Gordon Bell‘s vision for the future is of software that will let you sort and sift through your digital memories to uncover patterns you would never have gleaned unaided.
You will need lifelogging hardware: a discreet camera permanently slung around your neck that can take photos at regular intervals, and a GPS device to record where you are at any time. Your phone calls, conversations and meetings will need to be digitally captured, all your emails stored, and every web page you look at downloaded. Then you will need to scan in any paper documents that head your way and refuse any books unless they are available on an e-reader.
Work, leisure and spending habits, the pattern of emotional response in various situations and around certain people, the numerous subtle factors affecting your mental well-being and physical health — just about anything you care to know about yourself — can be chronicled, condensed, cross-correlated and plotted out.
via Total recall: Data diaries explain who you really are | KurzweilAI.
Although Sony’s televisions and other consumer electronics have long been status symbols, the company has lost much of the e-book heat to the upstart Kindle. When Amazon unveiled the Kindle 2 last month, the event was the publishing industry’s version of a celebrity news conference, with standing room only for hundreds of journalists and heads of publishing houses.
Never mind that Amazon is not exactly chatty about the nuts and bolts of its business — executives have never revealed how many Kindles have been produced or sold — the company’s brilliant marketing stole the show. Except for the download capabilities, however, the Sony and Amazon devices are similar. Both models of the Sony reader, the 550 and the 700, are actually smaller and sleeker than the Kindle 2.
Indeed, the “reading experience” of the Kindle and Reader is nearly identical. Neither device is backlit, and both allow for note-taking, highlighting and the importing of PDF, Word and other files. The machines are also similarly priced.
via Sony expands its book download stockpile – Los Angeles Times.
