Starting this Sunday we will have available a digital program that people can access from their mobile devices. check it out at http://program.gatewaychurch.com (it’s a work in progress. Beta?)

We’re going to roll it out slowly this week and only mention it on Twitter to give the early adopters a first crack at it. For Easter weekend I would like to slap QR codes where people can scan them on their way into the auditorium and get kicked to the digital program.

Go check it out

We’ve launched a project to crowd source people’s stories based on the Psalms.

I would love for you to contribute to the project, head on over to www.onefifty.me to share your story.

We rolled a version of our live page for the Story conference in Chicago using 316 Networks technology for the streaming and the player.

Justin and Vince rolled up to Chicago and did some live streaming backstage….it was sweet.

The reality is that streaming to mobile devices is a no brainer with Ustream.tv. There is nothing to build or code, just plug and play. So there are not secret recipes here, I’ll just list out the work flow we have going and you can tweak it to your needs.

Here’s the signal flow:

Auditorium a/v feed > TriCaster Studio (switcher) > Canopus ADVC 110 > iMac > Flash Media Live Encoder > Ustream broadcast interface > Ustream Viewer

Our main feed for the live page of our internet campus gets encoded and fed to Limelight Networks from the TriCaster. There are two analogue outputs on the unit and we send one of them to the ADVC 110 which converts it to digital and interfaces with the iMac via firewire.

Flash Media Live Encoder is a free download and will recognize a camera or in this case the ADVC 110 hooked up via firewire. If you were going to livestream with one camera or come straight out of your IMAG switcher this would be the same setup you would use.

If you have livestreamed using FMLE with Livestream.com or other SMSP there is a slightly different workflow with Ustream in that you have to also use the Ustream broadcast control panel. To do this, you go into the advanced settings for your show and download the XML file for it. Then open this file in FMLE. This is nice because you don’t have to worry about getting long RTMP URLs correct. We tweak the settings to make it widescreen at this point. Once you’re set, fire off the feed and then launch the Ustream broadcast control panel. iPhone note: encode h.264 using AAC audio otherwise iPhones won’t work.

UPDATE: Here’s a screen shot of the FMLE settings we use. Except the source is the ADVC 110 rather than the iSight.

This is important, FMLE must be up and running before launching the Ustream controls (which you launch by clicking the ‘broadcast now’ button). At that point you click the button to make it live.

Like I said before this is counter intuitive if you have used FMLE before, because in most cases it’s all you need. I believe Ustream does this for monetization since the control panel contains ads.

That’s it on your end. Users need to install the Ustream Viewer app from the Android Market or the iPhone App Store. From there, they can search for your feed to watch it. Not the best workflow for discoverability …but it’s FREE!

Let us know how that works out for you.

Click on the graphic to see it full size.

Looking at the stats for May of 2010 you can see that iPhone represents the overwhelming majority of mobile phone connections to Gateway Church’s website st 6 to 1 over Android. Blackberry also ran at just below 200 visits. I’m interested to see how this changes over the rest of the year as Android continues to rise in adoption and sales.

I put this poll up over at ChurchCrunch.com to see what other churches are doing, I’ll break down the results in a day or so. Head over to ChurchCrunch, vote and leave a comment while you’re at it.