If you scroll below your timeline, you will find that you have a couple of choices:

1) Lifestream: Inside this tab, you will see a linear view of your lifestream. The notable thing in this view is that you are now able to quickly see the blobs around which discussions are happening so that you can join in and add your point of view.

2) Newsfeed: Inside this tab, you will see the activities that your friends are performing inside lifeblob.

3) Comments: Inside this tab, you will see comments that other users have made on your timeline.

We hope that these changes should make your interaction with lifeblob a lot more interesting and also make it easier for you to have discussions with other people that share your interests.

1) Single Sign On
This is the most obvious of all - link up your facebook account with lifeblob and thou shalt have the privilege of signing into lifeblob with your facebook credentials.

2) Timeline from facebook photos
If you maintain your photo albums in facebook, this is your opportunity to turn them into a timeline. We also look at your face tags and automatically turn them into relations that you will see behind the blobs. Trust us, no one can make your photos look better than a lifeblob timeline.

3) Autocomplete includes your facebook friends
There are times when we ask you to enter the name / email ids of your friends, for instance when you create a new blob or when you add a face tag. If you have imported your address book, we assist you by auto-completing the names for you and linking up your facebook account will now get your facebook friends to show up there too. Isn’t it cool?

4) Share your blobs with your facebook friends
You can now add your facebook friends as participants to your blobs. When you do so, we automatically intimate your facebook friends about your new blob. You also have the option of publishing your newly added blob on the facebook news feed so that all your facebook friends get to see it.

5) Get your facebook friends involved in your activities at lifeblob
When you add a comment or perform some other activities inside lifeblob, you have the option of publishing it to your facebook news feed. This is a great way of getting your facebook friends to participate in a discussion on something you like in lifeblob.

We hope you like these and find these valuable means of interaction. If you have more suggestions on how we can help you further, do not hesitate to write to us.

“Facebook connect is now officially live at lifeblob”

For new users, this means that you do not need to create a new account at lifeblob. Simply click the f-connect button to login directly with your facebook account and get a lovely timeline built off your facebook photos.

For our loyal blobbers, if you login with the facebook account next time, we will do our best to match it with your lifeblob account and link them together. However, the fool-proof way to link up your facebook account is to follow the steps below:

1) Select “Manage Imports” from the “My Lifeblob” dropdown.

2) Click on the facebook icon.

3) Click on the f-connect button and login with your facebook account.

Thats all - your lifeblob account will now be linked with your facebook account and you can in future login with either of the two.

Whats more, we allow direct sign-ins using google account, yahoo account and open id so your members don’t need to create yet-another-account to use these features. Sounds unbelievable - check out the video below to find out how you can benefit from it.

Today we announce  an upgrade to our picasa button where you now have the option of just uploading all your photos and let us do the tedious part of organizing them. Our servers do a good job of grouping together photos that were taken around the same time into a single blob and automatically turn your photos into a beautiful timeline.

Here are the steps:

1) Install Picasa’s latest desktop client on your machine. You can download it from http://picasa.google.com.

2) Install the lifeblob picasa button. You will find the instructions to install it at http://www.lifeblob.com/tools/. This will add a lifeblob button on your picasa button bar - it looks like:

3) Select all the photos that you want to upload and click the lifeblob button in picasa. Please note that picasa imposes a limit of uploading only 400MB of photos at one time.

4) In the screen that shows up, select “Automatically organize photos for me” option.

And thats all - in the next few minutes, all the photos on your hard drive will be converted into a beautiful timeline.

1) If you are looking to edit a post, take a look at the top-right section of the detailed blob view. You will now be able to selectively edit photos, videos and blob details.

2) You will also find the details of the person who posted and the visibility settings in the top-right section.

3) Participants can now add photos and videos to a blob, though they cannot remove any photos/videos added by other participants. This makes it a great tool for travelogues and parties where everyone has photos to share.

4) If you look below a photo, you will find the caption and any photo tags for that photo. Take your mouse on the photo tag to see the person it belongs to. You can also point your mouse on the face of a person to see their name.

