What do you think when you read the word "Lifeblog"? Blogging software, for sure. A new API client? A competitor for Blogger and Movable Type? A blog search engine that really works? That was my reaction, too. But, we're wrong. Lifeblog is new software from Nokia for mobile phones. The first to come equipped with it will be Nokia 7610. But so far, Lifeblog doesn't have anything to do with blogging. Wired asked Nokia why. Where Apple has expanded on the success of the integration of iTunes and iPod by releasing a suite of music, video and photography tools under the iLife banner, Nokia is attempting to bring that same level of integration to the growing mishmash of data captured by the current round of cell phones: sound, text, photography and even video.
After connecting your phone to a Windows-based PC with the Lifeblog software, photos and messages will not only be downloaded and saved to the computer, but they will be organized and available for searching and editing, according to the Nokia website. Users will even be able to mark certain items as "favorites" to be held in the phone's memory, forming sort of a "greatest hits" scrapbook, a digital version of a wallet stuffed with beloved photos and important notes, only sleeker.
In other words, Lifeblog will serve as both a way to create content and a conduit from the wireless device to the computer, much as a PDA or an iPod does. Nokia acknowledges the name is misleading. "Maybe log would have made more sense," said Keith Nowak, spokesman for Nokia. But he does see Lifeblog as a useful tool for bloggers, helping them to organize their words and pictures. "You can look, day by day, here's what I did, here's what I saw." Nowak sees actual weblogging as a possible future direction for Lifeblog. "It's a possibility," he says. "The interest is there." Christian Lindholm, a blogger who is also Nokia's director of multimedia applications, has tried to end the confusion by explaining Lifeblog on his weblog. More on the misunderstandings: 1.) Q: Why a logging tool or as Nokia prefer to call it a multimedia diary? [A:] Nokia feels that blogging is a subset of your electronic life, not the whole life, hence our focus on the PC initially. The first version will not have any features enabling blogging (you can send e-mail from PC version, but I do not call that blogging). 2. Q: Why does Nokia call it Lifeblog? A: We added the 'b' in front of the 'log' as we wanted the name signal a longer term intent. Nokia['s] mission is connect people and that is what blogs do.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments
1 - Steve Rhodes
I saw Christian give a presentation on Lifeblog at etech and had dinner with him there. He said it was the first time he had shown it and I imagine he is open to suggestions.
The one thing phones/pda are good for now is photoblogging.