Oh, Tiffany, it's so fun to share videos, right? For sure, Tanya, everyone should see how cool we are!

The social network has taught us to love sharing our thoughts at the speed of light, and now our mobile videos are ready to follow suit. Socialcam, Justin.Tv’s free app for iOS and Android, allows you to instantly upload your videos, tag your friends, and see what everyone else is doing at the same time. It’s not quite real time video social networking, but it’s really close. And it’s getting to be really popular. Out less than three months and Socialcam racked up 1 million downloads for iOS alone by the end of June, and brags they have more than 355,000 unique active users already. Along with their rising popularity, Socialcam has been increasing their features, now allowing you to trim video length, privatize your collection, and tap to focus. Check out some of the other capabilities of Socialcam in the official demo video below. Is this early traction in the market a sign that Socialcam’s version of lifelogging could hit the mainstream?

Socialcam has much of what we’ve come to expect from social media: you can find friends, tag them in your content, share/watch content with others, and essentially establish a network of video feeds to follow. It’s also integrated with your established social network: you can sign in via Facebook if you want, and you can easily push your videos to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Socialcam bridges the geographic gap between us all, letting us go anywhere and share what we’re doing and seeing whenever we want:

What makes Socialcam most interesting to me, however, is that all of this happens more or less instantly. You film yourself in action, you share, others are notified and can watch in moments. Essentially this means Socialcam can give you almost live fees of what your friends are doing. Sure, most people will probably take the time to edit and alter their videos before sharing, but the potential is still there. What you’re looking at here is one of the first widely available, and popular, lifelogging apps.

Record, share, watch - all at the click of a button.

I really have no idea what we’ll do with it. Socialcam’s millions of videos are rather seamlessly integrated into Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ such that I can’t find any discernible patterns as to its use. Are we simply turning our mobiles into reasonable vlogging tools? Are we creating a visual version of texting? Are we simply tweeting with short, hopefully poignant video clips? Any or all of those are certainly possible, but for now, early adopter habits don’t show us which direction Socialcam is heading towards.

That doesn’t seem to keep Socialcam from covering all their bases and enabling the app to spread even further. They’ve recently rolled out new versions for iOS and Android, upgraded their features to follow user requests (especially those in favor of privacy settings, the approval of followers before they can see your feed, etc). The list of modes you can share through is getting bigger, now including Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Email, SMS, Posterous, Tumblr and DropBox. Socialcam is also expanding beyond English, now translated for use in French, Italian, Chinese, Arabic, Japanese and others languages. It seems clear that the company wants to maintain their early momentum.

The hardware for easily recording the world around you has been available for years, and it’s constantly improving. We’ve shown you video goggles you can take anywhere, and spy glasses that will blend in with any social scene. None of that will matter, however, if we aren’t drawn to the idea of quickly sharing their videos with everyone. Socialcam is tentative proof that at least some of us are more than ready. Million+ downloads and hundreds of thousands of regular users – that’s impressive. What will be more impressive however, is if Socialcam can convince the general public that those video cameras we take everywhere (called smart phones) are ready to be used as such. If the wave of early users gathers into a tsunami of adoption, get ready for lifelogging to change the world. Those riots in UK? They’re already talking about how mobile videos could put people in jail. Imagine if everyone with a smart phone was tweeting their videos to the world in real time during such disasters. That’s just one small effect we may see if lifelogging hits the mainstream. Whether Socialcam keeps growing, or another competitor takes their place, the future of video sharing is near. Get ready to see it all.

[image and video credits: Socialcam]
[source: Socialcam, Socialcam Blog]

Clear lenses or shades, Eyez video glasses will let you record you life with no one the wiser.

Ever since True Lies I’ve been waiting for an affordable pair of spy glasses that can transmit video in real time. My wait looks like it may be over very soon. Seattle startup ZionEyez is building momentum to launch their Eyez video recording glasses this year. The Roy Orbison looking Eyez will feature a 720p HD recording camera, microphone, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, 8 GB flash memory, and three hours of battery life. Using an iPhone or Android app you can transmit what your Eyez record directly to the web, or you can save and upload it later using a microUSB port. Take a tour of the Eyez in the animated video below. As part of their KickStarter funding project, you can get a pair of these video glasses for just $150 (shipping winter 2011), or wait until after July 31st for the general retail release at $200. *Due to the overwhelming popularity of the Eyez, the KickStarter project has already met its goal of $55,000 – it took less than eight days!* These glasses are just plain awesome, and I can’t wait until mine arrive. With devices like these I think we’re moving ever closer to a world where everything you do is being recorded and shared as it happens. Lifelogging, thine name is Eyez.

ZionEyez is currently in the process of formalizing their optical choices, so there’s no sample of the video Eyez will record. Still, the following animation is a great overview of the general style of the glasses, and the specs of the equipment that will be onboard.

What we do know about the Eyez is that they will record in 1280x720p HD video at 30 frames per second using a wide angle lens to capture a good view of what you’re seeing. The LED indicator light for recording will only flash once, and it will be internalized so only the wearer sees it – you’re friends won’t know they’re on camera! Talk about spy glasses. There’s also Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity so you can transmit data to your smart phone of choice and from their to Qik or Livestream and onward to Facebook, etc. Audio is recorded at 128 kb/s (reasonable quality) for a total stream with video around 15 Mbps. Not a bad setup and with a three hour battery life (and 8GB of memory), you’ll get plenty of power to handle webcasts.

Would you notice that HD camera? Me neither. Spy glasses, FTW.

But that’s just one application. The ZionEyez vision includes replacing/augmenting mobile video recording. Right now when you want to snap a pic or record something on the go, you probably use either your phone or some dedicated camera (let’s say a Flip). How long can you hold that gadget up before your arms get tired? How involved can you be in what’s happening when you have to track what you’re seeing through the display of your mobile device? With Eyez you get a hands free first person view that’s both discreet and easy to share. Epic win in my book.

Now some hardcore video jockeys out there aren’t going to be satisfied with just 3 hours of recording per charge. For you, the microUSB port on ZionEyez will be a means of extending record time (through an external battery), as well as possibly transferring data onto different platforms (backup drive, etc).

