10 ms·

A Personal API

321 points by dannyr 13y ago

ngoel36 13y ago
This is so cool. Somebody should turn this into a platform - a mobile app that at least helps you record the stats you want, paired with an API platform that lets you grant and request permission for other "personal APIs". Then other API calls can be built on top of individual people - College students in the US, citizens of India, etc. The possibilities are pretty endless.
- mnutt 13y ago
  I'll bet you could get a lot of this information from something like FitBit.
  - vijayr 13y ago
    True. But fitbit can only give health related data - what if one wants to track multiple things in his/her life - finance, health, food habits etc
- jpreiland 13y ago
  The Biggest Loser - play along at home! Be the "biggest loser" in [your region] to [acquire swag], etc. Sorry, maybe I'm being a bit facetious. There's definitely a lot of cool stuff that could be done with a personal API though. But how do you get people on-board? You have to have equipment to track/update stats right? Are people willing to buy into this potential network?
  - ianstormtaylor 13y ago
    If Fitbit and all of those types of companies start having Export APIs a service could have wrapper around all of them. Then anyone with one of those devices could join easily. Could be the way to start, since you definitely don't want to be building the hardware and API altogether for an MVP.
  - gregpilling 13y ago
    Do you think people might spend a million in the next year on weight loss? Then do this!
clockwerx 13y ago
The FOAF crowd already did a lot of this style of work - see also http://wiki.foaf-project.org/w/DataSources http://wiki.foaf-project.org/w/DataSources ; you probably have a few data feeds already, particularly focused on social networking site activity. Other vocabs work - ie, crschmidt's menow vocab. Express it as json ld to make it more modern, and you have a distributed ecology of services that all talk the same sort of language, about you.
tejaswiy 13y ago
I've actually been toying with the idea of having a private facebook account to hold all this data and more. Facebook's pretty much become the default social layer these days and almost every app can publish data to your news feed. Facebook also has a pretty cool Timeline UI to boot which will probably only get better as time passes.
- doc-m 13y ago
  I'm starting to think this is a really great idea - to have somewhere to keep a private personal history - particularly for checking in to keep a track of where I've been without appearing to be a self-important moron. You know who you are FB friends!
- naveenium 13y ago
  that's a really interesting concept you could probably do it today without the use of a private account i believe in app settings, you can restrict the visibility of posts by any particular app. this way, your scale's posts could be seen by just you and not your friends.
nkozyra 13y ago
I've thought about this many times before. But, this is the easy part. Storing, doing simple metrics, making assumptions and returning the data is not a problem. Standardizing input methods is.
- reeses 13y ago
  Federating data is a fairly 'solved' issue. Ironically (or not) enterprise IT is ahead of the average organism in this space. Faced with legacy systems communicating (or not communicating) via various channels, Middleware, ESBs, SOA, message queues, content-based routers, business process management, event processing, and data virtualization have all been created so that a development group can factor these systems into canonical representations of business events. At that point, the input method ranges from the simple (existing web app to API) to complex (treating a batch-oriented system in a semi-synchronous manner or screen-scraping an ancient smart terminal as a queriable data source). At that point, the real challenge isn't the input method but master data management and security/authority/privilege.
dale386 13y ago
This website was blocked by my company's firewall as "suspicious."
- crisnoble 13y ago
  maybe because its a tumblr site? You must work at a strict company, there is nothing NSFW in the article or the site.
  - chiph 13y ago
    Got blocked for me as well - "Pornography"
  - dale386 13y ago
    They're pretty lenient -- there are all sorts of awful websites that I'm able to visit without issue. They only tend to block sites related to hacking and piracy.
thorntonbf 13y ago
That's pretty cool! As an engineer, I crave data. As much as anything, this process would force me to organize that data into some archivable, more useful form.
cocoapriest 13y ago
As an engineer, I can understand the excitement. But I wonder why and who should use that data? I can't see any great use cases.
- tannerc 13y ago
  Doctors, for checking activity/sleep/etc. Friends/relationships, for checking general activity and check-ins. Potential businesses, for seeing interests and the like. Or, if currently employed, the employer could randomly check to see how the employee has been sleeping (are they going to be tired/cranky today?) or to see how often they check-in at the office. Aggregated with more data from people doing similar things and you can start to get a look at populations (what if everyone in SF was logging this data? What if a good chunk of those in the US were?).
- uptown 13y ago
  Insurance companies - for adjusting rates based on lifestyle.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  The quantified self people all claim if you can't measure something, you can't improve it. It is very popular with runners. If you don't track your time or run competitively, you tend not to improve your times. Runners are willing to put a lot of data in, even like how they felt after each run, which has good uses for planning work outs, etc.. But the same concept applies to anything - eating healthy/less, walking more, smoking less, etc.. Like good old Ben Franklin used to track virtues until he mastered them.
neeharc 13y ago
As you suggested, I think this is a great way to expose your data to apps that may be built on top of you. Also, a stalker would love this :P
abraininavat 13y ago
I was about to dismiss this but have thought about it a bit more, and there's something interesting here. There are already APIs built on top of you. There are the ones you know about, like Facebook and Twitter. There are the ones we know exist but have no direct access to, such as Amazon's backend or your police record. And there are the ones we may never know about, such as the NSA bot scanning this post right now and correlating it to my recent overseas cell phone calls. I'm intrigued by the concept of aggregating this data. Imagine if the wealth of data collected about you all went to one place, and, most importantly, was controlled by you. Imagine if Company X had to pay you to know about your Amazon spending habits instead of paying Amazon. Imagine if scientists could perform long-term health studies in an instant because the data they need is already collected and just needs to be crunched. I think the concept that's missing from your blog post is the idea of discoverability.
- jckt 13y ago
  +1, but do you mind expanding on "discoverability"?
  - abraininavat 13y ago
