Keeping it Organic

Hey what's up to everyone bored enough to read my blog! I've been so busy working on developing the concept for CKiPf that I haven't been keeping up with my blogging, which is the reason I am writing this blog today. Funny thing is, I'm working on making life logging more efficient. Here are the challenges I've been met with so far.

(1) It's too tedious! I don't write journals, I don't write blogs (but I'm writing a blog right now, so.... never mind). I like to just whip out my smartphone and hit the home button at best.

So in my searches for life logging products. I have come across Flava, an app for Android and iOS which allows you to capture moments in your life and create your own digital journal. Even though I was hoping to create software with very similar features, I have to say it's pretty cool. So much that I am actually using it right now via twitter to see how much traffic I could possibly push to this post without just posting my link to this page. So if you click on http://flava.in/vJt6 you get to my timeline, where I actually used Flava Clipper, one of the features included, to save the site on my timeline.

The thing I like about Flava is that it has shown a very sleek and user friendly way of documenting your life using your smartphone as a data input. You can save videos, notes, voice memos, pictures, websites, music (by search), and movies (I'm assuming by search, I haven't tried that part yet). It would be totally awesome if Flava had an embedded Shazam function or a tie in with Shazam. That would take a few keystrokes out. For a beta, I have to say this is very well done, and I aim to create something as impressive as this.

After my discussion with Eric Vogel, Harry Mugala, and Sterling Hawkins up at BeakrStudios in Atlanta, Georgia, I was adamant about the fact that I want this software to be automatic, continuous, and searchable.
Flava has done an excellent job of organizing data in multiple forms and making it searchable via user tags associated with each note. I would like to build something that does this automatically.

How would I be able to capture and tag information to automatically recognize what/who is in the picture, your location, and the context of your conversation. I'm sure the context of your conversation part may raise some issues in regards to privacy. My wife doesn't want me to backup any of our files online for fear of someone having too much access to our information.

Flava has addressed that issue as well, allowing users to save this information to their "timeline" which is hosted on the company's cloud based server. So your information is stored without putting the burden on you to provide storage space. That answers the question of where to store 2PB of data. But can I build a system that will store that much data for an incalculable number of users? What type of infrastructure would we need to store 1TB of information per person per year.

Let's just be honest, most if the time in our day is uneventful. It's not like you really need to save every moment of your life, but if we're striving for total recall, that would be necessary. What information do we really need to capture?

I like the fact that Shazam has an automatic feature that operates in the background without interferring with other activity. Can we do that for television/movies/commercials?

I wouldn't mind recording the conversations I have and who I have them with, as long as I control where the data goes. If I decide to share that info, how do you prevent violating the privacy of the other person in the convo.

The personal timeline is incredible. It solves the problem of privacy, organization, and presentation of your daily activity without eating up all your memory saving exhaustive amounts of information?

Maybe we don't need to record EVERYTHING. If we can make lifelogging more accessible we would find ourselves in a competition to find out which device or software allows you to capture information quicke like two gunslingers from the Wild West.

Lessons to Learn from The Vikings

I'm taking a moment to update what I've done so far today in my "life-logging" experimentation and I have to say the process to document what I have done and seen today frustrates me. I press on, because the only way to solve the problem is to know the problem.

So I've recently found the History Channel TV show, The Vikings on Amazon Prime (http://amzn.to/1hIu3Hb) and I love the story line. Although it may not be historically accurate as expressed by author and self-proclaimed dedicated Norwegian re-enactor Lars Walker (http://mobile.spectator.org/theamericanspectator/#!/entry/history-channel-gets-vikings-precisely-wrong,528ee30c025312186c8dfb20), I find incredible lessons of courage and innovation in the show.

The protagonist Ragnar Lodbrock wants to  sail west to discover new lands to pillage, but he meets opposition with the Chieftain. He goes out on a limb and his hunch to make his dream come true regardless of the status quo. While everyone trembled before the chieftain and subjected themselves to his will, because, as he stated, "They are my ships, I paid for them, you go where I tell you to go.", Ragnar thought outside the box and found the raw talent overlooked by others to produce a means to satisfy his desired end.

