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…
There will be six Quantified Self meetups occurring in two countries this week. Thessaloníki in Greece will be having their very first meetup. New York is a must attend event for they always have excellent talks. Chicago will have a toolmaker talk from the maker of an under-desk elliptical trainer that tracks usage, while southern Florida will have two meetups…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Feb 14, 2015
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.,…
We are happy to welcome this guest post by Madeleine Ball. Madeleine is the Senior Research Scientist at PersonalGenomes.org, co-founder of the upcoming Open Humans project, and the Director of Research at the Harvard Personal Genome Project. She can be found online @madprime. The digital trails we create are becoming thick and personal. Increasingly, people choose to collect meaningful data…
Richard Sprague is interested in understanding peak performance. Inspired by self-experimenter, Seth Roberts, Richard decided to test if consuming fish oil affected his response time. In this talk, Richard explores his data and discusses what he found out when he ran his analysis.
This week will bring six Quantified Self meetups in four countries! In Cambridge, they will have a toolmaker talk for Emotion Sense, a mood app developed by the University of Cambridge. Zürich will have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) session, where everyone will have some hands-on time with the QS tools in use by their…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Feb 7, 2015
Today’s post comes to us from PF Anderson, Emerging Technologies Informationist for the Health Sciences, University of Michigan and a member of the QS Ann Arbor meetup group. It first appeared on her excellent Emerging Technologies Librarian blog and we’re happy to republish it here. Last week, I felt really lucky that I was able to make…
In 2007, after collapsing while rushing to board a train, Hugo Campos was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and an ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) was implanted in his chest to track and regulate his heart rhythm. To his great surprise, he discovered that it was very difficult to gain access to the data being generated inside his…
As you may know, we’re very interested in how HealthKit is shaping and extending the reach of personal self-tracking data. Last week, during Apple’s quarterly earnings call, Tim Cook mentioned that “There’s also been incredible interest in HealthKit, with over 600 developers now integrating it into their apps.” (emphasis mine). This morning, we were alerted…
In 2013 Beth Martin was dealing with a failing startup, starting a new venture and working so much she moved her office into her bedroom to limit the time between waking and starting work. After a series of additional changes led her to near breakdown she decided to take six months off to rewrite her…
There are five Quantified Self meetups occurring this week in the United States and England! The original Quantified Self group, Bay Area, will be convening in San Francisco for a lovely slate of Show&Tell talks on dating, diabetes, and more. To see when the next meetup in your area is, check the full list of…
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Jan 31, 2015
This morning President Barack Obama announced a new Precision Medicine Initiative, a key $215 million piece of the proposed 2016 budget. Much has been written since last week’s State of the Union, when this initiative was first mentioned by President Obama. In brief, the initiative is an investment in new programs and funding initiatives at…
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…
New sensors are peeking into previously invisible or hard to understand human behaviors and information. This has led to many researchers and organizations developing an interest in exploring and learning from the increasing amount of personal self-tracking data being produced by self-trackers. Even though individuals are producing more and more personal data that could possibly…
Paul LaFontaine is on an incredible journey to understand himself, his stress, and how he works through consistent examination of his heart rate variability (HRV). We’ve featured a few of his talks here on the Quantified Self website, and we were happy to have him present at a Bay Area QS meetup this past December….
Eight wonderful QS meetup groups will be getting together this week in four different countries. Belfast and New Orleans are two new groups that will be having their very first events. Belfast is starting especially strong with a mother and son show&tell on using a new continuous glucose monitor system that doesn’t require finger prick calibration….
What We Are Reading Newsletter from Jan 24, 2015
