Sweetcron: A Sweet Lifestreaming Solution

It's a common complaint: with all the social networking sites and blogging options that our friends are always asking us to join, we're getting over-extended. By the time you've had your first cup of coffee in the morning, you've no doubt updated your Twitter account, added some bookmarks to Delicious, added links to your FriendFeed, and shared your favorite news stories on Google Reader, posted to your personal blog, and uploaded a photo to Tumblr.

If continually updating all these sites is a hassle for us, imagine what it's like for friends who are trying to keep up with us. If you're looking for a way to tie all your updates into one site, have a look at the open source lifestream blog software, Sweetcron.

Lifestreaming is the newest way to let your friends know what you're up to without forcing them to track you across numerous sites. Sweetcron is a fully-customizable lifestreaming app that sets up quickly and runs on your own server. It pulls RSS feeds from whatever sites you tell it to -- Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, etc. -- every 30 minutes by default, or at whatever interval you choose. You can even add blog posts to the mix.

Obviously, the name of the app references cron jobs, but since the developer is also the founder of Open Source Food, I'm betting it's also meant to be a play on the words "sweet corn."

Of course, this nifty app won't change the fact that you still have to update your status or activities at the various Web services you use, but at least people can follow what you're doing much more easily. Your friends will thank you for it.