Kim Heintz

I like Cloud Computing.  It makes life easier.  The problem with it is being able to access it.  Face it, cellular companies are putting a cap on usage.  Connection speeds varies. Therefore, whatever I put on the Cloud, I have to say to myself “Self, you going to be okay if you don’t have 100% access to it?”

I just received a beta invite to Small Demons.  As I was perusing, it reminded me of an idea that I had during my graduate days.  As I was looking through the site, I noticed in the footer, there was a link to Freebase.

“Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed repository of structured data of almost 22 million entities.”

As I started to go through the Freebase site, I got excited.  This is something that I need to make my idea happen.

I have data all over the place and I generate data on a daily basis.  I’m fascinated and scared of my data that is out there in the world.

For the past few years, I have been playing close attention to anything that is related to visualizing data.  I’ve come across various terms such as quantified self, lifestreaming, personal data logging, etc.

Regardless of the differences in terminology, I found that each term had a core meaning, which is keeping track of your data and then doing something with it.

I often browse through the many applications/websites that are available to keep track of my data.  But I can never jump the hurdle of actually doing it.  Why?  Privacy.  Data portability.  I saw on my Google menu there was a tab for Health.  Do I really want Google having that information?  And what about that whole Delicious bookmarking scare?  Everyone (including me) were freaking out because we didn’t know what other app or what to do with our bookmarks if Delicious got shut down.

There are people who could benefit from my data.

Seriously, think about it.

Facebook and Twitter alone carries a lot of information.  Imagine if someone wrote a program to log all status/tweets when people are sick.  Correlate that data with the weather and reported illnesses from hospitals and doctors.  Then cross reference with major events that have happened in the past year. (This is what some will call “Data Mining“).

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

As I ponder this more and more, I see where the future is heading with this type of personal data logging.  There will be more applications in regards to your health.  Advertisers, healthcare, and researchers are going to be using this data.  Privacy and data portability will still be a relevalent issue and will be of utmost concern.

So what to do?

For the past week, I’ve been working on getting the Google Spreadsheet API’s JSON into Flex/Flash.  I’ve managed to get it into Flex and now I need to write some classes to properly parse the data into strongly typed objects. I will be posting code up soon.

Resources used:

• http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2006/03/28/tutorial-using-json-with-flex-2-and-actionscript-3/
• as3corelib

I come across various content and trying to keep track of what I find and being able to search/filter/find them again has been an interesting experience.  I’ve been using a combination of Delicious, Zootool, Zotero, Tumblog, and WordPress to keep track of them.  Each of these app started with a different intention and has involved into something else.  It is now to the point where my bookmarks are spread across various apps and is getting hard to manage and navigate.  The various apps that I have been using has pros and cons after using them I’ve managed to come across a list of things that I wish a bookmarking app would have.

Things I wish a bookmarking app would have:

1. Easy to search and filter.
2. Easy to organize.  A drag and drop feature would make life easier.  Something along the lines of iTunes or iPhoto where you have a library and you can create folders/albums.  Tagging is not necessary
3. Visual representation – image snapshot of the website is wonderful and makes it easier to remember what it is you are looking for.
4. Aesthetically pleasing to the eye and simple.
5. Easy to bookmark.
6. Snapshot of the entire page or selection .  Things disappear on the internet quite easily.  A year from now that post I bookmarked will be gone.
7. Meta data – information of when I added, last accessed,  if the website is still active, and let me know if the link still works!

Honestly, it would look something like this….(part 2 coming up…)