
Jennicam and the Birth of 'Lifecasting' - danso
http://digg.com/2015/reply-all-jennicam
======
helsinki
I'm not directly exposing my life, but I have been running a site that streams
photos taken within 250 meters of my cell phone's current location every three
minutes. Check it out: www.instagrampostsnear.me

Side note: If anyone that has art world connections could hook me with the
possibility of exhibiting some of the best photos, it would be very much
appreciated.

~~~
beachstartup
hey that's cool. how did you get the gps location of your phone
programmatically? is this a commercial project or are you going to open source
it?

~~~
helsinki
I am using a custom built iOS app to regularly send my gps coords via an HTTP
request to a Flask app. The majority of the code is already open source, but I
certainly think it has the potential to be a commercial project. If anyone
wants to fund it, send me an email, haha.

------
kefka
There's work at Indiana University that is about machine learning and
lifecams. The question is thus: is there an algorithm that can determine
private moments (bathroom, sex, ...) and remove them from the video/picture
stream?

One of the research faculty obtained $1.5 million from the NIH for this
research.

Source: [http://itnews.iu.edu/articles/2014/iu-study-explores-
privacy...](http://itnews.iu.edu/articles/2014/iu-study-explores-privacy-
implications-of-life-logging-camera-devices.php)

~~~
pervycreeper
>One of the research faculty obtained $1.5 million from the NIH for this
research.

There are presumably other uses for this technology....

------
sgentle
Does anyone remember DotComGuy? (not to be confused by the similarly named Kim
of recent fame) A man with the audacious goal of staying inside for a whole
year and just ordering whatever he wanted off the internet.

Perhaps not so impressive now, but in 2000 it seemed pretty futuristic. I
wonder what crazy social experiments are happening today that will seem normal
in 15 years.

~~~
corobo
> Perhaps not so impressive now

These days you could do one with the rule that you're not allowed to use the
internet for your day to day life (e.g. Still use it for work, still use it to
update your online diary for the challenge)

------
ryandvm
Whoa. The real story here is that Digg is still around.

~~~
danso
Since its demise and revival by Betaworks, Digg has actually been one of my
favorite front pages...somewhere between HN/NYT, and Reddit. They have a few
clickbait things but mostly a pretty interesting variety of aggregated
stories. This was the first time I've seen them publish their own articles
(though I think they've been doing videos for some time)

Also, to give credit where it's due: Digg was one of the few places to follow
through on the "let's make something better" after Google Reader closed
shop...I hadn't used Google Reader in awhile so I've forgotten what features
it excelled on, but Digg's reader is the only feed reader I use currently:
[http://digg.com/reader](http://digg.com/reader)

~~~
kindlez
You should give Snapzu ([http://snapzu.com](http://snapzu.com)) a try. We're
trying to keep improving on it, so any feedback is welcome!

~~~
nols
I used to use Snapzu but forcing users to click a link twice (once to take you
to the Snapzu comment page and then again to "Continue Reading") to navigate
to the article is awful and probably a large reason people give up on it.

~~~
nodata
Digg does the same with videos. Very frustrating.

------
sthielen
I've been doing something similar for the past few months[0], but via an app I
made specifically for this kind of thing[1]. It's really cool to be able to
play back my montage, and there really is a sort of voyeuristic pleasure from
watching other people's "lifecasts."

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izZkCTBI3Bo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izZkCTBI3Bo)
[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beet-for-
moments/id960913398...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beet-for-
moments/id960913398?ls=1&mt=8)

~~~
bengali3
wanted this for a while, will have to check this out. do you have servers
mashing the video clips and keeping a video link on youtube or just keep
appending?

~~~
sthielen
The clips are stored individually on our end and played in sequence in the app
(this allows for easy scrubbing/segmenting of series of clips, as well as
things like watching friends' updates as they post videos). The YouTube
compilation is all the clips exported from the app and then I put some music
in the background.

------
ch4s3
This is a weird memory trip. I went to Dickinson College as well, though a
decade later. I always forget how awful and prison like those rooms in her
dorm were. The cam doesn't give you the sense of how small they were. I
believe that room is about 10x6, basically the whole thing except the door and
desk are in frame. A friend actually lived in that room, in maybe 2007 and it
was surreal to stand in there know it had been the birthplace of the internet
overshare.

------
EGreg
I wonder if it's legal and interesting to have a drone that follows me and
records my life but from afar, while avoiding obstacles.

~~~
robotresearcher
10-20 minute battery life is normal for quadrotor drones right now.

------
booleanbetrayal
Anyone read The Circle? - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Dave-
Eggers/dp/0345807294](http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Dave-
Eggers/dp/0345807294)

Pretty soon everyone will be "going transparent" whether or not they'd like
to.

