Things really started going down hill around the time I discovered FeedDemon. Damn that Nick Bradbury! With FeedDemon I was tracking nearly a thousand feeds a day. I’d focus on the topics I was most interested in by setting up watch lists. At first I thought that FeedDemon was helping me to effectively manage my information addiction. On the contrary, the problem was actually getting worse. I eventually realized that the more blogs I read, the more blogs I subscribed to. Each day I’d add a dozen new feeds to FeedDemon. It was a vicious circle. My feed reading began taking up larger chunks of my day.

At some point I came to my senses and realized that I had a serious problem. I had become overwhelmed by the sheer number of feeds that I’d subscribed to.

Converting Lifestreams into APML Attention Profiles is emerging as a key piece of the Attention Economy. An economy where a user's behaviour and interests helps her have a better Internet experience. More importantly, however, her Profile is her own. She controls it. And it exists outside any one propietary silo.

So - to get and promote your own APML file simply:


1. Add your Lifestream RSS feed to Engagd's Profiler and it will generate a living, hosted APML file for you
   
2. Make sure you set your APML file to PUBLIC so others can access it.
   
3. Use one of these graphics to link to it on your blog/website

How I built my lifestream

Too Many Choices, Too Much Content

Too Many Choices

However, there are certain areas we've noticed that seem to be the biggest
sources of conflict as of late. In these areas, several companies are clamoring
to be the winner of the space, releasing duplicate or similar products,
constantly adding new features, and generally trying to one-up their competitors
in an effort to come out on top. When there are several companies doing the same
thing, it gets confusing for the average user and time-consuming for the early
adopters who play with everything. In the end, the hope is that one great
service would come out on top, but that's hardly ever the case. We're already on
MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, and LinkedIn because there's no one winner for
social networks...are we going to have to use all these newcomers battling it
out, too?

I think overall Dataportability is an extremely important initiative based on
solid existing standards. As a huge evangelist for Lifestreaming, I see the
benefits pretty clearly. They’re also lucky to have some great PR going and
talented technical people behind them. But it appears to me that much of the
focus will need to be made on educating end users on its benefits and why they
need it. This will then hopefully in turn put more pressure on vendors to adopt
it.

Here’s a video from the event by TechZulu

Create

Here is a list of resources that can be used to create a Lifestream. They are
broken down by scripts that can be used to host on your own site and sites that
provide functionality to host them for you.