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May 03 2012
Passive Location Tracking Data for the Quantified Self with Placeme App
In my current quest to collect more personal data around my activities to draw knowledge and information with the aim of achieving a better quantified self I’ve kept a lookout for apps and devices to help me. We’re currently about to enter an amazing time whereby we’ll shift our attention from the vast knowledge of the world’s data we can access on the web to wanting to learn more about our own body’s data. There’s currently a many sensing devices available, and many new ones being created, to track our physical activity, sleep, weight, and other personal body metrics. These are going to continue to evolve and provide us with more data about ourselves and the next step will be to help us learn and improve our lives with that information.
We’re a couple years into using location based services and Foursquare has pretty much become the de-facto standard. The thing about Foursquare is that it was created and is primarily a social location app meaning that you actively use it to both share and view your friends locations. While this is a great feature with many benefits the way it operates requires you to pro-actively mark your location manually to use it. When it comes to personal data tracking you want the ability to set it and forget it. It’s easy to become forgetful and can become burdensome to manually track personal data.
Screenshots of the iOS version of the Placeme app (click for full size)
Location is an area where I’ve wanted to have a passive way to track my movements outside of having to manually do it by “checking in” on Foursquare. I recently became aware of a new app called Placeme (available for iOS & Android) which does just that. You simply run this app in the background and with your smartphone’s built in sensors (accelerometer, wifi, gps) it has the ability to mark your locations along your daily travels. It knows when you’re driving, walking, or staying still based on the phone’s sensors and with that data can accurately determine the locations you visit. It knows when you get there, and when you leave being able to track your duration at the location. It then builds a history where you can view locations you’ve visited by day in a calendar view, or you can view by location and see a log of all your visits. You can add notes for every visit logged to a location. You can also search your visited location history. The ability to track all of this data is a quantified selfer’s dream app for location as I haven’t found any other app that can do this passively.
The raw data stored by the location tracking aspects of the app are just the tip of the iceberg. We know that tracking personal data is just the first step towards analyzing it to find ways to improve our lives. Below is one of Robert Scoble’s patented long interviews that logs in at over 30 minutes with the the app’s creator Sam Liang. During the interview they discuss all of the possibilities that this app could provide through future functionality based on the location data. Robert discusses how the app crosses the “freaky line” because people that use the app are providing very private and sensitive information.
Most people have an aversion to apps that pass along this type of data but Sam points out in the video something that is key. If you can show a user significant value from providing the data, then you can get them to overcome that hurdle. An example of this could be that you frequent a gas station that is being tracked and Placeme could provide an alert letting you know that you could save money by pumping gas at a station 2 blocks away. In the video Robert eludes to the fact that the data stored by the app can be the basis for many other feature based apps. Watch the video to better understand all the things that could be possible. You can also visit this post that Robert made on Google Plus to see his take along with the 300+ comment discussion surrounding the app.
I’ve been using the app for almost a month and am very impressed. In fact I’ve found myself using Foursquare much less and only when I want to share my location with friends. However I love that I don’t have to do anything to have this running log of all my traveling that I can add to my other daily tracking data. I’m looking forward to updates to the app, primarily hoping there’s a way I can export the data at some point as in the near future I’m looking forward to aggregating all of my personal data by day within a single service. Several are going to come online soon and location data is a pertinent data point I’m looking forward to including.
Passive Location Tracking Data for the Quantified Self with Placeme App
In my current quest to collect more personal data around my activities to draw knowledge and information with the aim of achieving a better quantified self I’ve kept a lookout for apps and devices to help me. We’re currently about to enter an amazing time whereby we’ll shift our attention from the vast knowledge of the world’s data we can access on the web to wanting to learn more about our own body’s data. There’s currently a many sensing devices available, and many new ones being created, to track our physical activity, sleep, weight, and other personal body metrics. These are going to continue to evolve and provide us with more data about ourselves and the next step will be to help us learn and improve our lives with that information.
We’re a couple years into using location based services and Foursquare has pretty much become the de-facto standard. The thing about Foursquare is that it was created and is primarily a social location app meaning that you actively use it to both share and view your friends locations. While this is a great feature with many benefits the way it operates requires you to pro-actively mark your location manually to use it. When it comes to personal data tracking you want the ability to set it and forget it. It’s easy to become forgetful and can become burdensome to manually track personal data.
Screenshots of the iOS version of the Placeme app (click for full size)
Location is an area where I’ve wanted to have a passive way to track my movements outside of having to manually do it by “checking in” on Foursquare. I recently became aware of a new app called Placeme (available for iOS & Android) which does just that. You simply run this app in the background and with your smartphone’s built in sensors (accelerometer, wifi, gps) it has the ability to mark your locations along your daily travels. It knows when you’re driving, walking, or staying still based on the phone’s sensors and with that data can accurately determine the locations you visit. It knows when you get there, and when you leave being able to track your duration at the location. It then builds a history where you can view locations you’ve visited by day in a calendar view, or you can view by location and see a log of all your visits. You can add notes for every visit logged to a location. You can also search your visited location history. The ability to track all of this data is a quantified selfer’s dream app for location as I haven’t found any other app that can do this passively.
The raw data stored by the location tracking aspects of the app are just the tip of the iceberg. We know that tracking personal data is just the first step towards analyzing it to find ways to improve our lives. Below is one of Robert Scoble’s patented long interviews that logs in at over 30 minutes with the the app’s creator Sam Liang. During the interview they discuss all of the possibilities that this app could provide through future functionality based on the location data. Robert discusses how the app crosses the “freaky line” because people that use the app are providing very private and sensitive information.
Most people have an aversion to apps that pass along this type of data but Sam points out in the video something that is key. If you can show a user significant value from providing the data, then you can get them to overcome that hurdle. An example of this could be that you frequent a gas station that is being tracked and Placeme could provide an alert letting you know that you could save money by pumping gas at a station 2 blocks away. In the video Robert eludes to the fact that the data stored by the app can be the basis for many other feature based apps. Watch the video to better understand all the things that could be possible. You can also visit this post that Robert made on Google Plus to see his take along with the 300+ comment discussion surrounding the app.
I’ve been using the app for almost a month and am very impressed. In fact I’ve found myself using Foursquare much less and only when I want to share my location with friends. However I love that I don’t have to do anything to have this running log of all my traveling that I can add to my other daily tracking data. I’m looking forward to updates to the app, primarily hoping there’s a way I can export the data at some point as in the near future I’m looking forward to aggregating all of my personal data by day within a single service. Several are going to come online soon and location data is a pertinent data point I’m looking forward to including.
March 17 2012
Lifestream Blog Celebrates 5 Year Birthday Thanks to You
It was 5 years ago today that I created Lifestream Blog. It all stemmed from the fact that I became intrigued with the ability to find a way to aggregate content I created across social services into a single location. Furthermore, I wanted that content to appear in reverse chronological order. A digital social diary if you will. The original concept of “Lifestreaming” had been around but the application of using the web and social services as a method of implementation was very new. Back in 2007 there weren’t many ways that one could achieve this. I wrote a post detailing all of the research I had done to share with other people and thus Lifestream Blog was born.
Reflection
It’s been an amazing journey. When I created the blog I truly felt that this concept was something that was going to be huge. Within months of launching the site there was an avalanche of startups launched that aimed to bring Lifestreaming to the masses. I reviewed many of them and over time was contacted by founders to provide feedback and advice. It was an amazing time where you could see the evolution of this concept in various unique implementations. Initially most services only provided aggregation of RSS feeds but as the evolution of the web continued with the proliferation of websites providing API access to their services, we continued to see Lifestreaming services innovate.
