Call it life logging or self-surveillance or borderline OCD (as my wife refers to it), but there are a growing number of sites centered around allowing people to track and analyze data about themselves.
The obvious sort of tracking that goes on is that which even normal people tend to do — people tracking weight or calorie intake while on a diet, for example. Or weekend athletes tracking their efforts toward that next marathon or bike race.
But self-surveillance takes that as a starting point and then moves into often bizarre territory. For example, on a daily basis I track,
- weight
- blood pressure
- steps taken on the pedometer (Omron ftw)
- hours of sleep the previous night
- # of pages read in the book I’m currently working on
- bandwidth usage on my primary laptop
- bandwidth usage on my G1
- # of emails sent/received
- various exercise routines
- mood on a 5 point scale
- and about a dozen more different things that can be quantified
For anything that can actually be pinned down to a numerical value, Zealog is in my opinion the best tool out there.
First, it is extremely customizable, so you can track whatever you want instead of having a few pre-populated measures to choose from. Want to track # of hour spent web browsing daily (I should really add that to my list), it takes just a few clicks and you’ve got a chart in Zealog ready to start entering data.
Second, Zealog offers a number of different ways of accessing the data. You can view it in chart form on the site, and then make that chart public or private. Each chart also has an RSS feed which I particularly like as I feed all of the information into my lifestream application.
The only thing I really wish Zealog had at the moment was the ability to look at multiple variables on a chart. I’d love to be able to overlay my weight, calories and steps charts, for example.
Not everyone wants or needs to obsessively track the minutae of their daily lives, but if that’s your thing definitely give Zealog a try.