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My talk on exercise and weight tracking at QuantifiedSelfEurope was video’d and will be world-viewable on the Quantified Self blog at some point in the future.

So far being visible has been beneficial, so despite the challenge, I’m sharing slides. As I said during the talk, an exercise monitor is something of a conversation piece: to ask a fat person “Are you trying to lose weight?” is generally rude. But an exercise monitor has been a point of entry to me for useful conversations and interesting ideas (like weight averaging and tracking tools).

I’ll add video when that’s available.

What is this Quantified Self stuff, anyway? Here’s a brief intro (prettier PDF version) Nathan Yau and I wrote.

This weekend I’m in Amsterdam for Quantified Self Europe. So far this morning I’ve met Arduino hackers, seen several talks about monitoring heart rate (continuously, cool, or even with swimming goggles) and lung capacity. Oh, and given a talk about Exercise and Weight tracking.

There’s lots of blogging/photoblogging going on. Twitter hashtag (formerly #QSelfEurope) is #QS2011.

Here’s an argument made on Twitter:

Difference between cakes and biscuits? When stale, cakes go hard, biscuits go soft. Hence Jaffa Cakes are cakes. (Was official EU ruling).

I just love this example:

1. First, you can find it with “hence” (see cue phrases from an appendix to Marcu‘s thesis).
2. Second, the notion of this EU (tax) ruling amuses me.
3. Third, it shows that 140 characters is enough for a complex argumentative structure. This has three main claims: When stale, cakes go hard, biscuits go soft; Jaffa Cakes are cakes; and [Jaffa Cakes are cakes due to] official EU ruling.
4. Enthymemes anyone?

It’s hard, though, to draw the line between an argument and an explanation in this context.
Jaffa Cakes, for you North American readers, are a common dessert-y snack in Ireland and the UK. Vaguely like Kandy Kakes found in the Philadelphia area/East Coast, but usually have an orange filling.

I’ve been digging SoundCloud lately.

Today I noticed time-based comments in their tracks. It’s a bit disorienting to have comments pop up as you’re listening. Maybe after adjusting, there’s a pleasant sense of having a conversation going on around you. Definitely feels like you’ve got company!

Comments pop up as the track plays

Avatars appear below the track to indicate that there are comments, and you can scroll over avatars to read comments. You can also hide the comments if you prefer.

Entering a comment from the timeline

Avatar icons appear in the overview

Example track due to Duncan.

A few weeks ago, I noticed something new on YouTube: an “I dislike this” button.

I wonder how long that’s been there?

When I talk about online argumentation, a frequent comment is “too bad there’s only +1 and Like; we need more expressivity”.

See related discussions:

• Misusing like
• Mood classification on GetSatisfaction
• Using reactions instead of comments on blogs

Loro Aroyo gave a talk in DERI on Friday, based on her “Crowdsourcing community science” slide deck. She was in town for Smita‘s viva. This is a deck of interest to anybody in digital cultural heritage.

The slide on “Ways to use the crowd” seemed particularly useful to me:

• tagging & classification
• editing & transcribing
• contextualising
• acquisition
• co-curation
• crowdfunding

“The only constant is change.” – Heraclitis

How well do you know Wikipedia? Get to know it a little better by looking at how your favorite article changes over time. To inspire you, here are two examples.

Jon Udell’s screencast about ‘Heavy Metal Umlaut’ is a classic, looking back (in 2005) at the first two years of that article. It points out the accumulation of information, vandalism (and its swift reversion), formatting changes, and issues around the verifiability of facts.

In a recent article for the Awl¹, Emily Morris sifts through 2,303 edits of ‘Lolita’ to pull out nitpicking revision comments, interesting diffs, and statistics.

1. The Awl is *woefully* distracting. I urge you not to follow any links. (Thanks a lot Louis!) [↩]

GetSatisfaction does so many things right. Smart, immediate feedback is one example.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed this message while adding a post:
“EASE UP ON THE ALL CAPS IN YOUR TITLE. It looks like you’re shouting”

This is great in several ways:

1. It’s immediate.
2. It makes a single, clear, personalized¹ suggestion.
3. It uses a familiar analogy (“shouting”) — helping to explain the perceived problem.
4. It’s not enforced: this nudges the poster, but leaves them to make up their own mind.
5. It hints at humor/puts the shoe on the other foot (by USING CAPS FOR THE START OF THE MESSAGE).
6. It’s not overwhelming.

Like their mood feedback it’s lightweight and appears to be effective.

1. i.e. specific to the situation [↩]

April Fools!

Alas, you need an email address to actually connect!

GetSatisfaction‘s “How does this make you feel?” intrigues me: why do people answer this? Conventional wisdom says that people don’t classify their posts.

Presumably it’s polite to ask people how they’re doing — at least in some situations. And technically there’s no post classification going on here: it’s mood classification, which most of us are trained in from a young age.

Get Satisfaction aggregates the mood on each discussion thread: