"This is the dilemma of being a cyborg: It’s not just that everything we once committed to memory we now store externally on devices that crash or become obsolete or are rendered temporarily inaccessible due to lack of coverage. And it’s not that we spend a lot of time storing, organizing, pruning and maintaining our access to it all. It’s that we’re collectively engaged in a mass conversion of what we used to call, variously, records, accounts, entries, archives, registers, collections, keepsakes, catalogs, testimonies and memories into, simply, data." "Losing data is not the same as forgetting. It happens all at once, not gradually or imperceptibly, so it feels less like an unburdening than like a mugging."

"A new app, Decim8, attempts to take on the nostalgia challenge by introducing the look of digital artifacts: hard edges, high-chroma blocks of color, and partial repetition. Instead of mimicking errors of paper and ink, it celebrates errors of light and speed." "Nostalgia is not neutral. We need to remember, along with all the memories, that our lives in the now are partially cast from the look of our past."

"Relevant themes include but are not limited to family photographs and home movies; personal health and financial data; interface design for archives; scrap booking; social network data; institutional practices; genealogy; email, blogs and other correspondence; and funding models."

Yadin Dudai reviews two books, one by the LifeBits team promoting never forgetting, and a counterpoint that suggests remembering everything might not be a good thing. Worth a read.

Ah, one of those kick-myself moments. This is a very easy thing to implement ("Time Capsule looks at your Flickr account for photos you took a year ago and sends them to you in email"), but this looks lovely and polished.

A (very minor) point in favour of a MacBook Pro over the MacBook. $30 is a bit expensive compared to a USB memory card reading box, but it would be more convenient. Hm. Also, too small for CF.

Found for andym, who inadvertantly lost his movie files on a memory card. I've seen plenty of stuff like this for the Mac and Windows, but it's payware- this is cross-platform and free (GPL).

"lets you use a USB 2.0-based flash memory device to speed up the performance of virtually any Vista PC" I remember using a CF card + PCMCIA adaptor as virtual memory for old PowerBooks. Worked well enough, and most had two slots (so wireless as well)