Read this as I was finishing a work-week. And while my mind thinks often on the subject of mobile, sometimes, it takes really real stories of what’s being done to help me gather perspective. This was one of those. Here’s a snippet:

…She watched as I showed her how the application could download images, and how doctors could make annotations, and add dictations, and I explained how another doctor could open the application across the globe “While on vacation in France, perhaps.” and listen to the dictations and read the annotations. She stared at me in utter disbelief as I went through the images, and turned the application to landscape mode and zoomed in and out. I retold the story of how a retina problem could lead to blindness if not immediately treated, as her young assistant, who had now moved in for a closer look, stared at the iPhone screen…

Read the rest of The Closing Argument at the iPhone BioTech Blog.

Really, there’s not much more that I can say from this except to quote what an MMM partner once told me: technology is only relevant when it is personal. Let’s make sure that in all our use of mobile, that we are truly keeping God and our hearts in the right place.

Preparations for BibleTech 2010 Conference has recently been published and this one will be held in San Jose, California. Here are some of the particulars:

BibleTech explores the intersection of Bible study and technology. This two-day conference is designed for publishers, programmers, webmasters, educators, bloggers and anyone interested in using technology to improve Bible study. BibleTech 2010 is an opportunity to meet others who share your interests and hear from industry leaders.

This year’s conference will be occurring on March 26-27. Check out the BibleTech Conference website for more information concerning registration and costs.

If you are looking to be a presenter, the call for papers is now open. Get your topics in and make sure that they are solid, relevant, and something that sparks conversation. I can attest that a good topic keeps people talking.

A tech note, take many batteries for your mobile devices. There’s a lot of tech talk and you will be online and on social networks all the time.

Again, for more information, check out the BibleTech Conference website. Hope to see you there.

I think I started with something called a Velo by Philips. It was a little pocket pc, running a version of windows. It came with a very expensive modem which could connect at tiny speeds. But I loved it. I had two of those (they had quite a short lifespan) and an HP PDA of some sort. It enabled me to collect email when I wasn’t at home, to carry the odd document, and to keep a synched diary on the desktop.

Then came my first real ‘converged’ device: a treo600 running palmOS. It was my first experience of Palm, and I can understand the love for it. I was bowled over by what it could do – Bible, book reader, music player, diary, email, I had a programme that told me what the lectionary was and somewhere to make notes on thoughts if I had a moment to spare somewhere. I had programmes for prayer and a whole host of things. I joined a community (My Treo.net) who were all as excited as I was, got to know some of the developers, and even spent a bit of time as a moderator there. I still have the T shirt (literally!) Sadly, my Treo died. The Treo600 didn’t have a removable battery, so when the battery stopped holding charge out of sheer over-use, it was time to give it a decent burial. I deeply regretted that – and would never buy a device without a replaceable battery as a result.

The Treo died at an inconvenient moment, leaving me little choice but to rush into the nearest orange store and get a phone, quick. I walked out with a Sony Ericsson k750i. Compared with the Treo, it was a helpless creature. I managed to squeeze a bible on to it (using java) and my shopping list (Smart Shopper). I could sync my diary with outlook, but that tended to goof, so I used a little programme called My Sony Ericsson, from the people at Kyocera.

What I DID gain from it was a decent camera. The k750i boasted a 2mp camera – which for a phone was quite some beast at the time. And it was a cracking little camera. I found myself taking photos in the oddest places. Living in Cornwall, it was not at all unknown for me to pull up the car, leap out and grab a photo. I took to posting them on my blog. I guess that’s the nearest I got to a truly ‘theological’ use of the device. I live in a glorious part of the creation, and I have no-one with whom to share the beauty around me. By always carrying a decent camera phone, I can share the loveliness with friends online. That’s important to me: the thankfulness I feel is seldom put into words, but think people realise why I keep taking photos. And people seem to follow my blog for the pics among other things, because it makes them smile.