    I'm no expert, but it occurs to me that a mountain of data coming in from disparate sources needs the concept of discoverability to be adequately used. That is, there has to be a way for a machine to find occurrences of data that it cares about without specifically knowing the exact attributes of the data. A simple example off the top of my head. Let's say there's a popular app that collects your pulse from your cellphone somehow, and that data is stored in your "Personal API" in some format. Some scientists write a routine that scans people's pulse patterns (with their permission, say) and warns them of possible risk factors. Later on hospitals start feeding their pulse data into the same personal API, but in a different format and using different units (bpm instead of bph, say), because they've never heard of the cellphone app. I take "discoverability" as a general concept addressing how the scientists' routine might discover that the hospital data exists in a person's "Personal API", discover that the thing being measured by the hospital is the same as the thing being measured by the app, and discover how to map both formats into a common workable format and units.
platz 13y ago
Please include the units in the results!
- naveenium 13y ago
  a good idea. for now, i left everything metric, but have thought about dropping in the units.
danielsiders 13y ago
This is one of the use cases we had in mind when in developing Tent (https://tent.io https://tent.io). Tent is an evented data store for arbitrary JSON blobs which can be typed b the developer. It has the added benefit of operating as a decentralized system that lets you push and receive posts with other users via webhooks. Tent can be used to create applications and systems from the quantified self to microblogging to cloud-backed file sync to collaborative real-time document editing.
kmax12 13y ago
Such an api sort of already exists in the form of Fitbit's api which can be found at http://dev.fitbit.com/ http://dev.fitbit.com/. Fitbit holds a lot of the data hostage, but it's at least something that anyone wearing a Fitbit can easily grant access to.
- whazzmaster 13y ago
  What data do they hold hostage?
  - randomchars 13y ago
    It was on HN[0] a few months ago that they don't give you access to minute by minute data, only daily totals. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001301
    - whazzmaster 13y ago
      Ah; FYI the API now supports Intraday Time Series fetching. See https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Intraday-Time-Series https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Intraday-Time-Se... for more information. You can retrieve data in 1 min or 15 min increments.
      - kmax12 13y ago
        you still cannot get access to the raw data or data in real time.
Dirlewanger 13y ago
Narcissism reaches a new level (or low, depending on how you see it).
- randomchars 13y ago
  Narcissism: 1. Excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one's physical appearance 2. Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration So explain to me; what does quantified self have to do with narcissism?
  - pknight 13y ago
    Well in defense of this snarky comment, I have to say that the social sharing part of personal data like this can come across in this way (doesn't make it narcissism but still...). The thing I like about personal data collection and cool new apis is what it could do for the individual, i.e. offer new insight, movitivation, encourage better behaviours. But I hate the sharing part because it opens the door to over-sharing. Not just in terms of corporations having all kinds of data and using it in their interests, but also just simply the noise that gets added by people sharing information that frankly, has very little relevance. I don't really care if someone just completed a 2 mile run and I certainly don't go to twitter to read automatically generated tweets about it.
- dirtyaura 13y ago
  Caring about your health and well-being isn't narcissism. It's one of the most important things that you can give for your loved ones - kids, spouse, family and close friends - because healthy and happy person can support others in the need. And I'm strong believer that our personal data will play a big part in the preventive healthcare in the future.
psycr 13y ago
I have been working on an open source version of this idea: http://www.quantify.io http://www.quantify.io Right now, things are fairly sparse. You can check the repo out here: https://github.com/jdjkelly/bodyimage https://github.com/jdjkelly/bodyimage An open source Rails API to track "quantified self" data. Right now, the hardware companies in this space are storing your data in closed systems. Let's change that. Take the Withings WiFi scale or the FitBit, for example. Both are essential pieces of the quantified self hacker, yet both store your data in their respective, siloed databases. What happens when one of them goes bust? Or decides to pivot towards an ad-based business model? This project includes a Rails + MySQL RESTful API to store your data.` Contact in profile.
- naveenium 13y ago
  this goes very deep; i like it. i'll drop you a note soon.
  - dawson 13y ago
    Here's another one http://api.howareyou.com http://api.howareyou.com (I'm the founder)
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  Some of your links at the bottom are broken.
EternalFury 13y ago
Cool idea, Naveen. I would like to contribute and expand it.
- rocky1138 13y ago
  Same. Where's the github repo?
- iusable 13y ago
  Would love to show you a working example of a similar project with a public API. We have a number of users giving it a spin and would really appreciate the technical feedback. Email?
nemesis1637 13y ago
My first thought was "this is about as narcissist as you can get". But, it's still pretty damn cool. Nice job.
- stinkytaco 13y ago
  Interesting take. I looked at it almost the opposite way: "You are turning yourself into a set of numbers that has no identity outside of those numbers." Certainly if this were to be a thing (a la online charts or Microsoft Health) it would have that end result.
parm289 13y ago
I actually started hacking on this idea a few weeks ago. A personal API could have tons of uses. Many others have commented on the benefits of aggregation, but this could allow users to control and selectively sell/provide information to companies, apps, and advertisers. Applications could be built which utilize the personal APIs of friends. In Naveen's example, my app could compare my fitness level with my friends, recommend new restaurants based on ones my friends actually went to, track progress on goals, etc. What I'm trying to say is that with a personal API platform, apps simply become a front end to standardized personal data. Switching costs would be reduced significantly, which would encourage a lot more innovation. Here's a spec I've written out for my work on my own personal API. It's not done yet, and the code isn't open sourced yet, but hopefully it will inspire others to hack on the idea. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/570656/spec_public.md https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/570656/spec_public.md
groby_b 13y ago
