Dandelife and autobiography

I recently did a little experiment over at Dandelife.com to see if this could replace my personal blogging space. I think this is a really cool service. It’s been a long while since I did any real blogging as is evident by perusing the archives here at SunNimbus. I thought Dandelife may reignite my interest in personal blogging. It did, but I’ve now decided to stop blogging at Dandelife. Why? Well, I want to own my data (plus they’re not open source). Sure, I really like Dandelife’s cool timeline view and how easy it is to add my Flickr photos, but what happens to all my content? Who owns it? I think it would be great for my daughter, Ashby (photo here at Coon Rapids Dam), to be able to read my crap ten years from now. However, where is Dandelife going to be 2 years from now? Where will all these other hosted services be? Who Knows!! As an employee of a ~”Web2.0″ company that is constantly evangelising data custody maybe I’ve drunk my own Kool-Aid. Or, have I? There are ample stories of hosted companies, like Flickr, blocking competitors from using their API to allow ‘we the users’ to pull our content out and /or expose it elsewhere. Who owns my content…If it’s not on my server? So, why am I using Flickr still…I don’t know…I still have high res copies of all my photos. Is there a better photo sharing service out there? Anyhow, I’m going to move all my posts from Dandelife to SunNimbus and abandon that space. I want data custody! Nonetheless, I think Dandelife’s timeline view is cool and overall I think they have a slick interface; moreover, I think their emphasis on providing an autobiography is a really good idea, perhaps more so now that I have a progenitor. After all, who else would really give a damn?