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December 9, 2011

Health Graph update from Le Web (video)

Our CEO Jason Jacobs (@jjacobs22) provided a great update on the Health Graph (@healthgraphapi) in his discussion with Leo Laporte (@leolaporte) at Le Web (@leweb).

Click here or watch the embedded video below.

http://www.ustream.tv/embed/recorded/19007839

December 9, 2011

Nexercise makes fitness fun with the Health Graph

Fitness games are an important and growing segment of the health and fitness landscape, and we’re very happy to have some several fantastic partners implementing games on top of the Health Graph (@healthgraphapi). Case in point: Nexercise (@nexercise), our featured partner this week.

Bill Day: Please tell us about yourself and your company.

Benjamin Young: I’ve been managing and delivering business and information technology solutions for the last twelve years. I love working on things that allow me to blend my creativity and entrepreneurial passion. I’ve worked in software development, product management executive positions and co-founded C.Y. Strategy, a boutique strategy and management-consulting firm focused on providing advisory services to early and mid-stage ventures. I’ve also worked on voice application systems and managed research in unstructured data analytics.

My latest venture, Nexercise aims to tackle obesity in America by turning fitness into a fun and interactive game. I originally conceived of the idea from personal frustrations with maintaining my weight while simultaneously working, going to school, and raising two children. Since the beta launch of Nexercise in August, the game has already grown to over 35,000 users.

BD: What is the “elevator pitch” for why someone should use Nexercise?

BY: Nexercise makes fitness FUN. It’s a new and exciting way to get motivated, lose weight, and stay in shape. You can play with friends, earn rewards, defeat challenges, and track your progress on the largest fitness mobile interactive game of its kind.

BD: How did you get started using the Health Graph API?

BY: We reached out to RunKeeper and you were extremely helpful. Your team pointed us to some great resources, including an open source iOS project in Github that enabled us to speed up our development time. [Editor’s note: Our Health Graph libraries page links to that and other third party libraries, wrappers, and related tools.]

BD: How is using the Health Graph benefiting your business?

BY: The Health Graph adds a new level of analytics and tracking for our users. Nexercise is great at making a motivational game experience and collecting data from a user’s workouts. We did not, however, build out a set of tools to give the user detailed insight on more “quantified-self” metrics like the capabilities RunKeeper provides. The integration was a perfect fit on capabilities! We make fitness fun and RunKeeper makes fitness and health data insightful.

BD: Which portions of the Health Graph API do you use, and why?

BY: Currently we allow users to link to the Health Graph and post their activities. This will enable them to get more insight into their fitness activities.

BD: What do you like about the Health Graph? What would you like to see changed?

BY: We like the simplicity and ease of use. We’d like to see a full iOS SDK to speed up integration.

BD: If you could request any new feature from the Health Graph, what would it be? How would you use it?

BY: We would love to see extended capabilities like interest discovery: You would recommend other users to connect, based on fitness level, location, interests, and activities.

BD: Can you share any future plans for your app? What’s coming next that your users will be excited about? Does the Health Graph play a role in that, and if so, how?

BY: We plan to expand functionality to provide Health Graph API users with additional customized game experiences based on their information. Additionally we will eventually allow users to get credit (experience points, virtual medals, and rewards) for activities not recorded using the Nexercise app.

BD: Is there anything else we should know about you or your application?

BY: Yes. It’s currently available on the Apple App Store. We will be coming to Android soon, so if you have an Android phone please sign up for early access by clicking here.

Cross-posted from the Health Graph blog.

December 6, 2011

Health Graph libraries

We have created a new “Health Graph libraries” page to provide a repository for all of the third party Health Graph API libraries, wrappers, bindings, and other tools available for developers.

Click here to access the page or here to jump straight to the Google Docs spreadsheet. You can subscribe to the spreadsheet’s RSS feed here to receive future updates and additions via your reader of choice.

The spreadsheet is also embedded below (scroll right to see the rest of each listing).

Please contact us via Twitter @healthgraphapi, Facebook, or Google+ if you know of others that should be added. Thanks!

Cross-posted from the Health Graph blog.

December 4, 2011

Notes from the week of 2011-12-04

November 27, 2011

Notes from the week of 2011-11-27

November 23, 2011

Off road mapping via OS RouteMapper and the Health Graph

Mark Kelsey (@freddy4th) is a doctor and a programmer with some great ideas for using the Health Graph (@healthgraphapi). This week we feature him and his first published Health Graph app, OS RouteMapper (@osroutemapper), in our ongoing series on Health Graph partners.

Bill Day: Please tell us about yourself and your company.