I've been spending a bit of time thinking about this lately, too. Here are the things that I think need to be answered for this to be truly useful. * Secure access. It's great you decided to share everything publicly. I'm looking at fairly confidential data like blood tests, though. * How do you express permissions? It's likely you'd give out sets of data, not per-url permissions. (I.e. my photos from date A to date B, in this general vicinity - your vacation pics) * How can others discover what data sets & types you've shared? * Related: A type description. Some events cover time ranges. Some are momentary samples. They all use different units. Some have location info attached, some don't. (I.e. my heart rate doesn't. Pictures do. Steps/day - geolocation is meaningless) Either way, it's exciting to see people push ahead on this - many of these questions will probably be answered as we go.
- naveenium 13y ago
  you're totally right on all these points: for the time being, i've only put out information that's okay being 'public', but i imagine when you do want to share a set with a small group (let's say your physicians), you'll want an additional layer of access control.
  - groby_b 13y ago
    Oh, I didn't mean it as criticism. I admire that you went ahead and just created a v0 - that's further than I've gotten on my project, that's for sure :)
jckt 13y ago
Interesting. I think the real challenge behind this though, is not the API itself, but that for it to be really useful there has to be some sort of semi-automated form of data collection, that can be generally applied. Relevant: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytic...
- naveenium 13y ago
  you're totally right this is why i believe a smart scale is one of the best examples of good data tracking: you step on it whenever you think of it (not on some weird schedule; nor do you have to wear it or take it with you). it does the mundane stuff of capturing the data and sending it to the cloud, which you would otherwise have to write into some notebook. if it's a system that's fully automated though, one might lose interest in collecting it in the first place: the QSers always like to say – when you add a little friction to a process, you end up paying more attention to why it is. so instead of just blinding capturing your weight, setting up alerts for goals and seeing trends fall and rise will get you to make the most of the data – instead of just collecting data for data's sake.
  - dreeves 13y ago
    Ooh, we have a solution to that problem (losing interest in collecting it if it's fully automated). Assuming you're collecting data that you want to change, like, for many people, their weight, or, say, how much time you spend on Hacker News: http://beeminder.com/d/hn http://beeminder.com/d/hn Namely, set up a commitment device that forces you to keep your datapoints on a path to some goal. That's what Beeminder does.
revorad 13y ago
This is awesome. I've also been working on a personal data dashboard app, which is similar. It pulls in data from various social and fitness app APIs. You can also enter in data manually. It's mainly for viewing the data and trends, but I'll add an API too if there's demand. Is anyone interested in using my dashboard app?
- taylorwc 13y ago
  yes - want to explore
  - revorad 13y ago
    Great, can you please drop me an email (see profile) with some details on what data you're interested in tracking?
checkoutmygenes 13y ago
Nice! A few similar services come to mind that might be of interest: http://lockerproject.org/ http://lockerproject.org/ http://humanapi.co/ http://humanapi.co/ http://developer.runkeeper.com/healthgraph/ http://developer.runkeeper.com/healthgraph/ Get your DNA in there too! https://api.23andme.com/ https://api.23andme.com/
banders 13y ago
This is great! I would love to hear some device recommendations. Fitbit, Fuelband, or Jawbone? Withings scale or fitbit scale?
- naveenium 13y ago
  i own them all and have tried each one on and off for the last couple of years. i like each one in its own way (and, also, am friends with guys at each place) if you're just getting started and you aim to keep it light, then i'd start with the withings scale. you leave it in your bathroom, set your goals, step on it when you feel like it and watch trends and alerts from time to time. i find my weight tells me more about me over time than many other metrics: it shows my bad weeks from my good and, in indirect ways, shows when i stress out and get bad sleep (and therefore, end up eating poorly and exercising inconsistently)
- whazzmaster 13y ago
  I've had several Fitbit's and own the Withings scale; love them to pieces. My early Fitbit's broke when I sat down and caught them on the arms of a chair (once at a beer garden, natch) but the new Flex bracelet is incredibly nice.
Yhippa 13y ago
If there was an easy way to collect and publish this data for the average person would you be willing to sell this to companies directly? We're basically paying companies like Facebook and Twitter with our information in order to have, well, Facebook and Twitter. Maybe we could do something else with our "money".
realrocker 13y ago
Interesting. Not the api part but the idea itself. What we need is bitcoin like encrypted decentralized personal file with an open spec. This file can be edited only by the owner while can be read by anyone. Then we need exporter applications which can read this data and provide as an api. Now there are two levels of abstraction:data owners and data providers. There can be "data unions", groups which can negotiate with data providers and data consumers for a better deal(money,privacy). Identity verification can now be handled by data unions instead of data providers(as is the case now). "Take control" anyone?
dreamfactory 13y ago
Kind of interesting to think about slowly building up and aggregating more layers - e.g. activity, location, shopping, internet, phone, financial, educational, medical, legal, work, relationships etc - and interesting how much of this exists already. So if this comprehensive personal dataset becomes the norm at some point in the future - what happens when this is under somebody else's control against your interests (whether an illegal attacker or a legal authority)? And what about more gray areas, such as marketing, insurance etc (which would likely encourage the creation of that kind of API in the first place)?
jtchang 13y ago
I like the idea of this. I know there was a post recently about a guy selling 24 hour chunks of data about himself. Is there an opportunity here to create a secure data store for your own structured data hosted securely somewhere else and that providers would pay YOU to access? Of course you'd give free access to it for your doctor who needed to pull some info. But what if you had total control over your own API. This is a kind of like Facebook but I would never let facebook hold some of my most personal data. I would like to control authorization to my own data though to certain people.
hawkharris 13y ago
I enjoyed the post very much. Just out of curiosity, though, why did you choose not to capitalize any words?
- ry0ohki 13y ago
  that's the hip thing to do these days
- brvs 13y ago
  Because he's tuned his body and mind to machine-like efficiency and calculated that hitting the shift key is an unnecessary ancient relic of the past. Basically he's disrupting capitalization, which I've been thinking about a lot lately.
