Today’s post comes to us from Rajiv Mehta, our longtime friend and co-organizer of the Bay Area Quantified Self Meetup group. Rajiv is also leading the team behind UnfrazzledCare, a media and application development company focused on the caregiving community. “What lessons have we learned through Quantified Self meetings and conferences that would benefit entrepreneurs…
A few months ago Quantified Self received an invitation from the Health Informatics Society of Australia to speak to their members at their annual conference hic2012. They wanted to hear a QS perspective on the future of healthcare. I volunteered to go down under, to share some interesting self-tracking stories, and to speak about the possible…
At a recent QS-themed event at Stanford, 3-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond described the constant stream of new technologies that make bicycles lighter and more streamlined and that provide ever more detailed monitoring of the cyclists. In contrast, innovation in swimming seems limited to controversial bathing suits. Competitive swimmer Hind Hobeika aims to…
In talking with many toolmakers, I find myself constantly surprised by how different people approach the same, and seemingly simple, issue with very different perspectives. A few months ago I wrote about Mood Panda which went from private to community. In contrast, Michael Forrest’s Happiness has evolved from shared to private. I also find Michael’s experimentation with the…
A few years ago, there was a lot of hoopla about PHRs (Personal Health Records), and the idea that all of one’s health records would be easily accessible in one place. Things haven’t turned out as rosy, and one major player, Google Health, shut down. However, Microsoft continues to persevere with its version, HealthVault, and…
There are ever more widgets to measure our physical selves, but how can we measure how well we’re thinking? Yoni Donner is trying to address this need with Quantified Mind. At a recent Bay Area QS meetup he told us how he used his tool to discover that fasting reduced his mental acuity, which was…
Our QS Conferences are organized to maximize discovery and serendipity. The entire program results from us inviting attendees to present and participate. You’re never quite sure what you’ll get, but it’s hardly ever boring! I didn’t know what to expect when Caspar Addyman took the stage in Amsterdam to talk about “Tracking your brain on…
The first speaker at last week’s QS meetup in San Francisco was Alexander Grey. He told us about the muscle-activity sensor he had developed and the fascinating things he had learned about himself from using it. The result of many years of thinking and work, he’s now eager to find collaborators, so he jumped at…
At a QS Meetup in San Francisco about a year ago, I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in over 15 years. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that he had quietly built one of the most widely used weight loss tools: MyFitnessPal (with 170,000 ratings on the AppStore, mostly 5s!). Mike Lee explains…
About three years ago, Gary Wolf wrote a detailed post on Measuring Mood — some tools are complicated enough to get you grouchy! Gallup goes through a lot of trouble to gauge the US happiness level on a daily basis. Others take a simple approach, such as Eric Kennedy’s recent talk at the Seattle QS meetup on Tracking…
This is the eight post in the “Toolmaker Talks” series. The QS blog features intrepid self-quantifiers and their stories: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? In Toolmaker Talks we hear from QS enablers, those observing this QS activity and developing self-quantifying tools: what needs have they observed? what…
This is the sixth post in the “Toolmaker Talks” series. The QS blog features intrepid self-quantifiers and their stories: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? In Toolmaker Talks we hear from QS enablers, those observing this QS activity and developing self-quantifying tools: what needs have they observed?…
This is the fifth post in the “Toolmaker Talks” series. The QS blog features intrepid self-quantifiers and their stories: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? In Toolmaker Talks we hear from QS enablers, those observing this QS activity and developing self-quantifying tools: what needs have they observed?…
This is the fourth post in the “Toolmaker Talks” series. The QS blog features many stories by those conducting personal QS projects that are about: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? In Toolmaker Talks we hear from those closely observing all this QS activity and developing appropriate tools: what…
This is the third post in the “Toolmaker Talks” series. The QS blog features many stories by those conducting personal QS projects that are about: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? In Toolmaker Talks we hear from those closely observing all this QS activity and developing appropriate…
This is the second post in the “Toolmaker Talks” series. The QS blog features many stories by those conducting personal QS projects that are about: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? In Toolmaker Talks we hear from those closely observing all this QS activity and developing appropriate tools: what…
This is the first post in a new series of “Toolmaker Talks” we’re starting on the Quantified Self blog. There are many conducting personal QS projects, and much of what is featured on the QS blog is about: what did they do? how did they do it? and what have they learned? Now, we want to…
Emily Singer, a journalist with MIT’s Technology Review, has an extensive series of articles and interviews on “The Measured Life“. She was at the Quantified Self Conference a month ago, seems to have talked with everyone, and has since been writing up a storm. The July issue of the magazine has a cool cover, the…
I have been participating in the QS Show & Tell meetings since they started. What those of us in the QS are working on today, and the interest we take in tracking and analyzing all aspects of our lives, is not quite mainstream yet. But many of us feel that like those pioneers in the…
