Number of active feeds

Looking through the database today, I saw that there are about 40-50 feeds which have been accessed within the last week. I consider this number to represent the number of current users. I expect this number to pick up as people create feeds of the latest General Conference.

Spring General Conference 2008 now online!

I've added General Conference, Spring 2008 to the volumes to scriptures available for podcasting. Those who wish to listen to the General Young Woman Conference may start with that if they wish. Those who don't want to listen to the Young Woman Conference may start with the Saturday morning session, or any other session or talk that they wish.

I usually like to listen to the past general conference gradually before the next general conference. I've added a special link to the homepage which will create a feed doing just this: starting now (whenever that may be), it will progress through the General Conference talks to finish October 31, 2008.

Find us on Facebook

I've created a Facebook page for ScriptureCast.net, although I haven't done very much with it. The idea is to create a space for more user discussion and reviews (if any), but also to allow people to become a fan of ScriptureCast.net which would help promote the site (and the gospel) to their friends on facebook.

Full chapter text in feeds

I received some feedback requesting that the full chapter text be included as part of the feed. ScriptureCast.net has never been about providing content, instead just linking to content. All the chapters and audio files remain on their original servers at LDS.org. I'm uncomfortable with providing any more than short excerpts as part of the feed.

However, for those who do want more than an excerpt as part of the feed, I have a solution for you. Yahoo! Pipes is a service which allows for manipulations of data sources and feeds. I've created a pipe that will automatically fetch the chapter text from LDS.org and include it along with the feed. Here is how you use it:

• Create your custom feed at www.ScriptureCast.net
• Copy the feed url.
• Go to http://pipes.yahoo.com/jacob/fullpage and paste the ScriptureCast URL in the box that says "Feed URL" and click the "Run Pipe" button
• Subscribe to the output of the feed using on the the methods provided by Yahoo!

I hope this helps. If many people start using it, I might create better pipes that filter out page headers/footers or I might include links to the pipes from ScriptureCast.net .

New Years Resolution: Loose Weight!

Happy New Year! To celebrate 2008, we are loosing weight, at least we are loosing the obese URLs from the site. Now all the URLs for feeds and preview pages created by the site are short and simple!

Old URL format:
http://feed.scripturecast.net/r/?start_time=1188579465&ratio=110.5432&volume=1&min_seconds=74715&type=rss2&check=34cd7

New URL format:
http://feed.scripturecast.net/web/1884d4d.html

Hopefully these new URLs will look less scary and be more easily cut and pasted into various pod-catching programs as needed.

The smaller URLs also have allowed us to keep better individual feed statistics. Viewing the "Preview Page" will now also show you which audio files you've already downloaded.

I'm thinking about renaming the "Preview Page" idea to something else like "Web View" (or maybe use both names).

2007 in Review

2007 was a big year for ScriptureCast.net, especially because it was the launch year for the website. (The idea of Scripture Casting was conceived at latest in 2006).

Since I've started taking stats, over 2900 chapters have been downloaded for a total of over 21 days worth of audio.

Meanwhile, the audio for Alma 10 still can't be found on the LDS.org audio website.

I hope 2008 will also be a great year. I hope to have a few extra features available soon. I've even created a special link for you to read the entire Book of Mormon by the end of 2008, starting today (whenever that might be for you.)

Suggestions for features are welcome, just leave a comment!

One hundred thousand seconds

Since I started counting file downloads about 2 weeks ago, there have been over two hundred chapters downloaded, and almost one hundred thousand seconds of audio downloaded. This is over 27 hours of audio, or more than the whole length of the Book of Mormon.

This fantastically makes me happy to see that something I designed might actually be helping people with their scripture study.

Fixed some 3 Nephi summary encodings

Some of the character encodings for the summaries in some of the chapters in 3 Nephi were bad, and thus, iTunes choked on the podcast feed. I found this myself as my progression through the scriptures hit 3 Nephi 12.

The problem is fixed now, and iTunes seems to be downloading 3 Nephi chapters as usual.

Also, while I was at it, I removed some bad links from the chapter summaries. (There were some relative links pointing to Matthew).

Audio file tracking

If you look closely at the source code for the RSS podcast feeds that we create, you will notice that the addresses for the enclosed audio files have changed. They now look something like http://feed.scripturecast.net/a/?id=###. These URLs will redirect to the actual audio file from the source site. They also allow us to keep usage statistics on the audio files.

There is a rate chance that some pod-catchers will re-download the audio files.

General Conference now added!

You can now get a custom podcast of general conference. Just go to scripturecast.net and create a podcast feed of conference at just the rate you want.

I suggest setting your rate by a completion date which you can set to be just before the next April conference. That way, you can be reviewing conference talks at a slow pace all year round!