Of course, the whole picture here is very technically thorny, especially where blog comments and forums are concerned. But that's no reason not to chip away at it!

I like your term "me collector." In fact, as a modest incentive to ambitious geeks, I just bought the domain mecollector.net. I'll give it away to anyone who can show me a tool that does what I want it to do.

Yeah, you're right -- It's my stuff, let me play with it.

Blogged you back, BTW.

Thanks!

- Amy

Right now, we aggregate all of the content you create online. We support over 55 sites by default and you can add unlimited custom sites. As long as it has a URL and/or an RSS feed, you can pull it into Profilactic.

We also allow you to pull your friends content into Profilactic and mash it up into a single stream. We are working on tools to allow you to choose which feeds you care about for each friend. So if you don't like someone's photos, but you love their blog and want to see their twitter updates, you can do that.

In addition to aggregating the content you and your friends create, we also allow you to "clip" stuff about you. So if you wrote an article or someone posted a photo of you, you can clip that item and store it in Profilactic.

Of course, we also give you badges so that you can take your mashed up content with you to your blog or website.

Check out my mashup here to see what it can do:
http://www.profilactic.com/mashup/smorty71

Again, it doesn't have everything you mentioned (yet); however, it is better (IMNSHO) than the other sites you mentioned.

Thanks.

lots of good info in this post. Now I have more stuff to try.

Is this not very similar to what was discussed in the book "Future Shock" and termed "information overload" many years ago? Maybe the more recent term (circa 1997) "data smog" also applies? The ease of content generation continues to require less effort. Thus more is generated. The rate of generation continues to increase. One's own content is enough of a challenge but add shared bookmarks and comments to the "Me Collection" and it gets even messier.

I use delicious to track what you, Amy Gahran and others are bookmarking and sharing. I start almost every day by looking over my network in delicious. Have you ever attempted to use the subscriptions in delicious? By the time you add one link to your delicious account, the entire subscription page has likely changes.

At present, the rate of content generated COULD actually exceed our ability to store it. IF this actually does happen, how do we decide who's "Me Collection" gets deleted? I am an optimist and am confident that there shall arise a solution to this problem.

Thanks for writing this. BTW, have any of you heard about Parakey? It is not out yet but it is supposed to make the web integrate seamlessly with your desktop. Facebook just bought this not even in beta startup. I am pretty new to Facebook but I can see how, if Parakey lives up to the hype, how this might actually bring us a step closer to the "Me Collection". Nonetheless, it sure is going to be fun to participate in and watch.

You make a good point about information overload, as having all this stuff collected in one place could look overwhelming. But look at the intention behind Amy's request. She is looking for a central repository of everything she does online. The intention, I think, is for "me" first: it's an archive, a launching point, a means to deal with the personal stuff overload.

How are delicious subscriptions different from following the RSS feed for an individual or a tag? Is it simply a nice way to collect all the feeds I follow in one place?

Parakey got a lot of notice when Facebook bought them, but I haven't any direct experience. It might be nice to include "my desktop" in a central collection, but the security and confidentiality issues can become a problem (client work; personal matters).

And back at Amy's original post, commenters have mentioned hanzo:web, a service that is geared around saving your web content. And Dandelife that collects lifestreams into one place.

As I read this post, I was struck at how much it addresses a challenge we are looking at from a communities of practice perspective - how to manage one's multimembership in many communities and networks. I've tagged it multimembership to keep in my growing collection!

Interesting thought -- extending the "Me Collector" to a "We Connector." Obviously, the requirements would be different. But, I think some of the core principals are related. Look at how many places people discuss "communities."

Then, anyone that goes to your personalized share URL can see all of the stuff from everywhere that you tagged to share.

It doesn't really have the discovery aspect (unless you set up a Google Alert for "Jack Vinson" and then use the RSS feed to track it), but it's another step closer.

Dan

Ironically what is missing here is what I have said elsewhere.

It just dawned on me that I never tend to post what I blog to delicious. I was reading what you, Amy Gahran and Robert Scoble wrote as I was writing a post over at lockergnome.

I am also dealing with two abandoned kittens that distract me often. Then I notice they have fleas. Then I have to bath them. Then I notice my couch has fleas. Then I have to rush to work and post what I was writing...

The result is I completely forget to mention what I was actually saying and doing at another blog. I don't see any trackback regarding what I said elsewhere here. I think, IMHO, it might have made my poor communication better. A Me collector would have saved me.

I also missed the comments here that were made after mine. It seems I need to hit refresh to make them show. What a mess. Not the point I was trying to make at all. I agree and want the same thing.

I also agree on the privacy issue. Can there not be some simple way to make at easy as switching desktop views in linnux? Heck, I think it would even be great if, provided both parties agreed, to make all aware of any e-mails sent back and forth regarding the topic. Even if the case be missing the mark, as in my case, it still is "me". BTW -->

http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/lumpy/2007/08/01/a-me-collector-i-want-one-badly

JP Rangaswami has an interesting perspective on knowledge management as it relates to instructional design and "learning" in general. His model is that KM should support the learning activity. [Read More]