1. Gordon Bell Accelerating Change ─ 6 November 2004
Challenges in building and using a Lifetime Personal Information Store based on MyLifeBits
Gordon Bell Accelerating Change ─ 6 November 2004

2. The 1 TB Life 1TB gives you 65+ years of:
100 messages a day (5KB each)
100 web pages day (50KB each)
5 scanned pages a day (100KB each)
1 book every 10 days (1 MB each)
10 photos per day (400 KB JPEG each)
8 hours per day of sound - e.g. telephone, voice annotations, and meeting recordings (8 Kb/s)
1 new music CD every 10 days (45 min each at 128 Kb/s)
It will take you 5 years to fill up your 80 GB drive
Want video? Buy more cheap drives (1 TB/year lets you record 4 hours/day of 1.5 Mb/s video)
Bottom line: we will be able to keep LOTS of video, and vast amounts of smaller data types (audio, photos, documents).
Note: probably not worth the time to delete an object

3. Everything goes in a database
You need all the features of a database (Consistency, Indexing, Pivoting, Queries, Speed/scalability, Backup, replication)
If you don’t use one, you will find yourself creating one!
Files as blobs, also sync with file system for legacy apps
- All the usual database features: queries, indexing, full-text search, replication, etc.
- Schema is extensible
- Links includes collection, annotation, and user-defined types (person in photo)
- Convenient APIs for all of the above
SQL

4. MyLifeBits Software SenseCam Telephone capture tool
GPS import & Map display
TV capture tool
TV EPG download tool
Radio capture & EPG
PocketPC transfer tool
PocketRadio player
Browser tool
Internet
MyLifeBits store
MAPI interface
Legacy client
MyLifeBits Shell
Screen saver
IM capture
database
files
Legacy applications
Import files
Voice annotation tool
Text annotation tool

5. Memex As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, 1945
“A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility”
Full-text search, text & audio annotations, and hyperlinks

6. I am data

7. The guinea pig Gordon Bell is digitizing his life
Has now scanned virtually all:
Books written (and read when possible)
Personal documents (correspondence including memos and , bills, legal documents, papers written, …)
Photos
Posters, paintings, photo of things (artifacts, …medals, plaques)
Home movies and videos
CD collection
And, of course, all PC files
Now recording: phone, radio, TV (movies), web pages… conversations and meetings to come
Paperless throughout ” scanned, 12’ discarded.
Only 44 GB, incl. 10 wma, 14 SQL!!! Video: o(100) mov

8. Capture and encoding

9. I mean everything

10. 50+ year old newspaper clippings

11. 400 year old books

12. O(100s) tapes from videotape “black hole”

13. Personal LifeLog Applications
Diary/Journal
Self
Tutor
Mentor
Advisor
Meeting Prep
Personal
Assistant
Babysitter
Financial Manager
Companion Caretaker
Medical Manager
Parole Officer
Photo Album
Application used by:
Assistant for Elderly
Pers Flight Recorder
Autobiography
Captain’s Log
Conservator
Biography
Baby Book
Trustee
Obituary
Personal Proxy
Executor
Others
Others
Application controlled by:
Self

14. Personal Search is not Professional or Web search
System sees every entry & access
Everything, not just a professional life
Limited to SIS, not an infinite amount, covers a profession & personal life
Professional user
Depth e.g. information item types & coverage
MyLifeBits
Web as seen by search engines
Knowledge breadth e.g. Dewey classification

15. Why bother? ..some reasons
Technologist: “we can” an opportunity e.g. 1 TB disks
For all of us with new media: a need e.g. jpg. Mp3
Environmentalist: eliminates “atoms” (paper, CDs…)
For business--memory enhancement & faster search: Let content analysis and data mining discover trends and correlations in our lives…that even we don’t know.
Business: It costs more to delete than it costs to store
Preservationist: decays or disappears unless its saved
For the human pack rat: “I may need it some day.”
For posterity and nostalgia: “Maybe others will want it.”
Stories and ambience: basis for creating content
For the aging & failed memory: surrogate memory

16. So you’ve got it – now what do you do with it?
“A record if it is to be useful … must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted”
“The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly … but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record”
- Vannevar Bush

17. Using my life bits: beyond folders
One item. One place.
It worked for 1000s of years.

18. My docs and archive Self Business Invests, family $s, & Legal
Library/file cab
X- Employer
Active Employer
Library/file cab
Project
Employer
Employer
Self E
Project E
Business
Invests, family $s, & Legal
Project
Employer S
Library/file cab
Library/file cab
Library/file cab
Library/file cab
X-Employer
Project
Library/file cab
Project
Personal, including Medical
Library/file cab
Library/file cab
Library/file cab
Library/file cab
<1995 Library/file cab

