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Facebook buys Moves, Withings has a new Pulse model, and more: Quantified Self weekly links

1. Facebook buys Moves

In case you missed the news, Facebook acquired fitness-tracking app Moves a few weeks ago. After the acquisition, Moves updated their Terms of Service, causing some users to cry foul and stop using the app.

We wrote up some thoughts about the situation this week.

2. Withings Pulse O2

Finally a Withings Pulse you can wear on your wrist. You can also clip it to your clothes or just carry it in your bag or pocket.

Apart from steps and distance, the O2 model can track your heart rate and blood oxygen level and sleep stats.

3. The side businesses of Nest and Fitbit

Your data combined with those of thousands of other people can tackle bigger problems such as cutting your company’s health care budget or sparing the nearby utility from building another power plant.

Nest and Fitbit are moving further into service businesses to improve their profit margins, working with companies to decrease power usage or health insurance premiums.

“We don’t let utilities control the thermostat. We don’t share the data with the utility. We won’t work with them if they don’t agree,” says Nest cofounder Matt Rogers.

4. My Quantified Selfie

This journey into self-tracking starts well:

Despite my early misgivings, two weeks into my experiment and the Quantified Self lifestyle is definitely working. I'm going to the gym regularly, swimming just as often - and more importantly, that motivation is spilling over into my everyday life. I find myself bounding up stairs rather than taking the lift.

QS is helping in other ways, too. Just over a week into my diet-logging, I begin to realize how much money I'm spending on coffees and snacks in Pret A Manger.

But it's not all good:

... the sleep section of the experiment was easily the least useful, perhaps due to the fact that neither the Fitbit, Up or Fuelband are expressly designed to measure sleep - it's just an extra thrown in.

There's more. For all the supposed motivational benefits of having your band light up or vibrate every hour to keep you moving, it quickly becomes tiresome.

An interesting read that looks at the good and bad of self-tracking, and how much of the author's improved lifestyle after six weeks can be put down to Quantified Self versus pure motivation.

5. MyFitnessPal adding step tracking

The company, best known for its namesake food and exercise diary, is building step tracking into its core MyFitnessPal app. For now, it will work with Apple's iPhone 5S, which has a built-in motion-tracking chip. Late-model Android phones will get the feature soon, says MyFitnessPal CEO Mike Lee, using Google’s built-in step-tracking subroutines. And MyFitnessPal will also suck in step data from wearable devices and other apps through its popular application-programming interface.

6. The world's first analog fitness tracker

Measure your exercise with sweat!

More:

• My Finances: finance-tracking app [iOS]
• Saved: another finance-tracking app [iOS]
• Sup: supplement reminder app [iOS]
• Drift light: a light bulb that dims over time to help you prepare for sleep
• everything.io: the operating system for your stuff
• Disciplino: habit-tracking app [iOS]
• Sleep Genius: sleep-tracking app with smart alarm [iOS and Android]
• Fitbit partners with HTC
• Don't fear the quantified workplace
• Why wearables aren't working (yet?)
• A generator to power wearables using body heat

Image credits: iMore, ROOBAND