A post calling for Quantified Self entries to Institute for the Future’s contest, BodyShock: ideas to transform lifestyles and the human body to improve health in the next decade.
Just released – Gary Wolf’s podcast with Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn of the Yi-Tan Technology Community. Here’s the description, and the audio below: We’ve talked about Participatory Medicine and DIY in various ways, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what people are starting to do by collecting and sharing their health-related information. If…
Would you like to see a heatmap of all your FourSquare check-ins? Steven Lehrburger shows a mashup he built called Where Do You Go? at a recent New York City Quantified Self Show&Tell meetup. He combined Google Maps, the FourSquare API, and the GHeat heat mapping library to create surprising visualizations. With amusing audience brainstorming…
Hello, everyone! Last summer, we conducted a study about people’s experiences using personal informatics tools to collect and reflect on data about themselves. This summer, we are running a more focused study to explore how people reflect on their personal informatics data. The study consists of two one-hour interviews (a few weeks apart) at Carnegie…
This was the scene two days ago, when the lower floor of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose was opened after hours to an energetic group of Quantified Self enthusiasts and interested spectators. The first 90 minutes was filled with mingling, enjoying healthy munchies, and gathering around the various devices that people brought…
What happens when self-tracking and games are pervasive? Jesse Schell, author of The Art of Game Design and instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, gave a shocking talk at the 2010 Dice Summit. With dark enthusiasm, he explored the question: if passive sensors become ubiquitous in the world around us, will everyday life turn into a…
The Boston Quantified Self group got together last Tues., June 1st, at the offices of Zeo, inc. About 25 people came, with four presenters… it was a fun night! David Rose first spoke about his product, Vitality. Vitality’s main product is GlowCaps — light-up, wirelessly communicating pill bottles that help patients with medication adherence. It…
At the most recent New York City Quantified Self Show&Tell meetup, Esther Dyson took the microphone to talk about her recent experience at the GET (Genes, Environment, and Traits) Conference. She then answered questions from fellow QS’ers about the direct-to-consumer genome market, public perception (“why on earth would you want to sequence your genome?”), DNA…
Jessica Charlesworth’s blog has a fantastic title: The Future of Self-Knowledge. Jessica is a designer and researcher based in London, England. She has developed several interesting tools for taking a somewhat quantified, analog peek into your future. Crowdsourcing Your Future is a postcard that you send to your friends to have them predict your preferable…
Photo Credit: Hesam Khoshneviss No, that’s not me in the picture. But I would love one of these! Researchers at Concordia University and the University of London have created ‘smart’ clothing, with embedded wireless biosensors that detect your mood and play voices and videos of people you want to hear when you’re feeling sad, upset,…
In our final video from the last Bay Area Quantifed Self Show&Tell meetup, here is Dan Brown explaining the microphone he embedded into an air mattress under his bed to track motion, snoring, and heartrate during sleep. He describes how he assembled his invention, the tools he used for analyzing his data, and why he…
I’d love your feedback on this question. Last Friday morning, I met with Aman Bhandari in President Obama’s Chief Technology Office. It was an intense 45 minutes! Aman is coordinating the Community Health Data Initiative, which involves taking the datasets that HHS has recently released to the public, incorporating other datasets through partnerships, and inspiring…
Earlier this week I organized an open invite brown bag lunch in San Francisco with HCI researcher Ian Li. We had a lively discussion of some leading edge issues in application design of self-tracking systems, with an emphasis on what new users might expect, want, and experience. Ian has been doing a lot of prototype…
What do you get when you mashup open health data, government officials, and app developers? A “river of mojo” for health innovation. These are the words of Todd Park, CTO of HHS, who recently instigated the release of several government health datasets for public analysis. Park revved up the audience at the sold-out Community Health…
Matt Bell is a sleep hacker. Having struggled with sleep for much of his life, he now tracks it with Zeo and looks for patterns. In this talk, Matt reveals several factors that he has found to be helpful for getting a good night’s sleep. Matt Bell – Hacking the Sleep/Wake Cycle from Loren Risker…
It all started when Seth Roberts wondered why his self-experiments were so effective. Over 12 years, this psychology professor and regular at Quantified Self meetups tested new ideas, observed himself, and learned a number of significant things – new theories about mood, weight loss, sleep-wake cycles, and daily habits necessary for optimal living. Seth’s exploration…
The Cophenhagen Wheel, a project of MIT’s Senseable City Lab, transforms an everyday bike into “a hybrid e-bike that provides feedback on pollution, traffic congestion and road conditions in real-time.” And yes, that’s an iPhone mounted on the handlebars. Thanks to Nathan Yau of FlowingData for the heads-up on this. Nathan writes: The wheel stores…
Here is Eric Boyd’s talk about the device he built called North Paw – a haptic compass anklet that continuously vibrates in the direction of North. It’s a project of Sensebridge, a group of hackers that are trying to “make the invisible visible”. Eric Boyd – The North Paw: A Haptic Compass Anklet from Loren…
A number of people in the Quantified Self community have been asking me about starting companies: How do I find a co-founder that complements my skills? What business model do I use? Can I even make my idea into a business at all? I wish I had all the answers. It’s definitely a complex path…
Many of those who have been involved with the Quantified Self since we started blogging and having our Show&Tell meetings already know Alexandra Carmichael. Alex is the co-founder of the collaborative health research site, CureTogether, a colleague of our friends at the Institute for the Future, a regular blogger on personal data topics, and a…
