Author: Alexandra Carmichael

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Roundup: Lifelogging Tools

November 30, 2010

Lifelogging – the continuous capture of a large part of one’s life. Some people use paper journals, others sport wearable cameras, post status updates, or tap numbers into their smart phones. If you record your life or make tools to record lives, read on! This post is part of our regular tool roundup for the…

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Jon Cousins on Moodscope

November 28, 2010

From the London QS Show&Tell group: Jon Cousins talks about the development of Moodscope, a social site where users can track their mood and share their stats with friends. He battled depression secretly for 30 years, and was inspired to invent his own mood-tracking system after a potential bipolar disorder diagnosis. Watch the video below…

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Martijn Aslander on PersonalStats.nl

November 21, 2010

From the Amsterdam QS Show&Tell group: Martijn Aslander talks about his PersonalStats.nl project to track all of his personal data. He records everything from travel to the 5 best and worst things he does each day to how many people he addresses at his lectures. He meets 100-200 people every week, and was interested to learn…

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Robert Rabinovitz on Mapping the Design Process of a Brain Seizure

November 18, 2010

From the New York QS Show&Tell group: Robert Rabinovitz, a design teacher at the Parsons New School of Design and a designer himself, mapped the 40-minute period on January 19, 2007 when he experienced his first brain seizure. He takes us through his gripping story, moment by moment, with images of what he saw that…

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Andrew Hessel’s Flight Log

November 14, 2010

From the Bay Area QS Show&Tell meetup group: Andrew Hessel from Singularity University talks about his 2010 flight log. He has traveled 79,922 miles this year – 57 flights, 22 airports, 16 percent of his days in the air. Andrew tracks his flights for the sake of tracking them, with no goal to minimize consumption….

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Polyphasic Sleep Experiment at Zeo

November 12, 2010

There’s a great new post over at the Zeo blog by an experienced polyphasic sleeper – instead of sleeping in one 8 hour chunk, he breaks it up into three segments throughout the day. In his post he shows how he used Zeo to help optimize sleep quality and create a polyphasic schedule that feels better…

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Kiel Gilleade on The Body Blogger

November 10, 2010

From the London QS Show&Tell meetup group: Kiel Gilleade talks about his experiences with tracking his heart rate 24×7 and sharing it in real-time via the Internet. More information about the project can be found at Kiel’s Physiological Computing Site and at his BodyBlogger Twitter stream. Watch the video below to hear Kiel talk about…

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Roundup: Goal Tracking Tools

November 4, 2010

This is our first roundup topic by request! Michael Nagle, organizer of the Boston QS Show&Tell meetup, wrote to say that the founder of StickK is coming to speak at their next meetup. He asked if we could do a roundup of goal-tracking tools in advance of that, so here it is. Thanks Nagle! It’s part…

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Beer van Geer on Meditation Training

November 2, 2010

From the Amsterdam QS Show&Tell Meetup group: Beer van Geer (aka Universal Media Man) shows his award-winning Dagaz Project. His application uses the Neurosky EEG headset to quantify brainwaves during meditation on Mandala symbols. As you meditate you can see your progress in real-time. Watch his mind-blowing talk below. Beer van Geer – Project Dagaz…

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Max Winter Osterhaus on Total Consumption Tracking

October 31, 2010

From the Bay Area QS Show&Tell group: Max Winter Osterhaus (tagline: “I make charts”) talks about tracking all of his purchases for the past 5 years in incredible detail. He tracks right down to the kind of fruit or bread he buys, and admits to being somewhat addicted to combing through receipts. Watch the video…

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Brennan Moore on Poyozo

October 28, 2010

From the New York QS Show&Tell group: Brennan Moore, co-founder of Poyozo with Max Van Kleek, talks about his thoughts on using life tracking data to help people manage their lives. His vision is to build an automatic personal assistant that respects your time/attention and reminds, recommends, and filters things for you. Watch a demo…

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Roundup: Food Tracking Tools

October 26, 2010

Given that the United States eats more average daily calories per person than any other country, it’s probably a good idea for us to track what we eat a little more closely. QS Amsterdam folks can sit this one out if you like! This week’s roundup is for food tracking tools.   It’s part of our…

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Matt Haughey on Sharing Gas Mileage Data

October 25, 2010

From the Bay Area QS Show&Tell group: Matt Haughey from Fuelly talks about tracking, sharing, and comparing gas mileage data. He tells the story of his efforts to move from 18 to 20 mpg – it required a great amount of concentration, and only ended up saving him $6. Watch the video below to hear…

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Peter Robinett on Predicting Productivity

October 23, 2010

From the Amsterdam QS Show&Tell group: Peter Robinett talks about a simple system he created to track, visualize and predict his productivity. Using Google Spreadsheets, he color-coded his activities by week to help him manage multiple consulting contracts. Watch the video below to see what tweaks he found most useful and how closely his predictions…

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Indhira Rojas on Managing Consumption

October 20, 2010

From the Bay Area QS Show&Tell group: Indhira Rojas explains Indexer, a database she is building for tracking consumption and managing waste. She wants to help people answer two questions: How much do I throw away? and, How do I recycle properly? In the video below, Indhira explains her project. See what she learned from…

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Roundup: Location Tracking Tools

October 18, 2010

Tracking location is a relatively new phenomenon, thanks to the ubiquity of cheap, embedded GPS receivers. When I was a kid, my parents had no idea where I was. Today, my daughter wants to see exactly where I am if I’m not in the same room as she is. As you might have guessed, this…

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Eri Gentry on Butter Mind/Coconut Mind

October 16, 2010

For those of you following our first Quantified Self group experiment, here is Eri Gentry telling the Bay Area QS Show&Tell meetup about the Butter Mind/Coconut Mind experiment. The question she wants to answer is, does eating 3 tbsp. of butter or coconut oil a day improve math scores? Hear more directly from Eri below….

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Randal Koene on Activity Logging

October 11, 2010

From the Bay Area QS Show&Tell meetup: Randal Koene shows his Linux project “dil2al” (detailed item lists to activity lists). Every 20 minutes, Randal gets a prompt asking him to log his activities and recommending possible task changes according to his set priorities. He’s been using this system since 1999, as a memory assist and…

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Bay Area QS Show&Tell #16 – Recap

October 9, 2010

It was another electric night. On Wednesday, 124 people gathered at the futuristic Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco for the 16th Bay Area QS Show&Tell. The theme this time was location, transportation, consumption, and energy. The workshop part of the evening seemed to take off this time, with buzzing groups forming around half a dozen people…

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Discuss: The Dark Side of Self-Tracking

October 4, 2010

Everything has a dark side (Photo by Pixelicus) Can self-tracking hurt you? We mostly talk about the positive aspects of self-tracking here, but it’s worth venturing over to the dark side now and then.  Take this comment from Stefan on a recent discussion post: “After spending some time playing around with the idea of what…