Brushing off the dust

[Jesse Stay]

It's been awhile since we've had activity in this group. I'd like to get it going again. I started the group, and now I'm working for the Church. Initially, I was thinking LDS Tech might be a good place to start sending members of this group, but I'm thinking there might also be use for this group in helping the Church in building the Kingdom through Open Source principles.

I see this group as helping to create *new* projects and build things of our own volition that could help the Church. LDS Tech, on the other hand, will be a great resource for soliciting volunteer help for projects initiated by the Church (and the Church owns LDS Tech - they don't own this group). In many cases there are projects that I think could help the Church, that the Church just doesn't have time to create and doesn't fit its purposes. I see LDSOSS helping in this area.

Here's one idea I have, that we could really use, for instance. I'd really love a "widget" that anyone could install anywhere on the web to be able to read the Book of Mormon. I'm sure we could utilize the skills of this list to build something pretty cool.

Is this a good direction to take this group? If so I'm going to revive this group and get it going again. Please chime in with your ideas!

Thanks,

--Jesse

Jesse Stay
Social Strategist, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
http://www.staynalive.com/p/about-jesse-stay.html

Author - I'm on Facebook--Now What???, FBML Essentials, Facebook Application Development For Dummies, Google+ For Dummies

[Kyle Mathews]

Hey Jesse (and others),

I think that's a great idea. There's plenty of interesting projects that we could create together that'd help build the kingdom and strengthen our families and communities.

Two ideas that I'm personally working on now is first, a Drupal "distro" focused on making it easy to place family history information (pictures, stories, autobiographies, letters, etc.) online that's easy to browse/search/share.

The other is what my family calls "Quicknotes". We started doing this awhile ago where my Mother emails everyone towards the end of the week a few questions to ask about their week and also more general questions about memories they have from growing up etc. Then each person replies and my Mother collected the ideas and sends them out to everyone.

This ended up being a fair amount of work for my Mother to do so I'm automating the process so that we can all add question ideas which are queued up and then sent out automatically each week. I'm building a small web app do to this and will provide a hosted version for a small fee as well as open sourcing the code for those that want to host their own "Quicknote" servers.

Contact me if you're interested in either of these ideas.

I think what might be nice Jesse is a simple website explaining your goal and then let people post Github (or to other hosts) links to projects they're working on that people could browse through.

--
Kyle Mathews

Blog: kyle.mathews2000.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kylemathews

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[Jesse Stay]

I agree - it's time to get the Wiki back up (I've still got the old LDSOSS.org wiki on my servers - just need to upgrade the software and get it running again). I'd like a place where Church employees can also bring up their needs, without fear of correlation killing projects (they would just be owned and run by members). It could be a great way to "proof of concept" ideas without the need to fund them with tithing dollars, some of which could be taken on by the Church once the idea is proven. Ideally, we could set a principle of each project being under an Open Source license, so transfer to the Church or any other entity is a simple process, and others could also use them.

I'm also thinking about bringing in More Good Foundation to take this on in a more official way, so there is funding behind it. They could provide servers for projects that make sense, and the developers in this group could also help them with some of their own projects to help the Church. Any objections to this?

--Jesse

[Russell Hltn]

The key is to select a good project.  Regarding the BOM, you may run into copyright issues.  I have seen indications that the church will be cracking down on that shortly.  They're working to get a API and agreement for developers, but I don't think that's in place yet.  When using scriptures, sooner or later, someone is going to ask to connect it to the My Study Notebook.  For that, you'll need the user's LDS Account credentials.  I know the church is picky about what they let use LDS Account credentials, and may not be exposing that API to "outside" developers.

 

The question is, what projects can you do without using any the data that members have access to under their accounts?

 

Family History might be a good place to look.  They are willing to work with outside developers.  I personally would like to see a source-based personal genealogy database.  All the current offerings I've seen (PAF, etc.) are good conclusion-based software.  Good for recording your results, but a poor data model for a "work in progress".

 

I do know the church does have community-based development.  Not having a programming skills in the languages they are using, I'm not involved.  But I wonder what the attraction of a independent community development would be over the current church-sponsored community development?

[David Hale]

If you haven't taken a look at FamilySearch recently, it may be worth your time. They have opened an API to their data with authentication using LDS Account. If you are in Utah this week there is a big RootsTech conference that targets both genealogy and technology. I attended last year and was very impressed.

--

[Greg Warner]

"GRAMPS" is an existing open source genealogy program written in Python.

--

[Brandon Stout]

Phpgedview is an open source genealogy program written in php.

