TempleStudy.com with just your phone.  It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.

The excellent thing about this service is that it works with any RSS feed.  This means that you could listen to any of the following from your phone from wherever you might be:

This works best with feeds that have full content, otherwise it will just read a summary.  Also, make sure you have plenty of minutes on your phone plan if you plan on using this very much, or use it during your unlimited off-peak hours.