Lifelog

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What Does Lifelog Mean?

A lifelog refers to the use of technology to capture and document large amounts of a user’s life and broadcast it to an audience. Lifelogging is made possible by certain kinds of technologies, including webcams and other surveillance equipment, wearable computers, streaming video and other data, and the ubiquity of data storage media that can handle large amounts of digital information.

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Lifelogging is also known as lifecasting.

Techopedia Explains Lifelog

The applications for lifelogging are diverse. Individuals who display their private lives through continual webcam surveillance could be classified as lifeloggers. Others may wear cameras that record certain kinds of locational data and other information to log their lives in real time. The prolific use of social media could even be called lifelogging, since many of these tools serve to update the user’s location, purchases, activities and even feelings in real time. A good example of of lifelogging is the very popular JenniCam site operated by Jennifer Ringley throughout parts of the 1990s that documented the woman’s life and displayed it on the Internet. Today, the use of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and other social media applications probably constitutes the majority of this type of activity, although there are more dedicated lifeloggers using more specific technologies to map their activities in real time more thoroughly.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.