Lifestreaming Services Peak
At it’s peak from 2008-2009 we saw the largest number of pure Lifestreaming services emerge. Leading the pack in terms of users and features was FriendFeed. These former Googler’s had created an amazing team who iterated often and created many cutting edge features that led to the creation of a great community. But in the end the service just couldn’t distinguish itself in a way to attract mainstream users to Lifestreaming and the droves of those potential people continued to join Facebook. As FriendFeed continued their mission, you could see new features pop up on Facebook that were heavily borrowing things that were being done on FriendFeed. Eventually FriendFeed saw their userbase become stagnant and in August of 2009 they were acquired by Facebook. In the end it was more about the talent grab as most of the former team were integrated at Facebook. I saw 2009 as the end of the Lifestreaming service goldrush. FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor eventually became CTO at Facebook and I see their recent launch of Timelines as the culmination of many Lifestreaming concepts by the integrated team coming to fruition.
The Evolution
From 2010 to now I have focused on several other areas related to the data we create on social services. I became very interested in how we can glean insight from the data and how we can filter and prioritize the massive amounts generated by the firehose. I became very interested in the growth of social magazine apps which allow us to connect our social accounts and use logic to filter relevant content for us. I’ve also become much more interested in Lifelogging and the Quantified Self. There are an amazing number of devices coming to market to track personal data as it relates to exercise, sleep, nutrition, as well as blood and dna analysis. I feel we’re on the verge of a huge revolution in pro-active and preventative healthcare. The evolution of these devices and services to analyze the data over the next few years will be amazing.
The Future
So what’s next here at Lifestream Blog? Well, I’ll continue to focus on what I mentioned in the previous paragraph and continue to bring insights and tips regarding social services and data. I also just got back from SXSW and saw a panel titled “Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death“. I’ve written about the aspects of Lifestreaming and death before but the panel really inspired me to give this much more thought. I plan on creating a new section here on the site soon where I’ll provide tips on the preservation, preparation and archival of our digital lives. I also will continue to monitor advancements in this area and report what I find. I feel that providing a digital legacy of our lives for both our family and future generations is critically important.
Giving Thanks
So that’s my update folks. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed sharing my thoughts and discoveries here with you. I truly appreciate all of the readers that have visited over the years. You’ve provided great feedback and in many cases friendships were born from here. I never realized what a powerful vehicle this blog would become. I urge any of you that have a passion in life to create a blog and share your thoughts and resources with others. It will truly bring you amazing things!
Lifestream Blog Celebrates 5 Year Birthday Thanks to You
It was 5 years ago today that I created Lifestream Blog. It all stemmed from the fact that I became intrigued with the ability to find a way to aggregate content I created across social services into a single location. Furthermore, I wanted that content to appear in reverse chronological order. A digital social diary if you will. The original concept of “Lifestreaming” had been around but the application of using the web and social services as a method of implementation was very new. Back in 2007 there weren’t many ways that one could achieve this. I wrote a post detailing all of the research I had done to share with other people and thus Lifestream Blog was born.
Reflection
It’s been an amazing journey. When I created the blog I truly felt that this concept was something that was going to be huge. Within months of launching the site there was an avalanche of startups launched that aimed to bring Lifestreaming to the masses. I reviewed many of them and over time was contacted by founders to provide feedback and advice. It was an amazing time where you could see the evolution of this concept in various unique implementations. Initially most services only provided aggregation of RSS feeds but as the evolution of the web continued with the proliferation of websites providing API access to their services, we continued to see Lifestreaming services innovate.
Lifestreaming Services Peak
At it’s peak from 2008-2009 we saw the largest number of pure Lifestreaming services emerge. Leading the pack in terms of users and features was FriendFeed. These former Googler’s had created an amazing team who iterated often and created many cutting edge features that led to the creation of a great community. But in the end the service just couldn’t distinguish itself in a way to attract mainstream users to Lifestreaming and the droves of those potential people continued to join Facebook. As FriendFeed continued their mission, you could see new features pop up on Facebook that were heavily borrowing things that were being done on FriendFeed. Eventually FriendFeed saw their userbase become stagnant and in August of 2009 they were acquired by Facebook. In the end it was more about the talent grab as most of the former team were integrated at Facebook. I saw 2009 as the end of the Lifestreaming service goldrush. FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor eventually became CTO at Facebook and I see their recent launch of Timelines as the culmination of many Lifestreaming concepts by the integrated team coming to fruition.
The Evolution
From 2010 to now I have focused on several other areas related to the data we create on social services. I became very interested in how we can glean insight from the data and how we can filter and prioritize the massive amounts generated by the firehose. I became very interested in the growth of social magazine apps which allow us to connect our social accounts and use logic to filter relevant content for us. I’ve also become much more interested in Lifelogging and the Quantified Self. There are an amazing number of devices coming to market to track personal data as it relates to exercise, sleep, nutrition, as well as blood and dna analysis. I feel we’re on the verge of a huge revolution in pro-active and preventative healthcare. The evolution of these devices and services to analyze the data over the next few years will be amazing.
The Future
So what’s next here at Lifestream Blog? Well, I’ll continue to focus on what I mentioned in the previous paragraph and continue to bring insights and tips regarding social services and data. I also just got back from SXSW and saw a panel titled “Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death“. I’ve written about the aspects of Lifestreaming and death before but the panel really inspired me to give this much more thought. I plan on creating a new section here on the site soon where I’ll provide tips on the preservation, preparation and archival of our digital lives. I also will continue to monitor advancements in this area and report what I find. I feel that providing a digital legacy of our lives for both our family and future generations is critically important.
Giving Thanks
So that’s my update folks. I can’t begin to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed sharing my thoughts and discoveries here with you. I truly appreciate all of the readers that have visited over the years. You’ve provided great feedback and in many cases friendships were born from here. I never realized what a powerful vehicle this blog would become. I urge any of you that have a passion in life to create a blog and share your thoughts and resources with others. It will truly bring you amazing things!
January 23 2012
Health and Fitness Gadget Announcements from CES 2012
The gadgets and services for Lifelogging and practitioners of the Quantified Self continues to grow and evolve at a very fast pace. I made a trip to CES this year which was unique in that it provided a situation for my personal and work lives to collide. As manager of web production for the X PRIZE Foundation I was attending CES to help work our booth in support of our launch announcement for the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE. On a personal level I also was very curious about all the new health and fitness gadgets and services that would be announced.
Below is a video of Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs speaking at the CES keynote. If you forward to minute 58 you will see him bring Dr. Eric Topol onto the stage who then demonstrates several new health monitoring gadgets that are already available or coming soon. You can also see X PRIZE CEO Peter Diamandis announce and provide details about the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE at the 1 hour, 8 minute mark.
This years’ CES showcased many new technologies that will appeal to both the Lifeloggers and increasingly the mainstream public as well. Unfortunately I didn’t get to walk the show floor very much but I have been monitoring all of the news coverage that has been coming out since the show. The competition for health and fitness tracking devices is really heating up. Early devices like the Fitbit and Bodymedia Fit saw some new players enter the market with the recent Jawbone Up as well as the Motorola MotoACTV device announced at CES. Then just 3 days ago right after the dust was settling at CES Nike announced the Fuelband which is similar to the Jawbone Up in that it is a device you wear on your wrist. In fact Digital Trends went ahead and wrote a post to compare the two similar devices. Then Mashable stated that “Nike also announced partnerships with Foursquare and Path.” I find this information very interesting since Path had hinted at offering the ability to integrate with the Jawbone Up in the future and now the Nike Fuelband announcement pretty much solidifies that, but also shows that they’re considering support for multiple devices. The integration of Lifestreaming and personal tracking devices is very exciting and Path will be a first mover in this area distinguishing their app from anything currently out there.
