The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released additional mobile applications for the Mormon Channel and Gospel Library.

The Gospel Library application allows you to download and study materials published by the Church on your mobile device. It allows you to search, bookmark, annotate, link, and highlight content from the scriptures, general conference talks, lesson manuals, and other curriculum.

The Mormon Channel application allows you to listen to radio.lds.org on your mobile device. (See previous posts about the great programs on the Mormon Channel.)

These applications are now available for a variety of mobile devices:

• Mormon Channel for Android (available from the Android Market)
• Mormon Channel for BlackBerry (OS 4.2.1 and higher)
• Mormon Channel for iPhone and iPod touch (updated version,  available from the iTunes Store)
• Mormon Channel for iPad (available from the iTunes Store)
• Gospel Library for Android (available from the Android Market)
• Gospel Library for iPad (available from the iTunes Store)
• Gospel Library for iPhone and iPod touch (updated version, available from the iTunes Store)
• Gospel Library for webOS (Palm Pre and Pixi, available from the Palm App Catalog)

Read more about the Gospel Library and Mormon Channel projects on LDSTech. There is also a Mobile Applications page at beta.lds.org/tools/mobile-apps.

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[from my blog]

The Church just released our second iPhone app: Gospel Lbry.

[Joel: Here is the link.]

It’s on the iPhone app store now. You can download and access the scriptures, hymns, various manuals, proclamations and so forth. It’s got some pretty nifty features that some of the main scripture apps out there don’t have. And it’s free.

When the May beta.lds.org comes out, you’ll be able to sync annotations with your online gospel study experience.

This, like our Mormon Channel app, was developed in cooperation with community developers. Thanks all!!

Download it and try it out. And rate it!!

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Earlier this year at the TED conference, Pattie Maes from the MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group showcased a prototype of a next-generation wearable computer interface that allows people to display and interact with the Web on any surface – including the human body. The video below shows the system’s main developer taking photographs with his hands, calling up Amazon review data onto the cover of a physical book, displaying information about a person he’s just met on the person’s t-shirt, and calling someone by inputting a phone number onto the palm of his hand.

In the presentation, Pattie Maes refers to this system as a “sixth sense” because it gives you seamless, easy access to information about objects and people you encounter. It removes several manual steps from the process of receiving relevant, contextual information. It’s a MicroSoft Surface Table without the table.

The possibilities are mind-boggling. Read a great review at ReadWriteWeb.

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Just 13% of teen mobile subscribers told the Nielsen survey that they were allowed a limited number of text messages. About 1/5 had a limited number of voice minutes.

Mobile video: Teens also watch a lot of video on mobile devices–an average of 6.5 hours per month–which is significantly more than the 3 hour 37 minute average across all age groups. Music and comedy videos are the most popular with teens.

Mobile Internet: Mobile Internet was used by 37% of US teen mobile users. Among the countries studied by Nielsen, only China had a higher teen use rate at 50%.

Sources: “How Teens Use Media” and “Teens Go Mobile for More Than Texts.”

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You can now receive LDS Church breaking news text alerts from the Church Public Affairs Department on your mobile phone from Newsroom.lds.org.

To sign up, text the word ldsnews to 29222 (United States and Puerto Rico). If you’re outside the United States, text the word ldsnews to 447624805710.

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I am pleased to report that the free Mormon Channel iPhone application is now available. This application allows iPhone users to tune into content being broadcast on the Mormon Channel, as well as listen to audio recordings of General Conference addresses, magazine articles, and the Church’s standard works. This application also works on the iPod Touch.

We are working on something similar for other mobile phones.

Get the Mormon Channel iPhone app

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How many households are abandoning land-line telephones and going mobile-only?

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly 15% of all US households were wireless-only in 2007. 25% of the households in Utah were mobile-only in 2007 (second highest state in the USA). In emerging markets, people are likely to by-pass fixed communications altogether and go straight to mobiles.

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TNS Global reports that 74% of the world’s digital messages were sent through a mobile device in January 2009, up from 59% a year ago. In emerging countries, 9 out of 10 messages are sent by a mobile device.

Although PC e-mail is still the most popular message method  in developed countries, its use is waning. Worldwide, more and more messages will be sent via mobile devices.

Source: eMarketer

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I happened today across a Web site called Tagga.com which provides free text messaging services.  Tagga (82442 on the phone keypad) allows you to create text messaging campaigns so that when people text in a keyword, they will be texted back with additional information.  Additional Tagga services allow you to put a Tagga button on your Web site or blog that then gives visitors the ability to easily send information from your site to their mobile phone.  The video below explains Tagga’s text messaging services in more detail:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R3h2HCu05k[/youtube]

There are many cool potential uses of Tagga, but one I want to try out soon is the ability to sell something, even your home or car.  This is how it works, just log on to the site Tagga.com, create an account, then go through the steps to set up a text campaign.  The campaign will include a brief text message and a link to a mobile site with more information.  Put the campaign code on your for sale sign, then people who see your sign can text the campaign keyword to Tagga and receive back on their cell phone more detailed information. To test it out, and to let you see how it works, I set up my own text messaging campaign on Tagga.com to sell a fake house. Text the word ‘myhouse’ to 82442 to see how it works.

Church Uses for Text Messaging Services

As we have been contemplating the next generation of Church Web sites, there has been a lot of discussion around mobile phones and text messaging services. Text messaging is continuing to grow in the US and around the world, in fact, there are many people in remote places of the world that do not have access to a computer, but they do have cell phone service.  Text messaging services that the Church has thought about are:

• Texting something like ‘map’ to the Church to get directions to the nearest Church building.
• Text a ward name to the Church and receive back its meeting times.
• Providing a Web site for bishops who can’t (or don’t) text to exchange text messages with the youth or other members of their ward.
• Text keywords like ‘priesthood’ to the Church and receive back a definition of the term.
• Allowing a bishop to text a member’s name to the Church and receive back their contact information (address, phone, email, etc.) and who their home teachers are.

What additional ideas do you have for Church uses of text messaging? Leave a comment to let us know. How about the features listed above, are they ones you would use? Fill out the survey below to let us know. (If you don’t see they survey in your RSS reader or email, then go to the blog Web site and you will see it).

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A group of researchers have devised a method which allows people to communicate over a 2G cell phone network using Sign Language. This is a pretty big step for deaf people, because text messaging is a poor substitute for the expressiveness of Sign Language, and for many who have been deaf since childhood, English is truly a foreign language.

Source: Aaron at NorthTemple.com

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