Total Recall and Your Digital Memory
Photo Courtesy of Flickr / Ian-S
Believe it nor, I actually started using Twitter on May 29, 2008. My first tweet? "celler: This is a test message from my cell phone.” One of those great moments in history, similar to your child’s first words, right?
Total Recall
What is significant is that for the first time I have a chronicle of my thoughts and reading trends over the last four years, all captured in little 140 character text streams, all in one place. Why is this important? This past summer I started reading a book called Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything [Amazon.com]. The premise of the book is that with the technology we now possess, we can literally capture the ebb and flow of life as it happens. The authors (Bell and Gemmell) argue that we should be actively capturing every detail, every thought, every image, every sound that crosses our path.
The benefits of a digital memory is clear: imagine the joy of experiencing the life lived by your great grandparents in great detail. Instead, all we have are a few grainy black and white photos taken at high points in their life. When I look at the family history my great grandparents left behind, I could easily combine both my maternal and paternal family legacies into one small envelope. Even with my grandparents, I have a better record, but it is spotty prior to the 1950s, when cameras must have reached a level of affordability that they became a common item in middle-class America.
The disadvantage is finding your way through an mountain of data, both analog and digital. It is relatively easy to index and search my digital trail for the past 10-12 years, but beyond that, it gets more and more difficult. The biggest hurdle is overcoming all of the technological changes and proprietary software that has crossed my path.
Take, for example, the 1980s. While I started using a computer regularly in 1984 (my first computer was an Atari 64 and then I moved up to an Epson Q-20, which ran on an old OS called CPM), my method of storing data changed every few years. The Atari, for example, relied on cassette tapes to store data, while the Epson relied on 5.25-inch floppy disks. Consequently, all of my writing from 1984 until approximately 1989, when I purchased my first IBM-compatible computer, is gone.
Even the 1990s prove to be difficult. My first word processor was Word Perfect. It wasn’t until 1993 that I switched to Microsoft Word. Much of my publication work was in Aldus PageMaker. While you can still open these files in their modern-day siblings, it is a slow process to sort through hundreds of files, open them in a modern counterpart, and save the file as a pdf.
Total Recall Projects
Using the simple rule of baby steps, the authors of Total Recall suggest you tackle one “total recall project” at a time. In my case, I have started collecting and converting my journal writings into a single format that should be time proof. (In researching what formats are time proof, the two that seem most recommended include plain text and Adobe pdf.) While this may sound like a simple process, it is not. I started journaling in 1984. My first years were all paper. Sometime in 1989, I switched to journaling on my computer. Over the next 20-plus years, I journaled in a wide variety of formats, from simple Word documents to various cloud-based apps (Google Docs or Zoho), dedicated journal apps, Microsoft Outlook, and more. Intermixed throughout are times when I clearly tired of the digital forms of journaling and reverted to a paper-based approach, like my beloved Franklin Planner.
So, for almost three months now, I have scoured old hard drives, countless directories, files, and books for scraps and pieces of my journal. What will be fun (not really) is when I have to begin “digitizing” all of my paper ramblings. At first I thought I would simply scan the pages, but in order to have a format that is truly time proof, I will probably retype the handwritten journals so they end up in simple plain text format.
Needless to say, I will still keep the handwritten journals. As much as I appreciate the ease of writing on a computer, nothing beats the memory of a handwritten page. Plain text, while searchable and easy to store, lacks all of the nastalgia of a handwritten page. Looking at my handwritten journals from the 1980s, I can easily remember where I was and what it felt like at the time I was writing those words. There is no similar sense of nastalgia for the typewritten pages.
What does your digital memory look like? How are you capturing everyday life as it happens?
How to Backup Your Twitter Stream
Our twitter stream provides a unique insight into what’s happening in life. For some, their twitter stream is filled with minute details like the fact that you are having your first cup of coffee for the day (Breakfast Blend) and that the temperature outside is 22 degrees. For others, it proves to be a log of your reading trends and interesting facts that come across your information stream.
I fall into the last category.
This morning the idea hit me that I should find a way to archive my twitter stream and post it on my website. Not that it will be of any great significance in years to come, but it may prove interesting.
After some quick searches, I landed on TweetBackup.com. It couldn’t be easier to begin. Simply enter your twitter account credentials and in a few minutes you have a complete backup of every tweet you have sent. In my case, my first tweet was on May 29, 2008. Interesting. Like all similar services, TweetBackup is limited to 3200 tweets, which is the maximum number allowed by Twitter’s API.
Here are a couple of things I wish I could do with my twitter stream that I haven’t found a way to accomplish (yet):
- I wish I could automatically update my archive page with the latest tweets using an RSS feed or something similar.
