Kevin Kelly

June 12, 2008

The Quantified Self is primarily about self-monitoring, and not about monitoring others. But your baby is close to the self, so there may be some technology in baby monitoring to be of use to adults.

Trixie Tracker tracks and displays the activity patterns of babies. As they claim on their website:

“Uncover patterns in your baby’s sleep rhythms and daily activity. Develop a good sleep schedule with helpful charts. Share online with family and friends.”

Using this software parents can track what goes into baby, and when; what comes out, when; when baby sleeps, when baby wakes, and any other activity you want to collect data for.

This is a primitive version 1.0 of tracking tools because you need to manually enter all data. The tool provides a web-based fancy spreadsheet with cute charts. You provide the data entry.  It has an iPhone input option, too, which could make a difference. What you can take away — particularly if you are willing to share your baby’ data — is some sophisticated analysis of say baby’s sleep probability.

Trixie Tracker is part of a larger idea called data-driven parenting, which I suspect has a small following right now, because who wants to spend their lives inputing data? But once all these ubiquitous devices collect data for us, crunching your kids’ day later in the evening after they go to bed may be the new parental chore.