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Exist

exist.io

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Re: Exist

#11

Post by bellebethcooper »

mjewkes wrote: post #9

I'm waiting for someone to make a life sampling application. N times per day, for M seconds, turn on all my phone's sensors and take a short video capture of my computer screen. Then upload that data (preferably to my own server, not yours). Every couple days, I'll log on and tag the data. At 17:56 on 12/05, I was sleeping, working on X, talking to Y, going to Z, etc. Sample 3-4 times a day for a year. Should get a r…

Have you tried the app Reporter? It's going down a similar path. I think it uses 5 iPhone sensors and questions that you pre-set and just asks you to report at random times during the day. I've really enjoyed using it so far.

http://www.reporter-app.com

Re: Exist

#12

Post by tedks »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #8

So, what is the deal with the quantified self obsession? Is it a young persons thing? Has it always been that way and I just missed out on it? Or is it a newer phenomenon that is catching on due to technology making it easier to capture data about ourselves? I'm really curious.

It's hardly new; people had commonplace books in the 1600's.

I think QS is probably more popular in communities like hacker news because there are a lot of people here that understand:

1. Computers think faster than you 2. Computers remember more than you 3. You can use the above to solve interesting problems.

Combine that with pervasive computing/surveillance and you enable yourself to remember arbitrary amounts of things and mine insights from them.

Empirically, it's probably a young person's thing, because people tend towards conservatism with age, and the technology required is going to be something young people are more comfortable with. But there are plenty of older people involved in QS.

Re: Exist

#13

Post by bellebethcooper »

sciguy77 wrote: post #7

Hope they add support for the Narrative Clip. That would be quite a cool dashboard.

Exist co-founder here. The Narrative Clip is on our radar, but seems to be more of a lifelogging/journalling use case. For now we're focused on making your data useful but we have had a few people ask about the possibility of a lifelogging/journal angle so that could be where we end up down the track, who knows...

Re: Exist

#14

Post by bellebethcooper »

Shank wrote: post #6

This is a really neat concept -- I always thought it was a bit arcane to sign up for disparate services (Fitbit + SumAll for tweet data) with no way to correlate them. The only odd part is the backer model: unless they have over 1,000 users on the waiting list who have committed to buying it, it seems like they should have a prominent button to pay and start using it somewhere, rather than email invite.

Good point. We didn't plan on making the campaign public quite yet as we've been focused on giving people on our waiting list first dibs. Since everyone knows what's going on now, we've adjusted the home page to make the process of backing Exist more simple.

Re: Exist

#16

Post by cfeduke »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #8

So, what is the deal with the quantified self obsession? Is it a young persons thing? Has it always been that way and I just missed out on it? Or is it a newer phenomenon that is catching on due to technology making it easier to capture data about ourselves? I'm really curious.

I've felt like quantified self is like an engineer's magic diet pill. If you track how many steps you take you must be losing weight!

Re: Exist

#17

Post by throwawaymsft »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #8

So, what is the deal with the quantified self obsession? Is it a young persons thing? Has it always been that way and I just missed out on it? Or is it a newer phenomenon that is catching on due to technology making it easier to capture data about ourselves? I'm really curious.

To each their own, but I think it's a fancy way of procrastination/avoidance/navel-gazing.

The examples on the site include how many tweets you wrote (ok), tracks you listened to (erm... ok), checkins you had, and the max degrees Celsius for your location that day (what?).

In general, you optimize what you measure, but eventually it becomes a parody of itself.

Re: Exist

#18

Post by amwelles »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #8

So, what is the deal with the quantified self obsession? Is it a young persons thing? Has it always been that way and I just missed out on it? Or is it a newer phenomenon that is catching on due to technology making it easier to capture data about ourselves? I'm really curious.

I tend to track things I'm trying to improve on or get in the routine of doing. Checking something off as being done is very satisfying to me. I've been using an iOS app called Balance (no affiliation to them) to do this, and it works perfectly with gentle reminders.

Re: Exist

#20

Post by frio »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #8

So, what is the deal with the quantified self obsession? Is it a young persons thing? Has it always been that way and I just missed out on it? Or is it a newer phenomenon that is catching on due to technology making it easier to capture data about ourselves? I'm really curious.

For me, it's down to having a chronic health condition. Over the long term (say, 2 years +), it's really easy to lost context -- suddenly, the fact you've been to the toilet 10 times a day rather than 11 seems like an improvement, rather than indicating you probably should see your doctor.

I use QS tools to define where some degree of normality is, so my simple monkey brain doesn't lie to me and I can see when I cross that line :).

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