Today I was reading the latest issue of Wired. In it is an interview with Salon Cofounder Scott Rosenberg about his new book Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters.

Rosenberg’s book researched the origins of blogging and goes on to discuss how it has become a phenomenon. Wired asks him several questions which include why did he need to write a book when a blog post would do which could have been followed with a rimshot. Other questions include whether he believes blogs have peaked, what impact Twitter has had, and what does he see the future of blogging becoming.

It is this last question that piqued my interest. Here’s the excerpt:

Wired: So what will blogging look like in 2019?

Rosenberg: The interesting outgrowth will be lifecasting. With traditional blogs, even if it’s easier to put stuff into a blog, you’re still selecting items. Lifecasting is an alternative where you’re pressing a button and recording everything.

Rosenberg uses the term Lifecasting which more often is used to describe broadcasting personal video but many people interchange the term Lifecasting and Lifestreaming and I’m gonna say he meant more than just video with his statement.

You can read the whole interview here.

I recently featured Yongfook’s Lifestream in the first Self Hosted Lifestream Gallery. Several people commented on how they really liked his unique design. Well guess what, pretty soon you will be able to host your own version just like his with the release of his new development project Sweetcron. Visiting the site provides the following details:

• Automatic Imports – Uploaded a photo to flickr? Bookmarked a new site? In a few minutes it will show up on your blog!
• Easily Customisable – Edit simple templates to change the way your Sweetcron Lifestream looks. Default Boxy But Good theme included!
• Self Hosted – Keep all your data safely on your own server and run Sweetcron via your own domain.
• 100% Free and Open Source – Oh and did I mention Sweetcron is fully extensible, too? Write your own php classes and slot them right in!

This all sounded great, but I still had some questions. So I decided to contact Yongfook to see if he could provide me with some details. Below are the results.

So it sounds like it’s going to be software for a self hosted solution right?

yep, think of it as running Plaxo Pulse or Tumblr on your own server. t continually imports stuff from other places (your flickr, diggs, Youtube favs etc) and also allows you to post directly. It’s what my blog uses.

What are the platform requirements (php, mysql, etc.)?

php5 and mysql5.

What services will be supported?

It’s extensible so that you can add whatever services you want.

Can you add services easily?

Yes, there is a simple GUI to add new services

Will stream data be cached locally? (i.e. create records in db for historical purposes)

Each item will be stored in the the database, allowing people to page through your lifestream and perform searches etc. There is also a GUI to manage and edit the data (i.e. take stuff offline that was imported but you don’t want to show in your lifestream)

How are new themes added / created?

I’m really not looking to replicate a traditional CMS with all this hot-swapping of “themes” etc. There are some simple controls to customise the layout of the site (e.g. grid-style like my site or “stream” style like FriendFeed) change colours and text, and ability to paste in your own CSS. Beyond that, you’ll have to edit the
template files directly.

Any plans to release plugins or modules to extend the functionality of existing platforms? (ie. Wordpress, Drupal)

Nope – people who want to use Wordpress should just use Wordpress! I’m sure there are lifestream plugins for that already.

Any other unique functionality that differentiates this from other Lifestreaming scripts or services out there?

It’s different from a service in that you can self-host and use it under your own domain. The benefit it has over other scripts? Ease of use and it certainly looks a lot nicer than the ones I’ve seen so far

So when can we get our hands on this code?

June

I want to thank Yongfook for taking the time to answer my questions. This is definitely software that you want to keep an eye out for and you can go to the Sweetcron site & sign up to be notified as soon as it becomes available.

In the meantime you can check out his current project release that is an application using Code Igniter & Tumblr API. Also, there is the Lifestream Module for Drupal by nickgs which was inspired by Yongfook