5) To tag a person, simply click on their face and type their name and email id. Tip: If you have imported your address book, we will auto-complete the name for you.

6) You can now comment on individual photos in the comments panel below the photo. These comments also show up in the blob comments area to give you a consolidated view of discussions.

7) Click the “Autoplay” link and we will play all the photos in the blob for you.

We look forward to hearing from you if you liked these changes. Do also send us your requests on other features you would like to see here.

The 2009 edition of SXSW starts tomorrow and we bring you all the action on a SXSW timeline. Follow this timeline to keep yourself posted on the latest updates through the next week and if you are out there and would love to contribute, do give us a shout at contact@lifeblob.com.

One of the things we’ve tried to do with the new release is to bring about a seamless integration of social features around the timeline. Here is a low down on what we have to offer:

1) If you are interested in getting updates of a particular timeline, you can now follow that timeline and we will notify you.

2) On the home page, you will now find a timeline that is composed of all blobs that have been added by your friends, or added to the timelines you are following and some popular content. This makes it really easy for you to see what everyone in your network is talking about.

3) We have also added a few widgets to make it easy for you to find other interesting and popular timelines.

4) And as always, we have a status message and a news feed.

Adding posts to your timeline has never been easier. In our never-ending quest to make it easier for you to post stuff onto lifeblob, we’ve added a few new features and simplified some existing ones.

Right below your timeline and also on your home page, we’ve added a nifty little panel that lets you add stuff instantly to your timeline.

• Want to post a photo to your timeline? Just select the file and click post. No further questions!
• A bunch of photos? Sure, just select “Upload an album”.
• We also let you add videos to your timeline. Currently, only YouTube videos are supported.
• Are you the writer kind? Choose the “Write” option and express yourself to your hearts’ content.

For the users of picasa offline photo organizer, we have a picasa button that they can install to upload directly from picasa to lifeblob.

Email is still a very widely used mode of sending photos to friends and the next time you mail your photos to your friends, you can also cc it to me@post.lifeblob.com to have them posted on your timeline - all your friends listed in the mail also get added as participants.

Life is beautiful, and so are the moments that you are a part of. And now, they look as beautiful on your timeline too.

When you click on a blob on a timeline, it opens up to show you a detailed view. This has been completely redesigned so that your content not only shines, it looks simply stunning. The dark gray background, the printed newspaper kind of a layout, the ability to view thumbnails and the text along with your media all combine to give you a never-before experience.

Wondering where your relationships and other details of the blob are? Simply scroll down and you will find them all there. You can also change most of these details inline, without leaving the blob - the tags, participants, location and related timelines can all be changed inline.

You can also easily share a blob with your friends by either sending them the URL or by using the “Tell A Friend” button at the top. There is also a “Next” and “Prev” button to make it easy for you to move to the next or previous blob in the order of time.

We have put in a lot of thought on this and we would love to hear how you like it. Do share your feedback!

The most important feature of the new lifeblob is the brand new patent pending timeline visualization. The value proposition of lifeblob lies in enabling users to build timelines of their lives and presenting how their relationships, interests and associations change over time. The new visualization helps us focus more strongly on the latter part.

In the new timeline visualization, we simulate a third dimension that shows all the relations of a blob right behind it - this makes it really easy for you to see how your relations with other people, places and your interests changed over time, as you scroll through a timeline.

The picture above shows a blob about “Abhin’s Birthday” on my timeline. A quick look behind the blob will tell you that it is related to Lifeblob, Pranav, Rakesh and two more relations that could not be shown. Clicking on any of these cards behind the blob will take you to the timeline of that relation at that piont in time.

Sweet, isn’t it?

Today, I am pleased to announce that we have moved one step closer to realizing our vision. For the past few months, we have been listening to your feedback and secretly working on a new version of lifeblob. This is the day when we bring it to life in front of your eyes.

Here is a 4-min screencast that will show you what lifeblob v 2.0 has to offer. I will cover the features in detail in subsequent blog posts.

