Lifestreaming the easy way

I recently discovered a new PHP/MySQL lifestream tool named Sweetcron. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of lifestreams, a lifestream simply displays posts you have made to your social networks, blogs, photo sites, etc. It displays a stream of content that is representative of your life, I suppose. I began playing around with lifestreams a few months ago after seeing Joe Tan’s lifestream. Although I really like the way Joe uses Yahoo! Pipes to create his lifestream, I am infinitely happier with Sweetcron.

If you have any PHP experience, you will find Sweetcron very easy to install. If you don’t, I imagine you can figure out the installation without too much difficulty. Simply create the database, change a few lines in a couple of files, upload the files, and complete the installation via the web. Adding new feeds to your lifestream is a snap. Once your feeds are added, you can manually initiate a feed check or wait for Sweetcron to automatically do it. Sweetcron’s feed fetcher prefers to be run automatically via Cron or a Cron-like tool, but the software provides its own “Pseudo Cron” in case you don’t have access to such a tool.

My own installation of Sweetcron uses the default theme, but it looks easy to customize the layout and I look forward to doing some of that and posting a follow-up.

By the way, Sweetcron was developed using the CodeIgniter PHP web application framework and provides a good demonstration of what CI can do. I have looked into CI before but never put a lot of time into it. I’m hoping to get to know it better now that I have seen it in action.