How To

Favorite Searches

Save useful searches to your homepage for easy access

• From Search Results - To favorite a search form a search result, click on the star in the search box. Then name current search and choose an icon and icon color. Once you save the search, it will now be a in your Favorites.
• From Quick Tabs - To favorite a recent or top search on the homepage, click on the star to the right of the search. Then name current search and choose an icon and icon color. Once you save the search, it will now be in your Favorites.
• Edit, Unfavorite, or Delete a Favorited Search - To edit a favorited search, click on the star to the right of the Favorite search. You may then edit the name and choose a new icon and/or icon color. You may also click the “Unfavorite” or “Delete” button.

Tags

Organize and curate data in LifeScope using hashtags. Tags are automatically detected on data the LifeScope collects. We index the tagged terms we discover in your data.

• Add Tag - Click on “Tag#” in your search results to tag specific content. In the dialog box add your tag, then either hit the Enter button if the dialog box is still highlighted or click the '+' button next to the dialog box.
• Delete Tag - Click on “Tag#” in your search results to delete tags. Click the “X” next to the tag you wish to delete.

Sharing via Tags

You can publicly share a feed of results tagged with a specific tag. Go to your home page and click on the ‘Tags’ tab. Next, click on the right-hand side of a tag where it says ‘Share’ with a lock. Set the tag to 'Public' to make it accessible to anyone with the correct ID and passcode, which is randomly generated when the tag is shared.

If a tag is public, you will see several sharing options. You can:

• Send the public URL to someone
• Share the public link through several different social media or messaging services
• Embed that tag’s feed directly into a webpage

Naming Advanced Filters

Views

See search results in a variety of views.

• Feed - All search results in full detail. (Default view)
• Map - Events placed on a map by their location. See 'Location-based features' below for more information.
• Grid - Thumbnails of search results in a grid. This is useful for photo, video, and other media.
• List - Detailed search results in a list. This is useful for text-centric results.

Location-based features

Lifescope offers a number of features tied to the location of Events.

Locations (estimated and non-estimated)

If the Provider of Events has a record of where those Events occurred, LifeScope will index that as a non-estimated Location. If you have Location Tracking enabled (see 'Location Tracking' below), the Locations that that features makes will also be marked as non-estimated.

Many of the Providers that you can make Connections to do not have any location information associated with their Events, however. If LifeScope has collected any non-estimated Locations for you, it will estimate the Locations of every Event that lacks a non-estimated Location. This is simply done by finding the non-estimated Location that is closest in date and time to when the Event occurred.

When you sign up for LifeScope, it will wait 30 minutes to attempt a Location estimation; this gives you some time to make several Connections and hopefully pull in a good deal of Location information. Once the initial estimation is attempted, LifeScope will estimate Locations once a day. LifeScope will re-eestimate the Location of every Event, not just new ones; new Location data may lead to changes in the estimated Locations of existing Events.

Map View

Map View lets you explore your history by geolocation. Since Events are the only data type in LifeScope that are associated with Locations, you can only use Map View with the Event facet.

Events are displayed as either single markers, or clusters if more than one marker would be too close to other markers. Clicking on a cluster will normally zoom in to that cluster, or 'spiderify' into multiple markers if the map cannot zoom in any more. Clicking on a marker will show you the details of that Event. Click on the button 'Get more results' to retrieve the next page of Events.

Map view will only show Events that have a Location (estimated or non-estimated) associated with them. 

Where Filters

Map View additionally lets you create geolocation-based filters for your search queries, also know as 'Where Filters'. Unlike other types of filters, Where Filters cannot be initialized from the filter menu; they must be created in Map View by drawing a new polygon.

To create a Where Filter, go to Map View and click on the Polygon Tool in the upper left; it's the button with the square icon, above the trash button. Draw a polygon by clicking on the map around the area you wish to restrict your search to. To finish drawing the polygon, click on any of its points, at which point the filter menu should open.

There are two options for Where Filters: whether to search inside or outside that polygon (default is 'inside'), and whether to retrieve Events with estimated Locations (default is 'no'). Make sure to click 'Add Filter' to save a newly-drawn polygon.

You can delete a Where Filter by clicking on it and then clicking the trash can button in the upper left.

Sorting

Adjust search results to appear in ascending or descending order. You may sort on certain fields that change depending upon facet selected. (e.g. Connection, Content Type, Time, Title)

Facets

Facets allow you to filter results by data types. Select a facet from the dropdown selector. You will only see facets that have results.

• Events - A timeline of Events indexed from your Connection data. This is the default view.
• Content - All digital content. Such as Audio, Code, Files, Games, Images, Videos, etc.
• Contacts - Any point of contact for a person. Such as Email, Username, or Handle.

Browser Extension/Add-on

Your internet browsing history is a pretty deep well of information. We’ve created a browser extension that lets LifeScope make Events, Content, and more from elements of your browsing history that you authorize.

Go to the Providers page, click on the icon for your browser, then click on the button in the popup to be taken to the extension store for your browser; alternatively, search for ‘LifeScope’ in your browser’s extension store. Install the extension.

By default, the extension records nothing; we want to give you absolute control over what information LifeScope acquires. The extension only works on websites that you explicitly give it permission to access,. You can either give it permission to track a general site domain, such as ‘www.wikipedia.org’, ‘nytimes.com’, or ‘dmv.ca.gov’, or a specific webpage, such as 'en.wikipedia.org/Main_Page'.

You can add domains/sites to this approved list either through the extension’s settings page, or by navigating to a site, clicking the button for the LifeScope extension, and clicking ‘Start tracking this domain’/'Start tracking this site'. LifeScope will parse your entire browser history on that domain/site as well as tracking any future visits to sites on that domain/site. Note that you must be logged into LifeScope in that browser for this to work, as the extension uses your login session credentials to authenticate its actions.

Tagging

You can tag the current page in your LifeScope account without having to enter the LIfeScope app. If the current page is being tracked and you are logged in, you will see a section for tagging below the buttons.

Entering a tag and pressing Enter or clicking the '+' will tag the Content in LifeScope for that page. Clicking the 'X' next to an existing tag will remove that tag. Clicking an existing tag will open the LifeScope app and perform a search for that tag.

Supported Browsers

We currently have browser extensions for:

• Chrome
• Firefox

Connection Settings

On the Connection Settings page, you can:

• Rename Connections
• Update Connection permissions (may require re-authorization to take effect)
• Disable a Connection from future runs
• Delete a Connection, along with all data that has been collected through it

Location Tracking (Disabled by default)

As an optional feature, you can enhance LifeScope’s history of your locations by letting it track your location when you’re on a LifeScope page. Go to your Account settings page and click the button ‘Enable Location Tracking’ to begin; you must also tell your browser to allow LifeScope access to your location.

We plan to make use of the locations we retrieve in future features such as a Map View. A number of the Providers we support don’t have any location history, so we plan to estimate your location during those events using other location data we have for you.

You can delete all of this location data by clicking the button ‘Delete Tracked Locations’. You should probably disable tracking first so that more Locations aren't created for you immedi.

Access the LifeScope API yourself with an API key (for advanced users)

LifeScope runs off of a GraphQL-based API. Calls to the API are authenticated either through a session token stored as a cookie, or through an API key. We generate an API key for every user so that you have just as much access to your information as we do, and this key can be obtained from the Account Settings page.

If you wish to rotate your API key for whatever reason, click the button marked ‘Generate New API key’. The old key will be discarded and rendered unusable and a new one made to replace it. Note that there is no going back to an old key once you’ve generated a new one; the old key cannot be restored in any way.