BYU Professor Daniel Peterson and Scott Gordon FAIR have launched a new website with the testimonies of Mormon scholars: Mormon Scholars Testify. Bro. Peterson explained his rationale to the Church News:

“I hope to gather up testimonies from, well, Mormon scholars,” Brother Peterson said. “I’m trying, thereby, to comply with a request made about a year ago by Elder M. Russell Ballard and reiterated by other authors in the October Ensign that we use the Internet as a way of sharing our testimonies of the gospel.” (via LDS Church News)

Bro. Peterson suggested this could be one of many “vertical” websites highlighting the testimonies of Church members:

“I think there ought to be similar on-line collections of testimonies from athletes, executives, farmers, housewives, morticians, retirees, chess players, stamp collectors, everybody. The possibilities are endless, and I hope many others will take to the Web with their expressions of faith.” (ibid.)

More Good Foundation’s website Mormons Believe, or the yet-to-be-built Why I Believe, announced at the Boston singles conference, could be the home for these many testimonies, organized by profession, location, interest, or some other attribute.

Mormon.org itself has a few select testimonies and could conceivably offer a repository of testimonies someday.

24 Hour Fitness has a website with the stories of members whose lives have improved through fitness. It includes categories such as life improvement, recovery, athletic, and social. Imagine a similar website for the stories of people whose lives have been blessed by the Gospel in even broader and more lasting ways.

CORRECTION (Jan 18, 2010): As Daniel Peterson mentions in the comment below, this website is not affiliated with FAIR.

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Have you checked out BingTweets yet? If not, you should give it a try. BingTweets is a project from Federated Media that uses Twitter’s trending topics and merges that with Microsoft Bing search results. This will enable users to share links to search results within social networks like Twitter and Facebook. According to Chris Brogan:

What’s cool about that is there are MANY times when we see trends on Twitter and we wonder what the backstory is. In my example, I clicked half-blood prince and got local showtimes for the new Harry Potter movie (hmmm, I could sneak off and watch THAT). I think this can be pretty darned useful.

But think about this: this is actually an ADVERTISEMENT, and yet, it’s useful. Chew on that a bit. It’s a relationship with an application built by Federated Media to help Microsoft promote Bing. (BingTweets – Fusing Search and Twitter)

As a test, I entered the word “mormon” and here are the results it generated:

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

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The other day I was reading Bryce Haymond’s Temple Study blog and came across a reference to “slow blogging.” In his article Temple Study One Year Anniversary Bryce referred to Sharon Otterman’s New York Times article Blogging at a Snail’s Pace. He suggested that with the birth of a “beautiful new baby boy” last September, his priorities shifted and he may become part of a growing movement called slow blogging.

In the New York Times piece, Sharon wrote that slow blogging:

. . . is inspired by the slow food movement, which says that fast food is destroying local traditions and healthy eating habits. Slow food advocates, like the chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., believe that food should be local, organic and seasonal; slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants — great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul.

A Slow Blog Manifesto, written in 2006 by Todd Sieling, a technology consultant from Vancouver, British Columbia, laid out the movement’s tenets. “Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy,” he wrote. “It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly.” (Nor, because of a lack of traffic, is Mr. Sieling writing this blog at all these days.) Ms. Ganley, who recently left her job as a writing instructor at Middlebury College, compares slow blogging to meditation. It’s “being quiet for a moment before you write,” she said, “and not having what you write be the first thing that comes out of your head.”

Recent studies indicate that slow blogging is catching on:

“I’m definitely noticing a drop-off in posting — I’m talking about among the more visible bloggers, the ones with 100 to 200 readers or more,” said Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies popular culture and technology. “I think that those people who were writing long, thought-out posts are continuing, but those who were writing, ‘Hey, check this out’ posts are going to other forums. It’s a dynamic shift.”

One of the reasons for this shift are evolving web business models and the introduction of new technologies such as Twitter (see What is Twitter?). Instead of posting a short note about a new article or video, it’s easier to write a short tweet“, share pictures on Flickr, or use the news feed on Facebook.” Then again, maybe slow blogging is just a response to the Internet and its incredible shrinking attention span. Regardless, less frequent posts written with a little more thought seems to be a growing fad.

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In case you missed it, a couple weeks ago Microsoft and Google announced support for OpenID. If you have a card, a spreadsheet, or password manager that contains your login information for all the web sites you regularly visit, then you might want to check out OpenID.

What is OpenID?

According to the OpenID web site:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login. (What is OpenID?)