19. Freedom from hierarchy
c:\my documents\talks\MyLifeBits.ppt ID=location=organization=display string
Don’t make me invent unique names
Don’t make me file everything
Or let me pick multiple folders

20. Using my life bits: easily adding valuable content
#2: Text annotations
Making bits more valuable and retrievable.

21. “Its just bits until it is annotated”

22. Getting the user to tell a story is the ultimate in media value
A story is a “layout” in time and space
Most valuable content (by selection, and by being well annotated)
Stories must include links to any media they use (for future navigation/search – “transclusion”).
Cf: MovieMaker; Creative Memories PhotoAlbums
We took him to lunch at our favorite Dim Sum place to say farewell
Dapeng was an intern at BARC for the summer of 2000
At table L-R: Dapeng, Gordon, Tom, Jim, Don, Vicky, Patrick, Jim

23. Annotation like this…
Voice
Annotation

24. Annotation when you feel like it, how you feel like it
Screensaver is the killer app!

25. Using my life bits: the value of time & time posts
#3: “I remember when…”
The 1st or 2nd most important retrieval handle.

26. MyLifeBits time overlap

27. MyLifeBits on-the-fly time clustering

30. MSR Next Media Team

31. M Stewart Lifeline v2 Mark Stewart’s Lifeline
Copyright Mark Stewart, 2004

32. F: father
F: mother
F: self
F: Sister
Education
F: spouse
F: son
F: grandChild
F: daughter
F: grandchild
F: Significant Other
W/Education
Work
Organization

33. M. Ringel, E. Cutrell, S. T. Dumais and E. Horvitz (2003)
M. Ringel, E. Cutrell, S. T. Dumais and E. Horvitz (2003).  Milestones in time: The value of landmarks in retrieving information from personal stores. Proceedings of Interact 2003.

34. Using my life bits: Where, an essential attribute
#4: I remember where
Just essential.

36. Using my life bits: pivoting on data to aid recall
#5: Relationships (links)
Using something near ‘it”, to find “it”.

37. MyLifeBits Entities & Links
Photo of Event
Caller in Phone Call
- All the usual database features: queries, indexing, full-text search, replication, etc.
- Schema is extensible
- Links includes collection, annotation, and user-defined types (person in photo)
- Convenient APIs for all of the above
Annotates
Transcludes

38. PhotoFinder - Schneiderman and Kang
Direct Annotation: A Drag-and-Drop Strategy for Labeling Photos, Ben Schneiderman and Hyunmo Kang.
PhotoFinder - Schneiderman and Kang

39. Using my life bits: never enough meta-data … but, can you afford it?b
#6: more meta-data (properties)
I remember something about the content
(understanding a person’s work)

41. Lederberg Finder page

42. Dublin core of a given item

43. Using my life bits: classification of everything
Is any gain from non-automated classification worth the cost and pain?

44. Is traditional classification required?
…at OCLC there was unanimous agreement among faculty and participants that “access to electronic resources requires controlled vocabulary and classification” OCLC Institute, “Knowledge Access Management: Tools and Concepts for Next Generation Catalogers”, November 1997, Dublin, Ohio.

45. “I have watched as hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested to re-invent the wheel - often badly.”
-Marcia Bates
Marcia J. Bates, After the Dot-Bomb: Getting Web Information Retrieval Right This Time, First Monday, volume 7, number 7 (July 2002), URL:

47. Professional Life:
Organizations
Administrivia
Projects
Library

48. Lederberg papers official reports
Number of document segments

49. Lederberg Artifact types
Press releases m
Procedures
Proceedings m
Programs m
Proposals m
Questionnaires
Reminiscences
Reports m
Resolutions
Resumes
Reviews m
School records
Speeches m
Summaries
Tables (documents)
Technical reports m
Transcripts m
Typescripts
Video recordings m
Abstracts
Agendas not
Announcements m;
Application forms
Articles m
Autobiographies m
Bibliographies m
Biographies m
Brochures m
Certificates m
Correspondence m
Diaries m
Drafts (documents)
Drawings m
Electronic images m
Essays m
Eulogies
Excerpts
Grant proposals
Interviews m
Invitations
Laboratory notebooks m
Laboratory notes
Lecture notes
Lectures m
Legal documents m
Legislative records
Lists
Manifestoes
Memoirs m
Minutes
Monographs m
Narratives
Newsletters
Newspaper columns m
Notebooks m
Notes
Obituaries
Official reports
Oral histories m
Petitions
Photographic prints m

