Social Workout

Semi Automatic

Doh! Time to Throw Away Your Fitbit?

There is a growing crowd of geeky, self-righteous researchers and businesses — like Social Workout — exploring the bleeding edge of personal wellness "tracking," i.e. tracking your every heartbeat, footstep, and sun salutation. One of the basic articles of faith in this field has been that more automation is always better. That is, if a person can carry a fitbit or Nike+ device which eliminates the need for them to manually enter their activities via keyboard, they are more likely to collect the data, and thus benefit from it. Now, however, researcher Anind Dey of Carnegie Mellon has made a surprising finding: Too much automation is counter-productive:

Manual collection of information means the collector is focusing on the data (whenever collection occurs) and has the opportunity for short reflections, and can keep abreast of the data more easily. We have found that completely automating collection removes these opportunities and can actually hinder individuals in keeping track of and making sense of their data.

In short, a bit of manual data entry is actually a good thing. Long live mlogging! (Via Project HealthDesign via Quantified Self.)

Workout Tech

The New Apple Smart Bike

What's a "Smart Bike"? Not 100% clear, but that's the name of the new bike tracking and communication system Apple filed a patent for last week. The basic gist is this: It's a little like Nike + iPod. The patent filing leaves some of details fuzzy, but using your iPhone or iPod Touch, the new system will let you trick your bike out to electronically communicate with other bikes, sharing data about everything from distance, cadence, and heart rate, to altitude, elevation, and incline. Apple already has some pretty cool cycling tracking apps, so you gotta figure there's even more awesomeness in the smart bike than they've outlined in their patent filings. New launch dates or prices available yet, but we'll keep you posted. (via Outside via Wired)

Tracking

My Favorite Sites (Other Than Social Workout!) For Internet Sweat

Feel like obsessing about your fitness, weight, lack of direction in life while you should be doing something productive for society and/or your boss? Have I got some sites for you. The interwebs is a magical place full of little nuggets of self-improvement obsession and time wasting.  From ExerciseFriends (like internet dating, but more immediately sweaty) to Dailyplate (where you can stalk your meals and the meals of your friends), all of the below are gratis, because the internet is best when it's free (I'm still mourning the early days of Napster).

Tracking

On the Joy Of Being Out and About

"I just enjoy being out, even if it's raining. I'm just addicted to the sport. Some people play baseball, football, basketball, soccer or hockey. I am no athlete, so I just walk on the trails."

— Ken Wilson, 81, who has logged nearly 56,000 miles of trail walking since he started tracking his walks in 1975.

Quick Post, for your enjoyment

Opened up my streaming radio, and the first song played is Weird Science.

Just as I was thinking how I didn't know if all this tracking and counting was worthwhile, the radio reminds me that this tracking i have going on is totally weird science. And that Weird Science is totally awesome.

And the next song played was She Blinded Me With Science.

Okay, radio, I get it.

New York