Betaworks recently announced that they had collected data from over 40,000 users who shared their iPhone homescreens through their apptly named #homescreen app. As they stated in their announcement, the apps people keep on their homescreen are often the apps they use the most. Being a data-minded individual I thought, “I wonder what kind of…
Like many people paying attention to the press around Quantified Self, self-tracking, and wearable technology I was intrigued by the many articles that focused on a newly published research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The letter, Accuracy of Smartphone Applications and Wearable Devices for Tracking Physical Activity Data, authored by Meredith A. Case et al.,…
Yesterday was the first day in a month that I handled cash. For weeks everything I’ve purchased and paid for has been handled by digital means. Debit cards, direct debits and deposits, internet purchases – it’s all 1’s and 0’s flowing through the tubes, and it’s makes my life very easy. However, now that the…
MyFitnessPal is one of the leading dietary tracking tools, currently used by tens of millions of people all around the world to better track and understand the foods they consume every day. Their mobile apps and online tools allow individuals to enter foods and keep track of their micro- and macro-nutrient consumption, connect additional devices…
Victor Lee makes data fun for kids. Victor is an assistant professor at Utah State University, where he’s been working on ways to bring the Quantified Self experience into high school classrooms to improve data literacy and expose students to “more authentic forms of inquiry.” I first met Victor at the 2013 Quantified Self Global…
If you’ve seen the announcement for our 2015 QS Conference & Expo and you’ve never been to a QS event before you may be asking yourself what our conferences are all about. From our very first meetup in 2008 through our six conferences and numerous events we’ve emphasized the role of the personal story and…
In response to the much anticipated reveal of the Apple Watch I did a bit of digging around to find out where we stand with wrist-worn wearable devices. I found over 60 different devices. The following list focuses on self-tracking tools, I intentionally left out those that work only as notification centers or secondary displays…
Here at QS Labs we’re very interested to see what Apple will be announcing today. The following post with reactions and discussion by Gary Wolf & Ernesto Ramirez will be updated as we learn more.
Someday, you will have a question about yourself that impels you to take a look at some of your own data. It may be data about your activity, your spending at the grocery store, what medicines you’ve taken, where you’ve driven your car. And when you go to access your data, to analyze it or…
This is a visualization of one month of my blood sugar readings from October 2012. I see that my control was generally good, with high blood sugars happening most often around midnight (at the top of the circle). -Doug Kanter Richard Bernstein, an engineer with diabetes, pioneered home blood glucose monitoring. What he learned about…
A core piece of our conferences are the numerous breakout sessions that cover a wide variety of topics from social sciences to hands-on workshops on privacy and data security. These sessions are facilitated by conference attendees and they put in a lot of work to engage their groups in meaningful discussion. This year, starting with…
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…
Earlier today John Wilbanks sent out this tweet: Help me build a @23andme health data export app. $500 reward. Details at http://t.co/dC2ZX1F2OK — John Wilbanks (@wilbanks) December 11, 2013 John was lamenting the fact that he couldn’t export and store the genome interpretations that 23&Me provides (they do provide a full export of a user’s…
Earlier this summer we found out that the Knight Foundation was launching a challenge centered on funding “innovative ideas to harness information and data for the health of communities.” We decided that this would be a great opportunity to propose a program idea we’ve wanted to work on for a long time: A Quantified Self…
Earlier this year we discussed some very interesting research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project about the role of technology and the Internet in health and healthcare. We were lucky to have Susannah Fox, Associate Director at Pew, talk to us a bit about what it means when 21% of people who track…
Today’s guest post come to us from Eric Jain, the lead developer behind Zenobase and a wonderful contributor to our community. At last month’s QS Europe 2013 conference, developers gathered at a breakout session to compile a list of common obstacles encountered when using the APIs of popular, QS-related services. We hope that this list…
This slide from Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends slide deck (link is to full deck on Slideshare) puts some numbers around what we’ve been noticing among QS Toolmakers: everybody wants to talk APIs.
At Quantified Self we’ve come to appreciate the interest in QS from scholars, researchers, and scientists. The essay below, which originally appeared on the Society Pages blog Cyborgology, was written by the thoughtful QS participant and scholar, Whitney Erin Boesel (we have collaboratively made minor edits for this posting). We learned quite a bit from it and are honored that Whitney allowed…
If you’re a loyal, or even infrequent user of the Zeo sleep tracking device then you’ve probably heard the sad news that the company has shut down. This opens up a lot of questions about what is means to make consumer devices in this day and age, but rather than focus on those issues we’ld…
It’s no secret we love data here at Quantified Self, but we also love seeing how people interact with data. We’ve explored many of those interactions here and we’re always on the lookout for new and different ways people communicate their data and the insights therein. A few weeks ago we wrote up a short…