[Alberto A. Flores]

Folks,

I have cultivating the idea of an app for food storage. My family are working hard on keeping one, but we keep on struggling with our paper-based method to account for expiration date as well as for good coupons to replace missing items. Ideally, we can have it web-based, but it seems to me that a mobile enabled solution is the way to go given that our storage is located in a small location in our basement (I suspect most others have it in similar situations). The following are some ideas I have been cooking in my head:

• Keep a complete database of your current food storage, with different views, specially by expiration date.
• Provide suggested meals (and recipes) for food that are about to expire in the following weeks/months.
• Ability to create a grocery-shopping list (over time) to create a 3,6,12 month storage.
  
• Alerts bases on expired or shortage of a food item. Other alerts can be incorporated as needed.
  
• Provide location based alerts based on coupons/sales from nearby food stores to re-stock the home storage. This is a social feature.
• Keep information of nutritional facts about items within the storage. This may be an interesting feature given that nutritional balance diet is not necessarily considered important during an emergency.
• Social Application integration to notify via facebook/twitter about needs so people can reach out to others about missing items.
  

Thoughts?

Alberto Flores
http://www.linkedin.com/in/aflores

“A war against standards leads logically and inevitably to hostility to religion, because it is religious faith that provides the ultimate basis for all standards.” - Michael Medved

"Cual es la diferencia entre un obstaculo y una oportunidad? Nuestra actitud hacia ella. Cada oportunidad tiene una dificultad, y cada dificultad tiene una oportunidad"

- J. Sidlow Baxter (1903-1999)

"Discouragement is not the absence of adequacy but the absence of courage, and our personal progress should be yet another way we witness to the wonder of it all!" 

- Neal A. Maxwell (1976)

[Greg Warner]

Great ideas Alberto.  

Along those same lines, I just want to share the google doc my wife and I use: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AgmNhhj_DfK4dHJxU3VyMm82bXc2WVh4YnJCZ2ZySnc&single=true&gid=0&output=html.

I think the spread sheet is fairly self-explanatory.  Each column is a recipe.  We fill out the ingredient quantities and at the top (in yellow) how many times we'd like to have each recipe in a three-month period.  On another sheet (not shown) it basically creates a giant inventory list -- basically a list of how much we should have of each ingredient to make all the recipes.  

So now, instead of just having a bunch of grain and canned food, we actually have stuff to make oh-so-delicious meals!

[Steven H. McCown]

I've seen some food storage programs, but you hit on one really cool point:

"Provide location based alerts based on coupons/sales from nearby food stores to re-stock the home storage. This is a social feature."

I have food storage (should get more), but it can be expensive unless it's on sale.  It would be cool to send/receive alerts like "Smiths has cases of pears for 50% off".  

Couponing is a huge hobby these days and, if marketed well, this would probably get some great response.  It might even change the attitude of "I'll get food storage, someday" to "I have to get pears by Friday", which tends to make people jump.

Steve

[David Hale]

There has been work on both Phpgedview (http://www.gedlynk.org) and Gramps (see http://code.google.com/p/legado/) to integrate them with the FamilySearch API. There are quite a few other projects with different language and technology choices. Take a look at http://devnet.familysearch.org

[Kyle Mathews]

For those looking at integrating with the FamilySearch API, be aware that it has two crucial restrictions -- 1st, users have to have an LDS account and be logged in to access information from the API -- so you can't build any apps leveraging the information for public consumption. And 2nd, you can't cache information locally which hurts performance.

My brother/cousin and I had planned on using the API for our Family History CMS but because of the restriction we were forced to fall back on using uploaded Gedcom files to get the needed information.

--
Kyle Mathews

Blog: kyle.mathews2000.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kylemathews

[Steven H. McCown]

US Copyright is for the BOM has expired and the text is in the public domain.  (see http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm)  Continuing copyright relating to the BOM would be limited to new packaged presentations of the book or new cross-reference material related to the book, but not the book's text itself.  

Jesse, I can already read the BOM online from any device with a web browser.  What exactly were you thinking of?

Steve

From: Russell Hltn <russe...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:35:20 -1000
To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [LDSOSS] Brushing off the dust

--

[John Harrison]

Steve,

The text itself has changed with each edition.  The 1981 text is under copyright.

John

[Kyle Mathews]

On that subject -- is there any cross-reference material in the public domain? I think it'd be really interesting to do social network analysis but applied to the scriptures with verses as nodes and references as links.

