I’m here in Anchorage, AK, at the Alaska Society for Technology in Education conference. Times like these I’m reminded just how small our state is, even though physically it’s 3X larger than Texas.

With 54 school districts, about 150,000 students, and just under 9000 teachers we’re one of the smallest in the country. In attendance this week will be hundreds of admins, technologists, and teachers from across Alaska. Most of whom know each other.

Below is a Flickr photostream from ASTE. If you’re at the conference and want to contribute your pictures, email them to this address: cam67loaf+public@photos.flickr.com. Make sure to include the text “tags: aste” in the subject or body of the email somewhere.

The following recipe assumes you are familiar with and have accounts at more than one RSS (aka “web 2.0″) enabled website. Popular ones may include the likes of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Amazon, Blogspot, Delicious, Wordpress, Flickr, YouTube, and many more.

Purpose

A lifestream is essentially a single page where you aggregate all your online activity. Writings you make for your blog, pictures or videos you post, websites you bookmark, comments you make on articles: all can be brought to one handy webpage your audience can subscribe to.

Conceptual Overview

You consume, you create, you share.

Samples

• http://krynsky.com/lifestream/
• http://freeryan.com/lifestream/
• http://adactio.com/extras/stream/
• http://www.nicesoda.com/?page_id=1519
• http://www.yongfook.com/

Ingredients

The recipe outlined here is just one of the many different ways to build a lifestream.

• Web Browser: Firefox
  
• Essential Firefox add-on: ReadItLater
• Modern Email: Gmail
• RSS Reader: Google Reader
• Accounts at your favorite RSS-enabled websites
• Lifestream Account: FriendFeed
• Bookmarklets and Firefox add-ons for sharing content at your favorite sites: FaceBook, FriendFeed, Twitter, Delicious

Preparation

1) Create your Gmail account. This will also create your Google Reader account. Make sure to choose your username wisely: it could be yours for a long time! If you need help finding a good username, try searching Google for a username generator.

2) Add feeds from your favorite websites to Google Reader and organize them into folders.

3) Peruse headlines in Google Reader or posts from people in your networks, and use ReadItLater to mark items you want to read later.

4) Later, when you’re reading the items in your ReadItLater reading list, use your handy bookmarklets and browser add-ons to share worthy items with your various networks. Remember when you find interesting sites, if you want to get their future posts, add them to Reader. Also don’t forget to spend time every now and then looking for those hidden gems on the web (a note on finding things).

5) Go to FriendFeed and setup your account. Add all the websites you publish content to that you want to show up in your lifestream.

6) Your Lifestream will now exist at http://friendfeed.com/. Embed it in your blog, tag it onto your signature, or just let people stumble upon it.

For the last six years we’ve enjoyed enormous gains in technology: the iPod has revolutionized handhelds and cellphones; cloud computing and virtualization have enabled unlimited data/system portability; the Wii changed the way we interact with computer games; and websites that truly embody the promise of Web 2.0 are finally gaining stride and enabling people to network in ways never before possible.

But, with recession coming, belts are tightening. For many companies the first cutbacks will happen in R&D, especially if they already have a satisfied customer base. 

Have we reached a crescendo of technology progress on the eve of what could be the worst recession since the 1930s?

Lack of technology progress won’t just manifest in the form of lost jobs (300,000 so far this year), but an overall decrease of investment into new technologies. In the 4th quarter of 2007, equipment spending dropped only 4% compared to a 31% drop in venture capital investment.

One immediate example of this the new Mac Mini. Apple has production designs for it but is opting not to manufacture because “you wouldn’t buy one anyway“. 

Recession effects all parts of the economy. Some sectors may remain under enough demand to continue making sales, others will have to scale back. Or hibernate. For us bleeding edge technology nerds this means we could be looking at a mellow few years.

And for those of you feeling left behind by all this technology racing past: now’s your chance to catch up!