We just got covered on techcrunch: read the complete coverage here

As a company that presented in the last edition of Proto, we eagerly look forward to the upcoming edition and hope to see some great companies showcase themselves. For those who haven’t been to Proto or those who want to know more about what has happened in the previous editions, we have put together a timeline on lifeblob that captures all the moments.

Check it out below:

We have had enough of these attacks and we owe it to the nation to improve the situation. Some of us are meeting up at Cubbon Park at 6 PM on Sunday, Nov 30 to light up a few candles and pray for the deceased souls and make a firm statement to the system - thanks to Sanjukta for taking the initiative.

Bring a candle along, bring all your questions and all your thoughts along and a list of all our thoughts shall be made and sent to the officials. This event is not for publicity - please avoid all kinds of media.

A previously unknown organization called Deccan Mujahideen claimed responsibility of these attacks in which over 150 people lost their lives. It is suggested that this group is linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al Qaida.

Yesterday, we started putting together some of the prominent news on a timeline to make sense out of it. As we did it, we became curious to also find out about the other terrorist attacks that have shaken various parts of India recently and also started adding those on to the timeline. The resulting timeline is embedded below and there are a lot of interesting observations that can be made here:

1) Terror is not a recent phenomenon to India. The first significant act of external terror happened as early as 1989, almost 20 years from today.

4) Fast forward to 2008 and this one year has the highest number of terrorist attacks that have ever happened in India in a single year. Notably, these attacks are not limited to a particular region but spread all over India.

This analysis does bring out an interesting and scary pattern, that the terrorist activites are becoming more frequent, that the activities are getting spread out and that the activities are getting more organized while being distributed.

It is high time we realize the gravity of the situation and make a concerted effort to fight terror. This is not something that a government can do by itself - all of us need to get involved to fight terror and bring peace and harmony back to the earth.

Lets join hands, lets get together to come up with ideas and fight this terror.

Thanks a lot to everyone who voted. But we still have some way to go and we can’t get there without your support. And in this round, the game gets more exciting - one vote, per email id, per day for the next 11 days is all we need from you to get there.

So come on, give us your daily vote and with your support, we can do wonders.

The good thing is that we will not need to say that anymore since we also have a news feed now. It looks a little facebook-ish right now, but hey, this is the first version - keep your eyes open as this evolves in the future versions.

A picture speaks louder than words, so here is a screenshot:

Here is how you do it:

1) Maximize a post on your timeline by clicking on it.

2) Click the “Start Tagging” button on the right.

3) Click on the object in the photo that you want to tag and start typing the name of the object. We will help you by auto-completing as you type, but you are free to type in something new.

4) If this object is a person, enter their email id otherwise just click on “Add” or press “Enter” to save the tag.

More about topic timelines in our previous post here.

We have now turned on the “Import Your Stuff” application for topic timelines. If you are a contributor to a topic timeline, you will see an “Applications” menu at the top from where you can trigger this app.

Three services are currently supported and more will be turned on soon. If you want support for a particular service, do send us a shout!

But what if you only want a few of those albums on your timeline ? Or what if you want an album in your friend’s picasa account on your timeline ?

This is now possible with individual album import. When you run the “Import Your Stuff” tool and select Picasa from the list, you will now have the choice of linking up a picasa account or importing picasa albums one at a time.

Here is what this looks like:

When you login to lifeblob, you will see the “Inbox” link on the top-right corner. Click on that link and you will be able to send a private message to any of your friends at lifeblob. You will already be familiar with the next steps.

Here is a screenshot:

This button will show up on the left of a maximized post ( if you are already not a participant ). Simply click this button if you want the post to become a part of your timeline as well.

PS: If you have some cool nifty ideas to make your life simple, send them over to us. When they get implemented, we will give you credit for your suggestion.

Want to pull you friend’s leg? Just tell us who and we will show you all photos tagged with that person anywhere in Facebook. Select the funniest photo and add callouts to it. You’ve just created a “Said It!” It’s that simple!