Even though I didn’t get to walk the show floor I was lucky to be working the Qualcomm booth next to Bodymedia’s Chris Knorr. I learned about updates to their service that will analyze the activity data to help provide recommendations and adjustments. They’re also releasing disposable patches in addition to the armband. I asked Chris what health related devices or services he had seen that were impressive at CES. The first thing he mentioned was the Macaw App which is aimed as a prevention plan based health app available for both iOS and Android. It’s supposed to provide the ability to be paired and synced with multiple wireless health devices and then import all the data in one place to provide a health profile. I downloaded the app but don’t yet see the ability to add 3rd party devices and didn’t find any details on their website about device support. Perhaps it was just announced and coming in the near future. On the surface it sounded somewhat like the health aggregation service I wrote about last May which I’m sure we’ll start to see several startups attacking very soon.
The other device and service that Chris told me about was Striiv. This device and service puts an emphasis on gamificaton to motivate people towards staying fit. Striiv does this by providing a pedometer device that has a built in display that ties in your activity to generate resources which you can use in a simulation game called MyLand. The other nice aspect is that you can also donate your activity to help various causes via GlobalGiving. The LA Times review called it “Sim City meets Wii Fit” which seems like an appropriate comparison. If you visit the link you can see a video demo of the unit.
Yesterday I read Dean Takahashi’s post stating that “Quantifying our lives will be a top trend in 2012″. It’s a great summary of some highlights of personal tracking devices at CES with his thoughts on the near future. I obviously couldn’t agree more with Dean and think these devices will continue to get better, cheaper, and continue to improve by analyzing the data to help improve our lives. This is going to be a great year for the health and fitness technology space and I’m really looking forward to it.
Health and Fitness Gadget Announcements from CES 2012
The gadgets and services for Lifelogging and practitioners of the Quantified Self continues to grow and evolve at a very fast pace. I made a trip to CES this year which was unique in that it provided a situation for my personal and work lives to collide. As manager of web production for the X PRIZE Foundation I was attending CES to help work our booth in support of our launch announcement for the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE. On a personal level I also was very curious about all the new health and fitness gadgets and services that would be announced.
Below is a video of Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs speaking at the CES keynote. If you forward to minute 58 you will see him bring Dr. Eric Topol onto the stage who then demonstrates several new health monitoring gadgets that are already available or coming soon. You can also see X PRIZE CEO Peter Diamandis announce and provide details about the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE at the 1 hour, 8 minute mark.
This years’ CES showcased many new technologies that will appeal to both the Lifeloggers and increasingly the mainstream public as well. Unfortunately I didn’t get to walk the show floor very much but I have been monitoring all of the news coverage that has been coming out since the show. The competition for health and fitness tracking devices is really heating up. Early devices like the Fitbit and Bodymedia Fit saw some new players enter the market with the recent Jawbone Up as well as the Motorola MotoACTV device announced at CES. Then just 3 days ago right after the dust was settling at CES Nike announced the Fuelband which is similar to the Jawbone Up in that it is a device you wear on your wrist. In fact Digital Trends went ahead and wrote a post to compare the two similar devices. Then Mashable stated that “Nike also announced partnerships with Foursquare and Path.” I find this information very interesting since Path had hinted at offering the ability to integrate with the Jawbone Up in the future and now the Nike Fuelband announcement pretty much solidifies that, but also shows that they’re considering support for multiple devices. The integration of Lifestreaming and personal tracking devices is very exciting and Path will be a first mover in this area distinguishing their app from anything currently out there.
Even though I didn’t get to walk the show floor I was lucky to be working the Qualcomm booth next to Bodymedia’s Chris Knorr. I learned about updates to their service that will analyze the activity data to help provide recommendations and adjustments. They’re also releasing disposable patches in addition to the armband. I asked Chris what health related devices or services he had seen that were impressive at CES. The first thing he mentioned was the Macaw App which is aimed as a prevention plan based health app available for both iOS and Android. It’s supposed to provide the ability to be paired and synced with multiple wireless health devices and then import all the data in one place to provide a health profile. I downloaded the app but don’t yet see the ability to add 3rd party devices and didn’t find any details on their website about device support. Perhaps it was just announced and coming in the near future. On the surface it sounded somewhat like the health aggregation service I wrote about last May which I’m sure we’ll start to see several startups attacking very soon.
The other device and service that Chris told me about was Striiv. This device and service puts an emphasis on gamificaton to motivate people towards staying fit. Striiv does this by providing a pedometer device that has a built in display that ties in your activity to generate resources which you can use in a simulation game called MyLand. The other nice aspect is that you can also donate your activity to help various causes via GlobalGiving. The LA Times review called it “Sim City meets Wii Fit” which seems like an appropriate comparison. If you visit the link you can see a video demo of the unit.
Yesterday I read Dean Takahashi’s post stating that “Quantifying our lives will be a top trend in 2012″. It’s a great summary of some highlights of personal tracking devices at CES with his thoughts on the near future. I obviously couldn’t agree more with Dean and think these devices will continue to get better, cheaper, and continue to improve by analyzing the data to help improve our lives. This is going to be a great year for the health and fitness technology space and I’m really looking forward to it.
December 29 2011
The Year in Lifestreaming for 2011
This year has been a tipping point for Lifestreaming. It has evolved quite a bit from the super geeky bailing wire and duct tape method of being a DIY project I started covering back in 2007. With advancements in technology, primarily through the proliferation of API’s, it has penetrated and mutated its way across the web. But the one place it landed to now become ubiquitous is with Facebook’s creation of the Timeline feature which has brought it to over 800 million people.
Facebook Timelines
There have been many ways of providing a presentation layer for a Lifestream. Early on most methods didn’t provide access to the long tail for a person’s posts. I wanted to see a calendar (or timeline) view to make a Lifestream become more of a historical record of the past. Several services started to pop up using the Timeline method and thus this digital diary metaphor was born. I believe it’s the most compelling form of Lifestreaming for an individual to be driven to create one. Providing the feature using a simple interface in a dominant social network has now brought this to the masses. I like to think that the knowledge gained by the FriendFeed talent acquisition is what helped propel Facebook to do this…and here we are.
During the early days of Lifestreaming there were many debates regarding its value. Initially services tried to become the hub of Lifestreaming activity and it was a bit difficult to realize the ways that content discovery would eventually become the catalyst driving so many people to do it. But over time the proliferation of API’s would bring about more sophisticated ways to take lifestreaming data and provide both great function and beautiful design. We now have many apps that are built on the backs of the Lifestreaming data people share across multiple services. We have social reader apps that aggregate the links we share on social networks, sometimes with some logic to prioritize the viewing order, and beautiful visual ways to display them.
The passive (aka frictionless) method of sharing was made popular this year by having the stream of our music listening habits from Spotify populate our Facebook Timeline. We’ve actually been doing this since 2008 by scrobbling from last.fm but only now is it a big deal as it hits the mainstream. Passive sharing is just starting to scratch the surface of where it’s going. It will become much more prevalent and start automating many of the updates to our Lifestreams.
Most passive sharing actions will come from apps on our mobile phones (soon with NFC) connected to our Lifestream. Path was another new entrant in the Lifestreaming arena with their revamped app release this year. The new version took steps to add passive sharing by posting updates in the background to our timelines based on monitoring our geographical location on our phones. Theoretically they could also monitor the audio to passively share our TV or movie viewing using Intonow technology. We will also see passive sharing coming from the stats behind our workouts, sleeping patterns, weight, and many other health based stats to Lifestreams coming from the growing popularity of Lifelogging devices. These devices will see huge growth as monitoring this data will provide health benefits including added motivation by sharing information socially.
As we move into 2012 it will be interesting to see how the Facebook Timeline evolves with many more third party apps populating it with data. I think the jury is still out on whether the Timeline will be a success depending on the usage and adoption. However, I am bullish on more innovation with mobile apps like Path coming and a new breed of services being launched to aggregate the health data generated from all these new lifelogging devices. It should be quite an interesting year as the Lifestreaming concept continues to reshape itself in line with advancements in technology. As always, I’m looking forward to watching it and sharing my findings with you here.
