Author: Alexandra Carmichael

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Where Do You Go? Steven Lehrburger Visualizes FourSquare

June 29, 2010

Would you like to see a heatmap of all your FourSquare check-ins? Steven Lehrburger shows a mashup he built called Where Do You Go? at a recent New York City Quantified Self Show&Tell meetup. He combined Google Maps, the FourSquare API, and the GHeat heat mapping library to create surprising visualizations. With amusing audience brainstorming…

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Bay Area QS Show&Tell #14 – Recap

June 24, 2010

This was the scene two days ago, when the lower floor of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose was opened after hours to an energetic group of Quantified Self enthusiasts and interested spectators. The first 90 minutes was filled with mingling, enjoying healthy munchies, and gathering around the various devices that people brought…

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When Games Invade Real Life

June 21, 2010

What happens when self-tracking and games are pervasive? Jesse Schell, author of The Art of Game Design and instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, gave a shocking talk at the 2010 Dice Summit. With dark enthusiasm, he explored the question: if passive sensors become ubiquitous in the world around us, will everyday life turn into a…

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Esther Dyson Answers Questions About Genomics

June 15, 2010

At the most recent New York City Quantified Self Show&Tell meetup, Esther Dyson took the microphone to talk about her recent experience at the GET (Genes, Environment, and Traits) Conference. She then answered questions from fellow QS’ers about the direct-to-consumer genome market, public perception (“why on earth would you want to sequence your genome?”), DNA…

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The Future of Self-Knowledge

June 14, 2010

Jessica Charlesworth’s blog has a fantastic title: The Future of Self-Knowledge. Jessica is a designer and researcher based in London, England. She has developed several interesting tools for taking a somewhat quantified, analog peek into your future. Crowdsourcing Your Future is a postcard that you send to your friends to have them predict your preferable…

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A Mood Jacket to Help You Through The Day

June 13, 2010

Photo Credit: Hesam Khoshneviss No, that’s not me in the picture. But I would love one of these! Researchers at Concordia University and the University of London have created ‘smart’ clothing, with embedded wireless biosensors that detect your mood and play voices and videos of people you want to hear when you’re feeling sad, upset,…

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Dan Brown’s Homemade Sleep Sensor

June 8, 2010

In our final video from the last Bay Area Quantifed Self Show&Tell meetup, here is Dan Brown explaining the microphone he embedded into an air mattress under his bed to track motion, snoring, and heartrate during sleep. He describes how he assembled his invention, the tools he used for analyzing his data, and why he…

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What Should We Tell the White House?

June 7, 2010

I’d love your feedback on this question. Last Friday morning, I met with Aman Bhandari in President Obama’s Chief Technology Office. It was an intense 45 minutes! Aman is coordinating the Community Health Data Initiative, which involves taking the datasets that HHS has recently released to the public, incorporating other datasets through partnerships, and inspiring…

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Health Data Mojo – 1 App, 1 Tool, 2 Challenges

June 4, 2010

What do you get when you mashup open health data, government officials, and app developers? A “river of mojo” for health innovation. These are the words of Todd Park, CTO of HHS, who recently instigated the release of several government health datasets for public analysis. Park revved up the audience at the sold-out Community Health…

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Matt Bell Hacks the Sleep-Wake Cycle

June 2, 2010

Matt Bell is a sleep hacker. Having struggled with sleep for much of his life, he now tracks it with Zeo and looks for patterns. In this talk, Matt reveals several factors that he has found to be helpful for getting a good night’s sleep. Matt Bell – Hacking the Sleep/Wake Cycle from Loren Risker…

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The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Self-Experimentation

May 31, 2010

It all started when Seth Roberts wondered why his self-experiments were so effective. Over 12 years, this psychology professor and regular at Quantified Self meetups tested new ideas, observed himself, and learned a number of significant things – new theories about mood, weight loss, sleep-wake cycles, and daily habits necessary for optimal living. Seth’s exploration…

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Hybrid Bicycle Tracks Your Environment

May 29, 2010

The Cophenhagen Wheel, a project of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, transforms an everyday bike into “a hybrid e-bike that provides feedback on pollution, traffic congestion and road conditions in real-time.” And yes, that’s an iPhone mounted on the handlebars. Thanks to Nathan Yau of FlowingData for the heads-up on this. Nathan writes: The wheel stores…

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Eric Boyd and his Haptic Compass Anklet

May 28, 2010

Here is Eric Boyd’s talk about the device he built called North Paw – a haptic compass anklet that continuously vibrates in the direction of North. It’s a project of Sensebridge, a group of hackers that are trying to “make the invisible visible”. Eric Boyd – The North Paw: A Haptic Compass Anklet from Loren…

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Help for Your Quantified Startup

May 27, 2010

A number of people in the Quantified Self community have been asking me about starting companies: How do I find a co-founder that complements my skills? What business model do I use? Can I even make my idea into a business at all? I wish I had all the answers. It’s definitely a complex path…

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The Visualization Zoo

May 25, 2010

Jeff Heer does it again. A Stanford professor in Human-Computer Interaction and Quantified Self advisor on data visualization, Heer and his colleagues Mike Bostock and Vadim Ogievetsky have put together a terrific guide to the various kinds of data visualization, and when and how to use each one. They call their guide A Tour through…

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Open Science Summit July 29-31

May 21, 2010

Joseph Jackson has an announcement to make. He attended the last Bay Area QS Show &Tell meetup and told the group about the Open Science Summit he’s organizing in Berkeley this summer. In his words: Open Science Summit 2010:  Updating the Social Contract for Science 2.0 July 29-31  International House Berkeley    opensciencesummit.com Synthetic Biology,…

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Intelligent Medicine – Proteus’ Raisin System

May 20, 2010

A crowd formed around me at the last Bay Area Quantified Self meetup as I showed around this bandage-shaped tracker and bright green pills with microchips on them. Questions showered me: What does it track? Does it have a battery? How does it work? Unfortunately I didn’t have all the answers. This new device was…

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A Visual Guide to Cognitive Bias

May 18, 2010

You’re biased. I’m biased. We’re all biased when it comes to thinking, remembering, being social, and making decisions. Understanding the different cognitive biases we have can help us design and interpret experiments, interact with each other, and make healthy, rational choices. Here’s a cool visual guide to cognitive bias that was running around Twitter recently….

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Bay Area QS Show&Tell #13 – Recap

May 16, 2010

Last Wednesday 100-ish QS folks gathered at Langton Labs in San Francisco for an energized meetup. Langton Labs is “an institute for future living,” where people live and work on cool projects. The meetup was sponsored by QuantHealth – thanks to Alex Jacobson and his team for being the first QS sponsor!  The evening started…