LDS Media Talk

A recent article in USA Today titled “Txting away ur education” talked about the use of cell phones and texting in our schools and the distraction that can be to your child’s education. It also talked about how addicted some youth are to texting and the emotional impact it has on them. I encourage you to read the article to be informed about the issues.

A Nielsen study reports that American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the 4th quarter of 2008 — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier. Read more about the extent of text messaging. 

How many messages do your children send? Are those during school time? Are they during sleep time? Have you had a good discussion with your children, taught them to be responsible in using their cell phones, and set ground rules with them?

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Last month, I wrote “Faith-Promoting Story or Urban Legend?” I just found this video clip, which debunks a few other Mormon myths.

And, of course, there is this video produced by the Church Public Affairs Department:

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Seen the Jitterbug phone? I’ll be honest. The first time I saw the ads, I thought it was a spoof. The phones seemed too simple, and I couldn’t believe a company would let you call an operator to place a call for you or add a new name and number to your contacts. Simple product and high-quality customer service. Seemed impossible.

Jitterbug phones are simple and easy-to-use cell phones for people who don’t want high tech. The phone pictured here is their simple model. They also have phones with actual 0-9 numbers so you can dial your own calls. The video below explains more.

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Thank you to those who recently completed the survey about Church-produced audio content. The information gathered was helpful in launching the new Mormon Channel and will continue to be helpful as the Church develops new programming for the station. As a follow-up to the survey, we are planning to conduct focus groups in the Salt Lake area to gather additional information related to audio content preferences and consumption. If you are willing to participate, please send an email to mcdonaldjk@ldschurch.org. If you don’t live near Salt Lake City, we would still love to hear your feedback and suggestions regarding the Mormon Channel. You can send these to radio@ldschurch.org.  Thank you for your support.

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reQall (pronounced like the word “recall”) is a voice-enabled personal productivity software program. It’s a free program you can use to help manage your time and tasks. It integrates mobile devices (via voice messaging) with e-mail, Web, text messaging, instant messaging, online calendars, and RSS feeds to create a unified memory tool. I’ve been using it for a few days now and thought I’d share my experience.

It has some cool features like creating to-do lists and shopping lists. I can call reQall on my cell phone anytime I think of something and record it. With my voice-activated phone, I just have to push one button, say “call reQall.” Then when the system answers, I say “”buy eggs.” Tomorrow, I can call and say “buy milk and bread.” Then, the next time I’m at the store, I call reQall and say “shopping list,” and it will read back to me “eggs, milk, and bread.”  

I can also call reQall and say “meeting tomorrow with Jeff at three thirty,” and it will recognize the day, time, and subject of the meeting. It will then organize all my meetings by day and time on a friendly Web page. I can call reQall anytime and have it read me today’s meetings. The Pro version ($2.99/month or $24.99/year) will even add the meetings to Outlook. However, I don’t really use this feature much. Since I usually have computer access, I just use Outlook to enter my meetings and to-do lists. However, if I’m away from my computer, I can call reQall and record a message about the meeting and retrieve it later.  

My favorite feature is recording messages when I think of things when I’m away from my computer. I can then retrieve the audio anytime by phone or Web. reQall also automatically transcribes the voice to text, so when I return to my computer I can retrieve the messages from my e-mail or from the reQall site as text and copy information about meetings into my calendar or copy profound thoughts into a Word document. It does an amazing job with voice-to-text transcription. My first test was a rambling 28-second message, which reQall transcribed perfectly (except for one “is” that should have been “was”).

The system also lets me decide how and when I want to be reminded of meetings or tasks. For example, it can send me an e-mail at a certain time each day with all my to-dos for the day. Or I can have all my audio messages automatically transcribed and sent to me by e-mail, text messaging, or instant messaging.

Watch the video below to learn more.

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We’ve all received e-mails from well-intentioned people who pass along the latest faith-promoting story, only later to find out (after you’ve forwarded it to everyone in your address book) that it was only a faith-promoting rumor.

Have you heard that the LDS Church was planning to buy Facebook? How about the seminar by a cardiologist appointed by the First Presidency as head of the “church’s pandemic committee?” Heard that missionaries were spared in the World Trade Center attacks? Or that Alice Cooper and Snoop Dogg are Mormons? How about the Church is a major stockholder in Coca Cola?

All are either rumors or gross exaggerations.

My advice is to always check out the validity of a story before passing it along. But how can you do so without spending hours of research? Below are a few hints that may speed up your fact-checking.