- mehrzad 13y ago
  Naveen is known for this. It's weird.
joshomh 13y ago
I work for a non-profit called Open mHealth. We are working to build an open architecture around health data from mobile apps and devices. The basic idea is that existing applications can have their own proprietary way of getting data into their systems, and we want to evolve a standard way of getting data out of these systems. We are developing an API specification around this. https://github.com/openmhealth/developer/wiki https://github.com/openmhealth/developer/wiki Once app developers adopt the Open mHealth approach, much of the work of getting data out of these silo'ed apps will be done. This is important because the real value of this data comes about when the streams are combined to be analyzed and visualized. I am posting here because many of the issues outlined in this thread and in the original post are things we are actively trying to solve.
aridiculous 13y ago
The prisoner forging his own chains.
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  Amusing ourselves to death in the 21st century.. this technology does raise, once again, the question of why people are saying so much personal information online. As if they had a giant ampitheatre.
- brvs 13y ago
  You DON'T have a public Bio-API? What the hell kind of deviant behavior are you trying to hide?! Freak.
crapshoot101 13y ago
I like the approach you're taking Naveen. I do wonder whether individual, disparate data steams have any value, or whether its a case of the sum of the parts is less than the whole, so to speak (along with concerns like security, etc etc that others have raised), but the concept is intriguing. Will be watching / following.
ace_of_spades 13y ago
Had a similar idea before but looked at it as more of a decentralized social platform where everyone hosts his own node with all personal information (maybe even locally on a personal device). Kind of like a virtual avatar that could connect and create a real social layer for the web, one that we could control and trust. Technically this should be pretty easy to create, nothing to fancy here. However standardizing and major real world adoption seems to be pipe dream (look at all the failed attempts like diaspora, etc.).
spdy 13y ago
One day we will own our own node. Where we have control over everything, what we want to share with whom and why. All we need is a place for storage and we add services like apps. With ipv6 around the corner everyone will get his personal ip attached anyway so we can build upon that. Many of us have this idea but no one made a breakthrough so far but it will emerge. We have not figured it out quite yet we have the technologie but we need to get the idea of how we glue everything together. I will look forward to the day when i pay a certain amount of money per year to have my own node without being the product of some megacorp thats only interested in quarter performance.
- amirmc 13y ago
  I'm working on exactly the kind of thing you're describing. Except ipv6 isn't really going to solve the connectivity problem as all the NATs and middleboxes on the network aren't going anywhere. We'll be using DNS instead as the 'identity' piece. Since you said you would pay for such a thing, can you elaborate how much and what you'd expect (in terms of functionality)?
  - spdy 13y ago
    I would pay for storage videos/pictures/documents etc. This could be one monetization stone. My gut feeling maybe around $9.99 / month or $50 / year. The basis everyone would except are normal social network features sharing of "items" galleries friend system feeds and groups. Maybe this part should be an open source solution like for example diaspora. On top of that you can build an app/service network. Maybe something like app.net. Important on all parts is that you own the data and you should be able to pull it at will from any part of the network.
- cpg 13y ago
  I have been working on something like this. A home server (called Amahi). See my profile. There is one app that one can run in a home server that is sticking out for this kind of behavior is ownCloud. We have packaged it for distribution in Amahi servers and it's resonating well with the users. I am not sure it has all the elements you would want, but many of them are there.
kcthota 13y ago
Nice! I like the idea of keeping all the data about me at one place. Given that so many companies are entering the wearable gadgets and personal fitness space, we will surely see some "Personal Portal" and the company making tons of money selling your personal data or showing "relevant" ads for you.
misiti3780 13y ago
Similar to this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5021783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5021783 (minus the act API)
stefanobernardi 13y ago
Very cool. I had actually mocked up something similar with openapi.me, but never got to release it. It included different level of permissions and data including addresses and payment information. The goal was to have a centralized repo of data to update only once and have it propagate to all the other services asking for the same data over and over (email, address, links, etc).
notlisted 13y ago
Love the idea. If you wish to incorporate social stream data, check out http://socialsafe.net http://socialsafe.net I've used it to back up and then delete my personal FB account, and continue to archive instagram, linkedin, twitter, blogs, etc. etc. What's more, even though their interface is kinda weird, they store all kinds of granular data in a very nice SQL database which contains more then they represent in their reports, and can be be repurposed in many different ways...
CodeCube 13y ago
This may be a bit of a privacy issue to publish, but an interesting dataset is that of https://openpaths.cc/ https://openpaths.cc/ ... keep the app running on your phone and it will keep track of your location. This data is then available to you over an API, or to researchers that you approve to get access to your anonymized data.
lnanek2 13y ago
Reminds me of 2net by Qualcomm, except that has a lot of features and uptake already: http://www.qualcommlife.com/ http://www.qualcommlife.com/ At CES, Qualcomm had a bunch of devices working with it through a plugin wall unit. They offer free data APIs for storage, etc..
tectonic 13y ago
This is also something that I hope Huginn can tackle. Huginn makes it easy to retrieve and react to your data. Adding an API beyond that should be straightforward. https://github.com/cantino/huginn https://github.com/cantino/huginn
question-all 13y ago
Is it that all your personal information is in one place that makes this so unique or is it the enormity of the data?
tn13 13y ago
That is a brilliant idea.
bbenko 13y ago
I'm also working on something similar as my weekend project. It's called Pokelog. https://pokelog.com/ https://pokelog.com/
dtwwtd 13y ago
I've had a similar idea for a while but never executed it well. I wanted to have my personal website merge all of my various feeds from other services into posts on my site to be the "one feed" of things happening in my life. I suppose API access to that would be a logical extension - this is very cool.
mengg 13y ago
http://www.personal.com/ http://www.personal.com/

