The Steve Rubel Stream

Insights on emerging technologies and trends.

Why Lifestream? To Model Leonardo Da Vinci

 

"For me, I’m going to respect the needs of my community, and keep on blogging to distill what I think is important."
- Jeremiah Owyang, June 26, 2009 writing on web-strategist.com

There have been a number of posts since I wrote yesterday that I am quitting blogging in favor of lifestreaming. A few of you wrote in comments that you're dropping the RSS feed. I want to clarify a little more what this means. It's not more noise, less signal.

For my purposes, a lifestream is really a thought-stream consisting of insights, links, videos, photos and more. While some just lifestream in order to post a lot, I promise you I am going to only share quality bits about emerging technology trends. However, the difference is, that not every item will be an essay. It's different than Jeremiah's approach, summarized above.

I like to think of a lifestreaming as today's digital equivalent of Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks. (Make no mistake, I am no Da Vinci nor do I think of myself in such a way. It's purely an aspirational metaphor.) Da Vinci recorded notes, drawings, questions and more in his notebooks. Some of these were quite mundane (grocery lists and doodles), others were not. But the body of work was over time, a view of a one individual's mind (in his case a great one).

My lifestream is not the same. But but the model is. I promise you that if you join me for the journey, we will learn about emerging technology trends together through links, images, video and audio. The difference though between this and a blog is that you will be right there with me as learn about and process new information, doodle about it in my online journal and and share/express my observations in real-time.

That is what will make this format different than my blog - especially the short bits, photos, videos and sound.

(Image credit : Wikipedia.)

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Posted 8 months ago
32 comments
Jun 26, 2009
Mark Whiting said...
Why don't you just tag (or auto tag, if possible) things that are more like your old blog and make a feed for those readers?
Jun 26, 2009
Wayan said...
Steve, If you want us to follow your feed, you may need to check on it. When I try to pull either of these feeds:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/steverubel
http://www.steverubel.com/rss.xml

I get the following error from Google Reader: "null" has no items.

Is this me, or do others have the same problem? Also, the text box for comments could be a smidgen larger so those of us who are verbose can respond.

Jun 26, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
There is a tag for them but I don't think a feed - yet. Working on that. http://www.steverubel.com/tag/essays
Jun 26, 2009
Karim said...
Gutsy move Steve. I've been reading your regular blog for a long time and I think to completely change tactics and start from scratch was a bold move, I'll be following your stream here and I wish you the best of luck with it!
Jun 26, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
@Wayan, the feed should be working. It is here. In terms of the comment box. It expands as you type. Posterous is rolling out templating in the next few weeks. I will see what I can do then.
Jun 26, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
The time to mix it up is when you're successful. That's how one grows.
Jun 26, 2009
Wayan said...
Yep, feed is working, my ability to use Google Gears was the issue. Fixed.

But the comment box does not expand as you type, nor can I reply directly to someone else's comment, a pretty common and useful comments functionality.

Jun 26, 2009
Anthony Scaffeo said...
Steve, see Hal Varian's article http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Hal_Varian_on_how_the_Web_challenges_managers_2286 ....read the paragraph on "flexible innovation" and the point about the bits of information.

I study Google Trends like you (you posted about the trends & MJ) and have a draft paper in progress.

Im not a blogger but an avid Twitterer who supports your idea of live streaming and plan on joining this journey with Posterous.

Another thing, I have something in common with DaVinci: Im Italian and balding.

Great stuff!

Jun 26, 2009
Wayan said...
Oh and on the bigger issue of you leaving your blog:

So far I don't see the big hubbub. This post/comments action feels like a blog to me, and I can see the Twitter login, so I could make this a Tweet also. Nice. Not game-changing as a reader, but you seem to be smitten with posterous as a publisher.

Jun 26, 2009
Tom Parish said...
Steve you just keep doing what you're doing. I admire and respect your vision. I like your decision to make this change. You have me inspired to do something similar.
Jun 26, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
Thanks Tom. 

Jun 26, 2009
Daniel Honigman said...
I look forward to seeing what you do with this thing, Steve. I gave Tumblr a brief go, but came away feeling unsatisfied. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance.
Jun 26, 2009
Jorge Mir said...
Hi Steve. I am enjoying your move from blogging to lifestreaming. I ran across posterous recently but punted on it in light of my use of friendfeed and other sites but am going to give it a go.

It seems as though you are still posting traditional blog post type entries here instead of what you are up to around the web which is what I've come to understand how lifestreaming is being defined.

In any case, I dig it, and see this type of lifestream-type publishing as the way things are going online and will continue to evolve.