• Is there a link in the e-mail citing the source? If so, click on the link and read it yourself. Is it from a reputable source? If the source is a blog that quoted another blog, just delete the e-mail you received and your work is done. If it is from a seemingly legitimate source, then you may still want to see if other sources are reporting the same basic facts. I tend not to trust even “credible” news sources any more, unless multiple major sources are reporting the same facts. Also, beware that there are many satirical, sites out there that pose as credible news sites, such as “The Onion-America’s Finest News Source.”
• Google a few keywords from the story and see what you find.
• If the e-mail urges you to immediately send this to all of your friends, you can be pretty sure it’s false.
• If the e-mail’s credibility is verfied by the fact that  “someone’s brother-in-law’s sister is married to a guy who…,” then you know it’s false.
• Check the facts on a fact-checking site. The following are the big four:  Snopes.com is the grand-daddy of all fact-checking sites. Some of the worst chain spams even quote Snopes with an embedded link to give their e-mail an added level of authenticity. TruthOrFiction.com is an excellent site from Rich Buhler. About Urban Legends is an about.com subsite that has been hosted for ten years by David Emery, who is passionate about finding and debunking rumors, myths, pranks, and odd stories. Break The Chain has been around since 1999 and is an authoritative source on stupid chain mails.
• There are even some sites dedicated to Mormon rumors, such as LDS Hoaxes and Myths.

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The microblogging service Twitter is exploding. Celebrities, politicians, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and everyday users are flocking to the service. In a cleaver marketing plan, Ashton Kutcher (Twitter name: aplusk) gathered more followers than any other Twitter user. His 1.5 million followers are more than CNN’s 1.2 million. Other notable Twitter users include Britney Spears (1.2 million), The Ellen Show (1 million), Barack Obama (944,000), New York Times (733,000), Oprah Winfrey (666,000), Al Gore (654,000), The Onion (615,000), John McCain (510,000), Skateboarder Tony Hawk (496,000), Time (437,000), Jet Blue (426,000), Amazon MP3 (304,000),  and, of course RichmanLarry (143).

eMarketer estimates there were roughly 6 million Twitter users in the US in 2008, or 3.8% of Internet users. They project that the number will double next year and tripple the year after.

Nielsen.com ranked Twitter as the fastest growing member communities site in February 2009. Twitter had a growth of 1,382%, compared with Zimbio’s growth of 240%, and Facebook’s growth of 228%. By all measures, Twitter is growing quickly.

Comparisons of figures reported by Nielsen Online , Compete, and comScore show anywhere from 7-14 million unique visitors to Twitter for the month. And the number of Twitter users is considerably greater than the number of visitors to the site, because of the multiple access points for the service (for example, mobile devices and desktop applications).

What’s driving this phenomenal growth? Twitter’s CEO says Twitter “makes people smarter and faster and more efficient.” While I agree, my personal experience with Twitter is that you have to manage it wisely to not be overwhelmed by an overload of information. I’ve found you have to manage new technologies wisely or they can turn into more of a burden than a benefit. I’ve had to limit the people I follow to not be inundated with tweets that are less than helpful. I don’t follow people who tweet “I just finished eating” or “Guess it’s time for bed.” I do follow people who limit their tweets to sharing occasional epiphanies and links to helpful information.

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Today, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission began work on a national broadband plan with the goal of ensuring that all consumers have access to services that are fast and affordable. The plan is due to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010, and could have a profound impact, according to Ben Scott, public policy director of Free Press, a media advocacy group. “It could be a very important document that guides the future of telecommunications regulation and the future of the Internet,” he says. “Or it could be a glorified study.”

President Obama considers broadband to be basic infrastructure, like electricity and water, and wants the FCC to do what it can to help drive adoption rates across the USA. Congress has allocated $7.2 billion in stimulus funding to entice companies to deploy broadband.

Currently, broadband costs $40-$60 a month on average in the USA, putting it out of reach for many low-income consumers. But new competition from small wireless providers may begin driving prices down.

Although broadband is widely available in urban and suburban markets, dial-up access is still common in many rural areas. Dial-up isn’t fast enough to handle interactive content, such as video streaming. Satellite-based broadband is an option for rural consumers, but it tends to be quite slow. In the USA, the average broadband speed is less than 3 megabits per second. In other countries, like Japan, average speeds are more than 60. Australia recently committed to 100 megabits.

Scott says the FCC would do well to heed those examples. “If we’re talking about the Internet as infrastructure, the bar (on speed) has to be pretty high.”

Source: USA Today

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Take-aways from the Publishing Business Conference and Expo I just attended in New York City:

Editorial

• Literary reading is growing, not shrinking.
• Publishers are moving from publishing for general markets to focusing on more targeted markets.
• E-books are growing, but at the same time, printed books are not fading. (2006-7: e-books doubled and tree books rose 3.2%)
• Publishers are moving from print-only publications to print and digital publication. New devices for digital reading (Kindle, e-Reader, iPhone, Android) are growing and improving dramatically.