~~~
bshimmin
Yes! Lots of interesting ideas - and some thinly veiled and extremely acerbic
criticism of Google et al. - in that book. It's a quick read, and certainly
not Eggers' best or most important work, but I think it'd definitely be of
interest to many here.

------
VariousPancakes
Have loved the idea of 'lifecasting' since the very begining. From Jennicam to
Justin Kan's original JTV (and iJustine rocking on the same platform.) to
Frank Taylor who is still broadcasting for many years over at:
[http://franktaylorslifecast.com/](http://franktaylorslifecast.com/)

There was also the oft forgotten Control.TV which Seth Green was a part of.
The show focused on one guy living in a house completely rigged with cameras
who's day to day activities were decided by the viewers. Almost everything was
sponsored, so he would eat Snickers bars all the time, drive a Ford, etc. Of
everything, control.tv was my favorite and I'm still looking for something to
replace it.

Alas, I dont think Periscope OR meerkat will be that thing.

------
mbreese
It's scary to think about, but one of my college roommates had a similar setup
for years. This story was a big walk down memory lane for me. His bedroom (and
I think the common living room in our suite) was on a webcam 24/7 for my last
two years in college (1999-2000). I think it was influenced by Jennicam, but
there were a number of people that had similar sites (I remember a
Lauracam...).

I had my own webcam, but wasn't very keen on being as transparent. I was happy
to live as a role player (Roommate #3) on his site.

The site was "bixworld.com" if anyone ever visited it.

~~~
gyc
I had a college friend stream live video using his webcam in his dorm room in
1997 or so. Apparently he didn't warn his roommate about it so every once in a
while you'd catch his roommate walking around without a shirt on.

------
MBCook
Gimlet Media's Reply All podcast had an episode about Jennicam:

[http://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-the-
jennicam/](http://gimletmedia.com/episode/5-the-jennicam/)

They also had a blog post with additional facts like it got her a walk on role
on Diagnosis Murder:

[http://gimletmedia.com/2014/12/6-things-i-couldnt-include-
in...](http://gimletmedia.com/2014/12/6-things-i-couldnt-include-in-reply-all-
episode-5/)

~~~
avemg
This article is by the Reply All team.

------
niche
I webcasted my wedding in Vegas ($100 add on). It was a great hit. With more
millennials jumping into the marriage pool, this is a great startup vertical
(horizontal?). Just make a pi, put a sim card on it / satellite link/ connect
to wifi, and you can invite everyone to your special life event.

~~~
pyre
The real problem is spotty internet connections causing the filming of the
"big event" to fail. Just has to happen a couple of times before people will
be leery of your product (because when it comes to weddings everything has to
be "perfect").

~~~
frandroid
Such a livestreamer would have to use data connections with fallbacks from
multiple mobile data providers and possible a satellite fallback, and a mobile
signal booster to bring inside venues.

~~~
Domenic_S
Last I checked that was stupid expensive. Here in the Bay Area Caltrain
doesn't have wifi (lol?) so I went on a kick of "I'm gonna get THE BEST MOBILE
INTERNET AVAILABLE ANYWHERE" to use on the train. I ended up with a simple
Verizon jetpack because the satellite internet stuff comes in briefcases, is
CRAZY expensive (like thousands of dollars for the equipment and hundreds for
the service) and on top of all that it's stupid slow.

$2,239, up to 492Kbps:
[http://www.groundcontrol.com/BGAN.htm](http://www.groundcontrol.com/BGAN.htm)

------
CPLX
I just read a digg story about Jennicam. Next I am going to surf over to Kozmo
and have some snacks sent over.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
You'd better check if you have enough flooz, though.

~~~
CPLX
Ah yes, who could forget Flooz. The original Bitcoin.

------
njharman
Holy crap digg.com still exists!?

------
lnanek2
Hmm, it does seem to predate Justin.tv, although it was just regular image
updates, not video. Basically a traffic cam for a college woman.

~~~
CPLX
Yes, it "seems" to predate Justin.tv by eleven years actually.

It also predates Google, Facebook, and web based email.

~~~
chc
Just to keep the timeline clear, it only predates web-based email by a couple
of months. Jennicam started in April 1996 and HoTMaiL came out two and a half
months later. It predates those other things by years.

~~~
quotedmycode
Web-based email was launched in Q1 1995 actually.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmail)

So it doesn't predate webmail at all.