321 points by dannyr 13y ago

This is so cool. Somebody should turn this into a platform - a mobile app that at least helps you record the stats you want, paired with an API platform that lets you grant and request permission for other "personal APIs". Then other API calls can be built on top of individual people - College students in the US, citizens of India, etc. The possibilities are pretty endless.

mnutt 13y ago
I'll bet you could get a lot of this information from something like FitBit.
- vijayr 13y ago
  True. But fitbit can only give health related data - what if one wants to track multiple things in his/her life - finance, health, food habits etc
jpreiland 13y ago
The Biggest Loser - play along at home! Be the "biggest loser" in [your region] to [acquire swag], etc. Sorry, maybe I'm being a bit facetious. There's definitely a lot of cool stuff that could be done with a personal API though. But how do you get people on-board? You have to have equipment to track/update stats right? Are people willing to buy into this potential network?
- ianstormtaylor 13y ago
  If Fitbit and all of those types of companies start having Export APIs a service could have wrapper around all of them. Then anyone with one of those devices could join easily. Could be the way to start, since you definitely don't want to be building the hardware and API altogether for an MVP.
- gregpilling 13y ago
  Do you think people might spend a million in the next year on weight loss? Then do this!

clockwerx 13y ago

The FOAF crowd already did a lot of this style of work - see also http://wiki.foaf-project.org/w/DataSources http://wiki.foaf-project.org/w/DataSources ; you probably have a few data feeds already, particularly focused on social networking site activity. Other vocabs work - ie, crschmidt's menow vocab. Express it as json ld to make it more modern, and you have a distributed ecology of services that all talk the same sort of language, about you.

tejaswiy 13y ago

I've actually been toying with the idea of having a private facebook account to hold all this data and more. Facebook's pretty much become the default social layer these days and almost every app can publish data to your news feed. Facebook also has a pretty cool Timeline UI to boot which will probably only get better as time passes.

doc-m 13y ago
I'm starting to think this is a really great idea - to have somewhere to keep a private personal history - particularly for checking in to keep a track of where I've been without appearing to be a self-important moron. You know who you are FB friends!
naveenium 13y ago
that's a really interesting concept you could probably do it today without the use of a private account i believe in app settings, you can restrict the visibility of posts by any particular app. this way, your scale's posts could be seen by just you and not your friends.

nkozyra 13y ago

I've thought about this many times before. But, this is the easy part. Storing, doing simple metrics, making assumptions and returning the data is not a problem. Standardizing input methods is.

reeses 13y ago
Federating data is a fairly 'solved' issue. Ironically (or not) enterprise IT is ahead of the average organism in this space. Faced with legacy systems communicating (or not communicating) via various channels, Middleware, ESBs, SOA, message queues, content-based routers, business process management, event processing, and data virtualization have all been created so that a development group can factor these systems into canonical representations of business events. At that point, the input method ranges from the simple (existing web app to API) to complex (treating a batch-oriented system in a semi-synchronous manner or screen-scraping an ancient smart terminal as a queriable data source). At that point, the real challenge isn't the input method but master data management and security/authority/privilege.

dale386 13y ago

This website was blocked by my company's firewall as "suspicious."

crisnoble 13y ago
maybe because its a tumblr site? You must work at a strict company, there is nothing NSFW in the article or the site.
- chiph 13y ago
  Got blocked for me as well - "Pornography"
- dale386 13y ago
  They're pretty lenient -- there are all sorts of awful websites that I'm able to visit without issue. They only tend to block sites related to hacking and piracy.

thorntonbf 13y ago

That's pretty cool! As an engineer, I crave data. As much as anything, this process would force me to organize that data into some archivable, more useful form.

cocoapriest 13y ago

As an engineer, I can understand the excitement. But I wonder why and who should use that data? I can't see any great use cases.

tannerc 13y ago
Doctors, for checking activity/sleep/etc. Friends/relationships, for checking general activity and check-ins. Potential businesses, for seeing interests and the like. Or, if currently employed, the employer could randomly check to see how the employee has been sleeping (are they going to be tired/cranky today?) or to see how often they check-in at the office. Aggregated with more data from people doing similar things and you can start to get a look at populations (what if everyone in SF was logging this data? What if a good chunk of those in the US were?).
uptown 13y ago
Insurance companies - for adjusting rates based on lifestyle.
lnanek2 13y ago
The quantified self people all claim if you can't measure something, you can't improve it. It is very popular with runners. If you don't track your time or run competitively, you tend not to improve your times. Runners are willing to put a lot of data in, even like how they felt after each run, which has good uses for planning work outs, etc.. But the same concept applies to anything - eating healthy/less, walking more, smoking less, etc.. Like good old Ben Franklin used to track virtues until he mastered them.

neeharc 13y ago

As you suggested, I think this is a great way to expose your data to apps that may be built on top of you. Also, a stalker would love this :P

abraininavat 13y ago

I was about to dismiss this but have thought about it a bit more, and there's something interesting here. There are already APIs built on top of you. There are the ones you know about, like Facebook and Twitter. There are the ones we know exist but have no direct access to, such as Amazon's backend or your police record. And there are the ones we may never know about, such as the NSA bot scanning this post right now and correlating it to my recent overseas cell phone calls. I'm intrigued by the concept of aggregating this data. Imagine if the wealth of data collected about you all went to one place, and, most importantly, was controlled by you. Imagine if Company X had to pay you to know about your Amazon spending habits instead of paying Amazon. Imagine if scientists could perform long-term health studies in an instant because the data they need is already collected and just needs to be crunched. I think the concept that's missing from your blog post is the idea of discoverability.

