Introducing ‘lifestream’: UK MP’s website breaks new ground
LibDem MP Lynne Featherstone is the party’s lead on web stuff and so she should be – she’s had a blog since 2003 and has fed it practically everyday since. Lynne even credits her election victory to her strong online presence and use of it as an organising tool.
When she came to updating her website she chose Simon Dickson of Puffbox, the man responsible for many website transformations including Number Ten’s.
For her site Dickson has done something entirely new and – I think – brilliant. Called a ‘lifestream’ it brings together all the flotsum and jetsum of Lynne’s online life in one place – her site.
So the grand concept of the site is the use of a tabbed ‘lifestream‘ as the homepage. The initial view lists her last 10 actions, no matter where they happened – including Early Day Motion signatures, which required me to write my own scraper. Then, if you want to see her activity on one of those specific areas, you just click the appropriate tab. It’s all driven by RSS; the tabs are powered by ajax; the lists are generated by a cron for obvious reasons.
It includes content from:
- Her blog
- Hornsey & Wood Green LibDem press releases
- Her tweets
- Her pictures on Flickr
- Her in Hansard
- Early Day Motion signatures
- Her videos on YouTube
- Media cuttings about her
So rather than a whole lot of icons you click through to find content this brings it all together. As I said, brilliant. And just maybe a first?
(Just not sure about the name ‘lifestream’, only I can’t think of anything better).
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Categories: All WW, Internet / Technical, LibDem, Politics
Looks interesting + good.
The concept has some ideas from Simon’s previous work at markpack.org.uk where he pulled lots of different things together via RSS, possibly including a category feed from the WW.
Matt
Actually, RSS used to be my Answer To Everything. Then it was WordPress. Now, it’s the combination of both.
I threw together a very quick version of the lifestream at the very beginning of the project, mainly to test the technicals. But then I was finding myself coming back to it, several times daily, out of personal curiosity. I was hooked.
You aren’t the first person to query the use of the term ‘Lifestream’: but we felt Lynne’s background justified a bit of geek jargon – and couldn’t think of anything better ourselves, either. Always open to better ideas, though…
.-= Simon Dickson´s last blog ..Presenting the new website for Lynne Featherstone MP =-.
Now this is what I call progress in personal internet activity. How I wish I had the capability of understanding how to do this, but my brain doesn’t just absorb it (too much rubbish fed into it for 63 years).
Thanks for explaining it though Matt. I’m jealous.
.-= subrosa´s last blog ..Subrosa’s Super Seven blogs =-.
Lifestreaming isn’t new, as a concept or a buzzword: been around since the 90s. It’s just that now, with the average user being on multiple sites, there is more need for it.
http://lifestreamblog.com/
The difference between a lifestream and your average blog, is that all the different services are integrated into one stream, rather than (conventionally) you’d have a blog, with a widget for Flickr, a widget for Twitter, etc etc.
Facebook has become a Lifestream: you get your status updates, messages from friends, links, notes, your blog feed, your tweets, your LastFM loves etc all presented as a consistent stream of information instead of widgets and boxes and disperate methods of aggregation. Infact, any time you feed your Flickr posts to Twitter, or use scrapbook services to aggregate, you are Lifestreaming. You’ve already been doing it for a couple of years!
Interestingly, on this MPs website, it’s only the “all” tab that strictly-speaking qualifies as a Lifestream, the other tabs are more akin to the oldschool aggregation widgets. Not knocking it! It’s a nice site, and works well. But it’s not groundbreaking – 5 years ago maybe
although this is the first MP to lifestream, so it’s groundbreaking for Parliamentarians
yes thanks Al. That’s ma point, this is a first for an MP (or congressional rep etc.). So it is actually ‘groundbreaking’. Grrr, grrr …
.-= Paul Canning´s last blog ..US health ‘debate’: the dangers of rhetoric and the need for responsibility =-.
Trust me we did try to think of different names all of which we eventually vetoed in favour of ‘Lifestream’. Some were word plays on the concept, others were plays on Lynne Featherstone’s name. As others have said it is an existing concept and so already partly understood. If ‘Lifestream’ becomes the defacto name for multi stream personal content aggregation then so be it. Better ideas welcome, after all MSPCA is hardly rolling off the tongue!