What this means is that whether you are an avid lifelogger, or just someone who wants a better mobile video solution, Eyez has something to offer. Which I think means ZionEyez has a really good chance of succeeding. Their KickStarter page agrees. In the time it took me to write this article they received $2000 in pledges. They’ve already met their goal of $55k, and they have more than 50 days left to go in their pledge drive! In interest of full disclosure, I was one of the people who’s pledged money to the project – the offer for $150 HD spy glasses was just too good to pass up. Singularity Hub’s Keith Kleiner also pledged for a pair of these glasses.  (And that offer should still be good up to July 31st…so, you know…don’t miss it).

A better look at the microUSB port, which again, is probably going to be unnoticeable to the casual observer.

We’ve covered several different video recording glasses in the past. Most, however, are aimed at the outdoor sports enthusiasts, and few are offered as cheaply as $150. What really makes me think that the Eyez could be a breakout gadget, however, is that it looks like it will have the right combination of appearance and performance. The Ray-Ban style frames will pass unnoticed in most social situations, especially as you can swap out clear or shaded lenses as you like (you could also easily fitt prescription lenses). The connectivity through a smart phone matches up with the planned user base very well, as does their vision for linking these glasses directly to the social network. Eyez seem to be custom fit to sell well. Indeed, $55k in eight days means they already have succeeded as a KickStarter project.

Now, as cool as Eyez may appear, there’s still plenty of reasons to be cautious. That animation video is great, but it’s not a real product. Is it vaporware? Well, the cynic in me says it’s too early to say otherwise, but ZionEyez CTO, Joe Taylor, is coming from Flip, a company that made millions on mobile cameras , and I don’t think there’s anything in this build that would be impossible or undeliverable at this price. Should we be concerned that Eyez is coming from a crowd sourced project rather than a big name distributor? Maybe. But it could also just be a sign that bright young entrepreneurs know that there’s more money to be made the longer they stay independent.

You know, I already pledged money to these guys, so maybe I’m biased. Look over their site, their project page, their specs, and decide for yourself.

What I’m certain of is that this kind of product – camera glasses that blend in and allow for easy hands free recording – is going to be hitting the mainstream, and soon. There are many companies entering this field, including big names like Polaroid, and roughly similar devices are already on the market. In the next few years the number of people wearing video glasses is likely to expand from celebrities like Lady Gaga to thousands of average people looking for an easy way to share their lives. That may excite you, it may you make you paranoid about privacy, or it may strike you as silly. Doesn’t matter. Get ready for everything you see to be on the social network. The future of mobile recording is very near.

[image and video credits: ZionEyez]
[sources: ZionEyez, KickStarter]

Quadcopters armed with cameras are an extreme athlete's best way to brag.

There are spies in the skies, and they’re trying to catch you doing something awesome. As remote controlled flying drones have become more sophisticated and stronger, they’ve opened up a new field of amateur cinematography – the recording of extreme sports. Whether it’s surfing, skiing, or paragliding, RC helicopters fixed with durable cameras allow you to get aerial footage that will blow the minds of your friends and enemies alike. Catch some of the phenomenal shots captured by these miniature aircraft in the videos below. These clips are a taste of the extreme forms of lifelogging we can expect in the future as cameras and RC drones continue to improve.

The videos above are showreels for three different professional aerial recording companies: DediCam.TV, Extreme Aerials, and Got Aerial. While there are many more such businesses, I chose these three to illustrate how global the RC copter camera craze has become – these videos each come from a different continent: Europe, Australia, and North America, respectively. The variety of services you can purchase from businesses like these are fairly broad, everything from a video shoot for a day to creating an online digital video map of your property to building an RC rig of your own (~$3500+ for the last one). When it comes to what you want to record the sky’s the limit, if you’ll pardon the pun.

Yet the global presence of these companies should by no means convince you that the RC aerial recording craze is strictly for professionals. Far from it. Go to YouTube and look up quadrotor first person videos (FPV). There are hundreds of people just using that one kind of rig to shoot their videos. Others prefer hexacopters, or even octacopters to get the lift they need to put a camera in the sky.

A simple rig that uses a MiKroKopter quadrotor, Canon EOS 350D, and a lot of skill. Oh, and this is from July 2007. Yeah, you can do it even better and cheaper now.

While the videos these amateurs create cover a wide variety of subjects, the one I see most often is extreme sports. It makes sense. Traditional video rigs can’t go where the most daring athletes tread. We’ve seen wearable cameras that let you get an up close and personal perspective, but sometimes you really want to see everything that is happening. It’s hard to get a better point of view than when you’re flying by overhead. With battery lives reaching upwards of 30 minutes, some of the larger RC drones give you plenty of time to capture all the trials, falls, and triumphs that make extreme sports so addictive.

As I’ve said before, I think it’s possible that the culture of extreme sports will not only push us to develop cooler ways of recording videos, it will push us to record many more parts of our lives. 24/7 lifelogging could be getting started now on the slopes and beaches around the world.

Even as extreme sports could pull lifelogging into the mainstream, first person videos are going to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with RC drones and high definition cameras. We’ve seen a remote controlled plane buzz through Manhattan, and people have been collecting low Earth’s orbit footage from high altitude balloons for years now. As cameras get smaller and RC vehicles get better (and cheaper) the amateur videos we’ll see are only going to get more outrageous. Flying through the Himalayas or taking a trip through your intestine…it’s all coming soon to an RC controller near you. Get ready to be recorded.

[image credits: DediCam.TV, MiKroKopter.de forums]
[video credits: DediCam.TV, Extreme Aerials]
[sources: DediCam.TV, MiKroKopter.de, Extreme Aerials (incl. Facebook)]

Deb Roy (left). Image of their home lifelog (right). Space-time worm tracking movements of family members (bottom).

