Lifeblog – How to …

Just imagine you are in a party. You are taking pictures with your Nseries device like crazy. And you are running out of memory. What do you do?

You can run to the next electronics shop and buy a new memory card.

Or you fire up Lifeblog.

In Lifeblog, you select “Options” -> “Manual cleanup”.  Two more clicks with the left soft key (“Yes”->”Ok”) gets the job done: all non-Favourite Lifeblog items will be removed from the device. But only such items, that already have been transferred to PC Lifeblog before. I.e. items that are safe.

Let me stress this: this single operation looks through all Lifeblog data types: images, videos, SMSs, MMSs, notes, sound, and also blog posts. Everything that is already backed up on the PC can go. Lifeblog does the cleaning for you. And you don’t have to fiddle with various applications in order to do the same manually which would take you at least until the party is over. Maybe even until the next party is over as well.

Consider the following use case: by coincidence -or due to hardware failure- you have lost some of your Lifeblog data on the PC. But you still have it on the Mobile. Now you would like to restore the “lost” items on the PC from the Mobile.

This case is not so uncommon since items are not deleted automatically from mobile Lifeblog after synchronization anymore.

A normal synchronization between mobile Lifeblog and PC Lifeblog does not help in such a case, because Lifeblog 2.X only considers mobile items for synchronization that are either new or changed. And latter characteristic is the one that we can use for this small “hack”:

In the Timeline in mobile Lifeblog, select ”Options” -> ”Mark/Unmark” -> ”Mark all”.

Afterwards, select “Options” -> “Make favourite”. Then start the synchronization. You might grab a cup of coffee now.

With or without coffee, afterwards all your mobile Lifeblog items should be on the PC again. In the Favourites, you have to do a bit of clean-up now: you have to un-Favouritize the ones that received the Favourite status due to the “hack”.

I have to admit that this post was inspired by Jonathan’s comment on Ivan Kuznetsov’s blog:

http://www.ivankuznetsov.com/2006/11/gmail_mobile_cl.html#comment-27369134.

Ok, Lifeblog is not about blogging. It’s definitely not about turning my whole life into a public event.

Instead, it’s about lifelogging: it’s about creating and keeping a multimedia log of my life.

But from this personal log I can share all the stuff that I have. Therefore, if I want to blog, I can do so. And even better:
when combining PC application and mobile application into one neat system, I get the best of both worlds: I can share instantaneously from my mobile Lifeblog. And I can review and share more consciously from my PC Lifeblog.

Cut the crap, how do I set up a blog? Ok, ok, here it comes: a very much biased listing of blog services that work with Lifeblog 2.x.

* TypePad (http://www.typepad.com)

TypePad by Six Apart is the default blogging service for Lifeblog and it is also the easiest to set up with Lifeblog. As the main advantage of TypePad I see:

•  Lifeblog comes with predefined settings and help environments for TypePad. That means, TypePad is the blogging service that is the easiest to set up in Lifeblog

Against that I would name as the main disadvantage of TypePad:

•  It costs money – starting at a basic level which currently costs $ 4.95 per month / $ 49.50 per year

For TypePad, the Lifeblog help describes how to set up a blog, but in order to be repetitive, here are the steps:

1.  Get a TypePad account:
   • In mobile Lifeblog, “Options” -> “Settings” -> “Blog” will take you to your blogging accounts and from there “Options” -> “Sign up online” will take you via the Lifeblog web page to the TypePad site from where you can sign up.
   • PC Lifeblog, click on “Tools” -> “Blog Account Manager” -> “Add New” and you will find a link to the Typepad page.
   • Select your favourite web browser, type in http://www.typepad.com/ and take it from there
2. Enter your TypePad credentials into Lifeblog
   • In mobile Lifeblog, open “Options” -> “Settings” -> “Blog” and create a new blog account via “Options” -> “New account”
     Chose an Account name of your liking and enter the Username and Password which you selected when signing up for TypePad. The Server address you should leave exactly as is (http://www.typepad.com/t/atom/weblog/); no need to fiddle around with it! As an Internet access point, chose the one that you like . Also, whether you set “Optimise images” to “Yes” or “No” is a matter of taste; chose “yes” if you want to save time and money when uploading and if you want to enjoy a bit more reliable setup; chose “no” if you have a good data plan or enough money or if you fancy high resolution images.
   • In PC Lifeblog, same steps as before apply: click on “Tools” -> “Blog Account Manager” -> “Add New”. In the dialog, just add the User name and Password that you used when registering for TypePad. Again, leave the Blog server address exactly as it is! Obviously, the Lifeblog do not think that money is an issue anymore in today’s Internet data plan world; hence, there is no way to adjust whether you want to downsize images when blogging
3. Select one or several items in Lifeblog and start blogging

* Vox (http://www.vox.com/)

According to its web page, Vox is free and fun. And just like TypePad, it’s run by Six Apart. And even better, it supports upload from Lifeblog. I love Six Apart for having done that! That brings me to the main advantage of Vox:

• It’s free!