The Year in Lifestreaming for 2011
This year has been a tipping point for Lifestreaming. It has evolved quite a bit from the super geeky bailing wire and duct tape method of being a DIY project I started covering back in 2007. With advancements in technology, primarily through the proliferation of API’s, it has penetrated and mutated its way across the web. But the one place it landed to now become ubiquitous is with Facebook’s creation of the Timeline feature which has brought it to over 800 million people.
Facebook Timelines
There have been many ways of providing a presentation layer for a Lifestream. Early on most methods didn’t provide access to the long tail for a person’s posts. I wanted to see a calendar (or timeline) view to make a Lifestream become more of a historical record of the past. Several services started to pop up using the Timeline method and thus this digital diary metaphor was born. I believe it’s the most compelling form of Lifestreaming for an individual to be driven to create one. Providing the feature using a simple interface in a dominant social network has now brought this to the masses. I like to think that the knowledge gained by the FriendFeed talent acquisition is what helped propel Facebook to do this…and here we are.
During the early days of Lifestreaming there were many debates regarding its value. Initially services tried to become the hub of Lifestreaming activity and it was a bit difficult to realize the ways that content discovery would eventually become the catalyst driving so many people to do it. But over time the proliferation of API’s would bring about more sophisticated ways to take lifestreaming data and provide both great function and beautiful design. We now have many apps that are built on the backs of the Lifestreaming data people share across multiple services. We have social reader apps that aggregate the links we share on social networks, sometimes with some logic to prioritize the viewing order, and beautiful visual ways to display them.
The passive (aka frictionless) method of sharing was made popular this year by having the stream of our music listening habits from Spotify populate our Facebook Timeline. We’ve actually been doing this since 2008 by scrobbling from last.fm but only now is it a big deal as it hits the mainstream. Passive sharing is just starting to scratch the surface of where it’s going. It will become much more prevalent and start automating many of the updates to our Lifestreams.
Most passive sharing actions will come from apps on our mobile phones (soon with NFC) connected to our Lifestream. Path was another new entrant in the Lifestreaming arena with their revamped app release this year. The new version took steps to add passive sharing by posting updates in the background to our timelines based on monitoring our geographical location on our phones. Theoretically they could also monitor the audio to passively share our TV or movie viewing using Intonow technology. We will also see passive sharing coming from the stats behind our workouts, sleeping patterns, weight, and many other health based stats to Lifestreams coming from the growing popularity of Lifelogging devices. These devices will see huge growth as monitoring this data will provide health benefits including added motivation by sharing information socially.
As we move into 2012 it will be interesting to see how the Facebook Timeline evolves with many more third party apps populating it with data. I think the jury is still out on whether the Timeline will be a success depending on the usage and adoption. However, I am bullish on more innovation with mobile apps like Path coming and a new breed of services being launched to aggregate the health data generated from all these new lifelogging devices. It should be quite an interesting year as the Lifestreaming concept continues to reshape itself in line with advancements in technology. As always, I’m looking forward to watching it and sharing my findings with you here.
December 05 2011
Path’s Next Version May Include Quantified Self Features
The new release of the Path app for iOS and Android has created quite a positive buzz. Much of it has been centered around the very beautiful design and UI. But the app has also pivoted down a different path (I know, I should be arrested for this sentence). Path originated as a photo sharing app whose distinction was the limitation of only being able to add 50 friends to your network. The new version has now expanded from simply sharing photos by adding the ability to share location (along with who you are with), thoughts, music, and declaring when you go to sleep and wake up. They also optionally offer the ability to passively share (aka frictionless sharing) new cities you visit as updates to your stream by monitoring the gps in your phone. They’ve also increased the sharing limitation from 50 to 150 to be within Dunbar’s limitation. This post doesn’t cover the full functionality and I’ll provide a link below if you want to read the many reviews on it.
I didn’t use the first version of the app because I was happily using Instagram and the only distinction I saw between Path and Instagram is that I could invoke a “velvet rope” group of friends. I’m pretty comfortable sharing most of my content publicly so this only distinction wasn’t enough of an incentive for me. I’ve now given the new app a sophomore try and the new functionality deemed by them as a “smart journal“ is an interesting new direction. This has been compared to Facebook’s timeline and I’d say that it draws some inspiration from it. The problem is that Path has the challenge of overcoming the network effect for it to become a Lifestream you can share with your closest friends. You’ll have to become an evangelist for the app by giving friends a compelling reason to add yet another social network to their daily routine.
I believe to truly use the app in the spirit it was intended for with tight friends requires an effort to treat it as a journal with private content you don’t share elsewhere. Treating it like any other social network seems to defeat the purpose. I’ve tried to use that app with that in mind, posting unique and more intimate things I don’t share elsewhere. But using the service without having many close IRL friends has left me with an awkward friending dynamic by mainly adding my early adopter tech friends whose relationships straddle that ambiguous line of acquaintance to friend. This could lead to usage that Jon Mitchell at ReadWriteWeb pointed out it as a timeline to worship the self.
But there’s another interesting aspect to Path. It has started to tread a little bit into the world of Lifelogging with the ability to track when we go to bed and wake up. The problem is that it requires you to do this manually as an action within the app. This is tied into the app functionality and far from ideal. I’ve seen many people use this feature inaccurately trying to explain their long bouts of sleeping. A few months ago I reviewed the Bodymedia armband which is one of many Quantified Self devices that are now appearing on the market. Perhaps the next iteration of Path could be integrated to work with various of these devices to provide a hybrid platform for lifestreaming and tracking that activity.
Here’s a video Robert Scoble did with the Path team. It’s almost an hour long but I’ve set it to start where they do a demo of the app.
Around 9:15 of the demo Robert notices that co-founder Dave Morin has a Jawbone Up which is a new self tracking device similar to the Bodymedia, and Fitbit. Robert asks him about possible integration between the Jawbone Up and Path to which Dave answers “That’s something we’re very interested in”. Dave talks about the trend around mobile collection of health data including workouts and sleep aimed to make us happier and healthier people. He goes on to say regarding the Jawbone Up “…we see that as a type of data we want to get into Path…it turns out to be a nice way to understand who we should be working with”. He feels that since Path is a private and trusted network that this type of data would be a good fit. Alexia Tsotsis over at TechCrunch also voiced her wish with Path integrating with her Jawbone Up.
These devices of health self awareness are still in the early stages but I believe on their way to hockey stick growth in the near future. With this there will be a slew of new web service opportunities to compliment them. I already see a need for a web service that could aggregate the data from people that own multiple devices. So if we used a Zeo to track sleep, Runkeeper to track workouts, Meal Snap to track our meals, and Withings to track our weight, we could view all of the data in a single place. This would essentially be a Mint.com for health and mark my words we’ll see this type of service coming in the near future. If Path pursues this type of integration at least across a few simple data points with multiple health device integration they could be a first mover in this area and clearly have a distinction between anything on the market right now. This could provide a compelling reason for people to use it.
Here’s my original post about Path on Google+ which also provides links to many of its reviews.
Path’s Next Version May Include Quantified Self Features
The new release of the Path app for iOS and Android has created quite a positive buzz. Much of it has been centered around the very beautiful design and UI. But the app has also pivoted down a different path (I know, I should be arrested for this sentence). Path originated as a photo sharing app whose distinction was the limitation of only being able to add 50 friends to your network. The new version has now expanded from simply sharing photos by adding the ability to share location (along with who you are with), thoughts, music, and declaring when you go to sleep and wake up. They also optionally offer the ability to passively share (aka frictionless sharing) new cities you visit as updates to your stream by monitoring the gps in your phone. They’ve also increased the sharing limitation from 50 to 150 to be within Dunbar’s limitation. This post doesn’t cover the full functionality and I’ll provide a link below if you want to read the many reviews on it.
