A Quantified Life is the Life for me

Sorry for this late post!

So firstly I thought I should quickly say that I somehow missed this activity and I'm still trying to understand how. To make up for it, I am posting it now and I apologise to everyone for this late post. We're talking about the Quantified Self, so hope you read it through.

The Quantified Self

What in the world are you on about this week Brian? Well let me educate you on what I've discovered about this topic. My research led me to a site called livescience which informed me that:

"The quantified-self movement refers to the increasing use of technology to collect data about oneself.

These technologies — such as smartphone apps, GPS devices, and physical activity trackers with accelerometers — allow individuals to track all aspects of their daily lives, including their total activity, number of steps, food they eat, amount of sleep, heart rate, and mood."

I personally have used several of these softwares and tools. I might have used even more and just not noticed it yet, that's how easily these tools integrate themselves into your life. One of the main reasons why people currently use Lifelogging tools is to improve their quality of life, as Nancy Messieh from the makeuseof website tells us. Lifelogging tools are great at keeping track of a users' fitness level and more, by tracking how many steps they take a day, the amount of calories they lose while running on a treadmill, a user's diet and so on. 

I decided to try out a tool

Google Now

Google Now is a software that is installed on certain android phones that provides the user with the right information at the right time. If a user has a hobby outside of the house that occurs the same time every week, this software will connect that with the location of the user during this time and then notify the user whenever the next event starts coming up the following week. It warns the user when they should leave so as to get to the location in time. It's a rather intuitive piece of software that is always entertaining to use and the possibilities for this sort of application is endless. Google has once again found created another great application which they can happily add to their collection of great pieces of software.

Google Now also shows you other pieces of information that the user may find useful by keeping track of what the user has searched up on google recently. It then provides links to the web of other information that is similar to the one that the user was looking at before. 

I rather enjoyed using this application, and will definitely make much more use of it throughout the rest of my time with an android phone. I reckon it's got a big future ahead of it.

Me as a Quantified Self Devotee

I truthfully don't believe that I class as a Quantified Self Devotee. Sure I have access to some of these tools and apps that exist, and I do make use of some of them, but I don't usually use the information that is then gained to further my own goals in health and fitness/the many other options that you can use this information for. So though I collect the information, I don't make use of it, and don't notice half of the tools/apps that are tracking my activities. The use of Google Now has definitely impacted my life socially though. It helps me out with when I should leave a certain location to make it in time to the next location, it provides updates on topics I may have searched on Google beforehand, and that's still just scratching the surface of it. This is just 1 of the tools I use as well.

I'm currently endeavouring to use Lifelogging tools to improve my diet as well as health in the form of fitness, which are two of the more popular uses for a Lifelogging tool. Many different applications and tools have been created to help assist and track users in the gym, or out running in their neighbourhood. Who know's I might just even join all of these users out there with a device of my own. I might just buy a FitBit as well, so as to track my heart rate and distance that I've run.

Conclusion

To conclude everything that I've said above, Lifelogging tools are already reaching far and wide and are mainly used as health monitoring apps. Google Now is one of the apps that have been created that I researched this week to learn more about Lifelogging. I would highly recommend anyone in the market for a cool application to start using this one, a very intriguing tool indeed. What other lifelogging tools have you used? 

I also don't believe that I am a full Quantified Self Devotee seeing as I collect information but don't do anything with it after its collected. I probably have A LOT of information collected on myself, yet when it comes to achieving something out of the data collected, I always seem to find something better to do. But I have already deduced that I have quite a lot of tools and from just looking around my bedroom now, I can already confirm multiple such devices that support the Quantified Self movement. Are you also drowning in Lifelogging tools too? Leave a comment below!

And as always
This is Brian Fernandez

Signing Out

Exploring Your Inner Maker: Social Tech and Copyrighting

So. The Maker Movement. Copyright. Social Technology. What are they? I asked myself the same question, and decided to research a bit more on them to better understand the topic for this weeks blog. 

The Maker Movement

Picture from SXSchedule

The first question I tackled was, 'What is the Maker Movement?' The site, Techopedia states:

'The maker movement is a trend in which individuals or groups of individuals create and market products that are recreated and assembled using unused, discarded or broken electronic, plastic, silicon or virtually any raw material and/or product from a computer-related device.'

Social Media helped with the Maker Movement by allowing online communities to form and provided new ways to share and create different things that interest different sorts of people. They are usually referred to as Maker Communities. The growth of makers also allowed creations of largescale events, such as Maker Faire, which is pretty much a giant show and tell for makers to meet in person and show what they've created. I found this particular piece of information quite interesting, I even made a mental note to see if I could visit one in the future to see what I'm missing out on. 

The creation of these Maker Faire's actually helped push the Maker Movement and made it even bigger then it originally was. Ian Cole, from the Raising Geeks blog went into amazing detail about the Makers Movement, providing me with a lot of the information that I needed for this blog.

3D Printing and it's impact on the Maker Movement

3D has actually had a very large impact on the Maker Movement. By providing people with the ability to create endless possibilities of creations easily, people are using it to create small and affordable every day objects and then selling them. Ashlee Vance from The New York Times writes:

'It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.'

The use of 3D printing in the Maker Community has vastly impacted it, once again making it even larger then before. And it's just going to keep on growing. I'm even thinking about throwing down with the other Makers out there just to get a go at using the 3D printing, after reading about some of the amazing things people are making with it, from prosthetic legs, doorknobs, handbags and jewellery to iPhone cases. The list just goes on and on. It really is looking like theres an endless possibility to the 3D printers use in the Maker Community.

Copyright

Having thoroughly researched the Maker Movement, I moved on to learning more about Copyright and how it impacts the Maker Movement. Copyrighting something allows a person to state that what they've created is theirs and no-one else can use it. If it makes money, then the creator is usually entitled to some of that money.

Copyright is especially useful for when you're making something that you don't want shared with anyone else unless they're willing to pay you for it. You get a lot of the profits from your product. If you were looking into sharing something that you created, you would look at getting a Creative Commons license, which allows you to share what you've made with others, but everyone can still see that you were the original creator.

If a Maker doesn't want other Makers to copy his/her ideas when he shares it, then putting it under a copyright is the best way for him/her to go. Otherwise, looking at a Creative Commons license is great for online communities that are focused on sharing and showing others how to make things that you created. FOR FREE!

Social Technology

Finally I turned my attention to Social Technology. What is it and how does it help the Maker Movement? Social Technology was a massive help to the Maker Movement. By providing online communities for makers to connect and share their ideas with others, Social Technologies was the main reason that the Maker Movement managed to gain momentum in its steady rise to popularity. It opened a world of unexplored possibilities by allowing users to share ideas through many online communities, one such community being MakerSpace. This is a purely Maker community which has been created for the Maker Faire events which were mentioned earlier in this blog. I think that the creation of these communities had a much bigger impact on the movement. Before people would only have been able to share it with their friends. But now they could share their ideas with the world.

The increase in internet speed as well as better technology has provided people with the opportunity to truly explore their inner maker. Because of all the shared creations floating around communities nowadays, people are able to learn how to DIY (do it yourself) or improve on other ideas and make something even more unique. This movement truly is amazing.

Conclusion

The Maker Movement has definitely impacted the internet quite a lot. I found a lot of information that led me to believe even I could become a Maker. Technically, I already am from past endeavours. I only just found out there was a community for it as well. Have you got any cool things that you've also made? Would you join one of the Maker Communities? Leave a comment below to let me know! I'm pretty interested in these Maker Faire events. That's the first step I'm going to take in my possible journey to finding my inner Maker.

Brian Fernandez
Once Again
Signing Out.