There is currently a contest that has been launched called 48 hours in Denmark calling out users to displaying their Lifestreaming skills using multiple services including YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and blogging.

Here’s a few details from the site

Basically we’re offering you a free trip to Denmark, with all expenses paid. Plane, hotel, food and fun. What’s the catch? We want you to show us how you use digital media when you travel as a tourist. We want you to tell us how you’ve researched the trip, how you use digital media while you are here, and how you share your experiences when you get home. Anything goes, as long as it has got something to do with digital media. We expect blogging, twittering, lifestreaming and flickring to come together – maybe even some services we haven’t heard about. (When discussing the project on your blog, twitter og vlog please use the tag #48hoursindk – this way we can track the chatter!)

They have a questions page and when asked about what the Lifestreaming examples should contain I found this answer provided

just show of how brilliant you are at using social media. Creative videos with good ideas are of course preferred

So who is behind this and why are they doing it?

It appears to have been an idea created by Danish consultants Seismonaut, for the Midtjysk Turisme, a Danish tourism agency. Their goal is to better understand how the tech savvy use digital media when travelling and what it means for the tourist industry.

This sounds like an interesting opportunity for someone who has become an avid Lifestreamer to show their skills and win a nice trip to boot. I’m sure many readers of this blog would make perfect candidates to win such an opportunity. So get out there and apply for this and if you do, please provide updates here in the comments during the process.  Once they narrow the entrants to 10, they will provide online voting to select the winners and readers here would surely love to help you win.

A new Air app for Lifestreaming was launched today called Skimmer. I’ve only played with it for a short while but it has a pretty diverse set of features. It can import your feeds from several services including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and blog.

It will import status updates and allow you to reply and post both to Twitter and Facebook separately. You can also filter all your imported feed data by keyword, service, or friends lists from the main interface. There are 3 different types of views available for the feed which offer some unique differences from other clients I have used.

There are also dedicated interfaces for your Flickr and YouTube accounts that are presented in a great looking interface. In fact the interface and presentation throughout is one of the things that makes this app standout. Besides allowing you to view your imported photos and videos, the app offers the ability to upload to Flickr and YouTube as well with a fancy drag and drop interface.

Probably the most unique and gorgeous feature as well is the profile mode which creates an awesome content mashup of your data that you can customize and even embed as a widget on your own blog. This feature alone is worth the price of admission. So as you can see the app is pretty different and offers a combination of features that I haven’t seen before.

I only skimmed the surface (pun intended) and I really need to dig in more. There is already quite a bit of coverage on the app which I have linked to below. I just wanted to provide some quick info. In my short time with the app I recommend you download now and check it out. Well worth it just to play with the different and wonderful interface.

Read about Skimmer elsewhere

• Skimmer brings your social streams to the desktop – Webware
• Skimmer: Visual Desktop App for Tracking Your Favorite Social Sites – Mashable
• Skimmer Brings a Sleek New Look to Social Browsing – ReadWriteWeb
• Fallon Launches ‘Life-streaming’ Tool – AdWeek

David Armano wrote a post titled 2009 Resolution: Aligning Your Lifestreams which talks about rethinking the usage of your Lifestreaming services and workflow. This is a great post and timely for me as I also realized recently that I needed to do the same.

Ever since I started Lifestreaming I’ve signed up for countless services to test and see how the data could be integrated into my Lifestream. In many cases there may have been services that offer very similar or duplicate services that I used. One example I can point to is for tracking what books I’m reading. I originally found Librarything for tracking and listing books I read and had built out my profile there. I have subsequently switched to similar service GoodReads which offers basically the same data for my Lifestream. I had been importing the data from both of these services into various Lifestreaming services which made no sense. So I migrated any unique data from Librarything to Goodreads and pruned it from my Lifestreaming services.

