Some years back I wrote my first short story. One of the hallmarks of that story was how I was able to use a combination of email and social networks (then, just a forum) to attain readership and feedback on it as it was being created. The experience was great, but I had always wondered what else could be done given the various web and mobile technologies that I’ll play with. And further, how could reading a story on a mobile be… mobile?

In a recent post at All About Symbian, I was introduced to a project called Cellstories. From their website:

CellStories was conceived and built by Daniel Sinker, who was the founding editor of Punk Planet magazine in another life. Thankfully, the death of print meant discovering something much more valuable: mobile publishing. But that previous life also meant that he met a great number of authors, publishers, and other Really Interesting People, many of whom were kind enough to supply some of the great pieces you’ve read

Read more about Cellstories and their innovative approach to reading, publishing, and networking a different kind of story.

Cellstories excites me for several reasons, but probably the most ticking one is how it forces the mobile interaction, and then builds out the experience of reading and sharing content from that point. In a lot of respects, its a nod to a very positive niche of publishing already happening in places such as Japan – where it is not uncommon to both read and compose/publish for mobile reading experiences.

So, in light of what we understand about the future of publishing, could this kind of delivery method, and even engagement experience rekindle some of the approaches to reading certain types of Biblical content? Could a digital printing method like this be a bridge in terms of easing some types of users into digital reading experiences from print ones (Amazon seems to be thinking in this manner)? Could it even change the relationship between publishers and authors?

Or, could this be a method used in mobile ministry engagements where we are training communities to tell the Gospel story using the narrative context of their own cultures – where mobile devices play the role of the ink and canvas? From an educational standpoint, could the Cellstory format be approachable towards teaching those writing and composition skills that are often debated for mobile-enabled users these days?

And the implications of Cellstories is clear: mobile reading is being approached similar to mobile gaming – instead of making experiences that are immersive, we look for the shorter experiences that convey some type of information in a chunk that is appropriate for less intense moments (such as waiting in line, sitting for a few minutes in a coffee shop/bathroom, etc.).

Personally speaking, I like this. And have Cellstories bookmarked on my mobile devices as the reading is certainly engaging. What say you?

We talked last week about how in making an application that goes alongside MMM that it would have to be something that adds value to how you interact with the vision and content of this site, and we’ve got a new application that will help you do just that.

The new MMM Mobile App was created with Nokia’s Ovi App Wizard and includes the RSS feed of the site, in addition to linking to our social streams on Google Buzz and Twitter.

This is a free application and a great way to get a piece of MMM on the road with you if you are using a Nokia Symbian device.

*Our other contributor, Brett, is actually looking into doing a similar (but better) app for other mobile platforms. Look forward to those posts and how that will unfold from this endeavor.

Download the free MMM Mobile App and tell your friends about it. The story of what happens in this mobile lens is also crafted by you now 🙂

[Press Release: Logos] Announcing BibleTech 2011!

We are gearing up for BibleTech 2011, which will be held in Seattle, WA, March 25–26. This will be our fourth annual conference focusing on the many ways technology is affecting and being affected by how we translate, interpret, communicate and transmit the Scriptures. BibleTech isn’t just a great opportunity to hear speakers address many of the tech savvy issues that are important to you, but also a chance to interact and network with some of the leaders in their fields and others who share your interests. Stories abound of the working relationships and friendships that BibleTech has spawned.

Calling All Presenters!

We are putting out a call for programmers, publishers, tagging experts, information/library scientists, technologists, thought leaders, design gurus, information architects, webmasters, or anyone working at the intersection of the Bible and technology to lead conference sessions and round-table discussions! It is as easy as filling out the participation form.

We get a lot of entries and we encourage you to be as descriptive as possible when sharing your ideas for topics and content. And, if you have multiple ideas for sessions, feel free to fill out multiple entries.

We will close the call for participation on November 30 so that we can choose the best session speakers for next year. Please have your entry in by then!

Get the latest information about BibleTech 2011

Come “like” us on Facebook and get the latest BibleTech information right in your news feed. You can also follow us on Twitter (@BibleTechConf).

Registration

Register today for $159.95 and guarantee that you don’t miss out on BibleTech 2011!