An interesting part of Said It is that it lets you fight fire with fire. If you’ve just been targeted by one of your friends in a Said It, just hit the Reply link to target them back in a new Said It. Add comments to Said Its and rate them and we’ll soon be able to tell you which of your friends has the best sense of humor.

You can start using the application from here. Browse, rate and comment on Said Its that are in the system. Try creating one of your own. It’s fun and takes just about 20 seconds. As always, we’d love to get your feedback. Email us (feedback@lifeblob.com),  write on our wall or write us a review.

This is ideal if you want to create a timeline for your college, or a timeline for your new born baby or just want to maintain different timelines for your personal and official life. This is valuable for groups/conferences that meet up at regular intervals, to be an easy way to notify the subscribers and to track the progression of the conference over time.

How To Create

To create a new topic timeline, simply click on “My Topics” tab and follow the instructions on the page. If there is already a topic timeline available for the same purpose, we recommend that you add yourself as a contributor to that timeline instead.

Making A Post

You can make a post to any of the topic timelines that you have either created or that you are a contributor of. When you click on “New Post” you now have the option of having this post appear only on the timeline where you are, or also linking it with other timelines that you have access to. To associate the post with other topic timelines, simply enter the name of the timeline in the topic text box.

So create new topic timelines, invite your friends to collaborate and enjoy!

And there are over 300,000 more celebrities waiting for you. So check out your favorite celebrities right now, add yourself as a fan and event contribute to these timelines.

You can also create new timelines about topics that you care about - the details will be covered in a future post.

1) Click on the “New Post” link on the timeline and the screen below pops up. Simply enter:

• One line title for your post
• The day it happened ( we understand when you say ‘yesterday’, ‘today’ or ‘2 days ago’ )
• Your friends that are involved
• Any other topic timelines ( that you created or you are a contributor of ) to associate
• And decide who do you want to make it visible to

2) If you would like to write about the post in detail, switch to the Journal tab and write about it. We also allow you to link pictures in the content. Also add any tags to classify your posts.

3) If you have pics to upload, switch to the photos tab and upload your photos. You can associate a caption with each photo.

4) Finally, switch to the place tab and mark the location. You have the option to search for your location or drop the marker at the desired place.

Click “Save” and presto, your post is on your timeline. Easy, isn’t it?

However, this is just the beginning, and now its time to change gears and move ahead full force. On the sidelines, we have been talking to our users to understand their needs and working on a brand new version of the service that will take the lifeblob experience to a whole new dimension.

Really soon, we will be opening up this new version to a select group and if you are interested in being one of the early invitees, go ahead and register for the beta here.

We like to hear from you. If you have something to say, please write to us at feedback [at] lifeblob.com.

You can also find out the status of any of your friends by moving your mouse on their photo.

So go on and let your status messages speak for you!

One of the interesting ( and counter-intuitive ) things that we learnt during the process is that high-performance generally translates to higher value, but sometimes you have to slow things down to enhance the overall experience.

And we promptly applied this new piece of knowledge to the zoom feature on our timelines. We slowed down our zoom so that you could actually see the blobs moving apart as you zoom in or merging in as you zoom in. We also added a nice effect to have the blobs bounce on the screen as the timeline loads.

Check out the screencast below and get an account to see for yourself. We do hope this brings a smile to your faces everytime you use it.

Just look below your timeline and you will find it all there. Moving it below the timeline not only keeps you away from any distractions while you are browsing the timeline, but also gives us more space to show you the stuff that you care about.

We would love to hear your feedback on this.

The next time you login to your account, you will find that your timeline is somewhat reduced in height and there is a scrollbar right below the date bar. Pick your mouse, drag the scrollbar where you want to go and feel the difference.

This exciting feature is also coupled with huge performance enhancements to the timeline navigation. Press your mouse on the timeline and drag it around - lightning fast, isn’t it ?

Enjoy your experience while we get back to work. Watch out for more exciting updates soon.