Another pair of services I use that seem to also provide duplicity are Twitpic and Flickr. I became a fan and user of Twitpic due to the ease at which you could post pictures using Twitter clients such as Twhirl and Tweetdeck. I even began using it more after getting an iPhone with support from several other Twitter apps. I have however started to think that splitting off my photos among 2 separate services is not a good idea. I really think I should solely use Flickr.

Why you ask? Well for one there is a good deal of additional meta data for photos that can’t be imported into Twitpic. Much of this is based on the exif data with the most important items being time/date taken as well as location (geo) information. With Flickr you also get to tap into all the other rich functionality like using titles, descriptions, sets, multiple image sizes, and getting detailed stats. I also use tagging quite a bit and although you can add tags in Twitpic I don’t want to have to duplicate those efforts on both services.

So the obvious barrier to migrate to Flickr is finding similar tools to those I’m currently using for Twitpic. I started using the free iPhone app Airme which uploads photos to Flickr and offers Twitter integration but I haven’t had luck using that feature. I then recently purchased the Mobile Fotos app which offers very rich Flickr functionality and albeit clumsy, offers Twitter integration as well. I then just need Flickr integration in Tweetdeck or other Twitter client and I’m set.

Comparison of data and functionality available on Flickr vs. Twitpic

So besides taking inventory of the services I use and either merging or eliminating them I also think it’s a good time to review your workflow. What do I mean by that? I’m referring to the set of rules used to publish and sync data amongst various services.

For example, most social network and media services all offer the ability to post a status update. In many cases you can also sync those from a single source. I currently only use Twitter for status (or microblog) updates and then sync those to Facebook. Conversely, I also am a very active user on FriendFeed and post many items on there. I have configured my profile to push only the posts I publish manually to be pushed to my Twitter account.

There are other services dedicated to syncing like ping.fm and hellotxt. There are also new tools in the works that will add more functionality than simply syncing adding the ability to filter data with logic before pushing to another service like Tarpipe.

In any case since it is the beginning of a new year I thought it would be a good idea to provide some examples here to encourage you to take a look at some possible ways to streamline your use of services as well as rethink and either add or remove ways you are publishing and syncing data to for your Lifestream. Hopefully this has given you some insight into ways that you can improve yours.

Alan Cheslow's Travelstreaming Site

Alan Cheslow notified me last night of a new site project he is working on that he’s deemed a Travelstream. He really piqued my interest and I made my way over to the site right away. He’s created this new site so that he could share his family road trip with his extended family and friends as well as providing a journal of his travels to reflect upon after his return.

His Travelstreaming site takes the Lifestreaming concept of aggregating social services data, but puts focus on a specific event. His site displays his vacation schedule, photos, blog posts, and several other GPS based activities. Alan has also provided details on many of the tools he used to build the site including several mobile client apps, Brightkite, Flickr, Yahoo Pipes, and more.

REM Tour 2008

This niche based method can be used to create many new forms of Lifestreaming for a variety of purposes. Another good example is the R.E.M 2008 Tour Website which allows fans to add their Lifestreaming content to the site by simply adding special tags to content they submit to YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and blog for each concert venue during the tour.

As many of you already know, I am a big fan of the Drupal CMS platform. It offers great functionality and tools for Lifestreaming. The REM site was built by Blake Lucchesi who I’ve met through the LA Drupal user group. He’s written a great case study describing how he built it.

These are just 2 examples of how the Lifestreaming concept can branch out into other areas and I’m sure we will continue to see many more creative ways that people will leverage it in the future.

Embedding of Flickr notes provided by Mbedr

The artwork above was created by Paul Downey aka Flickr user psd. He also wrote a post on his inspiration for the piece here where he discusses his views on each of the technologies portrayed in the picture.

After reading it I also came across his unique self-hosted Lifestream here which is powered by the Planet Venus feed reader. His Lifestream offers exporting of OPML, FOAF, and an aggregated RSS feed.

If you’ve read this blog for a while you’ll also remember that back in January I too felt this was the year that Lifestreaming would really take off.