Abstract:The growth of information acquisition, storage and retrieval capacity has led to the development of the practice of lifelogging, the undiscriminating collection of information concerning one's life and behaviour. There are potential problems in this practice, but equally it could be empowering for the individual, and provide a new locus for the construction of an online identity. In this paper we look at the technological possibilities and constraints for lifelogging tools, and set out some of the most important privacy, identity and empowerment-related issues. We argue that some of the privacy concerns are overblown, and that much research and Lifelogging 2 commentary on lifelogging has made the unrealistic assumption that the information gathered is for private use, whereas, in a more socially-networked online world, much of it will have public functions and will be voluntarily released into the public domain.

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The Semantic Logger 1 (SL) is presented as a system for the importing, housing, and exploiting of personal information. The system has been implemented using a number of Semantic Web enabling technologies, and attempts to store the information in a manner adhering to as many W3C recommendations as possible. The Semantic Logger's utility is grounded in two context-based applications, namely a recommender system, and a photo-annotation tool.