Printing

• Print-on-demand book publishing is growing, eliminating the need for overprinting, warehousing, and returns. Publishers are begining to use print-on-demand rather than offset printing for many of their titles.

Sales, Marketing, and Distribution

• Clicks vs. Bricks: Brick-and-mortar booksellers are struggling, while online booksellers are growing. (This means a change in the ways publishers promote and market books, as well as the ways they print them.)
• Publishers are looking to non-traditional distribution channels, beyond traditional booksellers and libraries.
• Publishers are moving from print and broadcast advertising to online marketing with search engines and social media.

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We explained RSS in a previous post. Here’s a quick video that explains how to use Google Reader.

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We recently talked about the shrinking world of newspapers. Another sign that news readers are moving from print to digital is that the Internet has now surpassed all media except television as a news source, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

In December 2008, 70% of people surveyed said they got most of their news about national and international issues from TV, 40% said the Internet, and 35% said newspapers. Notice in the table below the growth in the figures for the Internet. In just over a year, the numbers grew from 24% to 40%.

For young Americans under age 30, the Internet now rivals TV as a news source. Nearly 60% said they got most of their national and international news online.

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Here’s a quick video that explains how to use social bookmarks (like del.icio.us) to keep track of your favorite sites.

Remember that you can use social bookmarks on LDS Media Talk.

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The outlook for newspaper publishers in the U.S.A. is grim. And it’s more than the though economic times. Newspaper revenues are falling more than in any other major medium. eMarketer reports on this historic downslide in both newspaper readership and revenues.

Newspaper Readership

Newspaper circulation continues to deteriorate as people increasingly go online for news that is timelier and free.

Newspaper Revenues

The old newspaper revenue model doesn’t work in today’s society. Advertisers know it, and they are bailing. Newspaper advertising revenues declined 16% in 2008. And over the next 4 years, revenues are expected to decline another 25%. Even online newspapers see declining revenues from classified advertising as people go to Craig’s List and other free alternatives.

 Decreasing ad revenue, combined with the relatively high fixed costs of paper, printing, and distribution spells the demise of this industry as we know it.

What’s the Answer?

“The challenge for newspapers is continuing to make money while they transition to online,” says Carol Krol, senior analyst at eMarketer. “They face the same transition problems that plague other traditional media, such as TV, and so far they have not been able to crack the code.”

According to the “State of the News Media 2008” report published by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, businesses need to decouple news and advertising. “More and more it appears the biggest problem facing traditional media has less to do with where people get information than how to pay for it—the emerging reality is that advertising isn’t migrating online with the consumer.” They’ll need to find new business models beyond advertising.

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Here’s a quick video that explains how to effectively use search on the Web.

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Sometimes, technology can seem more of a burden than a benefit. Here are some tips for organizing and controlling information overload:

• E-mail. Whenever you get an e-mail, determine if you can delete it, delegate it to someone else, defer it, or respond immediately or take needed action right now to solve the issue. If you don’t need to take action, archive the e-mail. Don’t try to sort, categorize, or tag your archive. Just move it into a single folder. If you ever do need to access it, you can search for words or phrases. Read Inbox Zero, a series of articles from 43 Folders about the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your e-mail inbox and keep it that way. (You can also view Merlin Mann’s presentation about Inbox Zero.)
• To-do List. Maintain a to-do list and reference it often. Put everything on the list or better yet, schedule it in your calendar so you will have the time to get it done.
• Feeds. Use feed readers, like Google Reader or FriendFeed. Just read the titles, and pull out what is important to you. Separate your feeds into “must-read,” “maybe,” and “everything else” folders with tags. Hit the most important folder first. Consider using Feed Rinse to automatically filter out syndicated content that you aren’t interested in. It’s like a spam filter for your RSS subscriptions.
• Minimize incoming information. Be selective in what you consume. Your time is valuable, so only subscribe to the best of the best. Don’t get on too many social networks. It can drain your time checking them all. Limit yourself to 1-3 major networks. Keep the “noise” out of your life as much as possible.
• Prioritize. Where you spend your time says a lot about who you are. Click fast and read only what’s new and ignore rehashing what’s been covered somewhere else. Manage your actions to reflect what you say is most important to you. Stay focused. At the beginning of the day, write down the 1-2 things you really want to accomplish that day.
• Pace yourself. Take on information in approachable chunks. Check e-mail and feeds on a regular schedule so it doesn’t pile up. But don’t check them too often.
• Minimize distractions. Don’t be too connected. If you’re checking your Blackberry every minute, then you’re too distracted. Sometimes, you need to turn off your e-mail application and get work done.

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