This week I set out to buy a scale. My requirements were simple: I wanted a home scale accurate to within .25 pounds that had Bluetooth or a USB port so that I could transmit data to my computer. It didn’t turn out to be so easy. Here is a brief report about my quest….
From [Ethan Zuckerman’s](http://ethanzuckerman.com/) always interesting blog, [My heart’s in Accra](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/), comes [this story](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/07/29/social-lions-fiscally-literate-mobile-phones/) of a prototype of a social tracking device that helps teenagers notice patterns in their social behavior – and also alerts their counselors: Ennea, a project from students at the Eindhoven University of Technology is one of the cooler things I’ve seen…
I’m becoming a devoted fan of Seth Roberts, one of the great champion of self-experimentation. Roberts, an emeritus professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has spent many year studying himself, and, even better, offering many practical clues about how to construct your own “experiments of one.” I first found out about his work in the…
A post discussing the role of home monitoring systems in the future of long term care for the elderly.
I’m fascinated by the BodyBugg. Not convinced, but fascinated. This is the most complete self-monitoring system I’ve yet seen. With an accelerometer, a skin-temperature sensor, a sensor to measure the electrical conductivity of the skin (known as GSR, for Galvanic Skin Response), and a sensor to measure “heat flux” (the rate of heat transfer from…
How do you feel in different places? The precise correlation of location and emotional arousal is the topic of Christan Nold‘s long running biomapping project. The project used a simple galvanic skin response meter, which gives a reading of how excited you are. A GSR device is simple. Here’s the Lego version. These GSR readings…
Earlier this week I had a chance to drop in on Nathan Eagle‘s presentation at ETech about using the Bluetooth feature on mobile phones to keep track, not only of where people are, but who happens to be nearby. This research is part of the larger Human Dynamics Group at MIT run by Sandy Pentland….
Review of the LENA Baby Monitor: a voice recorder that tucks into a child’s clothing and evaluates their “language environment” throughout the day.
The heart rate is among the earliest biometrics used by humans to take stock of themselves. Before mechanical clocks were invented, this was hard. The first doctor credited with making objective measurements of the pulse was an Alexandrian physician named Herophilos, from the 3rd century, B.C., who used a water clock as his chronometer. Using…
Like other early 23andme customers, I’ve been struggling to find something interesting to do with my genetic results. After quickly learning [what kind of earwax](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/29cnd-ear.html) I’m predisposed to have, the path fades out amidst a tangle of SNPs. Here’s an example of a typical quest, and its results. It is well known that particular variants…
In April, 2005, the National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy launched a [task force](http://www.genome.gov/10001808) on genetic testing. The task force, which had broad academic and industry representation, tried to outline the issues, and recommend possible guidelines, for the coming age of consumer genetics. It was already obvious that cheap and ubiquitous genetic testing…
The Stress Eraser has been around for more than a year now, garnering positive feedback attracting heavyweights to the advisory board [PDF] of its parent company, and advertising heavily. . In one sense, the Stress Eraser is a classic QS device, a geeky quantitative aid to self-improvement. I almost want one. But the very thing…
Sometimes the future shows up in odd places. In the infancy of the public Internet, if you were poking around various gopher sites to see what they might contain, you picked up an accidental education in the mental health issues faced by American college students. [Gopher](http://www.codeghost.com/gopher_history.html), an early document-sharing protocol, happened to be embraced by…
Hugh Rienhoff advocates the potential of personal genomics on his journey toward understanding his daughter’s rare medical condition.
Kevin [posted earlier](http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/2007/11/access-to-personal-genomics.php) on self-knowledge through consumer genetics and linked to Amy Harmon’s [story](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/us/17dna.html?ex=1353042000&en=4e47cebf58fa5d93&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss) in the New York Times. I spent the weekend catching up on the very successful wave of publicity orchestrated by [23andMe](https://www.23andme.com/ourservice/labs/), with major stories by Harmon in the Times, Thomas Goetz in [Wired](http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/15-12/ff_genomics), David Ewing Duncan in this month’s [Portfolio ](http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2007/10/15/23andMe-Web-Site),…
My curiosity about real world applications of objective techniques of self-discovery and self-management let me recently to some classic work by [Albert Bandura](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura), who introduced the idea of [self-efficacy](http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/self-efficacy.html) into cognitive psychology. Self-efficacy is different than self-confidence or self-esteem. It is not a personality trait, or a set of general beliefs about oneself. Rather, it…
[ ](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/opinion/08aamodt.html?em&ex=1194670800&en=87671c1cea6447e9&ei=5087%0A)Brain training games are fun for every fan of self-optimization. We don’t like to play them, we like to point out how unconvincing the evidence is that they really help your brain. Today in the New York Times, two neuroscientists take aim at brain training. They guess that the effectiveness of puzzles and mazes…
The history of “recreational” drug use and medical self-experimentation is deeply intertwined, especially when medicine is broadly defined to include psychology. In San Francisco, where I live, there are numerous [cannabis clubs](http://www.sanfranciscocannabisclubs.com/) selling pot to holders of medical marijuana cards. Over the last few months there’s been a burst of attention to the sometimes humorous,…
This [interesting blog](http://brainmagnets.blogspot.com/) by Dr. Topher Stephenson tracks the use of “neuromodulation” techniques, including electrical and magnetic stimulation of specific brain regions to produce desired changes in mood and behavior. This seemingly far-out technology is a major topic of applied research today, with new discoveries coming almost too fast to track. In [this post ](http://brainmagnets.blogspot.com/2007/09/9v-battery-for-depression.html),…
[The Nike + iPod Sport Kit](http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/gear.html) is training people to monitor their physical state in real time. The great thing about the sport kit is not the wireless pedometer, but the integration of the pedometer into a relatively rich system that allows you to program your goals, compare results with others, and receive feedback during…
