What we're doing works a bit like a Kickstarter. We're asking supporters to back
us for AU$60.
Why charge for 1,000 places?
The maths on 1,000 × 60 means two co-founders working full-time for six months.
This is just enough time for us to get stuck in without worrying about the future
It's also a handy, low number that means we don't have to worry about scaling a
whole lot of data analysis just yet.
Although, I think that should be on the front page. But I like it better than someone setting up a quickie Selfstarter install and waiting for money to roll in.
Oh that's a neat model. I'm going to hang on to that idea for my start-up (on the back burner, just had to take a permanent position due to my financial position).
Connect literally five other services for a broader view
This copy seems quite strange. Using literally in this context would traditionally precede an impressive number. "We have literally thousands of service intergrations"... or something.
I agree when read literally (pardon the pun). However, I think the point is that this is a beta product and features are limited; thus the term 'literally' is used ironically in this case.
I've seen enough of those app claiming to be platforms to say: five, actually working, relevant services, correctly pooled together is an impressive number. Not f*cking up the timezones would be a great improvement.
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.
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...
Hi :) I'd love to have some high quality biofeedback tracked, in particular for measuring stress and concentration levels (in so far as either can be neatly defined).
Those metrics would be great to have. We already have a huge to do list of services to integrate, and I'd love to have some easily available ones like heart rate and blood pressure in there soon.
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 am starting to wonder if I'm getting old in tech years as well, and I'm just 27. It may be a draw for people at an earlier stage in life when being affirmed/noticed/accepted by a group of friends is really important to you (high school, college, etc...).
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.
Not really. I'd be impressed with a robot that could do bipedal gate (for example) as well as humans do, but the problem is lack of computing power. A human doing mental arithmetic is not at all representative of what and how much the brain actually does during the act.
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.
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.
Yes, I think tracking something you already know about and are working on is very useful. Expenses, weight, time spent walking or working out, time spent working on specific projects etc., there are many things that can quite easily be turned into actually interesting graphs, even if it's just to motivate oneself, and certainly to get a more objective look at things or keep track of something over longer periods of time.
But number of tweets, or number of checkins per day? Nah.. or maybe it's a play on something Oscar Wilde wrote.. "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Not that I mean to be snarky, I assume it's up to the user what stats to display and hopefully how to display them; but to get me excited, it would have to be the "Piwik version" of itself, if you catch my drift.
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 :).
I find this sort of thing especially helpful when trying new medications/treatments. It's nice to have a chart that I can look over to help give me a better idea about what's going on with my body. "Oh, ever since I started this new medication, I get headaches when I don't drink at least 4L of water."
There's no way that I'd be able to keep track of my day-to-day symptoms without writing them down; the days often blur together.
Exactly. I have some depression (or maybe just standard human psychology that I have somehow failed to cope with) that will flare up horribly if I'm not eating well, exercising properly, getting enough sun, spending enough time not working, getting enough social time, and probably a few other things I have no idea about yet.
Left to my own devices I'll end up eating out for all 1-2 meals a day, only move from the bed to my car to my desk, forget what sunlight looks like, pull 12 hour days and 4 hour nights of sleep (or stumble into a 48 hour cycle), IM only my closest friend every few months, get suicidal and quit another job because nothing matters and the world is cruel.
For me at least, quantified self is not about trying to treat myself like a machine, it's about trying to remember not to.
Maybe a shortcut to feeling like you can improve or collect any data that might help you improve. At what and how, who knows.
Makes me think of the concept that telling someone your idea while leave you less likely to act on it, as you'll feel like you've taken a significant step already.
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.
Is this one of those things to see how many people are going to take interest in your project, when in reality you don't have anything at the moment ? I'm not sure why it looks that way.
Hmm I would hope it doesn't look that way. The screenshots are certainly not mockups—we actually have a tiny group of close friends using it already to help us test it out.
Sorry, it's just that these days I'm seeing a lot of places they do that kind of stuff (there was even a term for it - can't remember exactly what it was).
