This is great! I would love to hear some device recommendations. Fitbit, Fuelband, or Jawbone? Withings scale or fitbit scale?
A Personal API
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Re: A Personal API
#42If there was an easy way to collect and publish this data for the average person would you be willing to sell this to companies directly? We're basically paying companies like Facebook and Twitter with our information in order to have, well, Facebook and Twitter. Maybe we could do something else with our "money".
Re: A Personal API
#43This is awesome. I've also been working on a personal data dashboard app, which is similar. It pulls in data from various social and fitness app APIs. You can also enter in data manually. It's mainly for viewing the data and trends, but I'll add an API too if there's demand. Is anyone interested in using my dashboard app?
yes - want to explore
Re: A Personal API
#44This website was blocked by my company's firewall as "suspicious."
maybe because its a tumblr site? You must work at a strict company, there is nothing NSFW in the article or the site.
They're pretty lenient -- there are all sorts of awful websites that I'm able to visit without issue. They only tend to block sites related to hacking and piracy.
Re: A Personal API
#45Interesting. Not the api part but the idea itself. What we need is bitcoin like encrypted decentralized personal file with an open spec. This file can be edited only by the owner while can be read by anyone. Then we need exporter applications which can read this data and provide as an api. Now there are two levels of abstraction:data owners and data providers. There can be "data unions", groups which can negotiate with data providers and data consumers for a better deal(money,privacy). Identity verification can now be handled by data unions instead of data providers(as is the case now).
"Take control" anyone?
Re: A Personal API
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1, but do you mind expanding on " discoverability "?
I'm no expert, but it occurs to me that a mountain of data coming in from disparate sources needs the concept of discoverability to be adequately used. That is, there has to be a way for a machine to find occurrences of data that it cares about without specifically knowing the exact attributes of the data. A simple example off the top of my head. Let's say there's a popular app that collects your pulse from your cell…
If I understand correctly, isn't this the purpose of a good documentation?
Re: A Personal API
#47I was about to dismiss this but have thought about it a bit more, and there's something interesting here. There are already APIs built on top of you. There are the ones you know about, like Facebook and Twitter. There are the ones we know exist but have no direct access to, such as Amazon's backend or your police record. And there are the ones we may never know about, such as the NSA bot scanning this post right now…
In my spare time I am doing something like it. It's called Egont (No Ego OR Ego New Technology).
If you liked this article, you might like:
i) Egont, a web orchestration language: http://blog.databigbang.com/ideas-egont-a-web-orchestration-...
ii) Egont part II: http://blog.databigbang.com/egont-part-ii/
iii) Parsing s-expressions in C# using OMeta: http://blog.databigbang.com/parsing-s-expressions-in-c-using...
Because your stuff is defined as an s-expression and then optimized to a DAG.
Re: A Personal API
#48I was about to dismiss this but have thought about it a bit more, and there's something interesting here. There are already APIs built on top of you. There are the ones you know about, like Facebook and Twitter. There are the ones we know exist but have no direct access to, such as Amazon's backend or your police record. And there are the ones we may never know about, such as the NSA bot scanning this post right now…
+1, but do you mind expanding on " discoverability "?
A trivial example from my own recent experience: getting my highlights and notes out of the Amazon Kindle app on my phone.
Amazon could make these available through a simple RSS feed or export feature, but they don't. The only way I can get my hands on them is to scrape their website, which depends on some fragile scripting and is subject to their terms of service.
I really like this idea, but without some kind of positive government regulation, I don't see it happening. At least not in the sort of meaningful ways the OP envisions.
Re: A Personal API
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm no expert, but it occurs to me that a mountain of data coming in from disparate sources needs the concept of discoverability to be adequately used. That is, there has to be a way for a machine to find occurrences of data that it cares about without specifically knowing the exact attributes of the data. A simple example off the top of my head. Let's say there's a popular app that collects your pulse from your cell…
If I understand correctly, isn't this the purpose of a good documentation?
I don't think so. Documentation is for people. Discoverability is for machines. Notice I suggested it's the scientists' routine which does the discovery, not the scientists themselves.
Re: A Personal API
#50Kind of interesting to think about slowly building up and aggregating more layers - e.g. activity, location, shopping, internet, phone, financial, educational, medical, legal, work, relationships etc - and interesting how much of this exists already.
So if this comprehensive personal dataset becomes the norm at some point in the future - what happens when this is under somebody else's control against your interests (whether an illegal attacker or a legal authority)? And what about more gray areas, such as marketing, insurance etc (which would likely encourage the creation of that kind of API in the first place)?