Your life, mined

(as in data mined)

With the availability of numerous software tools and services on the internet, there is so much we can learn about ourselves. Its getting easier to track what we've done, what web sites we've visited and who we've emailed/IM etc.

Here are a few services that already gather information about our online/offline activity:

1. Google Search Web History - Google know what all your search for. And now they share this data with you, unlike any other search engine out there.
   
2. RescueTime - Tracks what apps you're using. Allows you to tag apps by activity etc.
   All the data is uploaded to a website which allows you to view the data in different reports. Of course there are alternatives to this, like TimeSnapper, which do the same, but don't rely on any web services/sites to provide you the same data.
   
3. Email searches/organization - Of course Gmail is the front runner here, but a few other notable applications are LookOut, which got acquired by Microsoft a few years ago ( I believe the technology behind this got integrated into the larger Windows Search ecosystem). Another company, Xonabi, is rumored to get acquired by Microsoft, for their nifty Outlook plug-in which put a whole new spin on how your managed your email from Outlook. I'd recommend checking out their demo video.
4. RSS Feeds/Podcasts your subscribe to.
   
5. Outlook/GCal/GTD apps like RTM or other electronic calendar equivalents.
6. Our cell phone call logs.
   
7. You Firefox/IE browser history.
   
8. Social bookmarks - Digg/delicious/stumbleupon etc.
   
9. Credit card /Bank spending/saving habits.
10. Facebook /Orkut/MySpace/(and other social networks) - What's been happening in your social life. Who are your friends, when you added them etc.
    
11. LinkedIn - What been happening in your professional life.
    
12. Blogs - What you write about.
    
13. Your Pictures - Stored locally, or on Facebook, Flickr, SmugMug etc.
14. Your Videos - Stored locally or on YouTube and its likes.
    
15. Documents you've worked on (ie: OfficeDocs, pdfs etc) Lots of this info can be gotten from your OS.
16. 43Things - What you want to do/accomplish in life.
17. 43Place - Places you wanna visit.
18. And many more, that got missed in this list.
    

So that said, what's next on the horizon:

1. Car tracker - The technology already exists. LoJack sells this service as an anti-theft or theft recovery system. But imagine if the GPS in your car can log where all you've been. At the end of the year, your car sends you an email, which reports habits like you usually do groceries on Mon nights for about 30 mins, and that instead of stopping for gas on Fri evenings, you'd save $10/mo if you bought gas Tue morning.
   
2. Your cell phone + LBS (Location Based Services) - Tracks where all you've been through-out the day. I bet the Feds already do this tho.

The real kicker, or should I say "Killer Stalker App" - A mashup of all these data sources, which can build a model for your behavioral patterns, by doing some data mining on all there data sources. Spooky huh....