Profilactic

Profilactic is a social aggregator that helps in knitting together one’s online life. It brings together all the feeds, blogs and RSS feeds posted online by a person. With an increase in the online activity, managing all online data and identities is fast becoming an enormous task and the thing that adds to the pressure even more is the fact that it is hard to remember the websites and accounts used by friends. It can gather information for a user as well as his friends from as many as 185 sites for e.g., Bebo, 43 people, 43 places, Blinklist, Brightkite, Blipper, Friendfeed, Orkut, etc. and make them available at one place. This means that a number of online profiles scattered on the web can be smartly profiled together through Profilactic. It basically performs two important functions-first it displays Personal lifestream of the user (which takes into consideration of the user’s activities) and second the Group lifestream (which consists of the activities of his friends and groups). It provides a feature named Auto Clipping which works like a digital scrapbook and can be used to identify, track and tag the entries and items about the user written by his/her friends on the web. The user can also control the pool of updates by selectively excluding those which are not quite important for him/her. With the help of Profilactic the user can easily let other people know about his current location. Profilactic is a combined effort of three persons based in Louisville, Kentucky-Shawn Morton (founder of Profilactic), Tom Osborne (lead developer) and Eric Roland (the member of development team). The basic purpose for launching this site was to provide a platform to users to aggregate their various profiles at one place. Later on it was expanded to include friends also. The site can be differentiated from other online applications on various grounds-first it provides access to numerous numbers of sites. Clippings and badges are a couple of features which are distinct from other sites. Also it supports around 186 sites, a number which many other social aggregators are far behind of. Profilactic comes across as a site with decent looks. It is neat and doesn’t look stuffed. All information has been kept under different headings. Colors used are soft and subtle. Navigation is no problem. The registration process of Profilactic is short and there is no need to provide any personalized and secret information like credit card details. The user just has to fill up the email, username and password to be a part of Profilactic community. Some of the services of this website can be availed by the user without getting registered but it is mandatory to register to make full use of the services of the site. The site provides for advertisements through the companies involved in third-party advertising. They collect necessary information about the user and use that information to better target the visitors of the site. The user doesn’t have to pay any charges for availing the services of the site. Profilactic provides access to various sites across the web. It is a great prospect for the users who use several accounts and have a difficulty in tracking and following their several cyberspace identities.