I didn’t use the first version of the app because I was happily using Instagram and the only distinction I saw between Path and Instagram is that I could invoke a “velvet rope” group of friends. I’m pretty comfortable sharing most of my content publicly so this only distinction wasn’t enough of an incentive for me. I’ve now given the new app a sophomore try and the new functionality deemed by them as a “smart journal“ is an interesting new direction. This has been compared to Facebook’s timeline and I’d say that it draws some inspiration from it. The problem is that Path has the challenge of overcoming the network effect for it to become a Lifestream you can share with your closest friends. You’ll have to become an evangelist for the app by giving friends a compelling reason to add yet another social network to their daily routine.
I believe to truly use the app in the spirit it was intended for with tight friends requires an effort to treat it as a journal with private content you don’t share elsewhere. Treating it like any other social network seems to defeat the purpose. I’ve tried to use that app with that in mind, posting unique and more intimate things I don’t share elsewhere. But using the service without having many close IRL friends has left me with an awkward friending dynamic by mainly adding my early adopter tech friends whose relationships straddle that ambiguous line of acquaintance to friend. This could lead to usage that Jon Mitchell at ReadWriteWeb pointed out it as a timeline to worship the self.
But there’s another interesting aspect to Path. It has started to tread a little bit into the world of Lifelogging with the ability to track when we go to bed and wake up. The problem is that it requires you to do this manually as an action within the app. This is tied into the app functionality and far from ideal. I’ve seen many people use this feature inaccurately trying to explain their long bouts of sleeping. A few months ago I reviewed the Bodymedia armband which is one of many Quantified Self devices that are now appearing on the market. Perhaps the next iteration of Path could be integrated to work with various of these devices to provide a hybrid platform for lifestreaming and tracking that activity.
Here’s a video Robert Scoble did with the Path team. It’s almost an hour long but I’ve set it to start where they do a demo of the app.
Around 9:15 of the demo Robert notices that co-founder Dave Morin has a Jawbone Up which is a new self tracking device similar to the Bodymedia, and Fitbit. Robert asks him about possible integration between the Jawbone Up and Path to which Dave answers “That’s something we’re very interested in”. Dave talks about the trend around mobile collection of health data including workouts and sleep aimed to make us happier and healthier people. He goes on to say regarding the Jawbone Up “…we see that as a type of data we want to get into Path…it turns out to be a nice way to understand who we should be working with”. He feels that since Path is a private and trusted network that this type of data would be a good fit. Alexia Tsotsis over at TechCrunch also voiced her wish with Path integrating with her Jawbone Up.
These devices of health self awareness are still in the early stages but I believe on their way to hockey stick growth in the near future. With this there will be a slew of new web service opportunities to compliment them. I already see a need for a web service that could aggregate the data from people that own multiple devices. So if we used a Zeo to track sleep, Runkeeper to track workouts, Meal Snap to track our meals, and Withings to track our weight, we could view all of the data in a single place. This would essentially be a Mint.com for health and mark my words we’ll see this type of service coming in the near future. If Path pursues this type of integration at least across a few simple data points with multiple health device integration they could be a first mover in this area and clearly have a distinction between anything on the market right now. This could provide a compelling reason for people to use it.
Here’s my original post about Path on Google+ which also provides links to many of its reviews.
July 22 2011
Harnessing the Power of the Quantified Self through the Feedback Loop
image courtesy of Wired
I’ve written quite a bit about the Quantified Self but if you’re new here you can read my primer here. In this month’s Wired there’s an article on Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops. As I was reading this I immediately was thinking about how the methodology described can have the power to modify our behaviors through usage of the devices and services that are powering the Quantified Self.
This section of the article speaks directly to the application of the Quantified Self
Despite the volume of research and a proven capacity to affect human behavior, we don’t often use feedback loops in everyday life. Blame this on two factors: Until now, the necessary catalyst—personalized data—has been an expensive commodity. Health spas, athletic training centers, and self-improvement workshops all traffic in fastidiously culled data at premium rates. Outside of those rare realms, the cornerstone information has been just too expensive to come by. As a technologist might put it, personalized data hasn’t really scaled.
Second, collecting data on the cheap is cumbersome. Although the basic idea of self-tracking has been available to anyone willing to put in the effort, few people stick with the routine of toting around a notebook, writing down every Hostess cupcake they consume or every flight of stairs they climb. It’s just too much bother. The technologist would say that capturing that data involves too much friction. As a result, feedback loops are niche tools, for the most part, rewarding for those with the money, willpower, or geeky inclination to obsessively track their own behavior, but impractical for the rest of us.
That’s quickly changing because of one essential technology: sensors. Adding sensors to the feedback equation helps solve problems of friction and scale. They automate the capture of behavioral data, digitizing it so it can be readily crunched and transformed as necessary. And they allow passive measurement, eliminating the need for tedious active monitoring.
Some devices already exist that both capture personal data with user interfaces that can leverage a feedback loop. The article mentions the Zeo which is one often discussed Quantified Self device providing a feedback loop to help you sleep better. I recently wrote about the Bodymedia Armband which captures my physical activity and sleep data. With that device I was able to actually quantify the levels of physical exertion and that feedback actually fueled me to try harder during my workouts so that I could see the results next time I uploaded my activity data to the service. It’s actually a combination of a feedback loop with gaming mechanics that I feel can create a powerful way to modify our behaviors.
The article provides several more examples of devices and services that utilize a feedback loop. Rypple, which offers a service to help teams work better is one that seems pretty cool that I’ll have to check out. I think many web services can leverage the feedback loop and or gamification to increase effectiveness and usage. I use a service called RescueTime to track my activity across apps and websites on my computer. The service provides a feedback loop that helps make me more productive.
I think we’re going to see this leveraged much more in the near future as the continual proliferation of easily accessible personal data continues to get mined across all aspects of our lives. Be sure to visit Wired to read the full article as well as listen the the podcast they’ve created on the feedback loop.
Harnessing the Power of the Quantified Self through the Feedback Loop
image courtesy of Wired
I’ve written quite a bit about the Quantified Self but if you’re new here you can read my primer here. In this month’s Wired there’s an article on Harnessing the Power of Feedback Loops. As I was reading this I immediately was thinking about how the methodology described can have the power to modify our behaviors through usage of the devices and services that are powering the Quantified Self.
This section of the article speaks directly to the application of the Quantified Self
Despite the volume of research and a proven capacity to affect human behavior, we don’t often use feedback loops in everyday life. Blame this on two factors: Until now, the necessary catalyst—personalized data—has been an expensive commodity. Health spas, athletic training centers, and self-improvement workshops all traffic in fastidiously culled data at premium rates. Outside of those rare realms, the cornerstone information has been just too expensive to come by. As a technologist might put it, personalized data hasn’t really scaled.
Second, collecting data on the cheap is cumbersome. Although the basic idea of self-tracking has been available to anyone willing to put in the effort, few people stick with the routine of toting around a notebook, writing down every Hostess cupcake they consume or every flight of stairs they climb. It’s just too much bother. The technologist would say that capturing that data involves too much friction. As a result, feedback loops are niche tools, for the most part, rewarding for those with the money, willpower, or geeky inclination to obsessively track their own behavior, but impractical for the rest of us.
That’s quickly changing because of one essential technology: sensors. Adding sensors to the feedback equation helps solve problems of friction and scale. They automate the capture of behavioral data, digitizing it so it can be readily crunched and transformed as necessary. And they allow passive measurement, eliminating the need for tedious active monitoring.
Some devices already exist that both capture personal data with user interfaces that can leverage a feedback loop. The article mentions the Zeo which is one often discussed Quantified Self device providing a feedback loop to help you sleep better. I recently wrote about the Bodymedia Armband which captures my physical activity and sleep data. With that device I was able to actually quantify the levels of physical exertion and that feedback actually fueled me to try harder during my workouts so that I could see the results next time I uploaded my activity data to the service. It’s actually a combination of a feedback loop with gaming mechanics that I feel can create a powerful way to modify our behaviors.
