Tech Specs of My Ideal System (Part II)

Some more requirements that have become clear to me as I’ve started to piece together my ideal lifelogging system:

• I want it to be as passive as possible. When I’m home and near my wi-fi router I want all lifelog-relevant data to be automatically siphoned off my laptops and mobile devices and copied to my central storage. This will mean, for me, the use of rsync scripts tee-ed off by cron jobs.
• I want summation of all this centralized data to be as automatic as possible as well. For this, I plan to have DevonThink regularly and automatically index the slew files on central storage, and then, probably using some OSX Automator routines, build for me upon request a daily digest of what I did on any given day:
  • Where was I (based on iPhone SkyHook data, e-mail headers, etc.)?
  • With whom did I correspond via e-mail, SMS, chat, and to whom did I speak to by phone? What was said?
  • What photos, videos, and voice memos did I create?
  • What did I view on the web?
  • What podcasts did I listen to?
  • What video and audio content did I consume via Boxee, etc.?
  • What ideas did I come up with?
  • What did I spend money on?

  This kind of record will be very useful for me professionally. I’m a remote worker and this system will give me the ability to furnish my employer with a great deal of detail about my work activities should they request it.  Moreover, this kind of system, I’m sure, will one day be a great boon to me in terms of triggering bio memories that have faded over the long haul.

• I want mechanisms for easily publishing the non-private bits of my my autogenerated daily digest to social networking sites. This is again going to involve some DevonThink automation, as well as, perhaps, a web service like Posterious (which I’m only now learning about.

Plank one above is very nearly finished, and the nitty-gritty details of my implementation will be the subject of my next post.

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