Using exceptional ship building techniques (existing technology with outstanding craftsmanship) and new navigational skills (innovation), faith and endurance, he overcame insurmountable odds to discover what many of his kinsmen refused to believe existed. Although, we as a civilized society may disagree with the forceful taking of others valuables and the vast amount of slaughter, I saw great resolve in Ragnar's quest.

He knew what he wanted and he decided to take it. No, did not appear to be an option for him. He refused to bow to the antics of the Chieftain to discredit, even kill him when he first returned from the west. He was unafraid to literally put his life on the line to say that he is a man of his own heart, creating his own destiny. However, success breeds enemies.

As entrepreneurs we could take a few lessons from Ragnar and determine our own destinies.

1. If someone else is paying for the ships, you will do what they tell you to do.

    As long as you allow others to determine your fate, you will do their bidding. That's the reason many of us want to be entrepreneurs right!

2. Don't talk unless you bring something to the table.

    Conversations are good. Ideas are good. When you spend your time or someone else's time "talking", it better be about meeting a mutually beneficial agreement.How productive could you be during that time you waste talking? How much money are you costing that person just by sucking up their time? This leads me to number 3.

3. Seek value not notoriety.

    If you want to "look" good, carry a title, or appreciate a particular status, you will have a difficult time. You should be pursuing your heart's desire. The fire that burns so deep that you must complete your work. Your success will be measured in the accomplishment of your personal goals and the value you are capable of sharing with your commnity.

4. Don't seek approval, seek kindred spirits.

    The business of creating value is based on people working with people. Have you ever been working on an idea and you find someone else working on something bigger or where you want to be? Do you find yourself saying, "If I could talk to that person, I would really be on my way." Well, as Dave McClure pointed out on a podcast I heard a couple of month's ago, don't be a creeper. Relationships should be built organically and genuinely. We as humans have the ability to determine whether or not someone is either trying to buy or sell something. In my opinion, I hate being sold, especially out of the blue! Develop pure relationships, where you can determine whether or not you are travelling the same road.

5. Committment

    Entrepreneurship in my opinion is all about your mental fitness. Are you prepared to do what is necessary to achieve your goals? Are you willing to play the politics with people, barter, trade, give, take, and do what is necessary to attract the talent you require? You must ask yourself these things before you attempt to create allegiances with others.

I'm not trying to offer advice, just my thoughts. Unfortunately, this took several hours for me to get put together for you to read, multiple apps and devices. I'm still working on a more efficient way to create these notes and share them. Until then, I'll keep blogging!

Is Life-logging Possible?

I made the mistake of trying to write out my blog on Blogger and it crashed on me. So now, I'm back to using Evernote so a lot of stuff happened since my last post I have to put it in small increments.

I was talking about my desire to be able to record my daily thoughts and activities. For example, I've caught my son Major pushing his sister so I had to put him in timeout so I thought it would be really neat to have video of the incident but instead I have pictures below.So when they're in timeout I just turn it so the door faces the corner. I used Siri to set a timer for two minutes and called the foul like an NFL play.

"Foul. Major Canty, pushing and shoving , 2 minute penalty."

I wish I could've recorded that and shared with my wife simply by saying, "Hey, baby check out this video when I had to put Major in time out."

So I Google Voiced: recording life 24/7 and this was the link I chose: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifecasting_(video_stream)

So, I'm talking about life casting! Okay, first step in the right direction. So now that I know that in talking about, I click another link and search for more information.

So I clicked on this link: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyLifeBits

And found out about the MyLifeBits Project by Microsoft. Sweet, I'm not crazy and I'm not the only one thinking about this.

If Microsoft is already working on this with a mega-brain like Bill Gates, are people "life-logging?" From what I gathered in the article, this is an experiment to see if they can create an e-record of Bell's life so that it can recorded and searched electronically.

It was mentioned that he digitizes every piece of paper he reads, keeps copious notes, etc. the process sounds extremely tedious and inefficient.

I am hypothesizing that the reason we are not life-logging on a mass scale is due to limitations in hardware and the difficulty of actually imputing data. Smartphones and tablets have been incredible game changers in regards to connectivity and consumption of information. As far as input, we are still limited to the keyboard, camera, scanners, and the most important piece I believe, data storage on CDs or hard drives.