Having cleared that, I gotta say, it does look awesome and I wish you best of luck :) !
How many tweets you make? How many tracks you listen to? How is this data going to help you improve your life? Tracking your sleep is one thing. But most of this is just noise.
The name Exist is creepy. As if, you don't truly exist until you can pigeonhole yourself into a couple of statistics. I swear, everyone here is mind blind.
I agree that tweets and tracks probably won’t help you notice any useful patterns. But I don’t see the name Exist as creepy. I interpret it rather as a way of saying that this is very passive software, and all you have to do to use it is to exist normally, as if it’s not there. Like existence is the context of this software, not the product they are selling.
That xkcd is good for a chuckle, but the problem is real.
I dare you to try talking to a stranger on the subway regarding a topic requiring any kind of methodical or critical thought. You're going to get a lot of glassy eyed vacant stares, even controlling for the fact that they don't know you.
That comic isn't one of xkcd's finer moments. It only works if all the people are coincidentally on their way to someplace like Mountain View or Redmond. You know damn right well that you're 'more conscious' than most people, and less conscious than Jeff Bezos.
Perhaps its a good way to validate the idea / test the market? I wouldn't pay a $1 myself, but if they can get 1,000 people to pay $60, more power to them.
Putting up a high friction point seems like a unintuitive way to validate the idea.
I'm taking the founders at their word--they need the money to launch their product. It just seems like they could do it for less--however I don't have much detail so I'd like to understand the money breakdown.
These guys live in here Melbourne, cost of living is pretty crazy high. Sure, you could get away with paying yourself less than that, but 60k (less business expenses) puts them in the realm of basic office clerk.
Maybe the startup founder's lot in life is to be poor while they are starting up, so could probably do it with less. But they are hardly overstepping the mark.
Big data for your personal life.
Only one problem: Big data is amazingly hard to get valuable insight out of. Correlation is relatively easy, but causation? Not so much.
Actually, even if the data isn't big, it's still _really_ hard to figure out causation. If exist.io does make it, It'll be because they figure out just ONE kind of reliable causative relationship they pull out of their data, and they figure out how too monetize that....
This is actually a pretty clever way to crowdsource THAT process though...
This kind of tech reminds me of a story from Einstein's Dreams. It's a world of two kinds of people. Those who live close to the Earth living out there lives happily with no reservations and those who live at high altitudes because they believe the higher you are, the longer you'll live. Those who live at high altitudes measure the time they're at lower altitudes with stress and worry then haste back up so as to not get older.
So busy quantifying your life, you forget to actually live your life. My 2 cents.
This is very true and something I think about a lot. I come from the perspective that knowledge is always good to have, however it's a balance. You want to experience life in the now and live to the full, so most of the time these services are getting in the way.
I imagine as more computer 'clothing' comes out things like this will become more common because more knowledge at no more time expense can't be a bad thing.
Being a QS geek myself and partner in a QS based startup, I am always interested in new products.
However, it seems to me that 90% of people doing anything in this space have the same idea: track as much as possible and then try and see if there's anything interesting there.
"44% more likely to check in when you climb more floors" -- big whoop! I suspect that this is exactly the level of insights that you are likely to gain from that sort of approach. You will discover that you are indeed less productive if you don't sleep well or that you tend to have headaches after drinking large amounts of alcohol.
Exploratory data analysis is appealing because we like the idea of discovering something completely unexpected and revolutionary but I think confirmatory analysis (the boring one where you form a hypothesis and set up an experiment to test it) is much more likely to be useful.
If you prefer "confirmatory analysis" over the "correlate all the things" approach then check out zenobase.com (I'm the founder). The answers you get are as smart as the questions you ask :-)
That said, I also just signed up for for Exist.io; the screenshots look great, and I'm curious to see where this leads!
I know about my lifestyle. I'm there as it happens. I can't help but feel things like this just lead to a general sense of vexation over details of little consequence.