For more information, including viewing the presenters and their presentations from previous events, visit the Bible Tech Conference website. See you there.

MMM Preview

As a preview of what to expect, here are MMM’s presentations from the last two BibleTech Conferences:

• 2009 BibleTech Presentation: Speaker Abstract and Audio | Outline (HTML)
• 2010 BibleTech Presentations: Mobile in the Next 10 Years (5 Areas Where Mobile and Faith Intersect) | Mobile’s Christ-Led Encounters

Last night, I attended a Bible study where the pastor/teacher had his congregation study the text beforehand, and then come to the study being able to respond with cross-referenced verses to the primary passage. Really excellent seeing the engagement of the entire community to study the text and be able to respond intelligently to some of the questions.

However, there was some issue with cross-referencing while respecting cultural or literal context with some of the additional Scriptures. And while that’s certainly something worth finding out if it is something addressed for that kind of study, it got me thinking about the structure of Bible applications and how switching the primary interaction.

Since the dawn of digital Bibles, the emphasis has been on reading and seeking. We have a library of Bibles and commentaries, but the start of anything that we do is with the text. This works out for many types of interactions, as in many cases, the place of a mobile device is usually within a context where you are looking up a passage or a bookmarked entry.

But, what if we turned that model around a bit. What if the Bible application only stored our notes, dictionaries, and commentaries? What if that same application was intelligent enough to stitch our notes and the Scripture references that we used to online Bible services such as a YouVersion or Biblia? And it would also be able to – by a metadata driven index – be able to link our notes to similar phrases and indices within those dictionaries and commentaries? What would that do for a study like the one that I described able, where the point is to make the connections within Scripture to common concepts, while forcing the reader to literally meditate on the Scripture to know that those threads exist?

Example and Description

Proverbs 28:9
– Note(s): is the position of your life and heart in right relation to God and His instructions
– (XR) Isaiah 1:15 (hands full of blood) – JH Commentary, MH Commentary – 50% Relevant to Source Scripture (History of Isaiah book, book #2…)
– (XR) John 9:31 (God doesn’t hear sinners) – MH Commentary, JMA Commentary – debatable relevance because of context of the speaker and the lesson that was being taught
– Search for more (XR)

So, here we have a person that’s got a source piece of text, and a note attached to it. The note is scanned for all possible search matches (word, phrase, etc.) and the next button asks if the user wants to search all available library material (local and connected dictionaries, commentaries, Wikipedia, etc.) for cross-references (XR). After the search is completed, the user taps on the verse and gets what was cross-referenced (the word or phrase) and those associated resources which speak more on that specific XR. It then gives a percentage of the relevance of that XR to the note and primary Scripture based on some algorithm that weighs the primary Scripture, then the associated resource, then the user’s note content.

Thinking about it like this, the person is essentially having a near-real-time query of every statement they make in their notes run up against all available materials, without storing the Biblical text itself on the device. Ideally, one would use a API call in this app to link the Scripture to whatever Bible of choice the user wants – but this app keeps the focus on the notes and the ability of the user to constantly make connections which have higher relevance ratings.

Potential Benefits
There are several good things which would then come from this: we’d have people who become used to search as a means to relate applicable concepts to literal Scripture and already existing commentary (filling a gap where education might not be attainable); we’d have people who are made more aware (or at least more quickly aware) of their inconsistencies in reading or understanding Scripture against already established memes; it will expose people to the wealth of content that folks like Logos have turned digital in an amazing amount of time; and it would further push this idea of getting content in the open where publishers can better see who digests it, possibly making for them another means to make good where print/legacy study interactions might be failing because of the switch to digital content streams.

I will admit, this is about as rough as ideas get here; but something that would be worth exploring by a developer/publisher who is looking to sow some kind of application into the digital ether, but wants to do something that’s not as “me-too” as the hundreds of Bible apps and reading plans already available.

