photo by Joi Ito

Yesterday I was listening to the latest TWIT podcast when guest Cory Doctorow started discussing a current project he began working on to annotate and illuminate his creative process while authoring a new book. He does this by taking incremental digital snapshots of his working book file and pulling in other data files at that same moment in time.

Here’s details from his post

Enter Flashbake. Every 15 minutes, Flashbake looks at any files that you ask it to check (I have it looking at all my fiction-in-progress, my todo list, my file of useful bits of information, and the completed electronic versions of my recent books), and records any changes made since the last check, annotating them with the current timezone on the system-clock, the weather in that timezone as fetched from Google, and the last three headlines with your by-line under them in your blog’s RSS feed (I’ve been characterizing this as “Where am I, what’s it like there, and what am I thinking about?”). It also records your computer’s uptime. For a future version, I think it’d be fun to have the most recent three songs played by your music player. The effect of this is to thoroughly — exhaustively — annotate the entire creative process, almost down to the keystroke level.

Flashbake, is the tool he is using which he created in collaboration with Thomas “cmdln” Gideon. It’s a set of Python scripts that check your files for changes (in this case his book text file) every 15 minutes, and checks in changes to a local git repository. Git is a fast growing version control program similar to Subversion. So every 15 minutes the new revision is recorded and along with it Timestamp, weather, recent blog posts, computer uptime, and recent songs listened to data is also pulled in.

This method of Lifestreaming takes the original concept, but wraps the data around a specific context (in this case the book authoring process) as opposed to just standard aggregation. I find this to be a pretty interesting development in the evolution of Lifestreaming. I recently wrote about Storytlr which also allows you to take portions of your Lifestreaming data to curate a story that revolves around an event and could include multiple contributors.

I could see people in other creative areas take Cory’s methodology and find other applicable tools and data sets to provide their own custom contextual Lifestream. Some hypothetical examples could be:

• A graphic designer saving 15 minute snapshots of their PSD and pulling in data such as colors palletes, shapes & filters used, music tracks listened to, recent Flickr photos viewed, current mood, recent design sites visited.
• A developer saving 15 minute snapshots of their CODE pulling in data such as, Task manager resources, caffeine intake, current blood pressure, recent IRC discussion logs, Desktop image snapshots.

Those are just two quick (and possibly goofy) ideas but by expanding a Lifestream to incorporating local machine data beyond simply using 3rd party web services you can open up a whole new world of archiving your Life.

I find the idea of associating contextual and local data to Lifestreaming interesting and do think it could provide us with much more insight into our creative processes and even other areas we define. This could be an interesting experiment to conduct if appropriate tools are created to accomplish it.

You can hear Cory talking about it at around 50:10 into the Twit podcast. You can also read his full post over at his site here.

Today AOL owned Bebo social networking service released their initial implementation of Lifestreaming features to the service. This functionality was brought in after AOL’s purchase of Lifestreaming service SocialThing and I’m sure also based on features created for their buddyupdates service. Several sites have covered the news portion of the annoncement (links below) but I’m here to provide you with details of what’s actually under the hood. Since I wasn’t a Bebo user, I thought I’d provide a first hand look at these new features for you.

Getting Started

Upon visiting the site I went to create a new account and filled in all the standard information needed. After that I headed straight to the new Lifestreaming functionality. The steps to create your Lifestream and view it aren’t totally intuitive and took a minute to find from the profile page so I’ve added the screenshot below with steps to take to help you create one.

• Step 1 shows where you need to navigate to edit your Lifestream
• Step 2 shows where you click to add services to your Lifestream
• Step 3 shows where you have to convert to the new profile system which is required to view the “Lifestory” functionality everyone is reporting

The initial set of services supported is limited to Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, YouTube, and competing networks Facebook and MySpace. The Facebook integration simply brings over your status messages and photos. I added it for testing, but since I sync my Twitter status to Facebook and primarily use Flickr for photos I later removed it. Even after removing though, the items imported remained with no way to delete them. The MySpace integration only brings over blog posts.

The Lifestory feature is supposed to be a timeline based Lifestream similar to the current crop of services like dipity, Allofme, thismoment & Lifeblob. It’s design and function is nice, but the problem is that it’s limited to actions on the Bebo network and doesn’t incorporate your data from the services you import. You can manually add an item with photo and link along with a date to your Lifestory, but this is rudamentary compared to other services in this space. I think they should have waited for Lifestreaming support before releasing as the current version is lacking.

