Lifestreaming

Java One is the second conference in the city I have been to in the last couple of weeks.The previous one was the Web 2.0 conference which was full of the kind of high tech excited buzz that makes the valley a great place to be. Attending a presentation at Web 2.0 was quite an experience in itself. It was full of people frantically blogging the experience. The sheer number of people tapping away into their Apple Mac Books was a sight to behold.

One term I came across during that conference was “Lifestreaming”, literally putting your life online for all to see. I thought about this, it seemed amazing arrogant to think anyone cared that much about what I did on a day-to-day basis, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute. Still I thought I would have a little go. You can find me on twitter.com as RodCrawford this week as I twitter on about where I am and what I am doing.

In reality I actually do lifestream or lifecast a bit with Skype in that I often say rougly where I am, or where I am going so that other skypers can figure why I am not online or when they should try and contact me. I think that sort of thing is useful so maybe a twitter feed into skype would be useful. Who knows, let’s see how this experiment goes first.

My first twitter posting related to the fact that I was at the Java One conference which was a blatant lie! I was across the road at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Café enjoying a double dry cappuccino and using their free wi-fi to set up the twitter account. I guess Rule one: Don’t believe everything you read on a lifestream.

The reason I went over to the SFMOMA was partly because it does good coffee and closes on a Weds, but also because the wi-fi worked. It didn’t at the Java conference, so my next challenge was how to update my twittering with no wi-fi. I found (as I had hoped) that I could do it via text messaging. I don’t know if I will really be able to keep this up all week, twitter keeps a log of my postings so it will be interesting to see just how long I last.