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My new lifestream - LifePie
I’ve been into lifestreaming for a while now, using great services such as iStalkr and Profilactic. iStalkr is great because it saves your data over time, but I’ve long wanted a self hosted solution - not to keep track of data but just a simple visual of my online activities. There doesn’t seem to be an awful lot of offerings in this field, probably because lifestreaming is still seen as a relatively new concept (to the general populace at least).
I spotted a post over on the Lifestream Blog which mentioned Simple Pie a while ago. Some people have been doing interesting things using Simple Pie as the backend to a personal lifestream, so I thought I’d do the same. However, my php skills are pretty much non-existent, so I struggled to really do anything with it. That was, until Steffen came to the rescue!
The above is a screenshot of my brand new lifestream using Steffen’s LifePie app. You can see my lifestream here. It’s still very much a work in progress, and it breaks on smaller screens at the moment, but it’s a workable model and I’m very impressed with it, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for! Steffen is planning to release LifePie, so if you’re interested take a look at the post linked to above.
I will be adding to it over time, but you can already keep an eye on most things I do online via my lifestream. There is also a feed for the whole thing, I’ve used Afeeda to put that together - a great free service that allows you to mix up your own feeds from different sources.
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Zen’s Bits
No, not those kind of bits you filthy minded swine! Aherm…
I’m referring to my new domain name zensbits.com where you will find my tumbleblog / tumblelog / whatever you want to call it, which is hosted by Tumblr.
Tumblr is a strange thing. Essentially it’s a blog without comments. I have wondered myself what the point of that really is when I already have a blog, but I’ve become kind of addicted to the simplicity of it all. Tumblr has a great little bookmarklet through which you can automatically embed video, images and quotes. For lazy people like me, it’s ideal. So I’ve gone from wondering what the point is, to being amazed at the simplicity of it all, and then to question if I really need another place to post stuff, and finally to thinking sod it and becoming wholly addicted to hitting that little ’share on Tumblr’ button. I’m also routing my shared items from google reader through it, so that saves having yet another feed for people to track, and it keeps my links of interest (well, of interest to me at least, I don’t know about you) all in one place.
Anyway, the point being, I decided that my little tumbleblog was here to stay, and so I got a brand spanking new domain name for it.
Update
I’ve also set up a music tumblelog at music.zensbits.com
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iStalkr.com
I’m not sure what’s come over me recently, but I’ve found myself using a lot more ’social’ oriented sites. Last.fm of course has been a mainstay for me, but that’s more about the music with a pinch of social goodness thrown in (for me personally that is). Then I began to use del.icio.us, and more recently tumblr and twitter. All of this can make things a little confusing for those trying to follow my activities around the net. (Yeah, I know those people are scarce, but hey, I can pretend!).
This is where iStalkr comes in. iStalkr collects your feeds from all around the net and puts them into one handy page, which in turn has a feed that others can follow (although the feed links back to the entry on iStalkr as opposed to the original source). In addition, you can have your very own ‘Stalkrs’, and you can also ’stalk’ other people. The huge advantage to this is that much like twitter’s friends page you can see both your own and your ‘targets’ (friends) activities all in one page.
The interface itself is very slick and has a high level of useability. Each item gathered from your feeds appears as a headline, so it’s easy to see all the content at a glance. Next to each item is a drop down button, clicking on this will reveal the full entry. This makes it very easy to go straight to the content that you’re really interested in.
I’m not sure when it launched exactly (seems like only a few months ago), but it’s pretty new and in beta stage. Consequently there will be a few bugs, perfection can’t be expected just yet. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it but I managed to somehow bring the whole site down yesterday! Possibly something to do with removing my last.fm feed. The lead developer, Dan, seemed happy that I’d helped discover a bug, but I’m still feeling slightly shamefaced for breaking his beloved site. I must add, the site was brought back to life quickly enough though.
All in all, I’m really loving iStalkr. It has a great interface, supports openID login, and is a great way to keep up with friends and make some new ones too. The team also seem very open to user contributed feature suggestions, which is always a good thing. It’s early days, but it’s already showing a lot of promise. If you’d like to stalk me, you can do so here!
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