If you haven’t checked out Khan Academy yet, now is the time. Bill Gates calls it “the future of education,” and Salman Khan himself has a very inspiring perspective. Khan spoke at the most recent TED conference about his project to create a series of free online videos and detailed self-assessments to educate anyone in…
Here’s a snapshot of where Quantified Self is now and how we’ve grown in the past year – the chart titles summarize the growth extrapolated out from 10 months to a full year. Thanks and congratulations everyone!. QS Meetup Members Grow 3x Number of QS Groups Grows 6x Check out the newest QS groups in…
Next Monday, Stanford students will show off their designs around lifelogging and mobile sensing. Here is the announcement from Jeff Heer, Stanford professor and Quantified Self advisory board member: We’re having an action-packed year in the Stanford HCI program — in addition to celebrating the program’s 20th anniversary, we’re presenting a number of exciting new…
This is a guest post from MIT’s Ian Eslick, including his discussion-provoking video from the most recent Bay Area QS Show&Tell meetup. Thanks Ian! — Tracking my lifestyle changes and related symptoms on an ongoing basis has proved to be challenging. The severity of my symptoms have never been such that I’ve made detailed note-taking a…
With our first Quantified Self conference coming up, many people are learning about the Quantified Self for the first time. (Welcome, newcomers!) Here, I’ll give some of the history of the Quantified Self, with a focus on why we’re organized the way we are, and some ideas about how you can get the most out…
After about 5 months from the first meetup in Amsterdam, we organized the second meetup. The venue changed from het Volkskrant gebouw to Mediamatic which also sponsored us the venue! I have to add that Mediamatic is a awesome location for QS Meetups. They had an exhibition about early computers and consoles which perfectly fits…
Most of you have may have heard of TED or watched the talks online, but do you know about BIL, the quirky, populist, unconference option taking place nearby? Open to the public and fully participant powered, BIL features a wild mix of technologists, scientists, artists, and hackers. Join the fun March 5-6th on the historic…
George Lawton studies happiness, and how to have more of it. In the video below, he talks about emotional feedback tools, his research on how to incrementally increase happiness, and how he tried to change his mood by changing his facial expressions. George also discusses mirror meditation as a way to increase emotional well-being, engages…
From http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2154
Considerations for the future of big data in self-tracking and personal informatics.
Amy Drill is working on a new innovation in applying sensors to sports, specifically muscle training. In the video below, she talks about the spectrum of body metrics that are available now, and how measuring muscle fatigue and giving people real-time alerts can help prevent injury and increase performance. Amy’s startup, SensorySport, integrates lab-grade sensors…
A guest post from futurist Walter de Brouwer on his suggestions for the ‘periodic table’ of tracking gadgets still to be invented.
A post debunking some of the misconceptions around the practice of self-tracking.
QS advisor Seth Roberts offers suggestions on tracking wisdom by evaluating daily decisions.
In the past 27 days since we announced the first Quantified Self conference, we’ve seen some exciting things happen: – 214 people registered to come (54% sold out!) – 14 sponsors signed up, surpassing our fundraising target – 29 sessions have been defined by attendees on the conference wiki, from Cracking Behavior Change to Mood…
In the IEEE Spectrum, Paul McFedries, the author of Word Spy, writes about new words generated by new kinds of science made possible by cheap computing. Perhaps the biggest data set of all is the collection of actions, choices, and preferences that each person performs throughout the day, which is called his or her data exhaust. Using such data…
Joe Betts-LaCroix had a question. Which of the two exercises he was doing – dodge ball and lindy hop – was giving him a greater intensity workout? He used Fitbit to count his steps for every 5 minutes he performed these two activities. Watch his entertaining video below to see which exercise came out on…
While talking recently with my QS fellows (thanks Alex, Eri, Seth, and Rajiv) I realized I’ve been using the term “citizen science” rather loosely. Expanding on my short section in Wandering minds, self-tracking, and citizen science, I’d like to use this post to explore how the expression is used, sketch a little vision of where…
Over the summer at NYU’s ITP Camp for adults, I met the artist Laurie Frick who was making some breathtakingly beautiful sculptures and installations that looked a lot like our QS charts and spreadsheets. I encouraged Laurie to take a look at the data our community was producing. . In Laurie’s words, “I genuinely think…
I started self-tracking a long time ago, but I recently came across an interesting thing I would like to share. I wanted to change one of the services I use, but I could not find a way to export or get my data. I searched Google for a way to access my data for the…
