Funky something with highway rumble strips
By way of my friends at Youth Intelligence (I subscribe to their great Trend Central newsletter):
Musical Roads: In Japan, the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has
embedded grooves into sections of roads which boom a tune up through cars.
They’re in the process of planning different melodies for different locations,
picking songs that are somehow associated with the locale.
What a riot!
Maybe for the right-before-you-go-off-the-road rumble strip, they could have something like ‘Wake up little Suzie’ or ‘Hit the road Jack’ or something like that to shame to driver for veering off the road.
Easy peasy mobile video posting
Did I mention how easy it is to post a video from your phone (with Lifeblog, of course)?
To put you in a comparative frame of mind: normal video posting requires you to record the video with a DV recorder, transfer the video to your PC, cut out the clip, convert it into a web-friendly format, make a frame grab to show what the video is about, and then upload it to a video-friendly server.
Well, all I do is, shoot the video with my phone and then ‘Post to Web’ from Lifeblog. Like any post from Lifeblog, you can post multiple items, add captions to each item, and then send the link of the post to whomever you like (or open it yourself and tell yourself how clever you were).
A few comments on this procedure:
- TypePad does the work for me of getting the frame grab, formatting it, and serving it. Actually, I think Lifeblog is the only way to easily get video onto TypePad.
- TypePad leaves it in .3gpp format, so I can view it on my phone if I want to.
- You can use QuickTime (and RealPlayer, I think) to view .3gpp files from your browser.
- The video is not streamed. The user needs to click on it and it opens another window with the video (at least that’s what QuickTime does for me). Unfortunately, there is no clear indication that the item is an image or video, so I just make the caption saying something like ‘(click to play)’.
- Don’t forget to set your video recorder to 174×144 so you can get the biggest (or is it less small?) video.
- Note that the video is sent completely, so the longer the video, the longer the upload time over GPRS. Alternately, you could use Lifeblog to automatically transfer it to Lifeblog PC and just post from there over broadband. It’s roughly the same easy peasy procedure.
Here are two examples:
- One of mine on the joint Lifeblog-Wasabi blog.
- And one on Alvaro’s Sulfkultura blog.
Another view of Lifeblog – as a portfolio
I met a while back with Elizabeth Hartnell-Young. She’s an enthusiastic and amazing researcher who, as one of her interests, studies ePortfolios.
Link: Centre for Applied Educational Research – Staff – Elizabeth Hartnell-Young.
Elizabeth is leading a project using Lifeblog to explore identities and personal storytelling in social settings: school, home, leisure and so on
What I think is so cool about her is that we both were thinking along the same lines on what Lifeblog means to people as a story-telling tool. While I came up with that insight using the product day-in day-out, she realized it just from reading the product description (wow). I think others are picking up on her insight:
Link: Where am I at with ePortfolios?
Nokia’s Lifeblog
is one concept that may be useful. At the moment, the Lifeblog is
constructed to act mainly as an archive for various data that comes
through the phone (SMS, email, photos). The current version of Lifeblog
is able to organise the archive data so that it can be posted on to an
actual blog site.
This post talks about the different levels of a portfolio.
How do you use your Lifeblog? Do you just use Lifeblog mobile to view all your stuff in one place and share stuff? Do you use Lifeblog PC simply as a backup for all you mobile content? Do you annotate or modify or import stuff into your Lifeblog to make it more personal? Do you actually use Lifeblog to tell a story? Do you have more than one Lifeblog, each with a different story?
I’ll be at CScout TrendDay: Blogging on 08 March
An interesting blogging event in Munich.
I’ll attempt to pontificate on how the fusion of the blog, mobile, and PC is changing the way people share and communicate through personal content, touching on aspects relating to life recording, personal and corporate story-telling, marketing, and authenticity.
Let’s see how it goes.
For more info on speakers and stuff, go here.
Short-cut keys for Lifeblog PC
Did you know you could just Alt-tab out of Lifeblog on the PC and let it hang out hidden in the background (say, when synchronizing)?
Here are some others:
Transfer items… Ctl-K
Post to Web… Ctl-B
Exit Alt-F4
Go to Date… Ctl-G
Large item view +
Small item view –
If you want to see all the shortcuts for the PC and mobile software, just hit F1 to open the Help file on the PC.
I posted on the mobile shortcuts here.
Kinda lateral thinking by new Lifeblog user
On a tip-off from our friends at Naked Communications, I found out about John Griffiths from Planning Above and Beyond.
If you want to follow my trip then try the Lifeblog here on the right. Click on the images to get the latest posting as I travel from Feb 16th. This is a slightly hair raising attempt to do mobile blogging but since I’m presenting a paper on writing screenplays for brands then what if I create a narrative for the Planning Above and Beyond brand. Do you want
to follow it for a fortnight?
Basically, he heard about Lifeblog from the guys at Naked, loved it, went out and got a 6630 and Lifeblog, set up a blog, and is now capturing his whole voyage.
Check out his blog at http://paab.typepad.com.
Some good comments on Lifeblog
Hugo sent me another batch of links that he found on while searching for Lifeblog on Bloglines. Here are some.
MOBILE: Nokia Lifeblog 1.5 – Initial Impressions
It’s 2am, but I’ve managed to get Nokia Lifeblog installed on both my PC and my Smartphone, and I’m very pleased.
by: TANKERxSOFTWARE: Blogging Your life Away
Now I don’t know if Nokia have come up with something brand new that nobody has thought of before, or if it’s just me living in the back-of-beyond and just not heard of it, but I’ve been using Nokia Lifeblog for a few weeks now and it strikes me as one of those rare computer programs that can be described as beautiful.
by: TANKERxThe 6670 has this software called LifeBlog. Essentially you take the pictures and videos you created and convert it into a blog. Super cool! This then made me think and realize the days of the geek are over.
on: BloggerJacks