The article provides several more examples of devices and services that utilize a feedback loop. Rypple, which offers a service to help teams work better is one that seems pretty cool that I’ll have to check out. I think many web services can leverage the feedback loop and or gamification to increase effectiveness and usage. I use a service called RescueTime to track my activity across apps and websites on my computer. The service provides a feedback loop that helps make me more productive.
I think we’re going to see this leveraged much more in the near future as the continual proliferation of easily accessible personal data continues to get mined across all aspects of our lives. Be sure to visit Wired to read the full article as well as listen the the podcast they’ve created on the feedback loop.
June 16 2011
A Look Back at the First Quantified Self Conference
It’s been just over two weeks ago that the very first Quantified Self conference took place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. If you don’t know what the Quantified Self is you can learn more on my initial post about the site here. But the cliff notes version is that the group was formed to discuss devices and other methods of generating and tracking personal data to help optimize our health and behaviors and share that knowledge. Some devices you may be familiar with that can be used for lifelogging (or self tracking) are Runkeeper, Nike +, Fitbit, and an item I reviewed recently called the Bodymedia armband. I’ve created a page that I continually update that lists some of these items here.
One of the results of the conference has been this new site which provides a complete guide to self tracking by the Quantified Self group. This is an excellent resource for someone who has interest in learning more about the devices and services available which can also be filtered by various categories and price ranges of the products listed. They provide the ability to add tools and the site is also building a community of users by allowing people to create profiles and review tools as well. This should turn out to be a great resource moving forward.
I really wanted to attend this but unfortunately wasn’t able to make it. I did however track much of the discussion thankfully to all the Tweets coming out from the conference. There were also some posts written on the Quantified Self site recapping the conference. I feel that the best coverage from the conference however was written by Ethan Zuckerman who liveblogged a great deal while there. One of his posts was covering the discussion of context behind the Quantified Self conference provided by one of the group’s co-founders Kevin Kelly.
Here’s a snippet from Ethan’s post:
We’re in the middle of a third paradigm of metaphors and organizing principles for personal computers. We’ve moved from desktop and office metaphors, to page/link and web metaphors, to a new metaphor around streams, tags and the cloud. RSS feeds, Facebook walls, Netflix streams are our general drift at present. This accompanies a shift from the me to the we, and from pages and files to data.
What emerges in this new model are Lifestreams. That’s what we curate in the age of the quantified self. We head upstream, and we leave a wake of data behind us. Lifeloggers, who log everything they do, are pioneers in this space. Gordon Bell and others take these exercises to an extreme, and they’re sharing it, as part of the shift from me to we.
These lifestreams intersect with each other and are, in a way, creating a new media. If we organize computation around lifestreams, an intersection between our lifestreams is a communication, an event of some sort. The media we are in is these streams of data. Everything around us has a sliver of intelligence in it, and is generating bits of data. Each of those objects has a lifestream of data, from the hotel room to your shoes. This environment, with data streams and life streams, is the space where we’ll do the work of the quantified self.
I was excited after reading this because it provides a broad paintbrush by using both the terms Lifelogging and Lifestreaming. Kevin provides the distinction between both the data we’re generating by our behaviors online along with the tracking of personal activity. I’m glad that he discussed this all encompassing aspect of personal data generation and didn’t limit the aspects of what the Qauntified Self can provide.
There’s quite a bit more to what Ethan covered and you can read the rest of his post on Kevin Kelly here. Lastly Ethan wrote another post with his reflections on the conference in which he provides more context regarding his inclusion at the conference and views as an outsider looking in. It’s another great read and although I disagree with his skepticism on the ability for concepts being generated by the Quantified Self going mainstream, he does a great job of dissecting and getting better understanding of it.
A Look Back at the First Quantified Self Conference
It’s been just over two weeks ago that the very first Quantified Self conference took place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. If you don’t know what the Quantified Self is you can learn more on my initial post about the site here. But the cliff notes version is that the group was formed to discuss devices and other methods of generating and tracking personal data to help optimize our health and behaviors and share that knowledge. Some devices you may be familiar with that can be used for lifelogging (or self tracking) are Runkeeper, Nike +, Fitbit, and an item I reviewed recently called the Bodymedia armband. I’ve created a page that I continually update that lists some of these items here.
One of the results of the conference has been this new site which provides a complete guide to self tracking by the Quantified Self group. This is an excellent resource for someone who has interest in learning more about the devices and services available which can also be filtered by various categories and price ranges of the products listed. They provide the ability to add tools and the site is also building a community of users by allowing people to create profiles and review tools as well. This should turn out to be a great resource moving forward.
I really wanted to attend this but unfortunately wasn’t able to make it. I did however track much of the discussion thankfully to all the Tweets coming out from the conference. There were also some posts written on the Quantified Self site recapping the conference. I feel that the best coverage from the conference however was written by Ethan Zuckerman who liveblogged a great deal while there. One of his posts was covering the discussion of context behind the Quantified Self conference provided by one of the group’s co-founders Kevin Kelly.
Here’s a snippet from Ethan’s post:
We’re in the middle of a third paradigm of metaphors and organizing principles for personal computers. We’ve moved from desktop and office metaphors, to page/link and web metaphors, to a new metaphor around streams, tags and the cloud. RSS feeds, Facebook walls, Netflix streams are our general drift at present. This accompanies a shift from the me to the we, and from pages and files to data.
What emerges in this new model are Lifestreams. That’s what we curate in the age of the quantified self. We head upstream, and we leave a wake of data behind us. Lifeloggers, who log everything they do, are pioneers in this space. Gordon Bell and others take these exercises to an extreme, and they’re sharing it, as part of the shift from me to we.
These lifestreams intersect with each other and are, in a way, creating a new media. If we organize computation around lifestreams, an intersection between our lifestreams is a communication, an event of some sort. The media we are in is these streams of data. Everything around us has a sliver of intelligence in it, and is generating bits of data. Each of those objects has a lifestream of data, from the hotel room to your shoes. This environment, with data streams and life streams, is the space where we’ll do the work of the quantified self.
I was excited after reading this because it provides a broad paintbrush by using both the terms Lifelogging and Lifestreaming. Kevin provides the distinction between both the data we’re generating by our behaviors online along with the tracking of personal activity. I’m glad that he discussed this all encompassing aspect of personal data generation and didn’t limit the aspects of what the Qauntified Self can provide.
There’s quite a bit more to what Ethan covered and you can read the rest of his post on Kevin Kelly here. Lastly Ethan wrote another post with his reflections on the conference in which he provides more context regarding his inclusion at the conference and views as an outsider looking in. It’s another great read and although I disagree with his skepticism on the ability for concepts being generated by the Quantified Self going mainstream, he does a great job of dissecting and getting better understanding of it.
May 15 2011
A Startup Opportunity for the Mint of Personal Activity Devices and Services for Health
Since I recently started testing out the Bodymedia armband I’ve also looked into other devices and the associated data and visualizations they provide. It got me thinking that as we start to incorporate several of these personal tracking devices and associated services into our lives, an opportunity to create a single dashboard will present itself. It’s not going to be efficient to have to visit multiple sites and manually stitch all the data together to provide a full picture of our on-going health initiatives. The opportunity for someone to aggregate this data in a simple way to paint the complete picture will become a very apparent and important missing link.