--
Kyle Mathews

Blog: kyle.mathews2000.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kylemathews

[Steven H. McCown]

John,

I was under the impression that there were some changes in the ~1970's, which subsequently were reverted to the original text.  What changed (of the BOM text, itself) in 1981?  Are you saying that it's not the same text that Joseph Smith translated?

Steve

From: John Harrison <johnha...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>

[Kyle Mathews]

Apparently there have been 3913 changes since the original text:

http://www.irr.org/mit/changing-scripture.html

http://www.utlm.org/onlinebooks/3913intro.htm

http://www.fairlds.org/apol/ai282.html

http://en.fairmormon.org/Book_of_Mormon/Textual_changes

--
Kyle Mathews

Blog: kyle.mathews2000.com/blog
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kylemathews

[John Harrison]

Steve,

Look up Royal Skousen's Book of Mormon Critical Text Project.

There are all sorts of interesting discrepancies between the existing bits of the manuscript, the printer's manuscript, and the first edition.  So what is the original?

John

[Russell Hltn]

From what I understand, GRAMPS and Phpgedview are still both "conclusion-based" and don't really support a "source-based" data model.

[Russell Hltn]

I assume it would use barcode scanning to help with the inventory process?

[Steven H. McCown]

John,

That's interesting.  Personally, I'm not bothered by fixes for printing errors.  Those happen occasionally.  For a good laugh, the 1631 version of the Bible is called the "Wicked Bible", because it left the word "not" out of Exodus 20:14.  

In 1981, the "Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, employer for hire." filed a new copyright claiming that the new matter was "column referencing at the bottom of each page; summary of sections at the beginning of each chapter." (see:  http://tinyurl.com/6vdlpcw) 

That's okay and is what I was referring to regarding new indexes.  This is a game that all copyright holders play — to change things a bit to keep continuing copyright in force.  

Royal Skousen's project is really interesting.  Most changes I would classify as typos (either fixing or introducing).  On some of the more interesting changes, Skousen shows where they were actually made in the 2nd edition by Joseph Smith, himself, but changed again in a future copy.  This proves that we really need typesetters and proofreaders with OCD!  ;-)

I'm hoping that the church is a bit more liberal with online copyright control.  The alternative is to risk people 'forking the base', so that they can use or discuss it…

[Russell Hltn]

To explain what I'm talking about, here's a relivent quote:

 

"We should always bear in mind that in historical research, we're not actually dealing with physical persons, but with documents. A John Smith who is christened in 1733 is not necessarily the same John Smith that marries Jane Doe in the same parish in 1758. Nevertheless, when we want to enter these two disparate facts, current genealogy software forces us to either register two different "persons", or join the two source fragments to the same person ID. Thus, the software forces us to reach a conclusion about identity even before we can enter our evidence into the database. In my opinion, that is putting the cart before the horse. An advanced genealogy database should build a person as a kind of tree structure, deriving a "super-person" from several "sub-persons"."

 

You can read more at http://solumslekt.org/forays/tmg.php

 

BTW, I think you'll find FS works this way.  What I want is a "Personal FamilySearch".

[Steven H. McCown]

That'd be very handy.  RedLaser is one of the more well known, but their API is not free.  Zxing has a free API (http://code.google.com/p/zxing/)

Steve

From: Russell Hltn <russe...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:17:05 -1000
To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [LDSOSS] Brushing off the dust

[Joel Finlinson]

Something like this: http://beprepared.com/article.asp?ai=903 ?
FoodStorageAnalyzer.com

>>> Russell Hltn <russe...@gmail.com> 2012-01-30 11:17 >>>

I assume it would use barcode scanning to help with the inventory process?

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 6:25 AM, Alberto A. Flores <aafl...@gmail.com>wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I have cultivating the idea of an app for food storage. My family are
> working hard on keeping one, but we keep on struggling with our paper-based
> method to account for expiration date as well as for good coupons to
> replace missing items. Ideally, we can have it web-based, but it seems to
> me that a mobile enabled solution is the way to go given that our storage
> is located in a small location in our basement (I suspect most others have
> it in similar situations). The following are some ideas I have been cooking
> in my head:
>

> - Keep a complete database of your current food storage, with

> different views, specially by expiration date.

> - Provide suggested meals (and recipes) for food that are about to

> expire in the following weeks/months.

> - Ability to create a grocery-shopping list (over time) to create a
> 3,6,12 month storage.
> - Alerts bases on expired or shortage of a food item. Other alerts can
> be incorporated as needed.
> - Provide location based alerts based on coupons/sales from nearby

> food stores to re-stock the home storage. This is a social feature.

