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 .

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!

Slower Reading Rates

If you decide to subscribe to a scripture podcast using the "Set Rate Manually" mode, you can now be fed feed items more slowly than before; as slow as one item per month.

I think this will be helpful if I ever put general conference into the database, so you can listed to just a few talks a month if you would like.

Better feed titles

I thought I would just add a small little enhancement to the RSS feeds that are generated. I haven't forgotten about this project at all. I actually am using it more and more consistently to help me with my scripture reading. But one thing I found is that after I create the feed, I forget how fast it is feeding me new chapters, so I added the rate to the feed titles.

Now that I have added the rate, I see that the feed I'm subscribed to feeds me an average of 9.5 minutes per day.

Change of algorithm

Today I changed the algorithm that determines what chapters to push out when on the "Set rate by end date" feeds.

Unfortunately, the change means that current feed subscribes will jump forward by about one chapter in their progression. I apologize about any problems that may result from this change. ScriptureCast.net is still in beta, so changes like these aren't totally unexpected.

In feeds created with "Set rate by end date," new chapters are pushed out at variable rates determined by the length of the chapter. This new algorithm waits a short time after short chapters and a long time after long chapters before pushing out the next chapter.

End of feed bug

I'm aware of a bug where there is an error given when the feed has run out of chapters to push. The problem is that the system is looking for chapters beyond the end of the book and they just don't exists.

Update 8/28/07: I fixed this bug that was showing itself with long expired "Set rate manually" feeds.