jckt 13y ago
+1, but do you mind expanding on "discoverability"?
- abraininavat 13y ago
  I'm no expert, but it occurs to me that a mountain of data coming in from disparate sources needs the concept of discoverability to be adequately used. That is, there has to be a way for a machine to find occurrences of data that it cares about without specifically knowing the exact attributes of the data. A simple example off the top of my head. Let's say there's a popular app that collects your pulse from your cellphone somehow, and that data is stored in your "Personal API" in some format. Some scientists write a routine that scans people's pulse patterns (with their permission, say) and warns them of possible risk factors. Later on hospitals start feeding their pulse data into the same personal API, but in a different format and using different units (bpm instead of bph, say), because they've never heard of the cellphone app. I take "discoverability" as a general concept addressing how the scientists' routine might discover that the hospital data exists in a person's "Personal API", discover that the thing being measured by the hospital is the same as the thing being measured by the app, and discover how to map both formats into a common workable format and units.

platz 13y ago

Please include the units in the results!

naveenium 13y ago
a good idea. for now, i left everything metric, but have thought about dropping in the units.

danielsiders 13y ago

This is one of the use cases we had in mind when in developing Tent (https://tent.io https://tent.io). Tent is an evented data store for arbitrary JSON blobs which can be typed b the developer. It has the added benefit of operating as a decentralized system that lets you push and receive posts with other users via webhooks. Tent can be used to create applications and systems from the quantified self to microblogging to cloud-backed file sync to collaborative real-time document editing.

kmax12 13y ago

Such an api sort of already exists in the form of Fitbit's api which can be found at http://dev.fitbit.com/ http://dev.fitbit.com/. Fitbit holds a lot of the data hostage, but it's at least something that anyone wearing a Fitbit can easily grant access to.

whazzmaster 13y ago
What data do they hold hostage?
- randomchars 13y ago
  It was on HN[0] a few months ago that they don't give you access to minute by minute data, only daily totals. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001301 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001301
  - whazzmaster 13y ago
    Ah; FYI the API now supports Intraday Time Series fetching. See https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Intraday-Time-Series https://wiki.fitbit.com/display/API/API-Get-Intraday-Time-Se... for more information. You can retrieve data in 1 min or 15 min increments.
    - kmax12 13y ago
      you still cannot get access to the raw data or data in real time.

Dirlewanger 13y ago

Narcissism reaches a new level (or low, depending on how you see it).

randomchars 13y ago
Narcissism: 1. Excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one's physical appearance 2. Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration So explain to me; what does quantified self have to do with narcissism?
- pknight 13y ago
  Well in defense of this snarky comment, I have to say that the social sharing part of personal data like this can come across in this way (doesn't make it narcissism but still...). The thing I like about personal data collection and cool new apis is what it could do for the individual, i.e. offer new insight, movitivation, encourage better behaviours. But I hate the sharing part because it opens the door to over-sharing. Not just in terms of corporations having all kinds of data and using it in their interests, but also just simply the noise that gets added by people sharing information that frankly, has very little relevance. I don't really care if someone just completed a 2 mile run and I certainly don't go to twitter to read automatically generated tweets about it.
dirtyaura 13y ago
Caring about your health and well-being isn't narcissism. It's one of the most important things that you can give for your loved ones - kids, spouse, family and close friends - because healthy and happy person can support others in the need. And I'm strong believer that our personal data will play a big part in the preventive healthcare in the future.

psycr 13y ago

I have been working on an open source version of this idea: http://www.quantify.io http://www.quantify.io Right now, things are fairly sparse. You can check the repo out here: https://github.com/jdjkelly/bodyimage https://github.com/jdjkelly/bodyimage An open source Rails API to track "quantified self" data. Right now, the hardware companies in this space are storing your data in closed systems. Let's change that. Take the Withings WiFi scale or the FitBit, for example. Both are essential pieces of the quantified self hacker, yet both store your data in their respective, siloed databases. What happens when one of them goes bust? Or decides to pivot towards an ad-based business model? This project includes a Rails + MySQL RESTful API to store your data.` Contact in profile.

naveenium 13y ago
this goes very deep; i like it. i'll drop you a note soon.
- dawson 13y ago
  Here's another one http://api.howareyou.com http://api.howareyou.com (I'm the founder)
quantumpotato_ 13y ago
Some of your links at the bottom are broken.

EternalFury 13y ago

Cool idea, Naveen. I would like to contribute and expand it.

rocky1138 13y ago
Same. Where's the github repo?
iusable 13y ago
Would love to show you a working example of a similar project with a public API. We have a number of users giving it a spin and would really appreciate the technical feedback. Email?

nemesis1637 13y ago

My first thought was "this is about as narcissist as you can get". But, it's still pretty damn cool. Nice job.

stinkytaco 13y ago
Interesting take. I looked at it almost the opposite way: "You are turning yourself into a set of numbers that has no identity outside of those numbers." Certainly if this were to be a thing (a la online charts or Microsoft Health) it would have that end result.

parm289 13y ago

I actually started hacking on this idea a few weeks ago. A personal API could have tons of uses. Many others have commented on the benefits of aggregation, but this could allow users to control and selectively sell/provide information to companies, apps, and advertisers. Applications could be built which utilize the personal APIs of friends. In Naveen's example, my app could compare my fitness level with my friends, recommend new restaurants based on ones my friends actually went to, track progress on goals, etc. What I'm trying to say is that with a personal API platform, apps simply become a front end to standardized personal data. Switching costs would be reduced significantly, which would encourage a lot more innovation. Here's a spec I've written out for my work on my own personal API. It's not done yet, and the code isn't open sourced yet, but hopefully it will inspire others to hack on the idea. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/570656/spec_public.md https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/570656/spec_public.md

groby_b 13y ago

I've been spending a bit of time thinking about this lately, too. Here are the things that I think need to be answered for this to be truly useful. * Secure access. It's great you decided to share everything publicly. I'm looking at fairly confidential data like blood tests, though. * How do you express permissions? It's likely you'd give out sets of data, not per-url permissions. (I.e. my photos from date A to date B, in this general vicinity - your vacation pics) * How can others discover what data sets & types you've shared? * Related: A type description. Some events cover time ranges. Some are momentary samples. They all use different units. Some have location info attached, some don't. (I.e. my heart rate doesn't. Pictures do. Steps/day - geolocation is meaningless) Either way, it's exciting to see people push ahead on this - many of these questions will probably be answered as we go.