When Deb Roy’s son invites his girlfriend over for dinner with his family, there will be much more than photo albums to embarrass the teenager. His parents will have plenty of ammunition: 90,000 hours of video and 140,000 hours of audio. It’s the most comprehensive lifelogging event the world has ever seen, dwarfing a recent frame-by-frame photolog of an aging young girl. Moreover, the lifelog wasn’t compiled solely for family reminiscence, but for scientific reasons as well. As part of the Human Speechome Project, Deb Roy, an MIT cognitive scientist, is using this deluge of video footage to investigate early language acquisition. You can see his TED presentation on the subject, which includes some of the thousands of hours of footage, in the video below. From this pedagogical case study, his team also cleverly translated their budding ideas to human behavior in digital communities. With social networking and the growing prevalence of mobile devices with cameras, is this endeavor a precursor to even grander forms of lifelogging? If so, will scientists be equipped to make sense of world-logging – recording every moment on the planet – if it emerges? Only time will tell. For now, we all can marvel at Dr. Roy’s impressive feat of lifelog analytics.

Earlier this year, Deb Roy dazzled a TED audience with his presentation, “The Birth of a Word,” featured below. Because of the unprecedented nature of the project, the captivating visualizations, and the personal touch, the video garnered widespread attention. It even earned a tweet from Ashton Kutcher. If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and allot 20 minutes of your time to watch the TED Talk in full. You won’t be disappointed.

Roy opens with a thought-provoking scenario:

Imagine you could record your life – everything you said, everything you did – available in a perfect memory store at your fingertips, so you could go back and find memorable moments and relive them . . . or sift through traces of time and discover patterns in your own life that had previously gone undiscovered.

Here, Deb Roy is talking about using lifelogging as a tool to answer challenging questions about human behavior and life in general. The question that he and his wife, a speech scientist, were trying to address has eluded child development experts for years: How does the infant’s tabula rasa acquire human language? It has been a subject of rigorous investigation since the titan of developmental psychology, Jean Piaget, offered his own theory of child language development. While Dr. Roy and his wife did not completely answer the question, their videos certainly shed valuable light on the matter.

Vertical axis: Complexity of caregiver utterances. Horizontal axis: Time. At the minimum of the curve, the child made his first correct utterance of a specific word. Attaboy, Roy Junior.

There were some fascinating phenomena that emerged from Dr. Roy’s daunting dataset. He starts with some raw data at 4:59, where his son gradually improves his pronunciation of the word “water.” It’s actually quite beautiful to hear the word crystallize from its linguistic predecessor, “gaga.” In a recent CNN article, Dr. Roy eloquently referred to this verbal evolution as the “acoustic equivalent of a time-lapse video of a flower blossoming.” But what does it all mean? Well, the MIT team sorted through the hundreds of words in Roy Junior’s early vocabulary and found that he learned a word when the complexity of caregiver utterances reached a minimum (5:58). In other words, the parents and their nanny were subconsciously simplifying their speech to meet the nascent talker halfway. It seems to be related to “motherese” in which parents heighten the pitch of their voice in the presence of a newborn. This adjustment is thought to assist language acquisition. Here, the Roy family has revealed a previously hidden parent-child feedback loop in speech development by applying home video analytics. Jean Piaget and perhaps Bob Saget, another home video enthusiast, would be very proud.

Mass Media Feedback Loop

Okay, so lifelogging can address problems of child linguistics. What about questions of a broader scope? Luckily, the MIT Media Lab had more tricks up their sleeves. By correlating “social hotspots” in the home with specific words that Roy Junior learned, the team built “wordscapes” (10:15), mountainous, data-rich structures describing utterance frequencies at particular locations. This spurred the imagination of Dr. Roy’s PhD student, Michael Fleischman, who envisaged translating this concept from the Roy household to the digitally-based community (11:19). In “virtual living rooms,” source content in mass media leads to commentary and discussion in social media. Previously, much like pinpointing how environment influences word births, it has been tricky to monitor how source content mediates responses in the digital world. However, by utilizing high-throughput media analytics, the MIT team was able to capture these media feedback loops. This is brilliantly depicted at 14:45 as a co-viewing clique, a fundamental unit of content-commentary interaction which includes the original source and the linked responses in social media. To see the President Obama’s State of the Union make a “nation explode in conversation,” check out 15:54. From ideas born from the unassuming archives of Roy Junior’s lifelog, the MIT lab has unearthed previously unknown dynamics of the mass media world.

The co-viewing clique for the State of the Union address. See it in action at 15:54.

As you could imagine, these media feedback loops might provide invaluable audience engagement information to advertisers, TV executives, and political campaigns. Using media-social media interactions as unsolicited crowdsourcing could literally transform Internet audiences into massive focus groups. To make this a reality, Dr. Roy and his former PhD student spearheaded Bluefin Labs, a company with the mission of helping organizations “link social media comments directly to their televised source—at scale, with precision and near real-time.” One of their tools, a social heatmap of television programming, is currently available on their website. At the moment, Bluefin is demonstrating their technology to Fortune 100 companies, and they expect a fully developed product by year’s end. I wonder if Roy Junior will get a cut? If the prospects of this technology tickle your fancy, check out the promotional video below to augment your excitement.

These are just the first steps of converting the vast stockpiles of videos, photos, and commentary into meaningful data. As social media is chronicling the lives of millions and cell phone cameras are approaching omnipresence, humanity at-large is building a worldlog of epic proportions. Almost certainly, there are valuable hidden insights within this treasure trove of human artifacts. Throw in unstructured data on science, politics, public health, and history, and the possibilities grow exponentially. We might be able to track how language is born not just in the individual, but civilization as a whole. Digging further, we might discover how cultural conditions can lead to scientific breakthroughs. The question is:   Who is up to the Herculean task of elucidating global behavior patterns from this ocean of world knowledge? IBM has shown interest in this effort on a small scale with social media analytics, so perhaps a more computationally powerful version of Watson will be up to the challenge.

Also, what if we expand measurable life beyond the limits of sound, images, and text? All recorded human behavior is really just the end product of neural activity, so knowledge derived from advanced neuroscience might produce more fundamental insights than lifelogging through video. For a moment, imagine recording and interpreting brain activity among multiple individuals simultaneously. Now, imagine a whole community . . . then the world. The gates of social neuroscience would be wide open, transitioning worldlog analytics from  behaviorism to biological understanding.