Sharing your Lifestream

By default your profile (and Lifestream) will be private. You need to make your profile public which will then provide a url based on your username which you can then share. First off I didn’t like the automated username of MarkK316 which Bebo automatically assigned to me. To change it I navigated to the Settings->My Account and under Account Details I clicked on Change Username. After that you go to Settings->Privacy and change the radio button under Profile viewable by my friends only to everyone. Then go back to your profile page and you will see the URL of your profile listed under your profile picture. Mine is bebo.com/Krynsky

Bebo vs. Facebook

We knew Bebo was working on adding a richer Lifestream experience and while they have taken a different approach by making it prominent as opposed to Facebook who buries theirs, the experience appears to be cobbled together by various different teams which makes for a disjointed experience. Also, the current support of services and features is a little weak. Hopefully they will add more services and gradually refine the functionality because it’s currently a little light and not compelling enough for users to switch. Only time will tell.

News of Bebo’s Lifestreaming announcement elsewhere

• ReadWriteWeb - Bebo Now Emphasizes Lifestreaming – Updates Profile Pages
• BoomTown - AOL Socializes Even More With New Lifestream
• Mashable - Bebo Wants to Be Your Social Aggregator
• TechCrunch - Bebo Zeroes In On Lifestreaming For The Masses; Gets Massive Bump From AIM Profiles
• VentureBeat - AOL takes one part Bebo, one part AIM, wants to create central lifestreaming service

I was recently contacted by Jon Paul Davies about a new open source Lifestreaming app called AmpliFeeder which he’s working on. He’s a longtime reader of the site and was nice enough to provide me with an early look at it.

First off it will initially be a downloadable app which you will need to install on your own server. Also, the backend is written in ASP.NET with the front end being AJAX/Javascript. The backend really only makes up about 10% of the code and can be easily ported. In fact, he plans on also releasing a Ruby on Rails and Google App Engine versions as well, and feels ports to other languages shouldn’t be very difficult. Before you get too worried, there will also be a hosted version for those that don’t have the option of a server based install.

(click for full size)

I’ve been testing AmpliFeeder for a few days and really like what I see so far. There are still quite a few refinements to be done and I have been providing Jon with feedback but he seems eager to take care of all issues.

There is currently support to import data from 16 services as well as adding multiple RSS feeds. Below are shots of my Lifestream using some of the 9 themes that are currently available. Changing themes is as simple as going to your settings menu and choosing a new one from the dropdown.

(click thumbnails for full size versions)

Some other features are the ability to auto generate tags from your Lifestream data using the Yahoo API service. This is the first time I’ve seen an app or service utilize this method of tagging and I must say it makes for some interesting, if not chaotically random results.

There is an internal commenting system, search engine, a place to add Google Analytics tracking, and some nice graphical reporting of your Lifestreaming activity. He will be implementing OpenID authentication for the commenting system after the initial release.

Another important function of the app is the portability of the data. This will allow for users of the hosted version to migrate to the self-hosted app at a later date if they choose to. Jon is still working out the details on this (still researching formats covered at dataportability.org) but presumably the data will be provided in a standard format that would probably allow use elsewhere as well.

AmpliFeeder also provides a clear JSON API between the front and back ends, making the front end functionality simple to wrap any other lifestream service, but with the benefit of the simple theming engine AmpliFeeder offers. The plan is to have FriendFeed and Activitystrea.ms wrappers very soon after launch. The Activitystrea.ms support is interesting as it’s the first open source Lifestreaming app I’ve seen offering this. It’s an exciting new project that I’m looking forward to.

(click for full size)

Jon also can’t stress enough how easy AmpliFeeder is to personalize. HTML and CSS skills are really all you need to create some wonderful designs. His primary focus has been design and ease of use. He has really put a great deal of effort into the visual presentation part of Lifestreaming and it shows.

There are no doubt some similarities to SweetCron and I’m sure comparisons will be drawn. I love what SweetCron did for Lifestreaming and there are some pretty nice uses out there. Unfortunately there hasn’t been much support from the open source community providing updates and new functionality. This is essential to any app to thrive and grow.

So now we have a new kid on the block to watch for. Between offering both a downloadable app (to come in many language flavors), having a hosted version available with data portability, and offering gorgeous themes, it’s a worthy new entrant. Time will tell whether it gets the support and community to distinguish it as a popular new Lifestreaming platform.