- I wish TweetBackup had an easy way to archive hashtags. It may be possible, but I haven’t found a way, yet.
How about you? Do you archive your twitter stream? Is it available on your website?
Finding Alternatives to Delicious
Delicious, an excellent bookmarking service currently owned by Yahoo!, is an important part of my research process. While in the collecting phase, I use Delicious to tag interesting websites and documents that I need to go back and review at a later date. This allows me to use either Google or Google Scholar to rapidly search and tag documents without getting to engrossed in the details of individual articles.
To illustrate how powerful Delicious tags can be, here are a few lists I have created over the last couple of years as I researched various topics:
- Faculty Barriers to the Adoption of Distance Learning
- Church Ministries and Distance Learning
- Emerging Instructional Technologies
- Joomla Tips, Sites, Resources
- Switching from Windows to Mac Tips & Resources
- Model Churches
- Moodle Tips, Sites, Resources
- Review of “The Shack”
Adding sites to Delicious is a simple keystroke in Firefox [Ctrl-D]. The user interface allows you to quickly tag the page, make a note about its significance (or copy a paragraph from the page to jog your memory), even share your bookmark via Twitter.
Unfortunately, Yahoo announced earlier this month their intention to sell Delicious. [The original buzz on the blogosphere was that Delicious was simply going to go away. Fortunately, this proved to be a false rumor.]
Alternatives to Delicious
Still, this realization that a critical part of my workflow is facing an uncertain future led me on a quest for a potential replacement. Here are the prospects as of today:
- Diigo. Diigo is a mature social bookmarking, highlighting, note-taking, collaboration site that performs many of the same functions as Delicious. Seizing on the opportunity to capture new users looking for a replacement for Delicious, Diigo wisely provides a “Transition from Delicious to Diigo – Instruction & FAQ” page. Diigo is free.
- Evernote. I am a big fan of Evernote and use this application on Windows, Mac OS, iPad, and Android platforms. Evernote is a great archive for all of your digital documents. It is the critical part of my paperless workflow. As much as I like Evernote, I don’t see it as a viable replacement for Delicious. One of the best features of Delicious is its simplicity, and in my opinion, Evernote would add levels of complexity that would defeat the purpose of rapid collection of online resources. Like Diigo, Evernote provides a simple process on their blog to make the transition from Delicious to Evernote. Evernote has both a paid and free version, and the free version is more than adequate for my needs.
- Google Bookmarks. With Google sitting as king of the hill when it comes to search engines, it only makes sense that Google Bookmarks would be a viable alternative to Delicious. Tagging sites with Google Bookmarks can be as simple as clicking on the little star next to your search results. Google Bookmarks allows users to create and share lists, and plays well with other Google services like Google Maps, Gmail, Docs, etc.. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide instructions on making the transition from Delicious, although there are several recent articles on the web. Google Bookmarks is free.
- Historious. I’m not familiar with Historious, but it appears to offer many of the features available through Delicious. Unfortunately (for me) this service is not free, and that knocks it out of contention. (You can get a free account that allows up to 300 bookmarks. The paid account is $19.95 per year and gives unlimited access to the service.)
- Pinboard. The final contender in today’s roundup of Delicious replacements is Pinboard. As with Historious, I am not personally familiar with Pinboard, although it does receive some decent reviews. Pinboard provides a side-by-side comparison with Delicious if you need some help making a decision. Like Historious, there is a charge to use this service, so that knocks it out of contention for me.
I will update you on the final results of my search to find a good alternative to Delicious. Do you have recommendations as alternatives to Delicious?
Introducing Scrapplet: Creating Your Own Site from Scraps
Don Reisinger over at CNET.com’s Webware provides a nice review of Scrapplet, a new web service that allows users to create their own mashable dashboard using “scraps” from other sites. Here’s a brief description from the article:
Want to grab your Twitter stream and put that on the same page as your Friendfeed? With Scrapplet, that's possible. In just a few simple maneuvers, Scrapplet allows you to highlight portions of a Web page or an entire site, drag it to the Scrapplet page, and modify the design of that page to make it fit. In fact, you can resize the site, change the site's colors, and remove borders. In essence, you can create an entire Web page out of existing sites for your own consumption.
You can read Reisinger’s complete review here.
TweetDeck is a Cool New Twitter App
Twitter users have a new application to try. It's called TweetDeck, and it looks very promising. Allows you to group your tweets into categories to help filter out "active" tweeters who tend to fill your screen with a lot of conversation. It's built on Adobe Air, so install is fast and easy, and the interface has a nice cool factor. Give it a try.