What to do?

The traffic to ScriptureCast.net hasn't been very high recently, and so I'm trying to figure out a good way to lower my costs (time and money) of maintaining the server. I'll let you know what I figure out.

Spring LDS General Conference 2009 now online

I've just added the last General Conference to the site. I went through a more automated process of adding this conference to the database, so let me know if you find any problems.

--Enjoy

Financial costs for ScriptureCast.net

When I first started developing custom scripture podcasts, I did it as a personal tool and as an experiment. When I got the software to something that I felt I could reliably use, I decided to share it with others on the Internet.  Since I already have a server, the only specific financial cost was for the domain name, ScriptureCast.net. 

It costs me, out of my personal expenses, about $10 every year to pay for the ScriptureCast.net domain.  While this isn't a lot, it is a reoccuring expense that I would rather avoid.

Initially I had hoped that I could place a few advertisements on the site that would generate enough revenue to renew the domain name.  However, in the last year, the advertisements have only generated $2.24, which falls short from making custom scripture podcasts self-sufficient.

And so now, I'm considering a different a different financing method: donations.   For every $10 in donations I receive, I can continue using the ScriptureCast.net domain for one more year, up to 9 years.

As a result, I will also be able to remove advertising from all of ScriptureCast.net.

You can use this donation button below to donate.  Thank you very much!

October 2008 Conference online

I've added the October 2008 General Conference to ScriptureCast.net. Soon, I will start reviewing the talks at a rate just right to finish with the last talk shortly before April 2009 conference.

If I were to start today, I would listen to conference at a rate of 2.2 minutes per day. If every talk were 11 minutes long, I would listen to one talk every 5 days. Of course, shorter talks will be podcasted more frequently.

Ready for general conference

I forgot to mention here that over at my new blog, Square Galaxy, I've written a post about how I just finished with my custom podcast of last general conference, just in time to start again in a couple of weeks

General Conference feeds not validating

I was made aware tonight that some custom feeds of the Spring 2008 General Conference aren't being loaded into iTunes because the feeds aren't validating. I think this is a character encoding problem.

I'll try and fix the problem soon, but until then, you can try creating a feed that doesn't start with Saturday Morning.

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 .