What to track?

In The Island, each of the clones are cared for and tracked extensively by computer systems to ensure their healthy existence and usefulness as source material for the human that was cloned.  Though a disturbing premise, it does make me think about what we could do for ourselves now to better track our fitness and daily health.  Some things exist now - others, not so much.  Here's what I think the world needs:

1. Pulse Rate and Blood Pressure monitoring: this is an oldie but goodie.  Trouble with this is doing it consistently when its a separate activity.  Not likely to happen.  [Added: As Scott pointed out, Respiratory Rate should also be part of a complete picture here.  Unfortunately, there are no current tools that I know of to capture this - pulse is apparently an easier "on the go" measurement to take.  I'd rather not wear a face mask when riding.] 
2. Disolved Oxygen Levels: I just bought a handy finger tip device to measure this (along with pulse).  Great little device, but not connected to anything.
3. Urine Monitor: I haven't thought too much about this one, but it seems like a relatively easy thing to monitor.  Hang a device off the side of your toilet and it should be able to read some measure of the chemistry in the bowl before and after your deposit.  Somewhat gross, but I think that the results would be fascinating and useful.  Would have to have a means of distinguishing the depositor and transmitting the results.
4. Motion and Skin Moistness Monitor: I that this has been done (a la fitbit - for the motion part, which appears to be way better than Philips DirectLife; but Body Media Fit Link), but perhaps beyond acceleration and skin moisture content.  Add to it the following: temperature, blood pressure, oxygen and pulse levels could be recorded (all of the time)?  It would be great to be able to see how your body's metrics change as you: start your day, eat lunch, meet with stressful clients, start your workout, sleep.  Also, it would seem to be useful to provide alarms or silent vibrations when you've been sedentary for too long (like now while I try to collect my thoughts for this post).  This would be fantastic for an office worker such as myself.  I think form factor and ease of use will be the key here.
5. Weight: obvious one, I think.  Data preservation should take into account time of day, though.
6. Body fat measurement: handheld device to measure directly the fat in your body (or at least inferred through electrical resistance).  Likely related, but not perfectly, to weight.  The fitbit wi-fi scale looks like it does a good integrating this and weight (and makes it easy to track).
7. Waistline/neck/thigh: simple measurement, maybe, but I think that there should be more consistency - there must be a way to do it the same every time?  Digital measuring tapes and calipers could also be solutions here.
8. Sleep Monitoring: part of what the fitbit offers, but I'm not sure how much useful information it provides.  Should take some user input on when you've first laid down (though maybe this is obvious from the motion, or lack thereof).
9. Food Intake Monitoring: Aside from forcing people to record what they eat, I'm not sure what to do here.  I've done this over a couple of month period and it turns out to be reasonably hard to keep up with.  Need to find a way to make it easier.  How about taking a picture of what you are eating and the software figures out what you are eating and estimates how much of each thing?  Probably stupidly complex to make work well, but would be pretty sweet.

Design Principals:

1. Data preservation: all measurements are kept and timestamped
2. Data connectivity: all devices instantly pass along their measurements to a data preservation capable device (and ultimately send the data to the cloud).
3. Data ownership: all data should be available in a way that the user can easily manipulate on their own (CSV is probably the least common denominator).
4. Personalization of data presentation: different people are going to care about different things.  Let them customize the view.  That said . . .
5. Give guidance on what matters: Make sure that people know what types of things that they should be looking at.  Why does it matter?  What studies support the view?  How can they make small changes in their behavior to improve their health / outcomes?
6. Encourage the user to meet goals: goals should be chosen by the user and encouragement tailored to their interests - text message alerts/reminders/pick-me-ups and email summaries of progress would be fantastic approaches (and have already proven effective in studies on quitting smoking).  fitbit badges, etc. seem to be an OK start - but not quite the same.

A New Bulb

The only lightbulb on the outside of the house that was not an LED was the CFL that was lighting the stone chimney that is on the front of the house.  It was a CFL because I didn't have any LED's that fit in the light fixture.  Well, that bulb is dead.  I'm not sure that I should be surprised, but it was annoying giving that it is the only bulb on the outside of the house that requires the aluminum extension ladder to get to.  Fortunately, I combined changing this bulb with hanging the icicle lights, so it wasn't too much extra effort.  Let's hope that this bulb lasts for its rated lifetime of 30,000 hours!  (that would be roughly 8 years)

Is that a speaker or a light?

I saw the IAV Light Speaker yesterday in an email from SmartHome. Pretty cool concept: a virtually hassle-free installation for wireless speakers. I haven't seen any reviews to know if they are worth anything (but would be willing to test them out for the manufacturer if they asked). Immediately, though, here are some problems (IMHO) with their approach:

1. They are wireless, but the website doesn't have any information about the wireless technology (or even band) that is used. There is some information on this HomeToys press release-like article. But that is just enough to be concerned about wifi interference.
2. Its not clear that the speaker and the LED components are modular. What if one dies and the other still works? This seems like a problem.
3. High price - seriously, $200/speaker of unknown sound quality? $800 just to get started. Nope. No matter what you save in installation, this will be too high a barrier to most. Get it down to $100 for the base station and $100/speaker and I think you have something.
4. No digital audio in option. It seems that this would have been easier (and a path of lower sound quality degradation) than their approach. So it goes from Analog at base station input toDigital for wireless transmission (presumably?) to Analog to be played by the speaker. Why not skip the first A/D conversion?

Still, a pretty cool concept that has some serious potential use in my house full of recessed lights!