This is a guest post from reader Trae Blain. You can visit his site at traeblain.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post, just head on over to the contact page.

For the past couple weeks I’ve been trying out a news lifestreaming service called Nebul.us (currently in private beta).  Nebul.us offering is an easy way to share online content with friends based on your browsing history. By tracking your online activity, Nebul.us  will show your friends the information you single out and provides a very simple hub for posting information.

Behind Nebul.us is a Firefox plugin (Safari and Internet Explorer plugins coming soon) that tracks your online activity. The plugin will share this information with Nebul.us where then you can move into Nebul.us and choose which of these you’d like to make public. Yeah, that’s right. It logs all your browsing history and delivers it to Nebul.us…more on that later. Another way of sharing is setting up sites for Nebul.us to monitor like Last.fm, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, RSS, etc.

The Skinny

Nebul.us is beautiful. It displays the content you share in a beautiful graphical “cloud”. Information is shown around a central piece with status updates, videos, articles, etc. shown around it. Nebul.us separates the categories to share into 5 categories: Articles, Music, Photos, Updates, and Videos. The cloud allows friends a simple and elegant way to view what other people are sharing by placing each item in easily identifiable flags and usage bars. The flags identify simple updates (status updates, specifically shared articles, etc.) and the bars show length of time. Whether it is length of time spent on a specific website or length of a song.

image courtesy of useallfive.com *

Nebul.us is an interesting concept. Sort of a merge between a Wakoopa for websites and Pownce for sharing. It can monitor your web usage and share that information if you let it. And it makes sharing updates, videos, links, and music very easy.

Wait, it Monitors What?

Like I said, the Nebul.us shoots your everywhere you browse to the Nebul.us private history. This isn’t automatically shared, but it is visible. I found some items like my bank site usage, email usage, and my cable provider’s account. This is a bit scary out of the box. Another key thing is that in my testing I found that Nebul.us still logs all the sites I visited while using Firefox’s Private Browsing. This I think is unacceptable from the plugin, or should be identified as such out of the box.

You can setup blocked sites for Nebul.us. Going into the settings and telling the plugin which sites to ignore is doable, but it requires the user to be proactive in blocking. Making sites trusted is also required in the settings, which is how it should be. I don’t know how Nebul.us can correct for these issues moving forward, but it is a bit complicated to handle. I may be in the minority these days when it comes to privacy, but this steps a little beyond my comfort zone.

I like Nebul.us in concept, but I have to admit I can’t see myself using it regularly. I also have a feeling it will not receive wide usage due to the fact that it doesn’t just work out of the box. I’ve never been a big fan of sites that require browser plugins. StumbleUpon was the one site that proved browser plugin sites could work, but times have changed and so has StumbleUpon (which has a toolbar that don’t require a browser plugin anymore). And in this age of Twitter, things as complicated as installing a plugin, setting up trusted sites, remembering all of your blocked sites, then handling the sharing; I cannot see Nebul.us gaining much traction. Which is a shame because like I said it’s beautiful and fun to look at. If I were to give any advice to Nebul.us it’d be, drop the plugin and expand your monitored site selection. Then use a bookmarklet for easy sharing beyond what’s monitored. At the very least, drop the browser history monitoring and have every site be blacklisted unless explicitly selected as trusted. (Ok, I’ll step off my soapbox now.)

I have 15 invites for anyone that wants to check it out. Let me know in the comments.

* image from useallfive.com because their image is better than anything I could screen grab

This is a guest post from reader Trae Blain. You can visit his site at traeblain.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post, just head on over to the contact page.

AOL has recently rolled out changes to their popular AIM instant messaging service. Utilizing the skills and knowledge from their acquisition of SocialThing, AIM has become much more useful. AOL’s approach is different from the other major internet titans lifestream integrations. Where Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have added lifestreams to user’s profiles; AOL has seamlessly integrated it into their most popular service. The effects are worth noting.