50. Species: Animals: Chordata: Vertebrata: bony fish

51. Computer structures: digital computer: minicomputer (refined: Digital Equipment Corp.)

52. Computer structures taxonomy: computers

53. Classification wish list
Download classifications rather than build them
Definitions & synonyms should help find what I want
Today it is too expensive to manually classify my scanned paper. E.g. “right time” meta-data is critical!
Next year we hope “the system” can classify papers and other documents e.g. bills
In 10 years we expect all documents to appear electronically & classified with a little help from me

54. Using my life bits: Ontologies… useful? or fool’s errand?
#8: “ontology”???
“Succumbing to the ‘ontology’ fallacy” -Bates

55. MyLifeBits: Some Lives(t)
Personal
Parents, children, grandkids
CGB himself
GKB
SSF
Close friends
GB $s; Legal entities
Personal incl. several legal structures
Properties: autos, real estate,
Investments & contracts
Past prof. companies/organiz’ns
DEC
Carnegie-Mellon U.
DEC, NSF, Encore, Ardent, Me Inc., Bell-Mason
Bell-Mason Director
Diamond & Vanguard Brds.
Startups & boards
Microsoft
MLB
Clusters
Telepresence
WWW presence
Computer History Museum
BOD member
Fund-raising
CyberMuseum

56. F: father
F: mother
F: self
F: Sister
Education
F: spouse
F: son
F: grandChild
F: daughter
F: grandchild
F: Significant Other
W/Education
Work
Organization

57. Using my life bits: Providing insight, including… Where did I spend my time? What has been by output?
#9: logging & reports

58. Interface to xls

59. TV Usage

60. Using my life bits: Recording everything!
#10: CARPE Continuous archival recording of personal experiences

61. The A/V/real time data Future: new capture modes/devices
Deja View
SenseCam
Body Media
Quindi

62. Sensecam & Interactive jewellery

63. Open Problems

64. The Agenda for the Tbyte(s), Lifetime, PC: The killer app after office and mail.searching
Guarantee that data will live forever! “dear appy” problem
Cheap, easy, and data-rich (e.g. time, place) capture:
GPS and time everywhere
Paper capture has to be as easy as discarding (scanner/shredder)
Personal meeting capture...
E-book…e-magazines & journals need to have critical mass!
Telephony and audio capture with indexing
Media Center compatible for entertainment (photos, video, TV, radio)
Content analysis (critical for photo & video!); doable for text. Needs doing!
Information control: privacy, security, expunge/deniability,…
Having to be schizophrenic or have a lobotomy when leaving a “life”
One dbase for everything (articles, books, conversations, ... financial transactions) …vs. long-term use of hierarchical files. Is dbase intuitive?
Annotations/meta-information add every-increasing value Easy annotation for aiding search and it becomes the content
Other “killer apps”: Alzheimer, immortality, surrogate memory?
GUI’s to improve use (e.g. time to learn, use, retention)
The “Call to Action”’ is used for telling the audience what their next step is, based on what they heard/see so far. For example, their “next step” might be to fill out a contact sheet as noted above for continued follow up. Bottom line is that you want to direct the audience to do something with the information they just heard instead just saying “Cool Demo” and moving on. The Call to Action is used to turn a passive listener into an active participant, focusing on using the technology in their next product feature.

66. The “dear appy” problem
How committed are you? Please come back to me. Forever yours truly, Lost and forgotten data
Who’s responsible?
Media or 8 track cassette, 8” floppy
Evolving platform, file, and database
Evolving, incompatible standards & formats for legacy data that disregard ancestors
Evolving and/or disappearing apps 

67. A Storocratic Oath Do no harm to dates (File creation, Photo taken)
Do no harm to device created & other meta-data.
Camera data & location data are sacred.
Support & aid the creation of critical meta-data.
When/how the user feels like it
Auto-magically!
Maintain user confidentiality

68. The killer app?? Input, File, Classify, and Find… Operational
“Stuff I’ve Seen” (e.g. msg, name, paper, fact, birthday, phone call, photo
Observe every action…
Time & motion (routing, communicating, scheduling … thinking)
Archival one’s self
Finder aka Table of Contents aka Site Map
Story telling.
Screen saver & personal ambience