PC World reports:

OpenID is a free framework that eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites. If you have a Microsoft Live Mail account, a Yahoo account, or a Google account, you can log in with those same credentials on other websites like AOL, MySpace, Plaxo, Zoho or Buxfer, without having to create a new account on any of these sites. (Google Moves to OpenID.)

I recently signed up with Verisign’s PIP, but you can get an account with any number of OpenID providers. Or use one of your existing accounts as mentioned above.

Although there are still hurdles to overcome, and some potential downsides, OpenID offers great utility towards a federated login. (See Google Joins OpenID Providers in Race Toward Federated Login and Google Revises its OpenID Implementation to Accept All Relying Parties.)

Here is the recent announcement on theSocialWeb.tv. Be prepared though – the video is 24 minutes!

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Recently I posted an entry on LDS CIO about the term “geek” and how it has become, well, pseudo-fashionable.

Only a “geek” would put a version number on the web, but that’s exactly what has happened. The Internet is no longer an infant. We’re now using what is called Web 2.0. If you don’t know that that means, here is a good article that differentiates between Web 1.0 and 2.0.

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You may be interested in the following article that appeared in yesterday’s Deseret Morning News:

‘Gen XXX’ findings surprising
By Tad Walch

PROVO — Men are by far the main consumers in the mammoth worldwide porn industry, but today’s college women are surprisingly permissive about pornography, according to a new Brigham Young University study.

The BYU researchers discovered that 49 percent of the female college students they surveyed find pornography acceptable. Only 37 percent of their own fathers agreed.
That information is groundbreaking because it is a subject that hasn’t been addressed by family or development journals, said Jeffrey Arnett, editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research, which published the study.

The study of 813 college students at six American colleges and universities — BYU was not included — is titled “Generation XXX: Pornography Acceptance and Use Among Emerging Adults.”

The research found that 86 percent of college men and 31 percent of college women viewed pornographic material in the previous year. Men said they used it far more frequently — 48 percent used it at least weekly while 3 percent of women did.
Still, Arnett said, “One-third of female students said they’d used it. That surprised me it was that high.”

The key question asked of students and their parents was if they agreed or disagreed that viewing pornography is an acceptable way to express one’s sexuality. Lead author Jason Carroll, a BYU family life professor, offered two explanations for high acceptance among college women and men, 67 percent of whom agreed.

“One is that this is a life-course finding,” Carroll said, “that we captured them at a high point in time and their acceptance will decrease and they’ll be like their parents. The other argument is that because of the proliferation of pornography, this generation has a unique acceptance of pornography different from their parents, and that it will last. I think there is a compelling argument that is the case.”

Arnett rarely publishes quantitative, or statistical, studies. He prefers qualitative data based on subjective interviews. He made an exception this time.

“This is a hugely important issue,” he said, “given that pornography is so massively popular on the Internet. There are questions about how will it affect people’s sexuality and their views of gender roles, and how is that going to affect relationships between men and women. Maybe it will just be a form of entertainment. We just don’t know yet.”

Arnett and Carroll said BYU’s findings raised as many questions as they answered.
Pornography was not a centerpiece of a larger BYU study on emerging adulthood that, as reported last week in the Deseret Morning News, showed college students and their parents no longer see 18-to-25-year-olds as adults. The BYU team regretted not including several more questions on attitudes about pornography.

For example, Carroll said it isn’t clear whether college women were saying pornography is more acceptable for women or whether they are growing more permissive about men using it.

The study does indicate, without establishing a causal relationship, that women who are more accepting about pornography appear more prone to risky behavior.

“If they say pornography is an acceptable way to express one’s sexuality, they have elevated levels of binge drinking and are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior and have multiple partners in the last 12 months,” Carroll said. “That’s just by being accepting of pornography, let alone using it.”

Carroll said the BYU team is involved in a study in Seattle that could yield more information about how pornography affects couple formation and marriages.

“Only 50 percent of women are accepting but 90 percent of men are reporting some level of usage,” he said. “We know very little about what happens to pornography patterns during couple formation. Do women become accepting? Are more couples using it together? Do men stop using it when they are in a relationship? Do men keep using but hide it from their spouse? We have no evidence.

“It’s an area where there could be some real tension because men’s and women’s approaches to pornography are so different.”

Arnett would like to see researchers do some qualitative work, interviewing subjects personally about when they use pornography, what sort of Web sites they access, if there are some things they don’t find acceptable and whether they use it more when they aren’t in a sexual relationship.

Pornography is a $13 billion industry in the United States, $100 billion worldwide, according to the study. One-fourth of all Internet searches — 68 million per day — are for pornography. The United States hosted 244 million adult Web pages in 2006, according to Ogden-based TopTen Reviews.

