We are not alone. No, there haven’t been any extraterrestrial sightings lately, but there have been many advances in understanding the organisms that make up the ecosystem of ourselves. Did you know that you are supporting almost 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells? These bacterial collaborators have a profound affect on health and wellbeing. Jessica…
Last June, the Pew Internet Research Project released a report entitled, Family Caregivers are Wired for Health. The authors – Susannah Fox, Maeve Duggan and Kristen Purcell – found that 40% of Americans are caring for an adult or child with significant health issues. Of special interest to us: “When controlling for age, income, education, ethnicity, and good…
We’ve learned a lot from the diabetics in our community, such as Jana Beck’s lessons from 100,000+ blood glucose readings, and Doug Kanter’s narrative visualizations of a year of his diabetes data. At the upcoming QS Europe Conference on May 10th and 11th in Amsterdam, we’re going to hear the interesting story of a non-diabetic who began tracking his fasting glucose…
Like many of us, Michael Cohn had a hard time “rationally regulating” his behavior. Even as a psychology researcher at UCSF, he was falling victim to procrastination and time wasting. He started exploring “irrationally regulating” his behavior by stating personal commitment contacts then using self-tracking via spreadsheets to understand how he spends his time and…
Rosane Oliveiria is a researcher and scholar that focuses on integrative medicine, genomics, and nutrition. She’s also an identical twin. In 2012 she was struck by the different patterns of weight fluctuations that she and her sister, Renata, had been experiencing. Using historical data and medical records she was able to go back in time…
Maria Benet began tracking her activity a few years ago as a way to lose weight and take control of her health. What started with a simple pedometer and a few custom Access databases has morphed into a multi-year tracking project that includes news apps and tools. Her progress and data has even spurred her…
Joris Janssen is a researcher who’s focused his work on combining sensing algorithms with psychological insights. Currently he’s a researcher and developer at Sense Observation Systems, a Netherlands-based company developing context-aware computing. In this talk, filmed at the Amsterdam QS meetup group, Joris gives a brief explanation of the work they do at SenseOS, then…
Eric Jain stumbled upon a study published in 2013 that found the a full moon was associated with less sleep. Being an avid self-tracker and a toolmaker he decided to find out if that was true for him as well. Eric used his tool, Zenobase, to import, aggregate, filter, and then analyze his sleep data…
This guest post comes to us from Mark Moschel and Eugene Granovsky, the co-organizers of the Chicago Quantified Self meetup group. At their recent meetup on March 26, 2014 they had three great talks from community members. If you live in the Chicago area why not join the group! Dan Abreu on GeoTracking Dan travels a lot….
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Mar 29, 2014
The excellent organizers of the London Quantified Self Show&Tell recently fielded a detailed survey about the self-tracking practices in their group. In the video below Ulrich Atz presents their findings. Some of the interesting results from the survey: 105 respondents (22 identified as female, 76 as male). Over 500 unique tools were being used. 47% of…
It’s an iterative process. I’m peeling an onion, and I can continue peeling that onion for the probably the rest of my life. How many times have you sneezed today? This month? Over the last 3 years? Thomas Christiansen knows his sneeze count because he’s been tracking them since 2011. We’ve actually heard from Thomas…
Nancy Dougherty has talked to us in the past about her experiences with exploring self-tracking and how mindfulness interacts with the technological processes of gathering and understanding personal data. In this short Ignite talk, given at the 2013 Quantified Self Global Conference, Nancy digs a bit deeper into her personal experiences when she gave up…
This post comes to us from Maggie Delano, an organizer for QSXX Boston- the Boston Women’s QS Meetup group. The QSXX Boston Chapter held our fifth meetup on March 3rd, 2014. We had a guest Amy Merrill from The Hormone Project talk about the direction of this new project. As a group, we discussed how something…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Mar 15, 2014
In the Quantified Self community we focus on projects and ideas that help people access and get meaning out their personal data, including the information you can collect with your smartphone. If you have an iPhone, Android, or Windows phone you’re already have carrying of the world’s most sophisticated self-tracking tools. The GPS, accelerometer, the…
Max Gotzler was smack dab in the middle of a long Berlin winter and he started experiencing reductions in this mood, energy levels, and sleep. After getting a blood test he found out he had low levels of vitamin D and testosterone (among other biomarkers). His prior reading and research led him to experimenting with…
We are excited to be bringing a scientific and research track to the upcoming 2014 QS Europe Conference. We’ve been pushed and prodded by many of our friends in the QS community to make this happen. Today we’re highlighting one of those friends and collaborators, the Quantified Self Institute. Read below to learn more about…
We’ve been holding Quantified Self Conferences since 2011. Every year since then we’ve been approached by scientists and researchers in the academic community to help them find a way to incorporate their work and their ideas into our structure. After a few years of holding back, listening, and watching the research community become engaged with…