I strictly measure how much weight I can lift in the gym. This helps me to know if my program is on the right track or not. If things are not progressing upwards I know I have to tweak something.
I not so strictly measure my food intake, but I know enough now to correlate certain diet choices with my effectiveness in the gym.
Things I don't measure but would like to are various hormone levels and other health markers that could probably be worked out with a blood test. I take a number of foods and supplements that are meant to maintain a decent hormone profile - high testosterone, low oestrogen, cortisol etc.. But because I don't measure these I have no idea really if I am doing it right or not.
Another thing I really should measure is my sleep. Although obvious that if I feel dog tired I won't be as effective, I really should measure how much of a sleep deficit I can tolerate so I can balance my work/project time with sleep time effectively.
There are, but there's something about having my phone in my bed with me that makes me feel a little uncomfortable.
High fatty foods are supposedly good for testosterone production. Lower glycemic foods and higher protein is good for reducing cortisol production.
I have experimented with stuff like DHEA, Indole-3-carbinol and avena sativa for more testosterone and less estrogen. But as I haven't measured I can't quantify any difference it made.
Higher carbs seems to make me stronger, but also makes me fatter and less energetic post lunchtime. I tend to move between high fat and high carb depending on what phase of weightlifting I am in, strength building or fat reduction.
Something I haven't measured, but keep meaning to is how much of an effect total calories consumed has compared to the nutritional breakdown of those calories. It could be higher carbs makes me stronger because it is just an easier way to get more calories in.
If I could measure these things more finely rater than just speculate I could work out how to optimise my intake.
It's more the concern about pulling the charger cable out while sleeping and waking up without a fully charged phone, but I'll have a go, it sounds interesting. I presume there are Android versions.
A few years back, I picked up a Zeo to help answer why I didn't feel rested in the morning. If you had told me the deceptively simple answer before I purchased the Zeo, I would have dismissively laughed at you. Today, the Zeo collects dust and I'm in bed before 10:30p.
Started making something almost exactly like this just the other day. Although it's more aimed towards how my health/exercise/diet/work/social/mood bounce off each other. Stats like songs played, tweets, etc, don't really hold any value. Would like to see Exist support more manual entry, because a lot of the really valuable personal information won't be found in an API.
107 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadThe 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.
I'm really curious.
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.
Not yet. But they make calculations faster.
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.
But number of tweets, or number of checkins per day? Nah.. or maybe it's a play on something Oscar Wilde wrote.. "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Not that I mean to be snarky, I assume it's up to the user what stats to display and hopefully how to display them; but to get me excited, it would have to be the "Piwik version" of itself, if you catch my drift.
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 :).
I find this sort of thing especially helpful when trying new medications/treatments. It's nice to have a chart that I can look over to help give me a better idea about what's going on with my body. "Oh, ever since I started this new medication, I get headaches when I don't drink at least 4L of water."
There's no way that I'd be able to keep track of my day-to-day symptoms without writing them down; the days often blur together.
Oh, and doctors love it, too.
Left to my own devices I'll end up eating out for all 1-2 meals a day, only move from the bed to my car to my desk, forget what sunlight looks like, pull 12 hour days and 4 hour nights of sleep (or stumble into a 48 hour cycle), IM only my closest friend every few months, get suicidal and quit another job because nothing matters and the world is cruel.
For me at least, quantified self is not about trying to treat myself like a machine, it's about trying to remember not to.
Makes me think of the concept that telling someone your idea while leave you less likely to act on it, as you'll feel like you've taken a significant step already.
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 really clear and interesting picture of your life after 3 months or so.
http://www.reporter-app.com
"figuratively.io - a metaphorical API clearinghouse"
YC15 if you want to co-found with me.
Having cleared that, I gotta say, it does look awesome and I wish you best of luck :) !
The name Exist is creepy. As if, you don't truly exist until you can pigeonhole yourself into a couple of statistics. I swear, everyone here is mind blind.