Jon tells me that he expects the software to be released within the next 30 days. He is the sole developer on this project and he’s hoping to find more contributors. You can reach Jon on Twitter at @jonpauldavies and monitor the site at www.amplifeeder.com as well as on Jon’s blog at www.j-dee.com

UPDATE: 2/22
Demo Video

AmpliFeeder from jon on Vimeo.

Jon has posted more information and several other screenshots on his site here.

So late last year I decided it was time for a site re-design. The blog turns 3 years 2 years old in March and I thought it was time so I spent the last month or so working on it.

I started the process looking for a base Wordpress theme I could use. This took a looong time which is kind of strange since all I wanted was a pretty minimal theme. Luckily I finally found what I wanted in the Blue White theme by AskGraphics. And even though it offered a design I really liked, I ended up editing almost all images and template files, as well as the stylesheet. The theme has a very rigid method for forcing several elements so I had to spend way more time in Photoshop than I would have liked to. I also inserted, moved around, and removed tons Wordpress functions from the templates. In the end, I’m pretty happy with the outcome.

Along with the design changes, I also wanted to make some content changes as well. I removed widgets for Google Friend connect and MyBlogLog and opted for the addition of the Twitter Remote widget. This provides a list of the latest Twitter users that visit the site. I wasn’t seeing much value in the addition of Google Connect and really only wanted one recent readers widget and currently feel Twitter users cast a wider net for inclusion on the site.

I also added a great little customizable Twitter search widget to display the latest tweets from anyone using the term “Lifestreaming”. So if you find something on the web and want to share it with people and appear on the sidebar, send a tweet.

I also had previously offered both the internal Wordpress search as well as the Lijit search service. I tweaked some of the settings for Lijit and opted to make it my only search mechanism. Lijit is in my mind the best search service on the web and offers functionality which resonates well with my content and readers.

In addition to the Lifestreaming Tweets widget, I also wanted to try and include any more helpful data I could aggregate on the site that is useful. I use many tools and methods to track Lifestreaming news and wanted to find ways to share that on the site. I’m a big fan of sites that do a good job of providing a comprehensive way to aggregate data. One such site that caught my eye recently is the Lifestreaming page over at Daymix.com

For now I have added an RSS feed to my Delicious Lifestream tag. I use this to track all the latest info so it’s probably the best way to get my real-time feed. I’m currently just using the included RSS widget provided by Wordpress but hope to add Simplepie soon which is a more powerful and flexible RSS parser as I add more feeds.

I also plan to revamp several of the other navigation pages as well. I really want to add many more services to the Define area of the site and make it more comprehensive. Many of the other pages need attention as well. But I grow tired of postponing getting this live, especially as it’s eating into what I should be doing…which is writing more posts. So here it is.

Anyways, I hope while not a story on Lifestraming, this has provided some valuable insight on my re-design and the process. I always find it very useful to hear others provide this type of information. I hope you find this useful in the spirit of sharing.

A few days ago I posted a preview of the current design on FriendFeed. I wanted to thank everyone who provided me with feedback. I really appreciate it. On that same note, please leave a comment or send me an email if there is something else you’d like to have me add to the site.

Reader Jason Carter gave me a heads up regarding the launch of a new Lifestreaming service coming from the author of the Wordpress Lifestream plugin. I’m a big fan of the plugin and am currently using it at krynsky.com for my personal Lifestream. David Cramer, the plugin’s author, made this announcement in a blog post.

Here’s a snip from the announcement:

We want to create a platform where this data is open to the user. A platform where they can use this data whenever, wherever, and however they want. Breaking down barriers between the data providers, and the user is not our only goal, but we also want to bring you a platform which goes above and beyond what the others offer. Allowing you to group and tweak your feeds (which are being relabled as sources) to your hearts desire.

He also goes on to discuss other features such as:

• Grouping different feed types
• extensions for vBulletin, Blogger, and MediaWiki
• Communication with the Wordpress plugin (presumably to connect to your personal blog)
• Ability to get flexible access to the raw data (also presumed by me based on explanation)
• Themeable homepage

He states that the service will slowly be opening up to users over the next month, and he hopes to have a beta launch within the next 3-6 months. If you’re interested in helping him during the testing phase you can contact him by email letting him know. You can read the full post regarding the announcement here. I’m looking forward to this launch as it comes from someone who has a good amount of knowledge having spent quite a bit of time learning about the intricacies of developing for a Lifestreaming platform.