Mark Kelsey: I am a doctor by profession and an amateur self taught programmer. I have developed a number of web applications and software packages which we use within my medical practice and I now also work for a software company which develops clinical decision support software. Work on my Health Graph app OS RouteMapper is therefore a bit of a sideline at the moment, though with my medical background I have lots of ideas for how the Health Graph API could be used to help people manage their medical conditions.

BD: What’s the “elevator pitch” for why someone should use your app?

MK: OS RouteMapper allows people to view their Runkeeper activities on Ordnance Survey maps within the UK. These maps are world renowned for being very detailed and in particular provide excellent detail off road. They are therefore particularly useful for walkers, cyclists or runners who don’t stick to roads! Outside the UK, the app uses OpenStreetMaps Cycle Maps which in many areas are much more detailed than Google maps, again particularly useful off road.

BD: How did you get started using the Health Graph API?

MK: After using Runkeeper to track my cycling activities, I wanted to view my activities on more detailed maps so I could see where I’d been (I’m often cycling at night along dark tracks!) and plan where else to ride.

Before the Health Graph API was released, I developed a web site that would allow me to upload GPX files to show on an OS Map. When the Health Graph API was released it was a natural development to automatically get the activities off Runkeeper. I was surprised by how many people started using the app when I published it and when I saw that people from other countries were using it I added the support for OpenStreetMaps Cycle Maps. After seeing how easy it was to integrate with the Health Graph API, I have thought of lots of other ideas about how the data could be used in different ways.

BD: How has using the Health Graph benefited you?

MK: At the moment this is just a sideline for me but I think some of the ideas I have may have even greater appeal to lots of people and may become a commercial opportunity.

BD: Which portions of the Health Graph API do you use, and why?

MK: I mainly use the activities feed and in particular the path of each activity is used to plot the route on the map. The street team feed is also used to enable users to view street team members’ activities on the maps.

BD: What do you like about the Health Graph? What would you like to see changed?

MK: It is very easy to integrate with the Health Graph and the documentation is very clear, even for an amateur programmer like me! One addition I would appreciate is the ability to view the user’s saved routes as this is currently not available. I would also like to develop the ability for users to plan routes using my maps and save them back to the Runkeeper / HealthGraph site as a route.

BD: If you could request any crazy new feature from the Health Graph, what would it be? How would you use it?

MK: With my background as a doctor, I would really love to see some integration with clinical systems and devices so that users can see data (e.g. blood glucose measurements, BP readings, Weight readings etc.) that their doctor has on the clinical system, and they can see the effect of their exercise on their medical conditions. This could extend to things like blood glucose monitors so patients can automatically upload data. I think this kind of thing could really help telemedicine develop in the future.

BD: Can you share any future plans for your app? What’s coming next that your users will be excited about? Does the Health Graph play a role in that, and if so, how?

MK: In the immediate future, I am developing a way for users to compare their performance over parts of their routes i.e. split times, so that even if they don’t follow exactly the same route twice, they can compare their performance over the parts of the route that are the same. As stated above I have a number of other ideas that I think would work well with the Health Graph and build on it. I am hoping to develop these.

BD: Is there anything else we should know about you or your application?

MK: You can follow future developments on Twitter at @osroutemapper!

Cross-posted from the Health Graph blog.

November 20, 2011

Notes from the week of 2011-11-20

November 17, 2011

I love this Slate review of RunKeeper!

Farhad Manjoo nails it in his “Killer Apps” video review of RunKeeper. Very nice!

November 15, 2011

Social workouts with Fitness Tracker 90 CE and the Health Graph

Are you a developer with an idea for using the Health Graph (@healthgraphapi) but no company (yet) to help you build it? Take inspiration from this week’s featured partner, Steve Chen of SJC Global, Inc., who built Fitness Tracker 90 CE (@iFitnessTracker) himself while holding down a separate full-time job. You can do it too!

Bill Day: Please tell us about yourself and your company.

Steve Chen: My company, SJC Global, is self owned and I am the sole employee. I do occasionally contract with other individuals as necessary, but the core of the product is all developed by myself. The company started in August 2010, and the company’s mission is to create great apps that enhance users lives. I hope to expand and grow the company’s products in the next year. My company is currently one of my many “hobbies”, as I am only able to work on it during my free time, since I also have a regular full-time job.

I have a Computer Science degree as well as an MBA and a great deal of experience working in the technology industry. I’ve worked at numerous companies throughout my career including small start-ups as well as large multi-billion dollar companies.

BD: What’s the “elevator pitch” for why someone should use your app?

SC: Fitness Tracker 90 CE is an app for your mobile device that allows you to record and monitor your workout progress. You no longer need to try and remember your workout schedule, since the app allows you to customize any routine to fit your needs. Use the app to track any 60 or 90 day workout or anything in between. Entering data is simple with the sleek user interface that is designed with speed of entry in mind. With Fitness Tracker 90 CE you know exactly how your workout is progressing given the detailed logs and elegant graphs that let you visualize your achievements. Get social with your workout by sharing your results on the RunKeeper service, or sharing your workouts on the user forums.