AIM’s lifestreaming integration is seen on two layers. A website that pulls all your friends activity from various services into an activity timeline, and also by placing that same stream into their latest AIM client (currently in beta).  In the simplest of terms, the website collects your friends activity and turns your AIM status message into a Twitter-like update. The My Updates section provides your lifestream from the supported products.

AIM’s service list is rather small right now, but based on the supported list the same SocialThing team worked out for Bebo, I would expect more soon. Currently AIM supports Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Delicious. Also in there is AIM itself. Various privacy settings allow you to limit the noise a bit by controlling who gets to see your lifestream. Key to this initiative is AOL’s application of the Lifestream to it’s AIM client. By placing the lifestream in it’s popular IM client, it simplifies the ability to follow other other people’s updates by using one nice program.

The biggest drawback to the service is it’s lack of integration with each supported service. It brings all those activities into one spot, which means if you are already an active AIM user you no longer have to have multiple programs up to follow people’s activity. Yet, the ability to update those services is not available. So when @krynsky posts the next best lifestreaming tool, I can see the link and follow it but I cannot reply to him or comment on that update. The lack of this feature really dampens the usefulness of the lifestream.I could easily see this feature be much like Facebook’s wall-post commenting system, but not yet I’m afraid.

I indicated in the start of the post that this is something worth noting. This is significant for two reasons. One, it tells all those AIM users (one of AOL most popular products and possibly still the most active instant messaging service) that AIM is still being developed and evolving. Two, this is one of the most logical steps in the evolution of lifestreaming and it’s great to see it happen.

Lifestreaming is more and more being used as a communications medium. The aggregation of your life’s events into one place is a way of communicating those events to friends, extended friends, and beyond. I’ve always thought that a lifestream is ripe for a service like Meebo (or other IM services) to jump into. Often times a published event/status/video/etc sparks conversation (a concept FriendFeed has harnessed very well) that would make for great instant chat room topic discussion. The merging of instant messaging/chat into the lifestream flow is an exciting thing to see.

This is a guest post from reader Trae Blain. You can visit his site at traeblain.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post, just head on over to the contact page.

Cliqset has been around for a while, but I have just recently stumbled across their service. The easiest way to describe Cliqset is that it’s much like Plaxo in that it wants to be your centralized profile. You can add all your contact info into Cliqset and you’re profile will be viewable to all or just your set of contacts which are also added to Cliqset. This ties you and your contacts information and web activity together into one site.

Cliqset enters the lifestreaming world by including all your various web content into your profile. See Example. The profile page is standard fair, as far as profile pages go, with your online content placed in a steady stream. The items are nicely grouped together so you don’t get a long stream of pictures when you decide to upload all your vacation pictures, usurping all your other activity.

The main feature that sets Cliqset apart is not its lifestream capabilities, but its platform that you can use to ensure all your social profiles are the same. This can help bring unity among all your social profiles. Also Cliqset provides you with a OpenID url that is the same as your profile url. This can further help in unifying your online identity. I have not been able to dive into the platform tool much.

Cliqset can aggregate from 30 social services including location based services like Brightkite and FireEagle.  Adding each service is very straight forward and simple. Most of the items simply ask for your username and many (as far as setting up your profile goes) don’t ask for any login credentials. Adding my Yahoo profile was the only item I had some difficulty getting setup.

Cliqset is a nice, clean profile site with lifestreaming capabilites. It supports many features that profile pages offered by Google and Yahoo do not provide. Cliqset can most closely resemble Plaxo in number of features for your online profile.

This is a guest post from reader Trae Blain. You can visit his site at traeblain.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post, just head on over to the contact page

Lately, with the release of new software and updated web services, I’ve seen a blurring of what defines a lifestream. This is not a bad thing, and it indicates the impact of lifestreams on one’s online experience and the direction the current web culture is taking. What does get confusing is the use of the term lifestream to cover many different uses, each not exactly similar to the other. But essentially these uses can fall into two categories: Lifestreaming and Socialstreaming (a term I’ve accepted, although different terms have been attributed to this).