naveenium 13y ago
you're totally right on all these points: for the time being, i've only put out information that's okay being 'public', but i imagine when you do want to share a set with a small group (let's say your physicians), you'll want an additional layer of access control.
- groby_b 13y ago
  Oh, I didn't mean it as criticism. I admire that you went ahead and just created a v0 - that's further than I've gotten on my project, that's for sure :)

jckt 13y ago

Interesting. I think the real challenge behind this though, is not the API itself, but that for it to be really useful there has to be some sort of semi-automated form of data collection, that can be generally applied. Relevant: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytic...

naveenium 13y ago
you're totally right this is why i believe a smart scale is one of the best examples of good data tracking: you step on it whenever you think of it (not on some weird schedule; nor do you have to wear it or take it with you). it does the mundane stuff of capturing the data and sending it to the cloud, which you would otherwise have to write into some notebook. if it's a system that's fully automated though, one might lose interest in collecting it in the first place: the QSers always like to say – when you add a little friction to a process, you end up paying more attention to why it is. so instead of just blinding capturing your weight, setting up alerts for goals and seeing trends fall and rise will get you to make the most of the data – instead of just collecting data for data's sake.
- dreeves 13y ago
  Ooh, we have a solution to that problem (losing interest in collecting it if it's fully automated). Assuming you're collecting data that you want to change, like, for many people, their weight, or, say, how much time you spend on Hacker News: http://beeminder.com/d/hn http://beeminder.com/d/hn Namely, set up a commitment device that forces you to keep your datapoints on a path to some goal. That's what Beeminder does.

revorad 13y ago

This is awesome. I've also been working on a personal data dashboard app, which is similar. It pulls in data from various social and fitness app APIs. You can also enter in data manually. It's mainly for viewing the data and trends, but I'll add an API too if there's demand. Is anyone interested in using my dashboard app?

taylorwc 13y ago
yes - want to explore
- revorad 13y ago
  Great, can you please drop me an email (see profile) with some details on what data you're interested in tracking?

checkoutmygenes 13y ago

Nice! A few similar services come to mind that might be of interest: http://lockerproject.org/ http://lockerproject.org/ http://humanapi.co/ http://humanapi.co/ http://developer.runkeeper.com/healthgraph/ http://developer.runkeeper.com/healthgraph/ Get your DNA in there too! https://api.23andme.com/ https://api.23andme.com/

banders 13y ago

This is great! I would love to hear some device recommendations. Fitbit, Fuelband, or Jawbone? Withings scale or fitbit scale?

naveenium 13y ago
i own them all and have tried each one on and off for the last couple of years. i like each one in its own way (and, also, am friends with guys at each place) if you're just getting started and you aim to keep it light, then i'd start with the withings scale. you leave it in your bathroom, set your goals, step on it when you feel like it and watch trends and alerts from time to time. i find my weight tells me more about me over time than many other metrics: it shows my bad weeks from my good and, in indirect ways, shows when i stress out and get bad sleep (and therefore, end up eating poorly and exercising inconsistently)
whazzmaster 13y ago
I've had several Fitbit's and own the Withings scale; love them to pieces. My early Fitbit's broke when I sat down and caught them on the arms of a chair (once at a beer garden, natch) but the new Flex bracelet is incredibly nice.

Yhippa 13y ago

If there was an easy way to collect and publish this data for the average person would you be willing to sell this to companies directly? We're basically paying companies like Facebook and Twitter with our information in order to have, well, Facebook and Twitter. Maybe we could do something else with our "money".

realrocker 13y ago

Interesting. Not the api part but the idea itself. What we need is bitcoin like encrypted decentralized personal file with an open spec. This file can be edited only by the owner while can be read by anyone. Then we need exporter applications which can read this data and provide as an api. Now there are two levels of abstraction:data owners and data providers. There can be "data unions", groups which can negotiate with data providers and data consumers for a better deal(money,privacy). Identity verification can now be handled by data unions instead of data providers(as is the case now). "Take control" anyone?

dreamfactory 13y ago

Kind of interesting to think about slowly building up and aggregating more layers - e.g. activity, location, shopping, internet, phone, financial, educational, medical, legal, work, relationships etc - and interesting how much of this exists already. So if this comprehensive personal dataset becomes the norm at some point in the future - what happens when this is under somebody else's control against your interests (whether an illegal attacker or a legal authority)? And what about more gray areas, such as marketing, insurance etc (which would likely encourage the creation of that kind of API in the first place)?

jtchang 13y ago

I like the idea of this. I know there was a post recently about a guy selling 24 hour chunks of data about himself. Is there an opportunity here to create a secure data store for your own structured data hosted securely somewhere else and that providers would pay YOU to access? Of course you'd give free access to it for your doctor who needed to pull some info. But what if you had total control over your own API. This is a kind of like Facebook but I would never let facebook hold some of my most personal data. I would like to control authorization to my own data though to certain people.

hawkharris 13y ago

I enjoyed the post very much. Just out of curiosity, though, why did you choose not to capitalize any words?

ry0ohki 13y ago
that's the hip thing to do these days
brvs 13y ago
Because he's tuned his body and mind to machine-like efficiency and calculated that hitting the shift key is an unnecessary ancient relic of the past. Basically he's disrupting capitalization, which I've been thinking about a lot lately.
mehrzad 13y ago
Naveen is known for this. It's weird.