Alright, now I’m tiptoeing into science fiction, but in light of Deb Roy’s inspirational work, I can’t help but dream. His project foreshadows new tools that could change our world for the better. Through immediate and long range feedback loops observed in lifelogs and the hypothetical worldlog, we could improve our self-awareness, understanding, and behavior on both an individual and global scale. So, the next time you post a picture of your vacation on Flickr or upload your extreme sports exploits to Youtube, don’t think of it as an exercise in vanity. You are adding an infinitesimally small piece to an ever-growing library of human events that could answer our deepest questions. This echoes the bit of Socratic wisdom at the beginning of this article, a statement that really drives at the core of Deb Roy’s work and all the other lifelogging devotees out there. Socrates, if he were cryogenically unfrozen today, might amend his famous quotation: “An unexamined life is not worth living, and an unexamined world is not worth inhabiting. So take plenty of pictures! And don’t drink the hemlock.”

<Image Credits:  TED (modified), Bluefin Labs (modified)>

<Video Credits: TED, Bluefin Labs>

<Sources: TED, Bluefin Labs, CNN>

Eyes in the back of his head, literally.

I don’t know artist Wafaa Bilal, but I know exactly where he was about an hour ago.  How?  The constant stream of photos being automatically taken from a camera on his body and uploaded to the Internet, of course.  That, and the latitude and longitude of his location, as well as a handy Google map displaying his location – all of which is displayed on the website for his current project, The 3rdi.  Based on the PowerPoint being set up, I know that he gave a presentation around 7pm EST.  After, he went to a coffee shop in New York City’s West Village and relaxed a while, which is obvious from the photos of people reading and working on their computers behind him.  If you were in the area, you may have been one of them.  You may have heard about this NYU photography professor back in November when he underwent a surgery (of sorts) to implant the camera in the back of his head.  Recently some medical complications resulted in removal of part of the device but, as they say, the show must go on.

Indeed it has.  In addition to the website, the photos are also being displayed in real time at the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar as part of the Told/Untold/Retold exhibition.  The exhibition brings together 23 artists, and claims to be the largest contemporary art museum exhibit of its kind in the Arab world.  “The exhibition invites you to look at artists, not as national representatives but as ‘transmodern’ artists in consistent metamorphosis.”  Metamorphosis indeed.  Bilal underwent the surgical procedure at a tattoo and body-piercing studio in Los Angles after doctors refused to perform the procedure.  A titanium base was implanted between the skin and skull, using only local anesthesia.  Ouch. Just a couple months after the procedure, he removed part of the device after his body rejected one of the three titanium posts that held the camera in place. Undeterred, Prof. Bilal is forging ahead and wearing the camera on a strap around his neck.  The camera is still facing backwards, and is still capturing photos every minute and publishing them to the project’s website.

Top: 7:21 pm EST - Prof. Bilal was giving a presentatin about his current project as evidenced by photos taken around 7:21 pm EST. Bottom: 8:36 pm EST - Post presentation, he relaxed in a coffee shop, where others worked on computers, chatted, and read.

In the last hour, the images displayed on the 3rdi website have gone from the coffee shop to darkness which likely means that Bilal either went to bed, or that he is on NYU’s campus.  Yep – while the photography professor is on NYU’s campus or teaching, the school’s administration requires him to cover the camera to protect students’ privacy.  In a world where we might unsuspectingly receive a traffic ticket for running a red light, along with photographic evidence taken of us at the time, Bilal’s project seems to be just another one of the many opportunities for our images to be recorded.  If Wal-Mart suspects you of being a shoplifter, they simply check the video footage that captured the goings on of the day.  If you had a hunch that the guy next to you on the subway was picking his nose but didn’t want to visually confirm – somebody probably filmed it.

As technology evolves, the tools we use to capture images get smaller and more sophisticated and the data becomes easier to store.  The result?  We are probably going to see a lot more of this type of thing, and not always for the sake of art.  Maybe one day if you misplace your keys, you will be able to visually retrace your steps by scanning through the images that your brain saw that day.  Now really, that seems like crazy talk.  If you consider the advancements in implantable microchips and neuroscience though, the idea of uploading what you see everyday to your computer suddenly doesn’t sound so Sci Fi.  And Wafaa Bilal is paving the way.  As Oscar Wilde once said “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life” – so prepare yourselves, and by that I mean, smile!  You might be on camera at this very moment.

[image credits: wafaabilal.com, www.3rdi.me]

[Source: www.3rdi.me, wafaabilal.com]

Discovery's final launch as seen from an airplane. Not bad for an iPhone camera.

NASA’s launch last Thursday was the end of an era – the final mission for space shuttle Discovery. Yet a timely video captured on a mobile phone shows that it was also the beginning of a new era – the dawn of lifelogging. Software developer Neil Monday was on a commercial jet flight out of Florida when he flew close enough to Discovery’s path to see it rocket into orbit. Acting quickly, Monday pulled out his iPhone4 and shot a brief video of the arcing rise of the space shuttle as seen from his airplane window. It’s amazing and beautiful footage from an angle you’ve probably never seen before, and we have it for you below. Check it out. Neil Monday’s opportunistic recording of Discovery’s final launch is an example of what we can expect in a future where everyone carries a video camera with them at all times. Every special moment can be saved, shared, and relished – that’s the promise of lifelogging.

Most of us probably don’t think of our mobile phone cameras as lifelogging tools, but that’s exactly what they are. Honestly, why do you need a camera on your phone? It’s not as high quality, nor as versatile as a dedicated device. You use camera phones for the little things, the unexpected events, the rare moments you want to capture. That’s the sort of mentality that opens the possibility for the next step: forgoing the hassle of whipping out your camera phone every time something interesting happens and just wearing a camera that runs 24/7.

We’ve seen many different devices that let you automatically capture video and images of your surroundings, many worn inside glasses or goggles. There’s also already the social network infrastructure (YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc) to share these recordings quickly with family and friends. The only thing we’re really waiting for is the spark that sets these fuels aflame. We need an event, or fad, or concept that gets the idea of lifelogging into the mainstream.

