No time for a diary? Swurl comes to the rescue

Written on 7th July 2008                                                                                                              2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Just when I thought the lifecasting/ aggregating/ microblogging market was saturated, a new useful player pops up. The emphasis is on useful, as new services in this field emerge all the time – yet most of them look like useless clones to me. But Swurl absolutely isn’t one of them. Ryan and Jonathan from San Diego have developed a lifecasting tool that aggregates your online activity in a blog-like diary.

Although there’s a comment function, Swurl isn’t so much about sharing stuff with friends. Just like Second Brain, it wants to help you out with organizing and remembering the things you did online. So instead of desperately trying to evaluate the day in a diary, you just give Swurl your blog, Twitter, Amazon Wish list, StumbleUpon, Friendfeed, Flickr and more services’ credentials – the machine will do the rest. Although you probably don’t publish your deepest feelings online, Swurl can be satisfying alternative. Here’s a screen shot of my “diary”:

This may sound odd, coming from somebody who just posted a screen shot of his diary, but I’d like to see a “private” option on Swurl. I share my updates on Friendfeed et al and I’m planning to use Swurl only as a private diary. I could even start a private blog that DOES contain my deepest thoughts and pump them into Swurl. That would complete the diary experience for me.