joshomh 13y ago

I work for a non-profit called Open mHealth. We are working to build an open architecture around health data from mobile apps and devices. The basic idea is that existing applications can have their own proprietary way of getting data into their systems, and we want to evolve a standard way of getting data out of these systems. We are developing an API specification around this. https://github.com/openmhealth/developer/wiki https://github.com/openmhealth/developer/wiki Once app developers adopt the Open mHealth approach, much of the work of getting data out of these silo'ed apps will be done. This is important because the real value of this data comes about when the streams are combined to be analyzed and visualized. I am posting here because many of the issues outlined in this thread and in the original post are things we are actively trying to solve.

aridiculous 13y ago

The prisoner forging his own chains.

quantumpotato_ 13y ago
Amusing ourselves to death in the 21st century.. this technology does raise, once again, the question of why people are saying so much personal information online. As if they had a giant ampitheatre.
brvs 13y ago
You DON'T have a public Bio-API? What the hell kind of deviant behavior are you trying to hide?! Freak.

crapshoot101 13y ago

I like the approach you're taking Naveen. I do wonder whether individual, disparate data steams have any value, or whether its a case of the sum of the parts is less than the whole, so to speak (along with concerns like security, etc etc that others have raised), but the concept is intriguing. Will be watching / following.

ace_of_spades 13y ago

Had a similar idea before but looked at it as more of a decentralized social platform where everyone hosts his own node with all personal information (maybe even locally on a personal device). Kind of like a virtual avatar that could connect and create a real social layer for the web, one that we could control and trust. Technically this should be pretty easy to create, nothing to fancy here. However standardizing and major real world adoption seems to be pipe dream (look at all the failed attempts like diaspora, etc.).

spdy 13y ago

One day we will own our own node. Where we have control over everything, what we want to share with whom and why. All we need is a place for storage and we add services like apps. With ipv6 around the corner everyone will get his personal ip attached anyway so we can build upon that. Many of us have this idea but no one made a breakthrough so far but it will emerge. We have not figured it out quite yet we have the technologie but we need to get the idea of how we glue everything together. I will look forward to the day when i pay a certain amount of money per year to have my own node without being the product of some megacorp thats only interested in quarter performance.

amirmc 13y ago
I'm working on exactly the kind of thing you're describing. Except ipv6 isn't really going to solve the connectivity problem as all the NATs and middleboxes on the network aren't going anywhere. We'll be using DNS instead as the 'identity' piece. Since you said you would pay for such a thing, can you elaborate how much and what you'd expect (in terms of functionality)?
- spdy 13y ago
  I would pay for storage videos/pictures/documents etc. This could be one monetization stone. My gut feeling maybe around $9.99 / month or $50 / year. The basis everyone would except are normal social network features sharing of "items" galleries friend system feeds and groups. Maybe this part should be an open source solution like for example diaspora. On top of that you can build an app/service network. Maybe something like app.net. Important on all parts is that you own the data and you should be able to pull it at will from any part of the network.
cpg 13y ago
I have been working on something like this. A home server (called Amahi). See my profile. There is one app that one can run in a home server that is sticking out for this kind of behavior is ownCloud. We have packaged it for distribution in Amahi servers and it's resonating well with the users. I am not sure it has all the elements you would want, but many of them are there.

kcthota 13y ago

Nice! I like the idea of keeping all the data about me at one place. Given that so many companies are entering the wearable gadgets and personal fitness space, we will surely see some "Personal Portal" and the company making tons of money selling your personal data or showing "relevant" ads for you.

misiti3780 13y ago

Similar to this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5021783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5021783 (minus the act API)

stefanobernardi 13y ago

Very cool. I had actually mocked up something similar with openapi.me, but never got to release it. It included different level of permissions and data including addresses and payment information. The goal was to have a centralized repo of data to update only once and have it propagate to all the other services asking for the same data over and over (email, address, links, etc).

notlisted 13y ago

Love the idea. If you wish to incorporate social stream data, check out http://socialsafe.net http://socialsafe.net I've used it to back up and then delete my personal FB account, and continue to archive instagram, linkedin, twitter, blogs, etc. etc. What's more, even though their interface is kinda weird, they store all kinds of granular data in a very nice SQL database which contains more then they represent in their reports, and can be be repurposed in many different ways...

CodeCube 13y ago

This may be a bit of a privacy issue to publish, but an interesting dataset is that of https://openpaths.cc/ https://openpaths.cc/ ... keep the app running on your phone and it will keep track of your location. This data is then available to you over an API, or to researchers that you approve to get access to your anonymized data.

lnanek2 13y ago

Reminds me of 2net by Qualcomm, except that has a lot of features and uptake already: http://www.qualcommlife.com/ http://www.qualcommlife.com/ At CES, Qualcomm had a bunch of devices working with it through a plugin wall unit. They offer free data APIs for storage, etc..

tectonic 13y ago

This is also something that I hope Huginn can tackle. Huginn makes it easy to retrieve and react to your data. Adding an API beyond that should be straightforward. https://github.com/cantino/huginn https://github.com/cantino/huginn

question-all 13y ago

Is it that all your personal information is in one place that makes this so unique or is it the enormity of the data?

tn13 13y ago

That is a brilliant idea.

bbenko 13y ago

I'm also working on something similar as my weekend project. It's called Pokelog. https://pokelog.com/ https://pokelog.com/

dtwwtd 13y ago

I've had a similar idea for a while but never executed it well. I wanted to have my personal website merge all of my various feeds from other services into posts on my site to be the "one feed" of things happening in my life. I suppose API access to that would be a logical extension - this is very cool.

mengg 13y ago

http://www.personal.com/ http://www.personal.com/