Exist

Self-tracking and privacy: how do they go together? Quantified Self weekly links

1. No device needed: clothes to track your workout

If you’re really serious about tracking your workouts, you might want to try Athos, clothing with built-in trackers that monitor your heart rate, muscle effort, balance and time spent exercising, among other stats.

Pre-orders are open now for customers in the U.S.

2. The making of Fitlist – Amazingly simple workout tracking

If clothes that track your workout aren’t for you, this free app aims to make it fast and easy to track what your workout involves.

You can search thousands of strength and cardio exercises and keep a simple log of your workout progress.  All of the workouts are stored in an easy to navigate calendar, so you can see all of your past workouts with the swipe of a finger.

3. The irresistible rise of the quantified self and life logging

It’s always interesting to read predictions and opinion pieces on where the Quantified Self movement is going. I like that this piece looks at privacy from two angles:

But while Generation X and older get unnerved about threats to data, it’s quite clear that Generation Y are less cautious. CTO for the Obama Re-election Campaign Harper Reed has said, ‘Anyone under 25, for the most part, has the same views on privacy on data and trust, which is that they don’t really care.’

It also has this great point, that I obviously agree with, since it’s part of the reason we’re building Exist:

Maintaining more than one app may be too time consuming for busy people, and this might mean they are forced to pick one. At this point, one company effectively ‘owns’ a part of your life.

4. QS Gallery

If you’re into data visualisations, this is a great site to browse. It’s a collection of personal data visualisation projects from members of the Quantified Self community. Very cool.

5. You are your data

And you should demand the right to use it.

A really important point about quantifying our lives that we need to talk about more.

Privacy is a negative right—it obliges others to leave you alone. But the biggest pain point for QSers is not keeping other people out; they are trying to make use of their own personal data.

Instead, I propose that we should have a “right to use” our personal data: I should be able to access and make use of data that refers to me.