Today, we announce a feature that I personally like a lot, since it is the easiest way by far to make a post on the timeline. Here is how you do it:

• Open your favorite email client and compose a mail
• Add a subject to the mail - this will show up as the title of the post
• Write your content in the body of the mail - this will show up as the description of the post
• Attach photos that you want to include in the post
• Shoot the mail to “me [at] lifeblob.com” from the email id that you used to register for lifeblob

And presto, your post will show up on your timeline in the next few seconds. To keep things simple, there is currently no way to specify a location, tags and participants when you make a post over email, but you can always edit the post once it is on your timeline to add this information.

**Note:
a) Inline images in the email body will not be processed. Images will be processed if they are attachments to the email of linked from a URL.
b) If like me, you have exchanged a lot of photos with friends over email, simply forward those mails to lifeblob to build a rich timeline in minutes.

• YouTube
• SmugMug

To import your stuff from these services, simply click on “Applications”, select the “Import Your Stuff” service and follow the instructions.

We’d love to hear back from you on what you liked and what you didn’t. Please send us your comments at feedback@lifeblob.com.

The office is located off Bannerghatta Road in Bangalore and is really easy to reach. For those unfamiliar with Bangalore, IIM Bangalore is also on Bannerghatta Road.

It was surprisingly easy to get the office started. We just got a few tables and chairs, one wireless router, had the traditional puja and presto, we were all set to go. There is one aspect that we paid special attention to - all workstations are within 6-feet of the snack table and there is unlimited supply of tea and coffee :).

View Larger Map

Check out our coverage of the proto at the timeline embedded below:

Prior to joining lifeblob, Vishwas worked at Trilogy for three years. During his stint there, he worked on several services for the automotive industry. He was part of the team that created Dealer Order Services (DOS), a system that automatically replenishes automotive dealers’ inventories in an optimally based on demand and other market conditions.

Subsequently, he worked as the product manager for a couple of services for the Indian automotive market. This included the Lead Scoring service which statistically predicted a prospect’s propensity to buy a vehicle, a first for the Indian market.

Outside of work, he has a wide range of interests including economics, philosophy, film and tea-tasting.

We are all really excited to have him on board!

Checkout our coverage at DesiStartups here.
Checkout the screencast here.

Check out the entire coverage here and join the discussion.

Thanks Ashish for covering us. You can catch the entire discussion on pluggd.in here.

You can find the complete coverage here.

Lifeblob Is:

• A huge mesh of timelines inter-connected though various posts on them.
• A place where you can record your personal diary and connect events in your life with other people, places and things.
• A cool new way to write your blog and showcase it using an interactive timeline.
• A way for people to keep their friends and family posted about things going on in their life and collaboratively build timelines.
  • Especially useful for parents - they can post photos and videos ( coming soon ) of their kids on their timelines and the service automatically builds a timeline for the kids.
  • Alumni groups can add posts about the alumni interactions on their timelines and the service automatically builds a timeline of the alumni group.
• A way for you to view interesting slices of your life. As a personal example:
  • I view My Timeline to see my entire life, instances where I interacted with friends and family and all the thoughts that I have blogged about.
  • I view Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore timelines to view slices of my life that I have spent in these three cities with my friends and family.
  • I view Trilogy and Lifeblob timelines to view slices of my life that I have spent in these organizations.
  • I view OCC and Barcamp timelines to view slices of my life that I have spent in these unconferences and to keep a tab on activity happening in these groups.
• A way for you to discover other people with similar interests ( using tag timelines ).
• A way for you to find out what is going on in your city or connect with people around you ( using place timelines ).

Lifeblob Is Not:

• Yet another aggregation service. We only support aggregation to get our users started quickly.
• A place where you are only supposed to capture real-life events. You can use it to express your thoughts just as well or a mix of both.
• A direct competitor to LifeInLines, Plurk or Dipity. Our focus is not just to provide a beautiful timeline view, but to provide value to our users by exploiting the relationships that exist between these timelines ( or the mesh of timelines ).