This is a reader submitted post; well, more like a person I asked about their experience with mobile devices and this was the result. Part one anyways. Stay tuned for part two. To submit your story, use the Contact page.

Think Smaller (via @compassion thru @ClydeTaber and #VSN)

Since the Visual Story Network Summit last month, I’ve had a number of happenings around things related to MMM and outside ministry interests. So much so, that I’ve had to restart some prayers towards increasing my time and attention towards MMM and these other pieces.

Until a decision is made though, there are a few notes about the Visual Story Network that I’d like to share in the hopes that you, or those whom you live/minister with who are involved in the visual arts would have an additional outlet towards life and ministry.

The first item of note is that there are several initiatives that have come out of the September summit. These have galvanized into virtual groups that have met a few times already in many cases. These groups are all designed around the idea that media platforms are moving from just preaching and printing platforms, to a platform that also portrays Christ. Check out the Groups section of VSN and read some about what is going on.

Another item – more along the mobile angle – is that of the investigation of what a mobile media ministry/platform looks like. I sat in on half of a call with a few other folks who are interested in this, and there’s a group started and notes from that call. Check it out and get involved if you are interested in this. One thing that I can say from just sitting in on the call is that its very important that MMM does a better job of presenting examples of what has been and will be working in this area. Its a huge world of mobile to cover.

Lastly, I want to remind you to stay tuned to VSN as next year’s summit seems as if it will be much deeper and bigger than this year’s. I’ve just got a feeling that the next one isn’t one to be missed and will further encourage, equip, and empower a lot of missions and missionaries, local and global, for Christ. And who knows, maybe more folks will be presenting towards the effect of mobile 😉

The image keeps changing. Wonder if they are going to break the mobile market wide open?

I can’t tell you how long I’ve been looking for a means to do this, but it seems that I might have finally found a way to enable you – the reader – to keep up with MMM without using an RSS reader.

Check out this beta service called Pingie. Pingie is basically a service that turns RSS feeds into SMS messages (read more). No app needed, and definitely painless to setup. You simply create a profile and then that’s it. The service also supports plenty of mobile web and SMS-based commands to get some better use/admin out of the service.

Currently, Pingie supports US carriers only (possibly Canada, the website wasn’t clear on this). I’d recommend Google Lab’s SMS Channels for those in India and supported countries as an alternative to Pingie. For either, you’d need to have an account, so do be sure to read all of the terms of service, and make sure that your SMS plan fits this kind of use

For more information about Pingie, check out their website. Here’s the direct link to add MMM to Pingie or you can add your mobile number in below to get the SMS updates.

By the way, if you know of other RSS to SMS services, do list those in the comments below. We’d be happy to post about them, or just create a massive connect page for these items 🙂

MMM was recently asked about the availability of the Bible widget we spoke about some time back. Unfortunately, this was merely an idea, not a real-deal application.

That being said, this is a really good idea, and something that I think most folks should be able to use easily. Considering also that many mobile widget platforms are simplyHTML/CSS/JS components, this could potentially be developed very quickly. The sticky is making it compatible with the various APIs of every bible reader out there. That part would be hard, but could ultmately be most valuable.

How valuable? As a developer or publisher think of it like this: the API allows a person to taste your offerings for free. But to dive deeper, if you will, to gain that deeper integration, you can use that widget as a window to your other, deeper offerings. While many might not bite on that, those that do will be lasting customers. Something to think about. So, to those looking for ways to penetrate the mobile market, here’s another door. Keep it open source and you gain something even more for short and long-term efforts.

Just in case you’ve missed the posting over at Twitter, the chatter about developing an open source Bible reader for the newly announced Nokia N900 has started back up. Good comments in there, as well as some developers talking about what it would take to do so. Join the discussion, and maybe even assist in the effort.

And by the way of this discussion, if anyone knows of any open source (free or low-cost) multi-lingual dictionaries, please point out a few in the comments. There’s a need for this for this Bible effort and other ministry efforts going on currently. Thanks in advance.