The (really) tiny disadvantage is

• The server address has to be entered into Lifeblog manually.

Not surprisingly, the steps for taking Vox into use are quite similar to setting up TypePad:

1.  Get a Vox account:
   • Select your favourite web browser, type in http://www.vox.com/ and start registering
2. Enter your Vox credentials into Lifeblog
   • In mobile Lifeblog, open “Options” -> “Settings” -> “Blog” and create a new blog account via “Options” -> “New account”
     Chose an Account name of your liking. As Username, you should enter the email address that you have registered for Vox. As Password use the password that you have chosen for your Vox account.
     Now comes the biggest difference: You have to change the Server address to http://www.vox.com/atom/)! Again, Internet access point selection and “Optimise images” are up to your personal preferences
   • In PC Lifeblog, again the same basic procedure applies: click on “Tools” -> “Blog Account Manager” -> “Add New”. In the dialog, change the Blog server address to http://www.vox.com/atom/. Then, insert the email address under which you have registered for Vox into the field User name and your Vox password into the Password field.
3. Select one or several items in Lifeblog and start blogging

* Flickr (http://www.flickr.com)

Is there anyone who doesn’t know Flickr? If you are one of those, where have you been hiding during the last two years? Just for you, Flickr is THE photo-sharing slash photo-blogging web service. It became the ice-breaker 2.0 in the frozen sea of internet monetization, when it was sold to Yahoo in March 2005 for what is now to be considered an insanely small amount of money.

But back to the topic, what advantages does Flickr offer to you as a Lifeblog user?

• Even though it comes in two different flavours, the basic account is free. The pro account adds $24.95 to your list of yearly expenses.
• It enables you to share your images as part of the currently largest image-sharing community.

The main drawback, you’ll ask?

• The main drawback from a Lifeblog user’s perspective is Flickr’s clear focus on images. No other Lifeblog data types can be shared through Flickr.

And the procedure to take Flickr into use with Lifeblog is:

1. Get a Flickr account (in case you are the last one on earth who doesn’t have one)
2. Log into Flickr with your Flickr credentials and go to http://www.flickr.com/tools/lifeblog
3. Create a Flickr account in Lifeblog
   • In mobile Lifeblog, open “Options” -> “Settings” -> “Blog” and create a new blog account via “Options” -> “New account”
     Chose Account name of your liking. As well, Internet access point selection and “Optimise images” are up to your personal preferences. The rest of the settings, you should take directly from http://www.flickr.com/tools/lifeblog. Pay special attention to the Server address (which you have to set to http://www.flickr.com/services/atom/) and the Password. The Password is different from your usual Flickr password!
   • In PC Lifeblog, again click on “Tools” -> “Blog Account Manager” -> “Add New”. In the dialog, change the Blog server address to http://www.flickr.com/services/atom/ as indicated on http://www.flickr.com/tools/lifeblog. Also, the rest of the details you should take from http://www.flickr.com/tools/lifeblog. Remember: log into Flickr before going to http://www.flickr.com/tools/lifeblog! Let me also mention that it is a good idea to type the Flickr Password into the Lifeblog settings manually.

* Movable Type

Using a preconfigured and hosted solution is too lame for? But you lack the time to write your own solution from scratch?

If you have a server that fulfills the requirements listed here, another solution from Six Apart might be for you: Movable Type. Even though Movable Type is a commercial solution, the Personal Edition is free.

Unfortunately, Movable Type is not shipped with Lifeblog support. Therefore, some additional
assembly is required besides the basic installation. Luckily, all the information, bolts and screws are available from Robert Price’s blog. If you do exactly as you are told there, it should work quite nicely. At least, it did for me.

Good luck! And: if you know more blogging services that support Lifeblog uploading, please let me know.