If you are interested in more details, these two older posts on our blog are highly recommended:

What is Lifeblob all about ?
The power of dimensions

What are notifications?
Notifications are gentle reminders of activities that are pending an action from your side. Currently, we support notifications when you import your blog or photos from picasa/flickr to enable you to share the imported content easily with your friends and family.

In future, we will also extend notifications to include any pending friend requests or messages from your friends that you haven’t answered.

Why do I need them?
Sometimes, you may be really busy and may not have time to take an activity to completion. This is where we take the responsibility of reminding you when you visit us the next time of the activities pending your action.

How does it work?
Yesterday, I imported my blog into my timeline. I wanted to share some of the imported posts with my friends at Lifeblob and notifications made it really easy for me.

After the blog import finished, I got the following screen with a list of posts that had been imported, giving me the options of either updating the post or skipping it.

On selecting update, I got the options to add email ids of my friends, add tags and set the visibility of the imported post. There is also an option to import the email ids from the address book - that would turn on type-ahead completion of email ids.

By providing all the new posts in one location, this made it really easy for me to set the visibility options and also to share the imported posts with my friends.

What if I don’t have time to update all of them right now?
You can always click the “Remind Me Later” button at the bottom and we will show you this screen the next time you visit your timeline.

Please do email us to let us know how useful you found this feature.

Here is how it works:

1) Click on the “Applications” link in the top navigation bar and select “Import Your Stuff”.

2) In the screen that opens up, choose the service from where you would like to import your content. We currently support blogs ( and any RSS feed ), flickr and picasa.

3) Once you have chosen the service, you will be asked to provide the details required for the import. The screenshot below shows you how the screen would look like for blog import.

4) Once the import is complete, you will be shown statistics from your import. The screenshot below shows the statistics from my recent picasa import.

5) You can also click on “See All Imported Sites” link to view all the services that you have configured for import and manage them.

Note: You can only configure one account for each service that is supported by the aggregator.

What is Get Satisfaction?

Get Satisfaction is a place where people can get the most from the products they use, and where companies are encouraged to get real with their customers.

How do I use it?

Nothing changes for you. You can simply visit our help page and either browse through a set of pre-defined help topics or post a question in the get-satisfaction box if you don’t find what you are looking for.

What are the benefits?

Ask a question, report a problem, share an idea, or join in conversations already in progress. The most useful replies rise to the top and you will be notified when people respond to your queries.

1) For blog imports, blob on the timeline shows text
We want your timeline to look gorgeous, so wherever possible, we try to use photos in the blog content. However, for blog imports, it may be more important to showcase your thoughts. We have therefore updated our rendering engine to show blog text wherever the post has been imported from a blog.

2) Clicking on a person/place/tag shows you the same post in a different context
When you make a post on your timeline, you can link it up with other people, places and tags. This association gives you an interesting ability to view the same post in different contexts. With this enhancement, you will now be able to click on a person/place/tag on a post you are viewing and land on the same post on the other timeline.

3) Scroll buttons lock on double-click
Scroll buttons are small arrow buttons that show up on the top-left corner of your timeline. If you keep your mouse pressed on a scroll button, you can move the timeline forward or backward in time. With the new enhancement, if you double-click on the scroll button and leave your mouse, the timeline will continue to scroll in the chosen direction as long as the mouse remains on top of the scroll button. To stop the scroll, simply move your mouse out of the scroll button.

Keep sending us anything else you have on your mind - we love to see your mails

1) Use the navigation tools to get the timeline view that you would like to share.

2) Click the “Share” link in the top navigation bar.

3) Simply copy the link in the dialog box that shows up. If you wish to embed your timeline, the dialog box also contains the code that you can embed.

Didn’t I say it was really simple :).

If you are not already a member and would like to take a test ride, there is a featured timeline embedded in the home page that you can play around with.

Whether you are already a member or not, you will love our popular timelines section where the most popular timelines of people, places and tags are showcased. This is where you can take a deep dive and see most popular timelines in lifeblob in real action.

Well, thats pretty much it - short and sweet. Do tell us how much you like it.