So how much data would be necessary to record the average lifetime?

 {Google search: data required to record a persons life}. I didn't get the results I was looking for, so I just typed in MyLifeBits.

Results: http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,311727,00.html

According to the article, they've discussed the use of a 1 terabyte hard drive to save a lifetime of tidbits. However, if we consider video, were looking at 4 hours a day for a year. So basically, we would need 4 terabytes to cover a year of a person's data (assuming the average person sleeps 8 hours a day). If that person starts using the information at age 3, the average lifespan in America is 78.64 years, so the "average" person would require 300 terabytes of data! 

Where would you save that much data? For my family alone we would be looking at 2.1 petabytes (PB) of data. This is also the identifiable storage capacity of the human brain (2PB)!

That's all for tonight, I did get one response to my first post, thanks Adam Burke. Tomorrow, I'll be looking at data storage capacity and the speed required to transfer all that data.

If you have any suggestions, shoot 'em, I'm bound to crack this nut.

Feedback Please

"I like to be able to take notes from webpage a lot more efficiently.", was the first thought in Marcus' mind that morning.

What would it be like if I could just wake up, have a thought in my mind and start taking notes? The conversation in my head is so much more fluent than when I actually try to verbalize my concepts. If only my computer could read my brain....

I don't think it would really have to be that extensive either. Maybe if it could just recognize certain facial expressions, movement, and the tones of sub-verbalizing expressions in your brain.

Alright so if I can find the software that does that it would be awesome!

Let me think, Google Voice is pretty dope. I don't have anything to record my sub-vocalization anyway. Wouldn't I need some kind of device? At least a Bluetooth or something. Let me check it out.

Home button (HB) to a web browser, I think I'll try Google Chrome...

About 3-5 minutes of Google Searching, I don't get far before I came back to this thought. Google is extremely robust! You can do a lot with their services. I need to figure how to tie into their technology a lot more efficiently. I know people are doing it, but how?

I just jumped on the smartphone wagon and I'm convinced it's the wave of the future. It would be interesting to know how adept you are at using your cell phone as an awesome computing tool versus others. Maybe a ranking of your smartphone ninja skills measured in terms of posts to social media, searches, new knowledge obtained, etc. You know, keep score or something.

For social media posts, how many posts did you make and how much exposure did you receive? How many searches did you do? From those searches, how many links did you click? Maybe there could e a hot button or something where you can search for what you're looking for and acknowledge when you have obtained the information you were looking for.

If you get sidetracked, like I do with computer ADHD, you should be able to find whatever you're looking for in fairly minimum strokes. If you jump to a new subject, can those jumps be registered to tally how many subjects you researched, what you were looking for, and organize that information into a easily searchable database easily accessible by a quick search through your device?

Once you have all that information, you can have weighted score that would create a compilation score and save all of the new knowledge you obtained. Then post those results versus your friends. You can see how much productivity you're getting out of that $500 plus device you have in our pocket and find out how to communicate with the world more efficiently. See what search intersects you guys all had to discover common interests and organically start conversation with friends.

Oh yeah, you can really start convos with friends in Facebook or Twitter, but how do you know that you're being heard? Make one on one posts showing your latest thought or input on that subject. See what the most popular users of your social circle are talking about an become part of the "in" crowd. Because everyone wants to be heard! Everyone has something to share, but right now you have to find a way to publish your thoughts in a way that is receptive to your thought process.

If you're not a blogger, why have to focus on blogging your idea and trying to drive traffic to your blog. Just post your comment and record your thoughts via posts. Don't get me wrong Evernote is awesome, I'm using it right now! But unless I copy, paste, publish, via twitter, Facebook, a blog, a forum, no one will remember this moment in my life.

I was thinking about something and it was so important to me that I wasted time trying to get it out! I had to search for something, I browsed for something, I listened to music or a podcast, I watched a movie/television show/or YouTube video.

Where are those 5 hour of technology use going? How are they helping me, make my life better?

I have a couple of hours before the call with Dr. Kasarda, the kids are napping, I'm so stoked. I'll post this as a blog and ask a few of my social media friends what they think about this. So now, I'll finish that FB post I was in the middle of when I had this random thought. :-)