Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [59]
These e-memories are so enjoyable when they come up on screensavers that I declared screensavers the “killer application” for e-memories (ahead of search, which so many people presume is the chief end of Total Recall). The MyLifeBits screensaver shows photos and also selects random ten-second video clips out of longer videos. Before Total Recall, years would have passed between those occasions when I bothered pulling out old videotapes to play selections from them; now I can enjoy clips from them daily.
Screensavers are pleasurable on my desktop PC and notebook, but they really shine on my big plasma screen. I am tracking the progress of organic light-emitting polymer technology and looking forward to the day that an entire wall can be a screen. I want to sit at my dining room table and have my wall transport me to some other place or cherished past event—perhaps I can feel like I am reliving a train ride through the Rockies or sailing on the San Francisco Bay. I also love little “picture frame” screens that can sit on an end table and, instead of being stuck on one photo as real picture frames are, root through my e-memories to show all kinds of things.
Having different types of artifacts contributes to the richness of your e-memories. Think of the lady I mentioned above with her phone messages from her grandson. Jim Gemmell has some treasured audio recordings of his grandfather’s Scottish brogue. Video is essential for “preserving people,” a view that I have only recently come to appreciate. Seeing someone move, speak, and make facial expressions provides a distinctive view of a personality that written records and photos can rarely touch. Now add location, temperature, heart rate, and other new values we will be sensing, and really fascinating perspectives are formed.
With location tracking, we can plot you in space as well as time—and that’s exactly what we did with the MyLifeBits Trip Replay program. Gemmell came back to work one Monday, after spending the weekend at a sports tournament with his son, traveling with a GPS and taking pictures with his digital camera. When he joined us in the office, we were able see on a map everywhere he had been, and where his photos had been taken. Trip Replay even animated his travels, showing him moving around on a map, with photos flipping up as they occurred.
Gemmell was excited. “Look at this!” he exclaimed. “And think about it: I have the information about each game my son played in my calendar. All the components are here to tell the story of my weekend without me doing any work at all!” We started brainstorming about how this could be automatically wrapped up in an attractive form and sent to his parents to fill them in on their grandson’s weekend. We later hired an intern to prototype a system that let you just select a time range, exclude a few duds or embarrassing moments, and then click “Blog it.”
Consequently, I’m bullish on automatic travelogues. I envision a service that takes your itinerary and produces a trip log with photos of where you stayed, sights that you passed by, meals eaten, et cetera. With the use of GPS, the entire trip can be created in great detail that might even exceed the actual trip experience. As I write, Telestial is preparing to roll out a service that will track where your cell phone is, and post stock photos of the locations you visit to a Web site you designate. You can add captions by sending SMS text messages from your phone. This is just an early (and very simple) entry in a coming wave of automatic travelogue offerings.
The landscape of our e-memories becomes lush as we share with one another. The value of pooling media is already evident in photo- and video-sharing Web sites, like Flickr and YouTube. Facebook shows us how much we enjoy having others’ comments on our photos. Think of an extended family gathering for Grandma’s birthday with a number of people