I agree that tweets and tracks probably won’t help you notice any useful patterns. But I don’t see the name Exist as creepy. I interpret it rather as a way of saying that this is very passive software, and all you have to do to use it is to exist normally, as if it’s not there. Like existence is the context of this software, not the product they are selling.
I dare you to try talking to a stranger on the subway regarding a topic requiring any kind of methodical or critical thought. You're going to get a lot of glassy eyed vacant stares, even controlling for the fact that they don't know you.
> SHARE WITH FRIENDS
Because highly personal data needs to be shared with your friends. Just because.
Actually the real feature here would be "SHARE WITH MOM" for those mothers who always call to ask "Are you getting enough sleep?"
30k per founder for 6 months seems like quite a lot of money.
I'm taking the founders at their word--they need the money to launch their product. It just seems like they could do it for less--however I don't have much detail so I'd like to understand the money breakdown.
Maybe the startup founder's lot in life is to be poor while they are starting up, so could probably do it with less. But they are hardly overstepping the mark.
1. Pay yourself the barest minimum you can to survive, which may be 0.
2. Pay yourself just enough that you're not worried about money.
High founder salaries, especially in early stages goes against many investment theses.
Actually, even if the data isn't big, it's still _really_ hard to figure out causation. If exist.io does make it, It'll be because they figure out just ONE kind of reliable causative relationship they pull out of their data, and they figure out how too monetize that....
This is actually a pretty clever way to crowdsource THAT process though...
So busy quantifying your life, you forget to actually live your life. My 2 cents.
I imagine as more computer 'clothing' comes out things like this will become more common because more knowledge at no more time expense can't be a bad thing.
Also, by the way, correlation != causation. Live it.
However, it seems to me that 90% of people doing anything in this space have the same idea: track as much as possible and then try and see if there's anything interesting there.
"44% more likely to check in when you climb more floors" -- big whoop! I suspect that this is exactly the level of insights that you are likely to gain from that sort of approach. You will discover that you are indeed less productive if you don't sleep well or that you tend to have headaches after drinking large amounts of alcohol.
Exploratory data analysis is appealing because we like the idea of discovering something completely unexpected and revolutionary but I think confirmatory analysis (the boring one where you form a hypothesis and set up an experiment to test it) is much more likely to be useful.
That said, I also just signed up for for Exist.io; the screenshots look great, and I'm curious to see where this leads!
So many assumptions.
I not so strictly measure my food intake, but I know enough now to correlate certain diet choices with my effectiveness in the gym.
Things I don't measure but would like to are various hormone levels and other health markers that could probably be worked out with a blood test. I take a number of foods and supplements that are meant to maintain a decent hormone profile - high testosterone, low oestrogen, cortisol etc.. But because I don't measure these I have no idea really if I am doing it right or not.
Another thing I really should measure is my sleep. Although obvious that if I feel dog tired I won't be as effective, I really should measure how much of a sleep deficit I can tolerate so I can balance my work/project time with sleep time effectively.
What foods and health supplements do you take to get that good hormone profile?
What foods have you found correlate to gym performance?
High fatty foods are supposedly good for testosterone production. Lower glycemic foods and higher protein is good for reducing cortisol production.
I have experimented with stuff like DHEA, Indole-3-carbinol and avena sativa for more testosterone and less estrogen. But as I haven't measured I can't quantify any difference it made.
Higher carbs seems to make me stronger, but also makes me fatter and less energetic post lunchtime. I tend to move between high fat and high carb depending on what phase of weightlifting I am in, strength building or fat reduction.
Something I haven't measured, but keep meaning to is how much of an effect total calories consumed has compared to the nutritional breakdown of those calories. It could be higher carbs makes me stronger because it is just an easier way to get more calories in.
If I could measure these things more finely rater than just speculate I could work out how to optimise my intake.
About the sleep app and uncomfortable having your phone in bed - turn on flight mode?
The main sleep app on IOS is usually $0.99 and insightful. Try it tonight. The chart after a night of sleep alone is worth it.
Full write up here: https://garrickvanburen.com/archive/how-i-learned-to-get-up-...