These are the wonderful, inconspicuous devices that take photos at set periods of time and are an ethnographer’s dream. Clip one on, forget about it, and the device will capture images at a specified time frame, say every 10 seconds. Then voilà, a nice account of the wearer’s day captured neatly for you, without them having to think about it.
The possibilities for this are endless, understanding the average day, commuting journeys, shopping trips — it doesn’t capture the detail but it gives you a wonderful overview.
But the key bit for researchers is the output and deliverables. Lots of lifelogging devices come with their own software that automatically creates videos for you. But sometimes these don’t offer the flexibility we need. This is where our friends at Google can help. Assuming you can export images off the lifelogger, Picasa allows you to create time lapse videos from still images, with a handy option for setting the video size and the length of time for which an image appears. Perfect for creating just what you want!