Previously I’ve speculated that it could be extreme sports, with its penchant for showmanship and bragging, that jumpstarts lifelogging. Alternatively, lifelogging could arise naturally out of the newest generation’s exposure to social networking since birth (often since their mother’s pregnancy). Neil Monday’s video is yet another possibility: the ‘once in lifetime video opportunity’. We all have those ‘once in a lifetime’ events that we wish we had captured on camera. Monday’s video reminds us that now we don’t have to miss the next one that occurs. Videos like this one are just so cool, so fun to share with friends, that they could inspire others to start recording more with their own camera phones. 1.5+ million people has already viewed this video of Discovery’s final launch. Maybe, when coupled with all the other remarkable ‘once in a lifetime’ videos that crop up on YouTube from time to time, more people will start taking the leap to lifelogging.

Even if we don’t adopt wearable cameras that run continuously we are still headed towards a day when everything is recorded. There are enough video phones in people’s pockets such that collectively we will have an eye on the ground (or in the sky) for every event. Discovery’s flight into orbit as seen from a plane – somebody had a camera for that. If a woman gives birth on a subway I’m sure we’ll have a camera there too. An elephant gets drunk and throws a car at a clown? You know someone will record that. All the weird and wonderful things in the world can’t hide anymore. We’ve become a civilization armed with camera phones and, individually or collectively, we’re not going to miss anything anymore. Get ready for the recorded future…it’s already here.

[screen capture and video credit: Neil Monday]
[source: MSNBC Cosmiclog, NASA]

Dude, I'm totally recording you.

Whether you’re about to die doing something stupid awesome on a mountain, or about to die doing something stupid sweet in the ocean, you’re going to want your heirs to know exactly how you met your end. Maybe even relive it from your point of view. Liquid Image is here to help. The California based company has a line of camera goggles that let you record HD video directly from between your eyes. It’s an amazing way to step into someone else’s perspective. Their newest offerings were recently on display at CES 2011, and the demonstrations of their capabilities were killer. Check out some great ski and scuba footage, as well as a CES floor demo, in the videos below. Ranging from $150 to $400+, these camera goggles could be a relatively easy point of access to bring lifelogging to extreme sports, and from there to the rest of the world. Record it all, share it all, and encourage others to do the same. It might start with wanting to share your stupidest proudest moments from the exact same POV in which you experienced them.

We’ve seen plenty of head mounted cameras, but Liquid Image takes the concept and makes it really simple. Are you engaging in a dangerous activity? Well then you’re probably wearing goggles. Why not include a camera directly inside them while you’re at it? At CES, the company had several pairs of their headware on display, including D1 quality ski/stunt goggles starting at $150, 1080p HD goggles starting at $250, and various others. As you’ll see in the clip from CES below, Liquid Image works hard to make their goggles easy to use. Just two big buttons (for gloved hands), and an interior light to let you know you’re recording. The model they show off here can take a 32 GB SD card, and has a battery life of 1.5 to 2 hours. Not bad at all. Expect them to arrive early this year, with other versions being released throughout 2011.

Extreme sports could be the activity that helps popularize the idea of recording everything you do. It used to be that you needed a dedicated camera crew that was as insane as you were if you wanted to film your stunts on the mountain. Now you can record the whole affair without any more equipment than you would normally wear. That’s going to encourage many more people to videotape their adventures. It could even get the casual athlete or aspiring young crazy to strap on a pair of goggles and share their experiences with friends via YouTube. As soon as the idea of recording your life becomes fun and exciting it will spread. We already have a generation talking into their webcams. Next we could have them talking into their glasses.

Even if it takes a while for the technology and the culture to be ready, Liquid Image has hit upon a pretty great idea: sell cameras you don’t have to think about wearing. For extreme sports enthusiasts, that means goggles, but Liquid Image is already working on smaller pairs that will look more like sunglasses. Polaroid is doing the same. Give it a few years (maybe less) and it will be cheap and easy to wear these things anywhere. All it takes are some enthusiastic and persuasive early adopters, and the lifelogging concept could become a major fad. Maybe even a way of life for some. Take a good look at that Bro out on the ski slopes with the video goggles. Crazy? Cocky? Camera-whore? Yes to all the above. But just wait. Your Uncle Joe will be showing you videos from his scuba trip soon enough. Then your Great Aunt Edna will share some footage of her visit to the botanical gardens. …Lifelogging could turn us all into Bros.

*shudder*

Smile! You're looking at your future.

[image credits: Liquid Image]
[video credits: Liquid Image, Future Shop]
[source: Liquid Image]

Lady Gaga's latest glasses will record your life...and shade you from the sun.

Pop diva Lady Gaga’s latest sunglasses are straight out of a spy movie. Produced in collaboration with Polaroid, and unveiled recently at CES 2011, the GL20 Camera Glasses use two small screens in the lenses to display images and video from an embedded camera. Users can snap photos or record video of their surroundings, and then upload that content to a computer via Bluetooth or a USB port hidden in the ear piece. The GL20 is scheduled to be available later this year at an undisclosed price. You can see the premier of Gaga’s latest venture into electronics at the CES press event in the video below. Devices like these Camera Glasses will make it remarkably simple to record one’s life as it happens. With her new line of products, Lady Gaga could help bring lifelogging to the masses.

Over a year ago, Polaroid announced it had hired Lady Gaga as its Creative Director. Through that collaboration was born the Grey Label, Gaga’s new line of designer electronics. Along with the GL20 Camera Glasses, Polaroid also announced the launch of a $150 mobile photo printer (with Bluetooth connectivity), and a new line of Polaroid cameras (with both digital and photo printing capabilities). During the press event, Gaga also mentioned that she’ll be producing a device that could push your photos directly to social media outlets:

Mobile printers and Polaroid cameras really don’t excite me much, but I’m going gaga for the Camera Glasses (oh, c’mon, I get one bad joke, don’t I?). The device, inspired by a time when Lady Gaga built costume spectacles out of two iPod screens, isn’t that remarkable technologically. It’s a digital camera with two small LCD displays – big deal. But the form of the GL20 could lead to a different kind of use case from traditional devices. Instead of pulling out a camera to take a picture, you’re always wearing your camera, and it’s always pointed where you are looking. That’s going to encourage you to take more candid photos. You’ll be creating a more passive visual record of your life.

