Conceptual Overview

Imagine a system that controls essentially all the electrical and electronic systems of a house based on the wishes of its owner.  Imagine a system that helps its owner in planning the things that he does and organizes tasks for their orderly and efficient execution.  Imagine a system that creates a objective record of what happens:  what happened in its owners environment and what the owner did with his time.  That's LIAM. 

Conceptually, LIAM is the manifestation of some of the concepts put forth in a treatise created in the late 1980s.  The scope of the treatise is beyond the scope of this document but it did lay out the essential features of a automated "life management" system which will take 15 years or more to implement.  The implementation will also require the creation of technology which doesn't exist yet or is too immature for this application.  When the treatise was written, very little of the technology was ready, so there is already progress.

Since LIAM is about what happens, it is / will be broken down into three life components:

• LifeFuture™ - this is the component of LIAM focused on planning; i.e., the future.  Currently, this component has just barely been implemented, so expect much more in the future. 
• LifeConsole™ - this is the component focused on today; i.e., the present.  This component is largely in place today and was the first piece to be implemented.  
• LifeChronicle™ - this is an historical record of has happened; i.e., the past.  This component exists, in part, today.

Note that a key concept of the site is that it is almost entirely automated.  For example, LifeChronicle is not a diary or something published by a person.  Instead is a automated record of what happened and when it happened and is created as a by-product of the home automation and task management systems.  The exception to being entirely automated is that annotations may be added to the logs.

At the next conceptual level, LIAM may be broken down into two domains:  

• Environmental management ("home") - Home represents the autonomous and explicit functions of the house's electronics and computer systems; i.e., a home automation system.  This is fully implemented. 
• Task management ("tasks") - Tasks represents the activities of the human owner including a task management system.  This is largely but not completely implemented.  

At times these domains overlap and are integrated by design.

As mentioned before, the environmental management domain is essentially a home automation system.  It controls hundreds of functions.  These can be categorized into functions related to occupancy/security (which in turn controls many other functions), household device management (e.g., aquarium, spa, heating, etc.), lighting, whole-house audio/video system, telephony functions (e.g., voicemail, phone transfer), some desktop computer functions, "lifestyle sequences" (e.g., sequence of functions at bedtime), and miscellaneous.

The task management domain can be categorized into time management (management of to-do lists and other related functions) and knowledge management (keeping track of emails, modified files, etc.).  The task management system is used everyday and for most of the day.  What can I say, I'm busy!  A special feature of this domain is the capturing and categorization of "expressions".  Think of diary snippets.

For each domain, there can be three functional views:  

• Summary - Summary provides aggregated or abstracted information about a domain; e.g., the distribution of subjects in the current todo list.  
• Control - Control allows a person to control that domain; e.g., turn on the CD player.  
• Log - Log is a chronological record of a domain's activities.  Think of it as the sequential view.

Together the three axes -- component, domain, view -- define LIAM, a life management system.