The service is called Storytlr (a play on story teller) and it allows members to create their own lifestreaming service at their own URL. It's similar to the recently launched services Swurl (our review) and Sweetcron, but Storytlr has a few really neat tricks up its sleeve.

After you've signed up you are requested to complete the now predictable yet painless connecting of your twitter, flickr, last.fm etc. accounts. So far so good.

One of the cool things that Storytlr surprises you with is that it allows you to manually insert your own content directly onto the site. This content can be a simple tweet-like message, a full blog post, an image or even an audio file. I love that Storytlr imports all Tweets but it automatically hides all @reply messages so they don't clutter up your lifestream and don't get published to the public unless you specifically request that the are.

The end result is essentially a blog, see mine here, where visitors can comment on your content the same way you would on any normal blog. Storytlr offers a number of widgets you can include or remove and four customizable themes.

And Now For Something Completely New

Storytlr brings something completely new to the lifestreaming game and this part is where it gets its name. We discovered the service in a post by Ernst-Jan Pfauth titled "No more standard lifestreams please, be creative!" This part is where Pfauth gets his wish. You'll notice a tab on your public profile where you can create "stories". You can think of "stories" as all the tweets, posts and media about a particular event compiled into one. A story is like a topical collection of items. To create a story is very straightforward, simply select the dates this "story" or event occurred and select which content you would like to have included. Storytlr puts all this together into a little slideshow showing all your selected tweets, videos and photographs. You can see an example of one by clicking the image below.

Storytlr really does bring something new to the lifestreaming fanatics out there and I plan to make the most out of it myself. There is still room for improvement and a few bugs to iron out. I would love to be able to customize the design of my Storytlr site entirely and I would also like to see my content added much faster (think Friendfeed fast). However, for a brand new app they've done a fantastic job with both concept and implementation.

Developer Ryan Sit specializes in leveraging the visual to create new interfaces for data, his ListPic application lets users browse Craigslist by images. Just like Listpic creates a whole new experience for Craigslist, Sit hopes that Swurl will make interacting with lifestream data a much more visually enjoyable experience.

The most important part of Swurl is the timeline view, where all the messages, bookmarks, album covers and photos you've saved in various services are organized in a calendar view. It's a great way to look back at days gone by - we've found already that it can't help but put your experiences into a different perspective.

In addition to the timeline view, Swurl also publishes your activities in a blog-type format. Each person's blog is highly customizable. If you've hesitated to send the URL to your crazy-chaotic FriendFeed page to your grandma, maybe you should send her to a Swurl page instead.

Inside of each item you'll find all kinds of visual treats, like a nice slideshow viewer, song lyrics displayed below the Flash audio player for each song in your time line and elegant captions on your photos. There are lots of nice little touches here and we hope it will only continue to improve.

One of the areas the app could really use improvement is in viewing your friends' activities. You probably don't want to use it for that, unless it's very casual. Swurl discovers your friends on various services but displays their activities in a boring list that's spotty and hours behind.

The big picture here for us is that RSS feeds and lifestream data in particular can really look great when displayed nicely and mashedup with various sources of data. By grouping your activities into a calendar view, Swurl really facilitates a change in perspective. We think you'll enjoy this app and we are excited to see where it goes in the future.