Newsroom on the Sidebar

While poking around the LDS Newsroom yesterday I discovered they now have an RSS feed, which I promptly loaded into my right sidebar (and anyone else can easily do so too). Any other nifty features that any readers have stumbled on lately at LDS.org or at the Newsroom? And as long as I'm being experimental, I'm going to try embedding (love that term) one of the Newsroom videos, an excerpt from Elder Ballard's "New Media" talk at BYU-H a few months ago:

Here's the same video segment, pulled off of YouTube:

Which works better, the Newsroom feed or the YouTube feed?

Comments

[Dave]

Alright, questions for readers: Do all embedded videos from the Newsroom site show a "big black box"? On the other hand, the Newsroom feed plays more smoothly than the YouTube feed and, being smaller, uses less bandwidth.

[Kim Siever]

Thanks for the note.

When I subscribed to the feed, I had a bunch of duplicate stories. Did you notice that when importing it to your sidebar?

[John Mansfield]

I'm reading this at work where Youtube is blocked, so the LDS Newsroom video has an advantage in this situation. On the other hand, turning on sound in this environment would be disruptive, so I didn't get a lot out of the Newsroom video either.

The visuals do remind me of a bit from that Bill and Ted movie about the teenage boys doing a history report; my favorite part of the movie was the talks by the other students as they were waiting for Bill and Ted to show up. In particular, there was the football player who had no clue about his topic ("What would people from the past think about our world today?"). So he fumbled about at the podium: "Thing's are the same. But they're different. And there are computers."

[jock]

San Dimas High School Football rules!!!

[Ann]

My favorite thingamajig at LDS.org is the music section. The hymnal and the children's songbook are online. Both have an interactive player, which lets you pick out specific parts to play. You can also modify the tempo and the key, and then print out the modified version. You can download MP3's and print the music.

I used to be the ward chorister, and I liked to practice the night before, in case something was a little weird (like the meter change in "The Day Dawn is Breaking"). I don't play, so the music section was the perfect tool.