Guardian Unlimited | Online | How to save your life

Jack Schofield from the Guardian Online reports on the latest trend the media has glommed on to, called ‘life caching’. I’ve been seeing a bunch of references to the whole Life Caching ‘trend’ (and been interviewed) since an article from Trendwatching.com pegged it and made it a buzz name (though it is not a new concept).

Schofield says, “Nokia’s Christian Lindholm has captured this trend perfectly with Lifeblog software.” The article is pretty good. Read it here.

Suomenlinna quest

The lighthouse we went on a search for (this is Nancy's photo from her cruise ship). You can bearely see the opening we crawled through to get onto the rocks.
The lighthouse we went on a search for (this is Nancy’s photo from her cruise ship). You can bearely see the opening we crawled through to get onto the rocks.
Old radio from a museum-piece submarine we visited. Really cool.
Old radio from a museum-piece submarine we visited. Really cool.


Something about these massive walls is so cool.
Something about these massive walls is so cool.
Some famous dude's tomb. Interesting to see Christian and Greek Classical symbols on the tomb. How Neo-Classical.
Some famous dude’s tomb. Interesting to see Christian and Greek Classical symbols on the tomb. How Neo-Classical.




A lady named Nancy saw a picture of mine of a lighthouse on Suomenlinna. She asked if I knew its name. I said that I didn’t and neither of us were able to Google anything.

So I was bent on finding out and today dragged the family on a quest to find out the name of the damned lighthouse. The weather was grand, we explored our favorite haunts on the island, and made our way towards the mystery lighthouse.

Well, at the museum shop we found out that the lighthouse had no name. Also, none of the island maps gave it a name. So we took a bunch of photos to send Nancy and made the best of it.

What was really cool was that the lighthouse was on the outside of the battlements. They had placed a ladder so that folks could climb through a window in the battlement onto the open rocks at the sea’s edge to go be with the lighthouse. The wind was blowing right on us at something like Beaufort 7 or 8, something like 30 knots with whitecaps spewing froth and all. The rocks were dry fortunately, but it wouldn’t be hard to tumble down them and into the water with that wind.

Excitement for all.

Synchronization is hard

One of the key items in Lifeblog is the synchronization – both the tracking and transferring of new objects and the synchronization of the Favorites. While Lifeblog might seem simple, we spend a lot of time discussing and working on the synchronization. It might be just a line on the feature list, or a single button or menu item, but it’s hard work to do synch.

I remember years ago I had two mobile devices and one computer. It was a disaster trying to keep everything in synch. If two-way synch is hard, imaging more than two – it’s not worth it.

I think that’s why whenever I talk about multiple phones per Lifeblog, the R&D guys flex their hands and look like they want to wring my neck.

Football tournament

Setting up a tent
Setting up a tent
Putting on the cover
Putting on the cover


Up it goes
Up it goes
Teamwork!
Teamwork!


And there you are.
And there you are.
Meanwhile, the boys warm up.
Meanwhile, the boys warm up.




Today we’re at a tournament. The boys were weak in the first game but came on strong for the second. Waiting for the third in about 45 mins.

Using Lifeblog with two phones

Just as Lifeblog isn’t meant to work with two databases, it’s not meant to work with two phones. I’ve tried it. The items all transfer well to the PC, but then it gets hairy with the Favorites.

I think the model used to design the Favorites didn’t expect more than one phone or item database at a time dedicated to Lifeblog. Makes sense, since Lifeblog is not meant to do these things. 😉

But, it would be cool if a family, or say, and event could have a single Lifeblog to which all the items were transferred and each person had their own Favorites. I don’t know.