Some devices track multiple activities such as exercise and sleep such as Bodymedia and Fitbit, while others focus simply on one such as the Zeo which only tracks sleep and provides additional tracking metrics not available with the Fitbit or Bodymedia devices. Then there are other single minded devices and tracking services like Runkeeper and Nike+ for working out and the Withings scale and blood pressure monitor and many others that we would want incorporated into a complete tracking system (see list of items here). Beyond these devices there are plenty of other data sources that we would want to import from to provide more correlations for a complete health picture. Furthermore, there are things such as vitamin supplements, medicines, medical history and even additional genome analytics such as 23andme.com that would add much needed context to the data collected for relevancy over time. For example if you’re taking blood pressure medication or a sleeping aid you’d want that context along with your sleep patterns and blood pressure readings. It’s clear that there are many data points that need to be sewn together in a single service to help create a holistic picture of our health makeup.
Bodymedia armband dashboard provides several health related metrics
Mint.com set the bar when it came to tackling the very difficult aspect of connecting all of our financial footprints from bank accounts, to credit cards, to home loans, and investment accounts to provide a very clear and nearly real-time financial picture. I believe the same opportunity to do this with personal tracking devices, related services, and other contextual and historic data will present itself to create a real-time personal health picture. Building such a service will require the co-operation of existing device makers and their cloud data services to either open up or create API’s that can be integrated. I would imagine though that this wouldn’t be a very difficult barrier to convince support since it will be in the device maker’s best interest to provide the ability to connect their data to such a service as an added value for consumers. It would also provide a competitive distinction over other companies that don’t.
I’m extremely bullish on the ability for these devices and services to penetrate the mainstream over the next few years as the advantages become clear for using them. They provide great motivation for being able to quantify and improve our health and lives overall and with the breadth of devices and data collected an immediate need will present itself to make sense of all the information. Clearly the opportunity for a startup (or several) will emerge from this need and I’ll be the first in line to try them out. Here’s hoping that this blog post helps fuel them.
Sleep tracking from Bodymedia, Fitbit, and Zeo compared
A Startup Opportunity for the Mint of Personal Activity Devices and Services for Health
Since I recently started testing out the Bodymedia armband I’ve also looked into other devices and the associated data and visualizations they provide. It got me thinking that as we start to incorporate several of these personal tracking devices and associated services into our lives, an opportunity to create a single dashboard will present itself. It’s not going to be efficient to have to visit multiple sites and manually stitch all the data together to provide a full picture of our on-going health initiatives. The opportunity for someone to aggregate this data in a simple way to paint the complete picture will become a very apparent and important missing link.
Some devices track multiple activities such as exercise and sleep such as Bodymedia and Fitbit, while others focus simply on one such as the Zeo which only tracks sleep and provides additional tracking metrics not available with the Fitbit or Bodymedia devices. Then there are other single minded devices and tracking services like Runkeeper and Nike+ for working out and the Withings scale and blood pressure monitor and many others that we would want incorporated into a complete tracking system (see list of items here). Beyond these devices there are plenty of other data sources that we would want to import from to provide more correlations for a complete health picture. Furthermore, there are things such as vitamin supplements, medicines, medical history and even additional genome analytics such as 23andme.com that would add much needed context to the data collected for relevancy over time. For example if you’re taking blood pressure medication or a sleeping aid you’d want that context along with your sleep patterns and blood pressure readings. It’s clear that there are many data points that need to be sewn together in a single service to help create a holistic picture of our health makeup.
Bodymedia armband dashboard provides several health related metrics
Mint.com set the bar when it came to tackling the very difficult aspect of connecting all of our financial footprints from bank accounts, to credit cards, to home loans, and investment accounts to provide a very clear and nearly real-time financial picture. I believe the same opportunity to do this with personal tracking devices, related services, and other contextual and historic data will present itself to create a real-time personal health picture. Building such a service will require the co-operation of existing device makers and their cloud data services to either open up or create API’s that can be integrated. I would imagine though that this wouldn’t be a very difficult barrier to convince support since it will be in the device maker’s best interest to provide the ability to connect their data to such a service as an added value for consumers. It would also provide a competitive distinction over other companies that don’t.
I’m extremely bullish on the ability for these devices and services to penetrate the mainstream over the next few years as the advantages become clear for using them. They provide great motivation for being able to quantify and improve our health and lives overall and with the breadth of devices and data collected an immediate need will present itself to make sense of all the information. Clearly the opportunity for a startup (or several) will emerge from this need and I’ll be the first in line to try them out. Here’s hoping that this blog post helps fuel them.
Sleep tracking from Bodymedia, Fitbit, and Zeo compared
May 13 2011
Lifelogging Physical Activity and Sleep with the Bodymedia Armband
I was excited to discover the folks from Bodymedia who had a booth at the GDGT event at SXSW this year. In my coverage of devices used for Lifelogging, I continue to look for new gadgets in this arena. On the surface the Bodymedia armband sounded very similar to Fitbit in that it offers the ability to track physical activity and sleep. I’ve been testing one for a few weeks [Disclosure: Bodymedia sent me one] and being familiar with the Fitbit I was curious as to the differences compared to it. I asked the representative at the booth when I first saw it and they told me that main difference is that Bodymedia has sensors that allow it to measure several additional metrics. By visiting their website you can learn about what the sensors measure which include skin temperature, galvanic skin response, and heat flux which they state provide more accuracy and detailed picture than what a pedometer can provide. They also offer more details as to how Bodymedia differs from pedometers, accelerometers, and heart rate monitors as well.
Bodymedia is a device that bills itself primarily as a “weight management system” or device to help you lose weight. Beyond tracking just physical activity and sleep you can use their system to track calories consumed (manually) and it also can track calories burned and calculate your calorie balance daily against the goals you have setup within the system. I didn’t track that information as I was primarily interested in simply tracking my physical activity and sleep. However during the course of testing I discovered this interesting iPhone app called Meal Snap which allows you to take photos of food and have calorie count calculated from it. I may have to try this as the process of manually tracking calories is what prevents me from wanting to do it.
So I wore the device for 2 weeks straight. Wearing it was pretty comfortable. I was concerned that having it on basically 24/7 might become bothersome but it really wasn’t too bad. You just have to make sure to adjust the band to a comfort level depending on your current activity. For instance I’ll have it on a little tighter when I’m working out versus when I’m going to sleep. The battery lasts for a very long time, I never had it at a low level primarily because I was eagerly plugging it into my computer every day to upload the data collected. Publishing the data to the site is seamless after installing the software and creating an account on their website. They then import the data to provide some interesting activity charts.
For physical activity they provide 2 levels of tracking which include moderate activity and vigorous activity. For sleep they provide duration that is then broken down by lying down versus actual sleep to calculate your sleep efficiency. The graphs allow you to mouse over them to get more details as to the amount of time spent for each of the 2 levels that are tracked. Beyond the graphs they also keep a tally of special achievements based on your activity. This includes notifications for personal best scores by date and metrics for activity levels, calories burned, and sleep efficiency. You can so choose to brag about these achievements from the handy Facebook integration built into the service. They also offer a free iPhone and Android app so you can take your activity graphs with you on the go.
After using the device for a few days and uploading data I liked the interesting insights it offered. By providing a method of tracking your physical activity based on 2 levels of endurance, it sets a bar so that you can continually determine if your workouts are achieving the perceived goals you are expecting. In an attempt to make sure that I’m always maintaining or trying to exceed my previous activity levels it actually provides a strong motivation to work out hard so that I can quantify it when I import the data to my computer. I also found myself trying to work out harder to try and best my top achievements for each category. The device has aligned itself as a way to lose weight but I feel that’s limiting some of the larger benefits that it offers which is a motivational tool for working out and almost gamifying the experience. I’d actually like to see some more emphasis put towards offering features along those lines. I also wish they offered some more details around the data collected to educate me about it. For instance they state that moderate activity is 3-6 METs and vigorous activity is 6+ METs but they don’t offer any more details regarding this. It would be great to offer some helpful information to explain this to users. I also wouldn’t mind seeing more granular breakdowns of data. Same goes for the sleeping data.
