Chuck's Q Blog

 

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Lifelogging and lifestreaming (or storystreaming as some news outlets are calling it) are basically two versions of the same idea. Both are used to capture and store memories, but while lifelogging is geared more towards storing information in private, lifestreaming shares your information through a blog.

The Old Media, New Tricks blog has been talking about lifestreaming or storystreaming for a while. The first piece I saw about it talked about how the Austin American-Statesman used a service called Posterous to gather photos from readers on a specific topic. As Austin approached a record for 100-degree days last summer, the editors set up a Posterous account where readers could submit photos for a weekend that showed how they were coping with the heat. They then ran a story about this in the paper and used the photos that were collected for a slideshow on the site.

Like other blogging sites, Posterous is only as good as what’s being sent to it. It’s really designed for mobile photo posts, but I see people using it as a regular blog as well. (“Office” fans might want to check out Rainn Wilson’s blog.)

In his lecture this week, Dr. Alex mentions examining science fiction as a predictor of the future. And then I listened to the “On The Media” piece about “lifelogging” and it made me think of some of Philip K. Dick’s work.

While the “lifelogging” piece centered on extraordinary measures to preserve memories, many of Dick’s works went a step past that and explored the idea of embedding memories.
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The information age is taking its show on the road. Mobile is clearly the next computing revolution finally moving across the U.S.

While Japan and some European nations have been at the forefront of this movement for some time, better devices in the last few years are luring more U.S. users into the ranks of mobile computers.

More and more, cellphones — especially the latest generation of the Apple iPhone — are being used in journalism. Blogs can be updated via the WordPress app. Videos for news sites have been shot and edited using just the tools on the phone. Even live reports have been produced with it.

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My project’s legal implications are fairly clear cut and shouldn’t pose a particular threat to what I’m planning.

One of the things I want to do on my project site is to present in whole the lessons contained on other sites. The main reason for this idea is to create a bigger collection of tutorials while also making sure that the material exists somewhere other than its original Web site, as something of a backup. This way, if an original site containing this kind of material is hacked, closed or otherwise becomes unavailable, all of the valuable material on that site won’t be lost.

MultimediaShooter.com went through this about a year ago, but managed to reconstruct his site and press on. I’m not sure that would be the case for everyone that has content to offer.

Since the bulk of the content that I expect to provide on my project site will have been authored by someone else, I will have to rely on obtaining permissions to reprint or reformat that information, depending on the type of copyright under which it was produced.

Some of the information I’m likely to use was developed under Creative Commons licenses, which will make it easier to build the collection on my site the way I want, giving full credit to the original authors and linking back to their sites.

Also, since the site is likely to be non-profit or educational, I believe I’ll have a little more leeway under the copyright laws, though I think there are ways to proceed with more limited listings for various pieces if their authors aren’t interested in taking part in my project. Abstracts, or some similar construct, could be used with direct links to the projects.

If this week’s readings and videos don’t already have you looking over your shoulder, check out this story from MSNBC.com:

What will talking power meters say about you?

Would you sign up for a discount with your power company in exchange for surrendering control of your thermostat? What if it means that, one day, your auto insurance company will know that you regularly arrive home on weekends at 2:15 a.m., just after the bars close?

Welcome to the complex world of the Smart Grid, which may very well pit environmental concerns against thorny privacy issues. If you think such debates are purely philosophical, you’re behind the times.

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It’s a classic story of two wrongs don’t make a right.

On one side, we have the telecommunications companies who built the infrastructure of the Internet and are determined to scuttle all attempts to challenge their dominance to its access, as well as their profits. And on the other side are the folks who see the Internet as one big free market where everything should be shared, whether they created it or not.

Both are in polarized positions, dealing with their own ethical demons.
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Earlier today, Dr. Alex raised the musical question Is David Pogue a journalist?

The short answer is yes, despite what Pogue says. But the real question is deeper.

Pogue says he never claimed to be a reporter and that he didn’t go to journalism school. My undergraduate degree is in political science, but I’ve worked as a journalist for nearly 30 years.

But the fact that Pogue is a columnist and not a reporter also isn’t the point. The New York Times, like most other large newspapers, has an ethics policy that spells out the kind of freelance work Pogue and other employees are allowed to do under the terms of their employment. The policy clearly states that “Staff members must ensure that their freelance work does not interfere with their normal responsibilities.”
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Who do I think the typical user of my site would be and what are they looking for?

Well, considering that I’m in this program and that I’ve been a frequent user of these kinds of tutorials over the years, I guess I would be User 0 for this site.
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If you’re looking for ways to save ideas for the final project, or anything else, Evernote.com can be a good option.

Like Delicious.com, you can save Web clippings here. But the service also has a mobile option that allows you to snap a picture on a cellphone and e-mail it to your account. It will also store PDFs and other documents as well as voice memos.

The standard (free) account has a monthly upload allowance of 40MB. The premium service ($5 a month/$45 annual) boosts the upload allowance to 500MB.

I’ve had an account for a bit and haven’t done much with it. But I’ll probably use it a little more now.