lifeblogging
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Memoto is now Narrative Clip, shipping November 1st
The Memoto wearable lifeblogging camera was one of the darlings of March's South by Southwest Interactive, garnering some notice from movers and shakers at the event. The name, however, apparently still needed work. The company announced today -- one month ahead of product launch -- that it's changing its name to Narrative. The camera, meanwhile, is becoming the Narrative Clip. Why? According to a press release, the name "describes what we've been trying to do all along – help users tell the stories of their lives. We called the camera 'Narrative Clip' to reflect its attributes of being wearable, quick and tiny." Fair enough. The company's also scored $3 million in VC backing from True Ventures, which had previously backed MakerBot and FitBit. Press release after the jump.
Memoto lapel camera turns your life into one big photoblog
There likely aren't too many people in the world crying for ways to exponentially increase the number of digital pictures in their collections, but Memoto's hoping to help wearers rethink picture taking as they know it. The device, which is roughly the size of an SD card case, clips on a shirt collar, taking five-megapixel pictures every 30 seconds without prompting, running on a battery that'll last around two days. The idea is to create a lifeblog -- an encapsulation of what you did during a given day, told through still photos. Those images are served up to the company's proprietary software application, which uses an algorithm to group them into clusters. Visiting a user's page presents a sampling of photos from throughout the day. From there, you can drill down into the clusters to see the group of shots taken 30 seconds apart. And, of course, there's sharing on the thing, letting you post those images and groups to places like Twitter and Facebook.%Gallery-181391%
Samsung files patent for auto-generating life diary, Mayans didn't see it coming
If the minutiae of people's lives crowd your feeds and drive you to frustration, you really won't be wanting this Samsung patent application to be approved. The USPTO filing outlines a process for creating a "life diary" by collecting all manner of information about your daily routine from your smartphone. Data such as where you've been, what the weather was like, what you've been listening to, et cetera, would be spun out in computer-generated sentences and compiled into a story of your day. Although it would lack the romanticism of a traditional, hand-written diary, we could see it having some use as a mundane log -- as long as you're happy for all that info to be recorded, that is. However, if this ever comes to fruition with sharing options, to boot, all the pictures of food, coffee house check-ins and FarmVille updates would seem insignificant in comparison. Some things, like the last time we sang along with the Bieb, are better left unshared.
Lifelapse app promises to turn your iPhone into a life-logger
We've seen a few dedicated "life-logging" devices that let you record your every waking moment, but why spend a couple of hundred bucks on something when you're already carrying around a perfectly capable smartphone? That's the thinking of the folks behind the Lifelapse iPhone app which, like the Vicon Revue we've tested, promises to simply record a time-lapse video of your entire day -- they've even developed a "LifePouch" so you can conveniently wear your iPhone around your neck (no iPad version just yet). Unfortunately, the developers aren't offering a peek at the app itself just yet, but they are now accepting applications for those that wish to participate in the beta.
Two days at E3 with a Vicon Revue life-blogging camera (video)
Each year the video gaming Mecca that is the Electronics Entertainment Expo seems to get a little more... stale. I've been attending since 1997, back when PC games dominated the show floor, scantily-clad mascots were everywhere, and press releases were handed out in three-ring binders. Despite the increasing sameness of it all it's still a huge privilege to go, an invitation I receive every summer and wish I could share with all my gamer friends -- which is, at this point, just about all of them. This year, thanks to Vicon, who kindly let me borrow one of its wearable Revue cameras, I can finally take you all along for the ride. %Gallery-96315%
Microsoft's life-blogging SenseCam becomes the ViconRevue, coming to a lanyard near you in 2010
The months of 2004 were halcyon days for those hoping to capture their entire existences digitally. Nokia was talking up Lifeblog as a way to chronicle every action of every day, while Microsoft had a few SenseCams floating around, snapping random images twice a minute to create a sort of slideshow of your daily tedium. Neither went mainstream, but Microsoft's option still has some legs, getting licensed by a company called Vicon and re-dubbed the ViconRevue. It now has 1GB of internal storage backing what seems to be a VGA camera sensor that can snap a picture every 30 seconds. At £500 ($820) they're currently intended for those studying Alzheimers and dementia, but a consumer model is due next year, and hopefully it will be affordable enough for those with memories but no government grants.
Waymarkr captures your life via any S60 phone
If photoblogs miss too many crucial life events to be entirely accurate, and moblogs require too much manual labor, Waymarkr's software should fill the void quite nicely. While we've seen the likes of ShoZu and ZoneTag, neither sport the nifty ability to automatically take photos on a timed interval, upload your life in sequential order without you even hitting the shutter button, and make you look like a complete geek in the process. By simply visiting Waymarkr's site with one of the many Nokia S60 mobiles, you can install the beta software and let the snapshots ensue. Of course, the developers recommend that you rock your cellphone around your neck (or another unobscured location) to capture a first-person perspective of your mundane work week and draw all sorts of unwanted attention to your newfangled jewelry. The photos are automatically uploaded to the company's website so your cellphone's storage capacity becomes a non-factor, and since the program relies solely on a data connection, you won't have to fret over those (potentially) costly pay-per-use SMS / MMS costs. So if you're looking for an easier way to photo-document every step of your life, and don't mind taking a hit in the fashion department to do so, point your S60 web browser Waymarkr's way and get to snappin'.[Via SlashGear]
