Lifestreaming necessitates accessible multimedia — Andy DeSoto - “The value of lifestreaming is that it aggregates multimodal content into one “stream.” Unfortunately, our options are pretty limited when it comes to different kinds of media. Here’s a short list of what we have at our disposal”
Lifestream Data Structure | opensource.weloveit.info - “I thought I’d apply the same structure to the files and data I generate daily. These tend to be small documents , images , PDF files , Internet downloads , scripts , etc. This way I have a new empty directory for the files I create and use each day. “
FREE Tibet Actionstreaming - Another example of a vertical based Lifestream like the Travelstreaming version I wrote about.
Laander ” Lifestreaming - next generation blogging? - “The whole idea of lifestreaming is very interesting indeed, but none-the-less, a few uncertainties comes to my mind. Besides the many possibilities, I would like to emphasize a few topics”
A new Lifestream plugin was released a few weeks ago simply called “Lifestream”. It’s written by David Cramer. He apparently began using the RSS Stream Lifestreaming plugin and decided to roll his own version shortly after. You can view it in action on his site here.
RSS Stream is a great plugin and this one just takes it a step further by using the SimplePie parser and offering more flexibility in the feeds it can use. Keep in mind that it requires Wordpress 2.5 minimum and PHP5 which may not be supported by your hosting provider.
You can grab it from his site here or at Wordpress.org over here.
Tumblr was one of the first Lifestreaming services that gained popularity with it’s minimalist blogging approach with beautifully designed sites. Unfortunately I feel that they took a step backwards when they began limiting sites to only allow for 5 feeds to be imported.
Last year in my coverage I came across a very similar service called Soup.io which I feel offers richer options, support for more services, and great flexibility. If you are a fan of Tumblr, you owe it to yourself to take a look at Soup.io.
Today, Richard MacManus proclaimed it’s currently one of his favorite web services. Andy Desoto who has been writing quite a bit about Lifestreaming lately picked up on the Soup.io mention at RWW today and wrote up a good review.
Here’s a snip:
If you’ve known about this service for quite some time now, feel free to move along; released in the last quarter of 2007, it’s hardly new, especially in the rapid-fire world of Web 2.0 startups. But if you’ve never heard of it like I hadn’t, read along: soup.io just might be what you’re looking for.
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.
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.
Over the last few months I’ve had several co-workers connect with me via Plaxo. Along with this I’ve had several of them comment on how active I am on the Plaxo service. They are of course referring to my activity on Plaxo Pulse. When I then begin explaining that the activity isn’t occurring on the Plaxo site per se, but is actually data being imported and aggregated from 3rd party services, I usually get a puzzled look and need to explain what I mean in more detail.
I’m sure this is a very common occurance as more mainstream users become exposed to Lifestreaming functionality. It’s very easy for many of us in the tech field to assume people are familiar with many of the services and concepts that we take for granted. For instance, RSS has been around for a long time, but many in the mainstream haven’t adopted or even understand what it is yet. I think Lifestreaming may hit similar barriers on its way to mainstream penetration.
With the Facebook re-design I have now modified my wall to be a frequently updated rich Lifestream (click image) from all the services I am importing. I’ve also done the same for my Plaxo Pulse page. But I wonder how many of the users on each of these services aren’t familiar or even aware of this functionality and become confused when they wander onto profiles such as mine?
Facebook, Plaxo and most recently AOL have huge existing user bases that now offer Lifestreaming functionality. We will continue to see Lifestreaming proliferate to other top social networking sites, and as it continues to do so, people will need to be get a better understanding of how they can enjoy and benefit from Lifestreaming. I dont think the bigger sites that have come on board are currenlty doing a good job providing resources to educate and help explain the Lifestreaming functionality they are unleashing onto their users and I hope that will change moving forward.
Allofme.com is a new service that is currently in Alpha that has entered the Timeline based form of Lifestreaming. It appears to be similar to previous services I’ve covered dipity and LifeBlob and even Dandelife to some degree. I have yet to try the service as I don’t have an account, but they provide several interesting timelines available for view on the current site. The examples are history, sport, and pop culture driven and provide a very large and visually rich looking timeline. I especially enjoyed the Life Magazine timeline.
There aren’t any personalized timelines available for viewing, although a teaser on the site claims that is coming soon with the ability to import digital assets , such as pictures, videos, blogs, documents, or any internet page. The image above taken from their site allows us to glean somewhat into possible services that will be supported such as YouTube, Twitter, Picasa, and Flickr as well as personal documents.
