Nolan is a cross-device software aimed at collecting painstakingly all the activity done by its owner on their devices, and automatically synchronizing and analyzing everything on a server, either owned by the user or by a third party, but by zero-knowledge-encrypting all the traffic.
Unlike currently widespread pre-installed “digital health” apps, Nolan does not only look at the currently opened app, but it should connect to each one and get what is being done on it. For instance, Nolan is not interested in knowing that I am reading the New York Times, Nolan wants to know what I am reading, for how long, if there is some sort of trend int the time of the day when I read the newspaper; in the same way, he does not care I am watching a video, he notes which video I am looking at and from where.
As a result, Nolan makes a huge CSV or JSON database with a timeline of everything done by the user, and parses graphs and statistics about it.
Nolan is some sort of life dashboard: it cross-analyzes stuff you do - both online and offline - where you do it, for how long you do it, how often you do it, maybe even near whom you do it, and eventually it sums up the results serving them to you.
- Subsections of this everything are put in more specific pages of the websites to add accomplishments (e.g. Nebuchadnezzar, Tutto, Giri).
- Use tags to split stuff into the above-mentioned subsections.
- Add locations, too! Check OSM API to integrate the system.
Automations
- Take
page.dateandpage.updatedvalues of the websites’ pages to automatically know the moments when they were being created/edited. - Get from mobile OS stats the time spent on apps and how often they are opened.
- Somehow integrate with CalDAV and add personal calendar events.
Sources and inspiration
The existing software closest to what Nolan does is personal-management-system
I have just stumbled upon datasette, which does not have very much to do with life management per se, but it shares the fundamental concept of valuing little datasets and connecting them in the best possible way, reciprocally integrating them.
- https://github.com/Richardsl/heatmap-calendar-obsidian