Vicon Revue (SenseCam) now with 3MPixels and 8GB

Vicon has announced a new version of the Revue with more resolution (3MP), more storage (8GB) and a lower price (£299). It is due to ship in August.

The Revue is based on the Microsoft Research SenseCam, invented by Lyndsay Williams.

See the Revue website for more details.

Looxcie continuous loop camera in bluetooth headset

Looxcie makes a POV video camera built in to a bluetooth headset.  It continously records video in a loop (up to 10 hours long), and you can press a button to save the past 30 seconds of video. You also use their smartphone or PC apps to select a section of video from the buffer. The continuous loop approach has the advantage that you don't have to predict a special moment is coming and get out the camera in time; instead, you just click the button after the fact. 

This is a lot like the old Deja View - but without the cigarette-pack sized device and the wires. Very cool!!

Here's Gordon wearing the Deja View:

Hat tip to Clive Thompson

MemoryMiner

Here’s another nice offering in the Your Life Uploaded vein. MemoryMiner is a "digital storytelling" application that specializes in photos. "It is all about the intersection of people, places, and times." It has a lot of features that remind me of MyLifeBits and PhotoStory, with photo tagging, geolocation, and a rich search/browse that connects photos to people and places. Bringing together people, places and time is a key to unlocking the enjoyment of life-logging.

Check out some reviews of MemoryMiner here and here.

Hat tip to Selem Delul.

Automatic story-telling - a new twist

Reddington and Tintarev from the University of Aberdeen have published a paper on an interesting application of lifelogging: helping people with disabilities that make speech difficult.

Despite advances in [Augmented and Alternative Communication] devices, creating sentences ‘on the fly’ for spontaneous conversation is still slow and difficult ... In the case of severe difficulties, typing may not be possible at all. This results in a situation where new utterances must be prepared in advance either by the user or a carer, with a large time and energy cost. Recent or single use events, such as talking about one’s day or talking about yesterday’s television, are expensive to prepare in advance relative to the limited potential for future (re-)use. As a result, AAC users tend to be passive, responding to questions with single words or short sentences.

The idea in this project is to use lifelogging sensors to partial automate story-telling. Location data, voice recordings, RFID, and the log of previous utterences are to be mined to help tell one's story.

The paper is Automatically Generating Stories From Sensor Data published at IUI '11

Forbes: Prepare to invest in the self-tracking movement

This piece from Forbe's CIO Central predicts self-tracking as the next big thing after social networks:

...I contend that, what’s unveiling under our eyes is probably one of the most transformative changes of our civilization.  You can argue that the rise of social networks can be interpreted as our people’s need for more attention.  However, the willingness that newer generations have to keep track of daily activities and report about them to their community of friends, coupled with the advance in self-tracking technology, creates a perfect storm for a new wave of social data companies.

...

In their wonderful book (“Your Life, Uploaded”) Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell walk us through the techniques they have used to collect their own data.  Bell and Gemmel encourage readers to engage in life-logging (as opposed to life-blogging, which you can witness on sites like Facebook or Foursquare).   You must read this book if you want to understand the history of personal data and get a glimpse of what the future has in store for us.  This work reminds us that, beyond sharing experiences as they happen, in very transactional ways (“I’m having coffee at Jody’s”), we should realize that our daily activities amount to a large number of data points, which in isolation might appear meaningless but in aggregate could inform us better about our lives.

Read the entire article.