When it comes to trying to incorporate these tracking devices into your life there are several considerations I think you need to make. A big one in my mind is those that can combine multiple features so to make the tracking as simple and ubiquitous as possible. For instance if you wanted to track activity and sleep you can also use two separate devices such as Runkeeper and Zeo but those require 2 separate interfaces as well as services to track the data whereas having one device to track both in a single service and interface may be more desirable. I find that attractive about the Bodymedia armband but of course then you may have to make a trade-off on features or determine if the data / value of one device offers more important tracking information to justify using separate devices. It’s not an easy determination so you should look into this before choosing one or more of the ones out there.
Overall I think incorporating a device like the Bodymedia armband will offer you some good benefits towards your health and ability to actually measure the effectiveness of your physical activity and sleep by being able to track it over time. I also found it to be quite a motivational tool for me as well which was an added bonus I wasn’t expecting. I personally see these types of devices gaining quite a large adoption rate over the coming years as they continue to improve and as we continue to incorporate more personal data collection into our lives.
Lifelogging Physical Activity and Sleep with the Bodymedia Armband
I was excited to discover the folks from Bodymedia who had a booth at the GDGT event at SXSW this year. In my coverage of devices used for Lifelogging, I continue to look for new gadgets in this arena. On the surface the Bodymedia armband sounded very similar to Fitbit in that it offers the ability to track physical activity and sleep. I’ve been testing one for a few weeks [Disclosure: Bodymedia sent me one] and being familiar with the Fitbit I was curious as to the differences compared to it. I asked the representative at the booth when I first saw it and they told me that main difference is that Bodymedia has sensors that allow it to measure several additional metrics. By visiting their website you can learn about what the sensors measure which include skin temperature, galvanic skin response, and heat flux which they state provide more accuracy and detailed picture than what a pedometer can provide. They also offer more details as to how Bodymedia differs from pedometers, accelerometers, and heart rate monitors as well.
Bodymedia is a device that bills itself primarily as a “weight management system” or device to help you lose weight. Beyond tracking just physical activity and sleep you can use their system to track calories consumed (manually) and it also can track calories burned and calculate your calorie balance daily against the goals you have setup within the system. I didn’t track that information as I was primarily interested in simply tracking my physical activity and sleep. However during the course of testing I discovered this interesting iPhone app called Meal Snap which allows you to take photos of food and have calorie count calculated from it. I may have to try this as the process of manually tracking calories is what prevents me from wanting to do it.
So I wore the device for 2 weeks straight. Wearing it was pretty comfortable. I was concerned that having it on basically 24/7 might become bothersome but it really wasn’t too bad. You just have to make sure to adjust the band to a comfort level depending on your current activity. For instance I’ll have it on a little tighter when I’m working out versus when I’m going to sleep. The battery lasts for a very long time, I never had it at a low level primarily because I was eagerly plugging it into my computer every day to upload the data collected. Publishing the data to the site is seamless after installing the software and creating an account on their website. They then import the data to provide some interesting activity charts.
For physical activity they provide 2 levels of tracking which include moderate activity and vigorous activity. For sleep they provide duration that is then broken down by lying down versus actual sleep to calculate your sleep efficiency. The graphs allow you to mouse over them to get more details as to the amount of time spent for each of the 2 levels that are tracked. Beyond the graphs they also keep a tally of special achievements based on your activity. This includes notifications for personal best scores by date and metrics for activity levels, calories burned, and sleep efficiency. You can so choose to brag about these achievements from the handy Facebook integration built into the service. They also offer a free iPhone and Android app so you can take your activity graphs with you on the go.
After using the device for a few days and uploading data I liked the interesting insights it offered. By providing a method of tracking your physical activity based on 2 levels of endurance, it sets a bar so that you can continually determine if your workouts are achieving the perceived goals you are expecting. In an attempt to make sure that I’m always maintaining or trying to exceed my previous activity levels it actually provides a strong motivation to work out hard so that I can quantify it when I import the data to my computer. I also found myself trying to work out harder to try and best my top achievements for each category. The device has aligned itself as a way to lose weight but I feel that’s limiting some of the larger benefits that it offers which is a motivational tool for working out and almost gamifying the experience. I’d actually like to see some more emphasis put towards offering features along those lines. I also wish they offered some more details around the data collected to educate me about it. For instance they state that moderate activity is 3-6 METs and vigorous activity is 6+ METs but they don’t offer any more details regarding this. It would be great to offer some helpful information to explain this to users. I also wouldn’t mind seeing more granular breakdowns of data. Same goes for the sleeping data.
When it comes to trying to incorporate these tracking devices into your life there are several considerations I think you need to make. A big one in my mind is those that can combine multiple features so to make the tracking as simple and ubiquitous as possible. For instance if you wanted to track activity and sleep you can also use two separate devices such as Runkeeper and Zeo but those require 2 separate interfaces as well as services to track the data whereas having one device to track both in a single service and interface may be more desirable. I find that attractive about the Bodymedia armband but of course then you may have to make a trade-off on features or determine if the data / value of one device offers more important tracking information to justify using separate devices. It’s not an easy determination so you should look into this before choosing one or more of the ones out there.
Overall I think incorporating a device like the Bodymedia armband will offer you some good benefits towards your health and ability to actually measure the effectiveness of your physical activity and sleep by being able to track it over time. I also found it to be quite a motivational tool for me as well which was an added bonus I wasn’t expecting. I personally see these types of devices gaining quite a large adoption rate over the coming years as they continue to improve and as we continue to incorporate more personal data collection into our lives.
April 12 2011
Self Installable Version of the Locker Project Coming in about a Week
If you’re not familiar with the Locker Project it is an open source personal data storage platform which I recently covered here. I’m extremely excited about the prospects of this project and have been anxiously waiting for a version that I could self install. You can currently visit their project page on Github but the current version requires a setup process that is primarily for developers and doesn’t offer a setup script for us that are not quite savvy enough to install the current version.
I visited the project page yesterday as I have over the last few weeks looking for an update but still saw that only the dev version was available so I decided to reach out on Twitter to see if I could get any indication as to when an installable version might be available.
I’m dying to get my hands on a an easier install of @lockerproject on my own WAMP server. Any ETA or @singlyinc version? cc @jeremieless than a minute ago via TweetDeck 
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Mark Krynsky
krynsky
Today I was super excited to see that Locker Project creator Jeremie Miller replied to me with the following message
@krynsky we’re working hard on an initial test ver for devs to easily install/play with in about a week, excited!less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone Favorite Retweet Reply
Jeremie Miller
jeremie
I can’t wait to get my hands on this software and be involved in the early stages of testing it out and providing feedback. The potential that this project has is huge and I’m looking forward to being on the ground floor and providing you with information on it as it becomes available. Stay tuned…
Self Installable Version of the Locker Project Coming in about a Week
If you’re not familiar with the Locker Project it is an open source personal data storage platform which I recently covered here. I’m extremely excited about the prospects of this project and have been anxiously waiting for a version that I could self install. You can currently visit their project page on Github but the current version requires a setup process that is primarily for developers and doesn’t offer a setup script for us that are not quite savvy enough to install the current version.
I visited the project page yesterday as I have over the last few weeks looking for an update but still saw that only the dev version was available so I decided to reach out on Twitter to see if I could get any indication as to when an installable version might be available.
I’m dying to get my hands on a an easier install of @lockerproject on my own WAMP server. Any ETA or @singlyinc version? cc @jeremieless than a minute ago via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet ReplyMark Krynsky
krynsky
Today I was super excited to see that Locker Project creator Jeremie Miller replied to me with the following message
@krynsky we’re working hard on an initial test ver for devs to easily install/play with in about a week, excited!less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone Favorite Retweet ReplyJeremie Miller
jeremie
I can’t wait to get my hands on this software and be involved in the early stages of testing it out and providing feedback. The potential that this project has is huge and I’m looking forward to being on the ground floor and providing you with information on it as it becomes available. Stay tuned…
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