Bloggernacle Back Bench: LDS tech news you can use

For some reason, blogs touting fantastic new apps and resource sites caught my eye this week. Discover history on your iPad. Use a handy conference study tool. Virtually visit a London chapel, right in time for the Olympics. And more.

At the Mormon History Conference a few weeks ago, I was privileged to sit down with one of the brains behind the new Mormon Historic Sites: Alberta App for iPad. In the first of its kind (of many to come, from what I was told), this app takes you into the Mormon history of Southern Canada, opening up photos, timelines, maps, audio and much more. It’s the perfect accompaniment to any church history tour to Alberta. I’m excited to see which sites are app’d next.

The LDS Scripture Citation Index is completely cool and the Mormon Life Hacker explains why: “The LDS Scripture Citation Index is a website (and free app) which lists out every scripture reference made over the pulpit. ... These citations are organized into book-chapter-verse. ... Clicking on the citation will pull up the lds.org text for the talk in a window on the upper right when it’s from the Ensign or Journal of Discourses. If the talk is found in “Teachings of the Prophet ____,” the link opens in a new window hosted by BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library. When the scripture is cited directly, you should see it in the talk in red. If you click on the verse a window in the bottom right will show a portal to the lds.org copy of the scriptures with your verse highlighted.” And there’s more to it. Click in to learn all about this awesome resource.

Have you ever heard of the “Dictionary of Mormon Biography”? It’s just now getting off the ground, but looks to be amazing. Project leader Tod Robbins explains, “I hope the title of the project is self-evident, as it will primarily be about people: the notable, the not-so-notable and the forgotten. The first phase of the project has been the conversion of biographies from Andrew Jenson’s Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia to digital format. This includes doing verification of the OCR text, extracting the scanned photos from biographies and documenting the location of each biography via citation/hyperlinking of the Internet archive and BYU scans of the volumes. We may also document the histories of geographical units (stakes, wards, branches) and built works.” Wow, sounds exciting. Check it out!

Finally, I love how the Hyde Park Chapel is both virtually and in-real-life preparing to be a missionary tool as the Olympics descend. Click in to visit the Facebook page, which, as Larry Richman explains, includes “pictures, videos and an extensive timeline with the history of the church in the region. Scroll down the Facebook page timeline to see pictures of pioneer missionaries in England, significant events, historic visits and several short videos about the history of the church in the British Isles and the history of the Hyde Park chapel.” Awesome!

Now let’s see what else excited the Bloggernacle this week: