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