> - Keep information of nutritional facts about items within the

> storage. This may be an interesting feature given that nutritional balance
> diet is not necessarily considered important during an emergency.

> - Social Application integration to notify via facebook/twitter about

> needs so people can reach out to others about missing items.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Alberto Flores
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/aflores
>

<snip>

[Jesse Stay]

Working for the Church, I can help us work through doing things the "right" way so copyright isn't a concern. There are ways to go through the front door and still help the Church. Again, the emphasis is on making Open Source projects that the Church could inherit and use if they wanted.

The attraction of independent community development vs. LDS Tech and other Church-sponsored projects is solely to allow creativity outside of the projects the Church has established. Right now, on LDS Tech, since it's owned by the Church developers can't necessarily propose their own projects and ideas to solicit community help, for the benefit of the Church. With a group like this anyone can create their own project, every project is open source, so everyone, including the Church, benefits.

--Jesse

--

[Jesse Stay]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Steven H. McCown <steven...@gmail.com> wrote:

US Copyright is for the BOM has expired and the text is in the public domain.  (see http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm)  Continuing copyright relating to the BOM would be limited to new packaged presentations of the book or new cross-reference material related to the book, but not the book's text itself.  

Jesse, I can already read the BOM online from any device with a web browser.  What exactly were you thinking of?

Here's an example - I run http://facebook.com/bookofmormon on the side. It may be handed over to the Church as soon as one of the departments wants it, but until then I'm using it as another way to further the purposes of the Church. However, I'd like to have a link on the left that allows people to read the Book of Mormon without ever leaving Facebook. Right now there is no "widget" on Mormon.org which could allow others to embed the Book of Mormon on their own websites for others to read if they wanted to. I'd love an embeddable widget that anyone could paste into their website for others to read The Book of Mormon anywhere on the web. This would allow me to just embed the widget on a web page on the Book of Mormon Facebook Page, and there would be no new coding necessary. That's the concept, at least.

--Jesse

[Steven H. McCown]

Interesting.  And, by extension, it would be nice to be able to post a 'linked' Book of Mormon quote on my feed.  When people clicked on the quote (to learn more), it could also take them back to the larger widget in order to continue reading.  

One reading in the widget, users could inherit all of the bookmarking / highlighting features, the persistence of which, would be linked to their FB account.  This would allow users to 'pick up a book' and own their reading of it without having to login, create and account, manage connecting their data store to their various devices, etc.  FB is secure enough for that type of feature set.

That could be cool.

Steve

From: Jesse Stay <jess...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:27:17 -0700
To: <lds...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [LDSOSS] Brushing off the dust

--

[Mac Newbold]

Looks like it's time for the annual *bump* ... is anyone interested in doing anything with LDSOSS? 

I have been involved some in LDSTech projects, and found that satisfied my desire to help the Kingdom technologically.

Thanks,

Mac

[Brandon Stout]

I think this has been a great group in the past, and in a way it would be sad to see it go, but in a way, it's kind of gone anyway, probably because the things you can do here are now more available on the official LDSTech site, which you mentioned, http://tech.lds.org .  Has anyone else sent responses?

Brandon

--

[Jesse Stay]

I'm open to however you guys want to use it. I'll keep this around in case there is a use you guys can find for it that is relevant to our purposes, but I agree - there is definitely some overlap with LDS Tech right now.

Jesse Stay
http://jessestay.com

Author - I'm on Facebook--Now What???, Facebook Application Development For Dummies, Google+ For Dummies, Google+ Marketing For Dummies

[indie]

Thanks for reviving this discussion.  It reminded me of a project I'd been meaning to put on Github for a while -- one that definitely fits more under the umbrella of adapting OSS than anything else.  This project is basically a Yahoo! maps mashup:  http://lds.hackeress.com. 

I got the idea from a talk done by Rasmus Lerdorf at Open Hack Day 2008. The basic API had (graphical) red push pins to show all the places he'd lived over the world, as he eventually migrated over to the US.  One day I realized it'd be cool to show the chronological progression of the growth of the Church as temples were being built. 

But it could be adapted and used by a ward to make a virtual pinboard to show where missionaries are located, or something else.    I couldn't find the original talk / code, so all I have is what I've changed since. 

So it is now on Github -- https://github.com/indie/mappalicious

(And it is messy, I know -- disclaimer: I have no official training in this stuff)  :)

The most tedious part of this project thus far is getting the images of the temples which are licensed under CC, so I've not really finished it.  Perhaps someone more ambitious could figure out how to scrape those, or something.