A little while ago I began to realize just how much of my personal information is digitally created every day. This is both scary and enticing (to me). Scary, due to the fact that people can harness this information for evil/marketing. Enticing because I should be able to (theoretically) harness this information to provide a better user experience for the people who care (me and my friends, I assume). So, the other day I sat down and tried to figure out every accessible data medium that I generate and have access to. Now, with one stipulation: It has to be at least somewhat time-based and, therefore, intuitive to convert into an RSS feed.
Media
WWW
Personal
My masterplan: Essentially, an RSS aggregator (makes sense, nothing special) that pulls all of my personal RSS feeds into one place and provides an overall statistical view of the information that it contains. I may even provide some detailed information, save for things in the ‘Personal’ category. What I like about this is the fact that most of this information is completely public (or is possible to make completely public) – they’re all using common/widely available programs or tools. So, stage one: Set up a personal life browser – stage two: Open it up for the world to play with. More info soon.
Jonathan Fenocchi (May 2, 2005 at 11:01 am)
You mean something like http://elsewhere.adactio.com/ ?
John Resig (May 2, 2005 at 11:13 am)
Almost – I just saw that the other day (when he released it) and he’s getting close to what I’d like. The major difference is that he provided only data that is always public, on the other hand, I’m looked ot provide some aggregate information of my personal, and very sensitive, information (bank transactions, email, phone conversations, etc.) Because of this, I can’t just publish all of my information willy-nilly, like he does (and I sometimes do). This is an interesting problem unto itself. Thanks for the link, though.
Aaron (May 2, 2005 at 2:18 pm)
This sort of transparency is something I can’t understand, try though I might; paranoid though I concede I might be, I don’t understand your willingness to make obvious so much about your life (phone conversations, IM logs, email) — I assume you’re not just going to throw your IM logs and emails and such out on the web for anybody, but I’d be quite hesitant even to provide a generalized overview of that sort of thing, even if I could come up with a set of metrics which would make sense for it. And bank transactions? Granted I haven’t got enough money to be worth stealing, but I don’t invite anyone to know anything about anything I do involving my bank account.
Not necessarily courting a reply, though I would be interested. Fascinating stuff, regardless of how much I wince at the idea of doing something similar.
John Resig (May 2, 2005 at 3:17 pm)
Alright, what I’m shooting for: You can determine someone’s ‘presence’ at the computer through Instant Messenger, you can tell if they’re idle/online/away, etc. Currently, this is the best/easiest there is.
Now, this is where other layers of data come in: If I see TV programs disappearing off of my Tivo, I know that I’m watching TV. If I see ATM transactions/Debit Card deductions, I may know that I’m out on the town.
Browser History/Google Searches could determine if I’m actively using a computer, regardless of the fact that I may not be on IM. If I throw an IP address in there, I can figure out what computer I’m on, thus giving me a lat/long.
I’m also curious to see when I participate in ‘content generation’ e.g. writing in my weblog, posting to delicious, taking pictures, replying to email – is there one time of day at which I’m more available then others?
This is all conjecture at this point, I want to start pulling this data in and see what it looks like – maybe it’ll be useful, maybe not. I’m definitely in agreeance with you about security, however, I’m never going to release the particulars of my most confidental items.
Josh Skaroff (May 3, 2005 at 3:34 pm)
My ideal solution is a situation where every piece of my data, from email and playlists to scheduling and bank records, is available through some type of syndication solution. It should be encrypted and secure and ideally run off of MY server. As much as I love all the RSS feeds out there right now, I’d rather have local ownership of the data.
Then grab it from my browser, my desktop, my Treo, my Tivo…anywhere. Seems like you’re heading in the right direction.
John Resig (May 3, 2005 at 3:48 pm)
Josh: That’s just what I’m shooting for. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Pat Skinner (May 4, 2005 at 5:45 pm)
Most of us are certainly doing more things online, from banking to test taking. It’s quite interesting seeing all of these disparate places we work with; the most revealing method of doing this for me was the file Firefox stores the “Remember this login/pass?” cached credentials in. On my box its under ~/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/default.***/signons.txt
Because login credentials typically mean a committment of some kind to an online service, they reveal in some sense where you spend your “most valued” time online. In my signons.txt I already have 36 entries since reformatting last Sunday.
Lost Boy (June 16, 2005 at 3:02 pm)
Subscribe To My Brain
Over Thai food last week, Geoff and I were chatting about subscribing to RSS feeds for all of a person’s outputs. No just blogging but bookmarking, listening and other activities. Its a topic that’s seen some previous discussion. I’ve written about …