Below is also a very well produced and catchy video teaser for the service
This looks interesting and worth checking out when they open up. You can register on the site to become a beta tester.
It was October of last year when I wrote about a Wired story talking about Plaxo Pulse that generated some of the first rumblings of Lifestreaming entering into the mainstream. Then in January I asked if 2008 would bring Lifestreaming to the masses. Clearly it had now become “Wired” which is a little scary as that sometimes means that something has jumped the shark. But I think in this case we’re not going to see that happen.
Now fast forward a few months later and some major notable events. Just a few weeks ago Facebook releases a site re-design which puts a heavy focus on the activity stream and the recently added abilities to import your data from other services and comment on them. TechCrunch proclaims that it’s The FriendFeedization of Facebook. This change by Facebook single handedly had the ability to turn millions of Facebook pages into Lifestreams overnight. Time will tell whether people start to import other services and whether Facebook continues commited to adding more services and functionality in this area.
Last week brought about the latest major player to throw their hat in the Lifestreaming ring when I discovered a new service from AOL called buddyupdates. The new service allows for AOL users to create Lifestreams and share them with their buddies on a website or directly in AIM. Another huge way to expose a giant userbase to Lifestreaming. It’s my opinion that AOL finally realized that the Lifestreaming phenomenon is here to stay and didn’t want to get left behind. Just to be safe, they also decided to snap up SocialThing a few days later for good measure. This appears to be a very calculated move for them to accelerate playing catch up in the Lifestreaming service game.
Lastly we must not forget the roots of Lifestreaming. It’s origins are from custom code that allowed us to host them on our own blogs and pre-date any of the services out there. Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb wrote a great post where she reveals the future of blogging and proclaims it to be Lifestreaming. Her post discusses and provides examples of how blogs are starting to leverage Lifestreaming functionality to re-invent themselves. Web services don’t provide the flexibility, freedom and data ownership that a blog can for Lifestreaming. I have provided several examples of unique self hosted Lifestreams and continue to write about them while providing information on the tools that make them possible. It’s this area that still excites and captivates me the most and I know we will see some great examples of that moving forward.
If it wasn’t for this tweet from Frank Gruber I would have never found out about AOL’s new Lifestreaming service at buddyupdates.com and chances are if you wouldn’t have either. Quite surprisingly I didn’t see any of the major news outlets like ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Webware or TechCrunch review or mention it. So when I decided to take a look at it I didn’t expect much.
By their own description “Buddy Updates is a free service that lets you view and share your online activities with your AIM buddies”. Sure sounded like a Lifestreaming service to me so I went ahead and started looking under the hood. If you already have an AIM account signup is a snap. Just login and you can access the service immediately. Once logged in you are taken to an “everyone” activity page and voila, you already have a page streaming all of the activities of your existing AIM buddies.
AOL has done a good job of keeping this service dead simple. There are only two other pages besides the “everyone” page titled “just me” & “setup”. The just me page is exactly what you think. A personal filtered view of stream activity, while the setup page is nice and clean and allows you to add web services to your stream. They currently support 14 services which are Twitter, Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Xanga, Flickr, Webshots,  Del.icio.us, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Blip.TV, Viddler, YouTube, and MySpace. They also support adding your own sites. Lastly,  they provide activity from many of their own existing properties as well.
After the simple setup I went to the “just me” page and was happy to see that they had already imported some data from the services I added. The look is simple and clean whereby my AIM icon is merged with a service icon to show me a list of updates from each of my added services. It did not import data from my Flickr or YouTube accounts so I don’t know how they handle media on the page.
Viewing of the updates is done one of two ways. The site provides a custom url you can give people to view in a browser or they can see updates within their AIM client. If you want to see an example you can visit my page here.
Overall I’m pretty impressed with AOL’s entry into the Lifestreaming game. Not so much based on the funcionality of their offering, but more because they seem to know their audience well and have created a service that is tailored specifically to them. The site is designed well and simple enough to ease people into the joys of Lifestreaming. The fact that it’s tapping the existing AIM user base make it another large player poised towards gaining more mainstream adoption of Lifestreaming.
I’m guessing AOL (like Facebook) has seen the future of Lifestreaming and realized it’s a no brainer and of great value to add this service to their existing user base. And just like Facebook if the users are already on the service it makes the barrier to entry low and gives them another reason to remain on the service. Very well played AOL, I’m impressed.
August 22, 2008 Written by:
Mark Krynsky 
Posted in News 
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