That, in essence, is lifelogging. We’ve discussed the phenomenon many times before, and while it comes in different forms it always has the same basic premise: instead of capturing a few special moments on film, go ahead and record them all. Now, the GL20 Camera Glasses aren’t a continuous recording device. I’ve no idea how much memory or battery life they even have. Yet they are a wearable camera, and one that is promoted as an easy way to record what’s happening around you as you live it. Lady Gaga may not have designed the device as a lifelogging enabler, but it could definitely be just that.

It’s hard to know what vehicle will bring the concept of lifelogging into the mainstream. I’ve proposed extreme sports vlogging, and nostalgia as two possible driving forces. Celebrity could be a third. With her popular singing career and design cred, Lady Gaga might get many more trendy people wearing cameras and recording their lives. That idea is certainly bolstered by her plans to develop a social media enabled camera in the near future. Part of the draw of lifelogging will be sharing the visual minutiae of your life through the social network. Devices that do so automatically are further enabling a lifelogging mentality. Could Lady Gaga help give that phenomenon the push it needs to enter the public consciousness? Too soon to tell. But as video recording technology gets easier and more fashionable to use, we may all end up as our own personal paparazzi.

(Ok, so apparently I get two.)

[image credit: Polaroid]
[video credit: IDG News]
[source: Polaroid]

Views like this from a RC plane? Better believe it.

Get ready for a view of New York that would make Spiderman jealous. Expert remote control pilot Raphael “Trappy” Pirker recently took his 54 inch Zephyr model plane on a harrowing tour of Manhattan and the surrounding area. The best part: his RC vehicle was fitted with a camera that wirelessly transmitted an amazing recording of everything it saw – Pirker was piloting his craft with this visual feed. As you can see in the video below, the results were spectacular. The plane looks to be flying within a few feet of buildings and whizzing past bridges with ease. You have to check out around 2:01 when he starts to buzz the Statue of Liberty. Phenomenal! First person view (FPV) flying is a growing part of the RC community and watching footage like this I can certainly see why. Could the new era of personal video recording be spreading to the sky?

New cameras are making it cheaper and easier to record every moment of your life. We’ve already discussed how this kind of ‘lifelogging’ could be fueled by our fascination with extreme sports and real world adventures. Pirker’s video of Manhattan makes me wonder if FPV flights wouldn’t be an even greater enticement to get people recording and sharing their lives. Watching his Zephyr tour New York certainly makes me want to strap a camera to a RC plane and upload the video to the web:

Of course, Pirker’s attempt is far outside the bounds of any novice like myself. He custom built his “Ritewing” Zephyr (read about the construction here) and fine tuned the controls and video relaying system so that it can perform at absurd ranges. Pirker has tested his RC and video electronics to a distance of 27 miles. According to calculations, the maximum range would be 120 miles! For a FPV RC that’s just insane. Not only is the Zephyr a custom build, Pirker is an expert pilot. He’s tested his skills against sheer mountains, strong winds, and treacherous drops. You can’t take a plane that flies at 80 mph (130 km/h) through a city full of drafts and radio interference and hope to come out in one piece – not unless you are an expert.

It’s the extreme nature of Pirker’s flight that has garnered him praise and condemnation. The Academy of Model Aeronautics issued a statement declaring his flight “posed a significant threat to people and property.” In an interview with FliteTest, Pirker explained that he didn’t violate FAA airspace (the Zephyr was a model craft), and that he and his team took precautions to make sure that the plane wouldn’t fall on innocent people in the case of failure. You can see the full interview in the video below. For those worried that the text “Points Proven = 1″ was some vague reference to terrorism, Pirker explains that it was about a challenge from a fellow FPV pilot who didn’t think he could handle Manhattan. Good to know.

Despite the ethical debate sparked by Pirker’s flight, I think everyone can admit that his footage was absolutely awesome. While his Zephyr and control system are obviously custom built and top of the line, we are still talking about an RC system here. It’s remarkable how advanced systems like this have become, and the cameras and equipment used are still relatively cheap. You or I, if we invested two years of our lives to gain the experience needed, could do what Pirker has done. How much easier will it become in the years ahead. There already are commercially available drones that are simple to fly and that transmit a video signal to your iPhone. Give it some more time and there could be many more people flying cameras through the sky. Sure, that will raise some hard questions about privacy and safety, but it will also lead to some incredible videos. I’ll leave you with one of Pirker’s many clips of his FPV piloting through mountain ranges. Don’t you want to be a part of this?

Watch more of Trappy’s adventures on his YouTube channel.
[screen capture and video credit: Raphael "Trappy" Pirker]
[source: FliteTest]

Daily snapshots of Natalie show her grow over the course of a decade.

No, it’s not a deleted scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This little baby is turning into a young lady through the magic of lifelogging. Natalie’s parents took a picture of her nearly every day from birth to present and compiled them into a single 85 second video. The result is more than 3000 images that show her growth in a spectacular way. In a matter of seconds she sheds her bubbling infant’s smirk for a toddler’s grin and the gap-toothed smile of a school girl. A baby’s sleepy looks evolve into zany childhood antics and settle into the calmer face of a student entering into adolescence. In other words, the video shows ten years of life. It’s a wonderful artifact that Natalie and her family will be able to share forever. If that warms your heart, you’re not alone. You can feel a lot of love behind the camera in the video of Natalie’s growth below. As lifelogging gains more widespread acceptance, we could all have these personal records of our loved ones to cherish and explore.

Natalie’s clip, while very cute, is far from the first example of rapidly aging videos that we’ve seen. There are hundreds on the internet, many inspired by Noah Kalina and the video he produced in 2006. These time-evolved portraits, in turn, are just part of the larger phenomenon of lifelogging. Adherents use cameras and microphones to record their lives as they happen. Some, like Natalie, have snapshots of many moments in their lives, others endeavor to capture every event that happens around them. We already have the requisite equipment needed for 24/7 recording, and YouTube and streaming video sites like Justin.Tv provide the forums to share them. The only thing lifelogging needs in order to explode into mainstream culture is interest from the general public.

