New Feature on Hidden Lives

A very handy link has been added to Hidden Lives. When you are viewing any individual entry, now you can quickly jump to every entry submitted in that category by clicking on the 'trigger' text.

So you can compare how different people from all over the world respond to 'triggers' such as:

When I look in the mirror I see...

Life is...

I wake at 3am thinking...

I still harbour a dream...

I want to be remembered for...

Another Hidden Lives Entry

Freedom is...

being absolutely honest with the world. When you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Honesty is scary but surprisingly people are touched by it, however dark, tawdry and warped your inner thoughts may be.

Hidden Lives entry from Andy, male, 35 years old, Offenburg, Germany.

Another Hidden Life Unveiled

My life changed the moment...

.........I wore a black dress. For the first time this morning
being 9 yrs old wearing a black dress seems pretty weird, I want my pink , yellow or red polka dot dress.
where is mum by the way? **i am in thought** does she know dad is making me wear black?
Today i was going to wear all black, bubbles in my hair, beads round my neck black, shoes on my feet black. Still wondering where mummy is.
Today we bury mummy that's why you are wearing black.
.........my life changed the moment i wore black.

Hidden Lives entry from Lola, female, 31 years old, London, United Kingdom.

The 500th Hidden Lives Entry!

The entries keep on flowing at Hidden Lives and I am delighted to feature the 500th entry submitted. And it is a beautiful one.

"I believe... words and thoughts have more power and energy than we are led to believe."

Unveiled by autumn, female, 40 years old, somewhere, Bosnia and Herzegonia.

Tinkering with Hidden Lives

A couple of small but crucial additions have been added to Hidden Lives by the 'man behind the code' Remko Steenstra.

Most importantly, when you are viewing an individual entry on the site, you can now view all the entries from this user. The link has been added under the user's profile below the image.

You can also view all the entries from the same country with a single click on the country name, again in the user's details below their image.

For example, check out this entry from StripyButterfly in the United Kingdom. Then under the Contributed link you can view all of her thought-provoking 10 entries.

Or perhaps you just want to check out all the entries from Norway.

I think you get the idea. Simple but very handy additions to get more meaningful insights into the people's reflections.

Lastly, options to sort and filter Hidden Lives entries in a variety of ways have now been added to every page except the 'splash' page containing the interactive tally. These sort and filter options will become much more crucial when there is more and more content on the site.

That's all for now.

When I look in the mirror I see...

a virtual stranger. Despite being me all of my life, sometimes I look in the mirror and stare. I try to figure out who this person is that looks back at me. Trying to decide how I got where I did, and where I go from here.

Hidden Lives entry from JustMe, male, 46 years old, Mississauga, Canada.

New Bookmarking Tool for Hidden Lives

The extraordinary rise of social bookmarking continues unabated. To jump on this Web 2.0 bandwagon and also help spread the word about Hidden Lives, we've just added an excellent feature to the site. It's from Add This! and is essentially a button that allows you to bookmark the page you're currently on to just about ANY bookmarking service (ie digg, del.icio.us, technorati etc).

I've been experimenting with it on this blog (see below this post) and it seems to work quite well. So head over to Hidden Lives to check it out. And of course add the site (and some entries) to your various bookmark accounts.

I don't regret...

having loved and given myself to those who, looking in retrospect, really did not deserve me.

Hidden Lives entry from autumn, female, 40 years old, somewhere, Bosnia And Herzegovina.

Latest News & More Links

For (the few) current readers of this blog, you'll notice that I have been experimenting with how I display highlighted entries from the Hidden Lives site. I think the latest entry (last post) is probably the best.

The blog post title being the trigger, the user's response immediately following, then their image and anything I want to say about the entry I will put in the separate comments section.

A few more blog links to Hidden Lives although traffic seems to have dried up a little of late. A touch under 500 entries... I said that my first goal was 1000 entries, so no party poppers until then. Anyway;

- A posting on the brilliant Rhizome (connecting art and technology) website: unveil your hidden life.

- A detailed posting from a Malaysian designer at her jwhx blog New media art: Hidden Lives.

- And from the interesting Random magazine comes this mention in the section Net Art.

I once promised myself...

that when I was older I'd have the perfect life, the kind you'd see on prime time television, that my whole family would love me, that I'd have a big great group of friends and that I'd fall in love.

Hidden Lives entry from no matter, female, -1 years old, who knows where, Canada.

When I look in the mirror I see...

a very ambitious person who does a lot of day dreaming of doing great things but is too lazy to actually go about doing them.

Hidden Lives entry from vp, male, 24 years old, Chennai, India.

Official Press Release & Another Blog Link

I have come across some interesting online tools of late, some which work, and some, well, we'll see.

I came across PRLeap.com, a site specialising in distribution of press releases, and decided to give it a go. Of course, you only get real distribution if you pay, but there is a free version.

So here's a link to the official-ish press release (with quotes and all):

For Immediate Release: Creative Web Project Allows People To Unveil Hidden Lives.

And here's another recent blog link mentioning Hidden Lives. From an interesting organisation called Turbulence.org, who sponsor and support net art (yay!) and their networked_performance blog: A Social Experiment.

I wake at 3am thinking...

that I have to do something. Yesterday, I couldn't sleep, and I only get sleep after composing a song on my computer. I had to discharge that energy that was in my body. It's really weird, but is thus.

Hidden Lives entry from NIS, male, 18 years old, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Vote for Hidden Lives

There are a number of online destinations where you can help spread the word about Hidden Lives. So head along to the links below and help launch Hidden Lives into the blogosphere and social networking consciousness.

Digg :: user driven web content.

Technorati :: tracking blogs.

Stumble Upon :: brilliant website sharing site.

del.icio.us :: social bookmarking.

The Best Stuff In The World :: self-explanatory!

Reddit :: vote for sites and web stuff.

KillerStartups.com :: very dot com.

New Triggers and Interactive Tally

The ever so brilliant Remko Steenstra, brains behind the technical development of the site, has added a couple of small things to the site.

An interactive tally which is viewable on the splash page of the site. Lets people know at a glance how many entries are on the site as well as the number of countries. Check it out.

A few more triggers have been added to Hidden Lives. Now you can pause, reflect and reveal to the following triggers;

I find meaning in....

I don't regret...

I once promised myself...

I believe...

I tried to teach my children...

If I had kids I would...

So have some fun unveiling!