Your Comments
So let’s hear from you. If you are a pastor/teacher, would this kind of application be a help to you personally or for a Bible study such as what’s described above? If you are a developer, what are some of the good points of this idea? What are some of the issues you can see? Is anything in this idea impossible, or improbable? Let’s discuss 🙂

In the latest issue of The International Journal of Frontier Missions, there’s a look at the use of and the impacts towards ministry engagements in the mission field in the article The Little Phone that Could: Mobile-Empowered Ministry. Here’s a snippet:

…After the commemorative dinner in the morning tent, Abu Mohammed took the role of emcee for the evening, regaling us with tales of his hunting exploits and the skills he had used to track down and kill his prey. I was amazed when he produced a mobile phone from his pocket and pulled up a video shown him brandishing his scoped hunting rifle as he posed next to various animals he had bagged. Wow! Not only had this forty-something “man’s man” embodying the ideas of his people taken his video clips and assembled them into an impressive show on his phone, but he had even added a popular local tune in the background. Yes, I had known that the mobile phone was making tremendous inroads among these people, but this meshing of all that was truly and agelessly representative of their culture with the latest and greatest of the 21^st century took my breath away!

Read the rest of The Little Phone that Could: Mobile-Empowered Ministry (PDF), and the rest of the July-August issue at International Journal of Frontier Missions. This item is listed with other Mobile Ministry Case Studies and Reports.

~ Via Visual Story Network, Mobile Media Ministry working group

I received this in via email recently, and it was just too appropriate to not share:

Apply your heart to instruction, and your ears to words of knowledge. (Proverbs 23:12)

There’s An “App” For That:

Remember when phones were for making phone calls? With the advent of the smart phone, what was once a way to talk to someone has become a storehouse of data: Add cell-phone applications (computer programs) to that, and you can read sports reports, play games, plan trips, find an apartment-or any of well over 100,000 other tasks available with an “app.”

That’s pretty amazing, but the “apps” for phones are nothing compared with the kind of “apps” Scripture gives us. The “applications” of the Bible are direct notes from God telling us how to apply the truth of His Word to all of life.

Take Philippians 3, for in instance: The unity app (2:2), the humility app (2:3), the no-grumbling app (2: 14), the shine-as-lights app (2: 15). Or look at the apps of Ephesians 5: The imitate-God app (5:1), the walk-in-love app (5:2), the purity app (5:3), the tongue app (5:4). And the book of Proverbs? It’s teeming with applications.

You don’t have to wait for someone to offer these on the Internet. Just open the Bible and see the hundreds of ways to apply Scripture in your life. Got a question about the Christian life? Search the Bible. The answers are there, waiting to be discovered.

Attributed to Dave Branon (Our Daily Bread)

Wisdom for the Journey
The Bible has treasures of wisdom for you -read it and apply it!

This past weekend, I have put MMM on a bit of an evaluation. Asking questions around what is valuable about the content and service offerings, what has been done well and what has not. One of those things tat I wish had/has been done better is this idea of taking the centralized content approach away from MMM. If you will, not producing the content for it to live here, but for it to live anywhere and be aggregated here.

One proposal in doing is was to use Google Wave. And this was met with some interesting comments and notes. Another proposal that has returned is the idea of having a MMM application that would work in concert with a mashup RSS feed to broker content and activity.

Now, the idea of an app is a popular one. Even in thought about this it was asked (again) why MMM doesn’t have an app. The answer is simple, what is the value of an app for a magazine that sells strategy not a virtual or otherwise physical product? This is something that we would have to be able to answer here, but also the persons who’d want the app would too. If it were just an aggregated RSS feed of articles and Twitter, we could easily point you to a site that would help you do this yourself.

So what is the value of an app? Is it to get certain types of interactions that you cannot get otherwise? Is the idea of making an app out of MMM’s content something that would even even appeal to most of you, if so, why?

Don’t get me wrong, there is a mound of attention that having an app would bring which is good. But, doing it just to do it makes no sense (common or spiritual). Going down this path again of detaching content from a single author and site, this is one of many ways which could more easily point out it’s value and increase the visibility of it’s relevance. At least I think and hope so.

*By the way, you can download the very first MMM application for Nokia devices here. A new one is soon to come, with multiple platform support and a few other features. We look forward to your opinions about this initial attempt, and what your thoughts can be towards an app.