I’ve already discussed how I believe that adventurers and thrill seekers could help attract a larger audience to the lifelogging lifestyle. Natalie’s video reminds me that excitement is just one of the emotions that could get us interested. Nostalgia is another. Are there parents out there who can watch her age a decade in a few seconds and not wish they had similar records for their own children? I’m always told that kids grow up so fast. Well, Natalie’s accelerated example is, ironically, a call to combat that speedy loss of your child’s youth. With lifelogging you’ll always have a way of rewinding the clock and holding on to your little girl long after she’s moved out and had girls of her own.

The same can be true for grandparents, grandchildren, or even yourself.

There are myriad practical applications for lifelogging – everything from remembering where you left your keys to providing expert witness testimony at trial. Yet I doubt the practical side is really going to sell things. Holding onto the life and vitality of your loved ones as they age, now that’s a marketable idea. Take a good look at Natalie’s ever changing smile. It could be the face that helps launch a thousand lifelogging projects. Let me know when you decide to jump onboard.

[screen capture and video credits: JAMagicFilms]

Will You Record Your Entire Life?

Lifelogging – recording every single minute of your life – is quickly moving from science fiction fantasy to real life phenomenon.  Of course to truly document every minute of your life today is still a daunting task.  Although some people are already doing it, full lifelogging is time consuming, expensive, and limited in quality.  But logging every single minute of your life is not the only way to lifelog.  Each video, each picture, each email we create everyday is another piece of the puzzle that documents our lives.  If you are like me, you are accumulating more and more of these digital pieces each year.  This trend is accelerating, and within ten years or less it will be cheap and easy for most of us to record nearly every moment of our lives if we choose to do so.  How much of your life will you choose to record, and how much of your life will be recorded by others?

Technology has already made it so easy to record our lives that many of us might not even appreciate how much is already being recorded.  Gmail, for example, has a record of every single email I have ever sent or received for many years now.  Those of us that maintain online calendars can tell who we were with and what we were doing on any given day for the last several years.  I use my smartphone to capture several photos and videos per day without even thinking about it.  Most chat programs allow you to record and archive every single online chat you have ever had.  And these are just some of the more ubiquitous examples.

For those that want to be more ambitious about their lifelogging, there is a device you can wear  around your neck that will take photos automatically around the clock.  Ucorder makes a video camera that you can snap onto your clothing.  And taking things to the ultimate limit is Justin Kan, founder of Justin.tv, who was originally famous years ago for broadcasting his life 24/7 to the internet for anyone to see.

Being able to explore our recorded past opens the door to a whole new world of possibilities.  Arguments could be resolved by going back in time and seeing who really said what, rather than relying on flawed recollections of what we think we said.  Crime could be revolutionized with recordings of who was doing what and where.  Our entire past could be made accessible – from meaningful conversations with a loved one to trivial encounters with random people or places.  We would rarely forget anything ever again.  When we lose the keys, fail to recollect a desired piece of information, or lose some clarity on what something looked like – all of this can be fixed by looking back into our recorded past.

Our recorded past could be the best (or worst) movie we have ever watched.  We could watch ourselves go to school for the first time, go on our first date with our future spouse, or go to our first job interview.  It is a window into our past, with all it’s glory and blemishes.  Some of these recorded moments won’t be our proudest, but ultimately I think we will gain great value from being able to access our recorded past.

Recording our lives is one thing, but being able to find a particular conversation or image of interest from thousands of hours of footage is a daunting task.  Indeed, our ability to record information today is far ahead of our ability to organize and dig through that information.

The tools for searching through our lifelog are getting better though.  Video and images almost always have a timestamp associated with them, so programs like Google’s Picasa are easily able to sort your lifelog by date.  Software has recently made impressive strides in being able to automatically recognize and tag faces within images, making it possible to search for all images with a particular person in them.  Devices with a GPS such as the iphone are now able to associate a location with your images and videos.  This means it is now trivial to sort those recordings by location and then view them on a map.  See below for an example of how an iphone does this:

Map where pictures/videos were taken on an iphone

But ultimately what we really need is something much more sophisticated than “sort by date” or “sort by location”.  What you want to do is say “computer, please pull up the conversation I had with Dr. James about longevity a few years ago.”  Such a capability is not here yet, but the foundation for its creation is already in the works.  When you consider voice recognition technology and automatic speech to text translation that exists today, it is not unreasonable to expect Star Trek quality access to digital records in 10-20 years.

Even though the tools to search our lifelog are still lacking, this does not mean that those who are interested in lifelogging should stop their efforts.  Lifelogging can begin now, and we can count on the ability to effectively dig through that lifelog in the future.  Already I am lifelogging more each year.  At my current rate, I am easily capturing several photos and videos per day.  Even with this incomplete lifelog, when you stitch it all together it allows me to showcase an unprecedented digital diary of a single person’s life.

For my children, this lifelog is growing into an invaluble record of what they looked like, what they said, where they went, and what they were capable of during any day of their youth.  I am not just recording the “big moments” like their first steps or their first words.  Conversations, playing games, jokes, falls, fails, arguments, discoveries, crying fits…the minutae of daily life are all being recorded for my children and their loved ones to look back upon when they are older.

Many will say that such a massive lifelog of information is a useless pile of data.  But this is very shortsighted thinking.  When given the chance to view a video record covering years or even decades of our lives, I am pretty sure we all would find plenty of reasons to want to look back.  Besides, given how cheap and easy it is becoming to record a lifelog, the debate about the usefulness of a lifelog can mostly be ignored.  If you use the lifelog – great.  If you don’t use it, then it didn’t cost you much to record it anyway.

Although lifelogging unleashes fascinating ways for us to explore our past, it also exposes us to possible embarrassment, or even worse – trouble with the law.  It is a double edged sword, yet this is no different than with our actions that take place in the present time frame.