I do not have a hard definition for Lifestreaming, but what I’ve come to understand defines lifestreaming—in the online sense—as thus: the collection of one’s activity on various services (i.e. online life),  often arranged by time, into one central location. This is seen due to lifestreaming services will take all (or most) of your online activity and place that activity into one spot. Visiting Lifestream Blog’s Create page you’ll find a host of services that do just that. If I could recommend a couple that can get you setup rapidly: Profilactic, Storytlr, and Iminta.

The other camp has a subtle difference, but this difference has a huge impact on what it means. The process I’m dubbing Socialstreaming is defined this way: the collection of other people’s activity on various services (i.e. online lives), often arranged by time, into one central location. As seen, the difference lies with the original sources being yourself or a gathering of this information from your social contacts. A simple way of looking at socialstreaming is the gathering of your contacts lifestreams into a easily viewable place.

The two thoughts are based in the same spirit, but the most obvious difference is that a lifestream is made to publish all your activity for the benefit of others, while a socialstream is primarily personal to you. You don’t necessarily want to publish all your friends activity for everyone else to see, it’s a bit redundant. I’d say a chief socialstreaming service right now is FriendFeed. I call FriendFeed a socialstreaming services with solid lifestreaming features. A more recent development in the socialstreaming field is the release of the Skimmer desktop client. Skimmer labels itself as a lifestreaming application, but actually grabs your social connection’s activity and blends it with your own. The fact that Skimmer is not built around publishing all the information it collects and is built for your benefit, places it solidly under the socialstreaming definition.

Things like these examples blur the line as to what a lifestream truly is. I believe that the aggregation of people’s lifestreams will ultimately overtake the popularity of the internet’s current craze: Twitter. I believe Facebook sees this trend as well with their latest site design. Lifestreams will become the faucet where people’s lives are released, and services like FriendFeed, Facebook, and others will be the piping that gathers this information and directs it specifically to you…your stream of lifestreams…your socialstream.

It’s just my opinion, do you agree?

This is a guest post from reader Trae Blain. You can visit his site at traeblain.com. If you are interested in writing a guest post, just head on over to the contact page

Puddle is a self hosted lifestreaming script created as a side project from mobile game developer, OrangePascal. Puddle is simple to setup with no need for a database and can get you quickly up and running with it’s easy to use interface. This script—being young—still has a few hurdles to get over, but it’s promising feature-set could lead to an excellent self-hosted lifestreaming solution.

Installation and Setup

Kicking off the testing of Puddle was a pleasure as I simply needed to upload the script and I was ready to start adding services. The readme suggested setting the directory’s permission to 777, but I didn’t feel comfortable with this so I left mine at 755 and it is working just fine. The service adding interface is simple but elegant with nice AJAX menus that are nicely categorized. Puddle supports 36 service including a wide range of service types.

Puddle treats each imported item more like blog posts, instead of highly condensed items like most services. Puddle also can be used as your blogging system as it has the ability to create posts with a nice TinyMCE editor. Treating all items in this manner allows for easy integration with Disqus commenting system, which the script natively supports. The sidebar is fully customizable with the built-in plugins or with HTML/Text modules.

Nice

The script has some nice features that are often overlooked in things like lifestream plugins for Wordpress. Chief among them is the importing and displaying some of the gathered data above and beyond just links. Services like Flickr and Vimeo have options for just importing your uploaded media or also including the “Liked” media. Tumblr imports the actual media posted instead of just a link to the original page. And Brightkite imports will display a small Google Map with pushpin identifying the location.

Not so Nice

As I said, this system is young. Although the setup was so simple and fun I was surprised when I had to add a cronjob to get the script to update from the services. Something so simple to run should offer a pseudo or simulated cron system in the backend to update the services on its own. Also, again due to it’s age, there’s not much documentation. I dove into a couple of the themes and although it doesn’t appear to be a difficult theming system, someone that doesn’t have much knowledge in php will feel a bit uncomfortable.

If you are looking for self-hosted solution for your lifestream, Puddle is a great start.  The script is hosted at Google Code and open sources so you can modify it to your hearts content.