One the greatest source of unrecorded, unorganized yet useful sets of information is the movements and activites in one’s life.
- Where were you on the night of March 23rd at 7PM?
- Which bars have you been to in the area?
- How much time do you spend in my apartment per week?
That data dies when you forget it.
I now know I emailed my college dean 4 times in April 2006, withdrew $60 from my checking account 10/12/2005, searched for “MTA map” on Google last Tuesday.
Just like Microsoft indexes my mail, BOFA indexes my bank account and Google indexes my searches, I want someone to index my life. This should be possible with a gps-enabled smartphone.
Does anyone know any efforts in this space? There’s Brightkite – the best of a underutilzied crop of geo-aware social networking iPhone apps. But those are too focused on socialization. I want to know more about myself, what I do, when I do it. I want a life dashboard. I want my personal history to be searchable.
If Google isn’t 2 years down this road already, there’s a big opportunity out there.
Tags: technology
November 5, 2008 at 2:31 am
How bout a journal? 10 minutes a day… Thats what I do!
November 6, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Journals nice, but it’s not searchable, indexible, tagable, transmittable, or any of the other great things you can do with an electronic dataset.
It’s also not comprehensive.
November 7, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I need Google search for life. Damnit. Where are my socks?
November 11, 2008 at 9:28 am
[...] Good article, I decided to link to it from my site. All the best. [...]
November 19, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I think I know of this technology you speak of…it’s your brain!
On a less flippant note, the Luddite in me just had a apoplectic fit at the thought of all this information being publicly available. Do you ever worry/notice that by downloading all the information you use to remember you lose the skill of remembrance (of this type of information)?
November 22, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Catherine! Who said anything about “publicly available.” This is your info, not the public’s.
Interesting point about losing the skill of remembrance. I would say “that’s ridiculous, Catherine!” but then I remember that I don’t know how to spell. And my mom does. That’s all due to spell check.
But if a computer remembers for you, why do you have to do it? Unless you are a Luddite that is…