We all accept that actions we take in the present time frame are subject to negative consequences, but this doesn’t make us not want to live in the present.  For most of us, the same will be true for recording our past – the benefits we gain from being able to retrieve our past will far outweigh the risk we face for our past actions.  This is especially true if we consider that we will have full control over who can and cannot access our recorded lives.  That is, unless our hand is forced by the real risk of a search warrant or a security breach.  We will each have to decide for ourselves how to balance those risks as we record more and more of our lives.

The future of first dates?

As lifelogging becomes more prevalent, we will see that the book is yet to be written on the etiquette and law surrounding when we can and cannot record things.  Is it appropriate to record your first date with someone?  Would the two of you both be comfortable with having such a moment on record?  That choice will be up to the two of you.  Would a corporation really allow you to record your job interview with them?  Probably not, and the law will likely support the corporation on that choice.  It will be interesting to see how different individuals and entire cultures evolve to accept or deny the invasion of video recording into our daily lives.

As recording our lives continues to get easier and cheaper to perform, most of us find ourselves lifelogging more and more – taking more photos, recording more videos, sending more emails.  The trend is unstoppable.  Some of us will embrace lifelogging more quickly and more openly than others, but ultimately we are all moving in a similar direction.  The gains to be had from these detailed records of our lives are fascinating, but the threat to our privacy is very real.  I for one, tend to embrace inevitability rather than fight it, so I will continue to increase my lifelogging as technology makes it easier and cheaper for me to do so.  If you ever see me in person beware – it will probably be recorded.

Image Credits: kk.org, encentra.com

Just your average lifelogger

Lifelogging – recording every single minute of your life (or as much of it as possible) – continues its unstoppable march towards the mainstream with the announcement that Vicon will soon release a life recording device called the Revue.  The device  is worn around your neck and automatically takes photos up to every 30 seconds.  The Revue boasts an accelerometer, light sensor, and heat sensor that allow it to automatically take pictures at key moments when the wearer enters a new environment, confronts a person, and so on.  With an ability to capture 30,000 images per gigabyte the camera can easily capture 10 days worth of footage.  Although the device sounds pretty cool at first (or creepy depending on your perspective) there are several hurdles that need to be overcome for the product to be useful to more than a niche audience.  The Revue probably won’t be a huge success, but it is still notable, foretelling a breed of much more powerful life recording devices soon to follow.

From more extreme individuals wearing video cameras on their foreheads to the average Joe carrying a phone that can take photos and videos, humans across the globe are augmenting themselves with life recording abilities.  Handheld devices allow us to post tweets, pics, and video clips to the web in a snap.  Life recording software such as Kyte for the iphone allows us to create our own online channels that document our lives.  In London an individual is said to be caught on up to 300 surveillance cameras in a single day.  These examples and more show that the life recorder from Vicon is just a small drop in a burgeoning sea of lifelogging culture.

Although information is still hard to come by on the Vicon Revue, it does not appear to come with a connection to the net.  Without networking ability the usefulness of the device will be severely limited.  It won’t be able to dynamically or otherwise send images of choice to twitpic, facebook, or whatever is your favorite life sharing resource of the moment.  Even with a good network connection, will the revue have an intuitive interface (preferably touchscreen) to allow the user to command the device to take video, change focus, prioritize an image or perform other useful functions?  I doubt it.

Further complicating things, 99% of the pictures will be pure junk and there is currently no viable option out there to help a person manage and sift through so many pictures easily.  In fact therein lies one of the greatest problems not just with the Vicon Revue, but with the entire lifelogging phenomenon as a whole:  capturing the footage is the easy part, figuring out how to sift through it all to grab the chunks that you want is the real challenge.

The Revue Life Recorder From Vicon

Life recording might not seem that useful to many people, but that is because its potential is trapped behind the aforementioned information management challenges that it poses.  Instead of recording everything automatically, as in the case of the Revue, the trend right now is for individuals to manually choose when to record things, for example, by activating their phone to take a photo at a key moment.  This manual lifelogging will continue to be the dominant trend until the tools are available to easily search for and manipulate the precise video segment or image that you desire from thousands of hours of footage.

Even without better information management tools, automatic lifelogging capability from devices like the Revue offers some very powerful possibilities.  Since the pictures are at least organized by date there are several applications of time related data analysis that could be of great interest.  Want to confirm your alibi to the police about your whereabouts on Monday evening?  Simply show them a photo stream that your liferecorder has safely stored away for you.  Can’t remember where you put your keys last night?  Just skim through your photo stream during the hours before bed to recall where you had been and what you had done.

Sadly it will be a decade or more before powerful software is available that will allow us to fully unlock the potential of lifelogging.  Finding your missing keys is not bad, but what about being able to quickly find and then replay a conversation that is of importance to you from years, even decades into your past?  With current technology it would be very difficult to find such a particular video clip even if you had it.  Even if you could find such a clip today, the process would be so slow and laborious in most instances that it would not justify the effort.  Eventually, however, digging up a particular image or video clip from your past will be as simple as asking the computer in natural language to “retrieve the video of you and your buddy Mike at dinner several years ago when you discussed the finer qualities of fall leaf colors”.  At that point we will really be in business!

Some people reading this post will no doubt pull out the old privacy angle on this topic, but I am increasingly numb to that entire idea.  Unless you have had your head in the sand for the last decade, you should be realizing that society is changing and the rules of privacy with it.  Just because you are recording your entire life does not mean you are sharing it with the entire world.  Today we take thousands of photos of ourselves every year, but we have firm control over where we send these photos and who we share them with.  Why will it be any different with more intense lifelogging?  The same laws that prevent police and other parties from eavesdropping on our homes will also protect unauthorized access to our personal data.  Sure there will be breaches of our data from time to time just as there are sometimes breaches into our homes, but these infractions represent the exceptions to the law rather than the rule of law itself.

As technology continues to get more powerful and cheaper it is increasingly easier, in fact inevitable, that more and more of our lives will be recorded and available for subsequent manipulation via search, analysis, review, and more.  The Revue life recorder from Vicon likely will fall far short of our lifelogging needs, but it still represents a noteworthy advance in the right direction.  Some will choose to focus on fear and privacy issues, but I will continue to focus on the great benefits that life recording can offer.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you: next time you talk to me you might want to watch what you are saying.