Thursday, August 7, 2008

Lifestream visualization

Most people use lifestream applications such as Friendfeed and MyBlogLog primarily to log and view current happenings. Another interesting way to use the collected information is to visualize it over time. Here are a few examples and resources:

Dipity (Image below is interactive. Try setting zoom level to "week.")



favthums

Favthumbs del.icio.us visualization

Swurl


Swurl

6 comments:

Camilla said...

Interesting. I like the Swurl timeline the best. Very revealing to be able to look back and see how you spent your time online. But I can see that it could also be very addictive. I have had to drop almost all my Web 2.0 apps, and I am still too immersed. Something more has to go. I spend more time OUTSIDE of SL® reading blogs, etc, than I actually spend in world. Weird. My consciousness has invaded the metaverse.

How do you find time to do all of this? I cannot keep up.

Princess Ivory

Botgirl Questi said...

princess: It's a challenging problem. We're stuck (or blessed) with a fixed 24 hours per day of time, while the rate of new information available keeps accelerating. I've been trying to cope with this in a few ways:

- I cut my blog writing from 7 posts a week to 4.

- I stopped actively engaging in most twitter/plurk conversations unless I either have something of value to contribute or feel like taking a micro social break.

- I use google reader/feedly and their selection/categorization capabilities to pre-filter new information.

- I tend to limit time inworld to either project-related work (such as getting the gallery set up) or specific events.

So on the social side, I hate to say this, but my choice of how often to engage with people is based more on a strategic decision about how much time it takes to maintain relationship, rather than hanging out for the mere fun of it.

All work and no play...

Camilla said...

Thanks for the response. It was helpful. I have been going pretty much the same way, so at least you affirmed that I am not alone.

You said: "So on the social side, I hate to say this, but my choice of how often to engage with people is based more on a strategic decision about how much time it takes to maintain relationship, rather than hanging out for the mere fun of it."

Don't you find that you no longer really have any friends? At least not metaversal friends? Aren't you lonely? And doesn't it make you question the need to exist at all in the metaverse? Do I NEED to read all those blogs about other characters? Probably not.

I joined up a few open sim type projects out of curiosity, but quickly said "what ARE you doing? You don't have time for what you do now."

Princess Ivory

Botgirl Questi said...

Oh yah! SLpurpose is a question that keeps coming back.

For me, part of it is the opportunity to experience and contribute to what feels like a new frontier. Although we're probably a decade or more away from a complete Matrix-like immersion experience, I suspect that's where it will end up, assuming human civilization doesn't collapse before then.

As for metaversal friends, I have only a handful of SL friends (versus acquaintances.) Although I'm very open to new friendships, I've found it challenging to find people I hit it off with who don't eventually want to get romantically involved to some degree. As a result, I tend to be less-than-engaged emotionally so as not to invite such responses. I realize that this also keeps people at arms length who might be potential friends, so I'm still working on how to engage on that level.

One new and exciting change for me is that I've just started working on a couple of small projects with people I know only through SL identities. Since I personally don't need a lot of real-time social engagement, I find the prospect of co-creating to be one of the most compelling reasons to keep returning to SL.

Forelle Broek said...

Swurl and Dippity look fascinating, and of course I immediately went and created accounts upon reading this post. I will hold BotGirl directly responsible for adding such fuel to my already out-of-control online fire.

Botgirl Questi said...

forelle: is that a good thing?