Jun 26, 2009
whatidiscover said...
I see your move from blogging to lifestreaming like allowing us to visit your R & D labs. I can see your ideas earlier
Jun 26, 2009
Bruce Keener said...
Steve, clearly you are well-intentioned on this, and your desire for growth is commendable. From my perspective, though, I don't want to know everything you think. Nothing against you ... I don't want to know everything Anybody thinks. There is already too much data. I want distilled information, and I want to be told why it matters. It seems to me that "lifestreams" just contribute more to a polluted web, one that already has too much stuff that just doesn't matter.

I wish you luck with this, in terms of you finding what You are looking for, but I don't see it helping me find what I am looking for. I'll stick with your blog, unless it dries up and dies, but I doubt that I'll follow this more than a couple of days. Already have too much noise.

Jun 26, 2009
Jay Cross said...
Steve, thanks for providing a model for those of us who have been feeling that blogs can be too confining.

I've been blogging for ten years but lately my writing has been spilling out all over the net. The Posterous/FriendFeed combination is a great workaround.

People who want nothing more than the well-reasoned essay will be satisfied with the blog channel; folks who are more in tune with the rapid-fire, piecemeal approach of Tweets can grab the fire-hose feed.

Jun 26, 2009
Russ Jackson said...
Steve, I have read your articles on how Gmail has become " the nerve center" for everything you do just about. Was the fact that you use Gmail for everything also an overriding factor in your switch to using posterous. By using posterous you were able to extend the reach of Gmail and your nerve center?
Jun 26, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
@Russ, my use of Gmail was a bonus. It was more the email format - the fact that I could email in multi media too. However, I am thinking about how to combine the email feature in Friendfeed with Posterous (and also Zemanta).
Jun 26, 2009
Russ Jackson said...
@Steve I can't wait to hear how you combine the 2.
Jun 26, 2009
this is the future of blogging. near future. Steve, you are bringing it too close! in my real estate blogging it would be more smooth because of the topic and scope for group interaction. actually an extension of our GTalk going on at this point of time..
Jun 27, 2009
Mark Fidelman said...
Here's why blogging is important. With blogging you are telling an overall coherent story. With lifestreaming you are sharing bits and pieces of your life but without a narrator. We'll still be following you, but we won't necessarily understand the plot or direction. I also see your personal insight being lost amongst a series of pictures, thoughts and links.

Today no one completely understands Da Vinci because he didn't write an autobiography. We are simply observers of his work and are left to guess what his true intentions or life philosophy entailed. Were he a blogger, we'd better understand and learn from him.

Jun 27, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
@Mark that's helpful. I will try to infuse more insight into these bits. 

Jun 28, 2009
farouk said...
interesting post, thanks !
Jun 28, 2009
Chris Sparno said...
Steve, nice article. I like your approach and have been trying out different ways to present and publish the content that matters to me. I have found that a combination of Wordpress and Tumblr works well but now I need to check out Posterous to see if that is a better fit (to replace the Tumblr side of my publishing). The other piece I wrestle with is whether to use Twitter or FriendFeed in combination. It seems there are too many good tools right now to do the same things and I keep bouncing back and forth. Would love to see a future post on how you integrate tools like FriendFeed into your publishing. -Chris
Jun 28, 2009
Steve Rubel said...
@CJ Friendfeed is a powerful front end for Twitter. I should write about that sometime or do a video demo. 

Jun 28, 2009
Greg Santos said...
I've been enthuzin' on Posterous for some time now.
http://gregsantos.posterous.com/
This is one tight platform, a mobile blogging one stop shop.
One simple email allows me to share most media from anywhere,
automatically syndicating my content to the social profiles I designate including my personal hub at http://GregSantos.net
Best of all Posterous makes it dead simple for readers to interact with and share my posts.
I think Steve's choice attests to his insight into emerging media.
Jun 28, 2009
Chris said...
Great perspective on Social media.
Jun 29, 2009
Julia said...
The difference is that Leonardo da Vinci didn't publish his notebooks, much less "streamed" them in any way. I'm not too familiar with his work methods, but I guess he thought things through and only went public when he came to some sort of conclusion, breakthrough, discovery. Those don't happen every day. Or week.
Jul 03, 2009
JC said...
Sorry but you're missing half of the Leonardo equation. Following on @Julia, Leonardo's notebooks were not published because they were not end-results, they were simple tools that allowed him to create the real results, i.e. his masterpieces...Where is the result side of your lifetream? or Is it only a McLuhan world and as long as we have twitter we will have a message?
Oct 22, 2009
bobo said...
da vincis notebooks were about INTRASPECTIVE examination
Blogs are primarily - EXTROVERTIVE dribble.

same , not really.

Dec 11, 2009
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Feb 16, 2010
So with all this talk of blogs V notebooks what does that make my blog which is about my notebooks?

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