Those statistics make it clear that researchers need more information about pornography’s impact on the development of children, relationships and families, Carroll said.

That is even more true as the next revolution in pornography begins to crest.

“Internet and pay-per-view movies broke down social barriers to pornography use, making it seem more anonymous,” he said. “Now we’re entering the pocket-porn movement as society becomes more wireless. Parental monitoring used to be about taking care of Internet use at home. Now a group of 16- or 17-year-old boys could go out for the night and as long as one of them has a handheld device with Internet access, they have access to pornography.

“Parental monitoring becomes impossible, and that puts a high value on helping children improve their ability to self-monitor.”

_______________________________________
E-mail: twalch@desnews.com

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Parents: Be careful that the toys you buy for your child this Christmas don’t have unlimited Internet access, or he/she could easily (an innocently) view pornography.

Wireless handheld devices, such as video cell phones, iPods, iPhones, PDAs, and PlayStations and other video game consoles are now conduits for all the good stuff–and all the pornography–available on the Internet.

The Religious Alliance Against Pornography and the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, of which the LDS Church is a member, has sent a strongly-worded warning letter to congregations across the United States. Here are key points from their warning:

• Lots of wireless gadgets are commonly put in the hands of children and youth and many of these devices are capable of accessing anything on the Internet.
• Don’t expect government or the wireless industry to protect your children. Companies are just now developing filters for wireless devices, and only T-Mobile, AT&T and Alltel provide any kind of Internet blocking tool.
• Wireless companies do not intend to warn parents at the time of purchase about the dangers of Internet pornography.

“Let’s be very clear. Wireless technology is not the enemy. Rather, the danger lies in the perverse misuse of the technology and the fact that safeguards are limited in both availability and reliability.”

The letter warns that every child will be impacted directly or indirectly because:
“Pornographers are continually on the offensive and are determined to seduce those not seeking pornography and force their immorality on us. They have learned how to manipulate innocent people from good sites to pornographic sites.
“Every child will have some peers or friends of peers that are plugged into the Internet through a wireless device (video mobile phone, PDA, video iPod, iPhone, PlayStation).
“Pornographic material is powerfully addictive and because those peers who will be impacted, will talk about it, and will offer access to the material.
“Young people and children are often more computer literate than their parents and grandparents and are inquisitive about sexual things.
“Children and youth are already putting pressure on their parents to have video mobile phones, etc. that can access the Internet. That pressure will increase significantly as the video mobile phone industry explodes. Within a matter of months almost every mobile phone will have Internet and picture capacity and we know that the wireless industry will produce a massive advertising campaign because they make their large profits through monthly Internet fees. Peer pressure to not be left behind will intensify.
“If your children don’t succeed with you in getting the Internet, some of their friends or peers will succeed with their parents. When they discover pornographic material, including its addictive nature and how it impacts their hormones, they will share it with others. Knowledge is power and they will become an ‘In Group’.
“When (not if) your child sees that material, because you have trained them in the Christian faith, he/she will likely be attracted and repulsed at the same time. Often the revulsion will wane and the titillation will come back and make it more difficult to say, ‘No’ consistently over a long period of time.”

Read more excerpts from the letter in the Church News of November 17, 2007.

For more information, see the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families or my previous blogs on wise/safe use of the Internet.

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Attendees at BYU Education Week were told that technology can and should be used for good. Ron Schwendiman, of the Church Internet Coordination Group, reviewed the wonders of the information age and cautioned that it must be harnessed for good. Some key points:

• With all the information that is available, which information is true and right?
• What information is of the most value?
• How do we prioritize our time in conjunction with technology?
• How do we take advantage of all these great discoveries?

Read more in the Deseret Morning News.

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Six weeks ago, I blogged about Facebook’s announcement of a new business model that encourages people to develop and distribute applications on its platform. I also mentioned Paul B. Allen’s prediction that Facebook will become the largest social network in the world

Now Advertizing Age says that Facebook is Google’s biggest competition. Sure, Google is the 900-pound gorilla for search and has one of the largest databanks about users, but Facebook poses a real threat because (1) its network of connections between people knows comparatively more about each of its users than Google does and (2) Facebook is becoming a viral distribution platform unrivaled by any portal or search engine.

Facebook is growing at a stunning rate–nearly 30 million users now–with no signs of stopping. Viral distribution is the most powerful form of marketing and promotion. The potential is huge, and Facebook might have the upper hand.

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BYU professor Phil Windley points out that the United Methodist Church now has an online social network. Read Phil’s comments about the site.

What are your feelings about the value of such a site for LDS people?

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