Was pointed to this look at some of the implications of passing Scriptures phone to phone in (many) regional contexts. Here’s a snippet of what you will find from this paper by Richard Margetts:

This article discusses some of the implications of mobile phone technology for encouraging the sharing of audio/video Scripture products. Questions raised include:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. What are the best Scripture products for the phone?
3. How will people get their first copy of the media files which they can then share with their friends?
4. Are there any copyright issues involved?
5. How could mobile phone technology become an obstacle to people engaging seriously with God’s Word?
6. What are the most positive aspects of using mobile phones for Scripture distribution?

Explore these questions and more by downloading and reading the PDF report Betewen Friends: Passing Scriptures Phone to Phone. From Scripture Engagement via Visual Story Network

For one reason or another, I have not been as aggressive in terms of finding and/repurposing mobile tech to people who not just have a need for access, but also a need to learn some tech skills. I will admit, part of the issue is certainly linked to current financial difficulties, but a more signifiant aspect of this is linked to motivations.

Now, I can clearly remember most of the people that have received something from MMM. From students, to parents, to missionaries, it is something neat to see and at the same time the kind of change that effects the ground-level needs of communities (which is one of the reasons MMM is designed for teaching and training over building products).

I think that is why this tweet about tech-skills enablement that is happening in San Francisco is pretty neat. Not only is it the case that generations of users are getting the skills, but that their success in the program merits them a physical computer. At a teen center that I used to work at, we did a similar program, and had mixed results. Still, it made for an accessible and cleaner way for companies to relieve themselves of older tech while enabling communities to grow along with the times.

Do you do this with your old tech, or, is the hardware likely to stay in a closet or drawer while your skills stay for you to hone and others to receive from?

In areas where connectivity is more of a luxury but there is still a need for distribution, innovating around various distribution methods is key to taking advantage of evangelistic opportunities. The following contributed post talks about one method using kiosks and some of the successes blossoming with this approach.

Church Lobby Kiosk, Christian Outreach Kiosk, World Religions Kiosk

Church Lobby Kiosk

The Church Lobby Kiosk is the key to reaching the world with God’s word using kiosk evangelism. It serves the local church by delivering sermons and music as people leave a service. It also trains a new generation of SD-card evangelists and creates awareness regarding the unprecedented possibilities of using touch-screen kiosks to distribute Christian content to the billions of people that own cell phones but do not have toilets.

Suggested Contents:

• Today’s Message (Available within 3 minutes of being recorded)
• Message Archive
• Church Activity Videos
• Audio Bibles
• Evangelistic Movies
• Gospel Messages
• Christian Music
• SD Card Evangelism Training Videos and Materials
• Kiosk Evangelism Awareness Materials
• Other

Christian Outreach Kiosk

Each Christian Outreach Kiosk is sponsored by an organization intent on making the knowledge of God available to specific people around the world. Contents can be custom tailored to the desires of the sponsoring agency.

Suggested Contents:

• Audio Bibles
• Evangelistic Movies
• Gospel Messages
• Christian Music
• Other

World Religions Kiosk

The World Religions Kiosk is a software service available to the thousands of companies around the world that use digital signage to display paid advertising. These signage companies own and support the hardware and manage their own advertising sales efforts. Since they already have digital signs in airports and bus stations around the world, they are positioned to rapidly deploy thousands of World Religion Kiosks.

Most digital signs only offer information. The World Religions Kiosk offers downloads of the world’s bibles and sacred text in audio format, sacred music, messages and sacred videos. As the file is being downloaded, paid advertising is displayed and watched by people receiving content. The high international interest in spiritual information attracts viewers. The fact that the viewers are going to be watching the screen to discover when their file transfer is complete makes the ad space on these kiosks significantly more valuable than similar ad space on non-interactive digital signs.

Suggested Contents (Content is presented from world religion sources and includes but is not limited to):

• Audio Bibles
• Sacred Movies
• Sacred Messages
• Sacred Music
• Other

For more information visit Kiosk Evangelism to learn about three kiosk configurations designed to distribute Christian content onto cell phone micro-SD cards. These 42”LCD touch-screen PC kiosks will be found in Churches, Airports, Railroad Station and Bus stations around the world.