BD: How did you get started using the Health Graph API?

SC: I felt that integrating with RunKeeper would benefit both my existing users as well as RunKeeper users not yet using Fitness Tracker 90 CE.

I started development using the Health Graph API by going through the documentation on the developer site. I also worked closely with the RunKeeper team initially on validating some of the API requirements to ensure that they would map to my needs as well as others.

BD: How has using the Health Graph benefited your business?

SC: Having the ability for users to post their results to the RunKeeper service has helped expand the reasons why someone would purchase my app. Users tend to see the integration with the RunKeeper service as a great benefit and I am thrilled that I am now able to offer that service to them in Fitness Tracker 90 CE. Traffic to my site has started to increase with little promotion thus far, and I hope to see the traffic continue to rise as more and more announcements are made.

BD: Which portions of the Health Graph API do you use, and why?

SC: Fitness Tracker 90 CE currently utilizes the strength tracking and weight measurement features of the Health Graph API. The decision to use these Health Graph features was based on what Fitness Tracker 90 CE is designed to do, and that is to allow users to track and maintain their fitness.

BD: What do you like about the Health Graph? What would you like to see changed?

SC: The Health Graph makes it easy for any app to integrate with it through the use of the APIs. The one difficulty I found frustrating at times was that errors on the server often resulted in HTML pages coming back instead of a simple response with an error code and description. I could see the need for an HTML page result when the API is called from a web page itself, but when calling the APIs through a mobile app the result needs to be parsed out of all the HTML and it is unclear in the documentation what types of error conditions may arise.

BD: If you could request any crazy new feature from the Health Graph, what would it be? How would you use it?

SC: My first request would be a simple change to how fitness activities are recorded. Currently, there is a type “other” that may be used when defining a new fitness activity. I would like to see an optional field that would allow you to also specify the fitness activity name, as this option would allow my users to track activities such as cardio kickboxing or other workouts that don’t necessarily have individual exercises.

BD: Can you share any future plans for your app? What’s coming next that your users will be excited about? Does the Health Graph play a role in that, and if so, how?

SC: I can’t give away all my secrets, but I can say that I do plan on expanding my app to other devices in the future. The mobile industry is growing at an extraordinary rate and getting Fitness Tracker 90 CE on all mobile devices is one of my goals for 2012.

I am planning on integrating more workouts with the RunKeeper service as soon as the APIs are available that would allow me to do so. My goal is that every exercise, whether strength training related or not, that can be tracked in Fitness Tracker 90 CE should be integrated into RunKeeper.

There are also plans to add a stopwatch feature that will allow users to better monitor the time spent on fitness activities. This feature is already available through the RunKeeper API and would be something that users could look forward to seeing.

BD: Is there anything else we should know about you or your application?

SC: If you are serious about working out and keeping track of your routine then definitely give Fitness Tracker 90 CE a try!

Cross-posted from the Health Graph blog.

November 14, 2011

Android Open 2011 Highlights

This October I was able to attend both the O’Reilly Android Open (@androidopen) and X.commerce Innovate conferences back-to-back in San Francisco. I wrote more about Innovate in a separate DevZone article. This time, I’d like to break down the most interesting bits of Android Open from a developer-centric perspective.

Fascinating morning keynotes

Android Open was jam packed with activities including a pre-conference day of workshops and then two days of main conference. Each morning of the regular conference began with a series of five to twenty minute long keynote talks and panels. You can see a complete listing of the speakers for both days in the conference schedule. You can also watch the keynote sessions via the Android Open 2011 Youtube video playlist (click here to access). I would encourage you to watch as many of the keynotes as possible; they contain a lot of interesting and inspirational material to get your Android juices flowing!

O’Reilly founder & CEO Tim O’Reilly (@timoreilly) kicked things off with his Day 1 opening keynote “What Android can learn from Steve Jobs“. Definitely an interesting choice of title for an Android conference! But Jobs’ passing the week before presented O’Reilly with an opportunity to discuss some of the key principles behind Apple’s success, especially the notion espoused by Jobs that a company needs to be “true to its soul”. O’Reilly examined Google’s “soul” at length, suggesting that it needs to never forget its original mission to help connect people to all the world’s information. Key takeaway for Android developers and businesses: Stay true to yourself and your mission while holding Google to its own high ideals, too.

The next keynote that caught my attention was a conversation between conference co-chair Marko Gargenta (@markogargenta) and Robert Stephens (@rstephens), CTO of Best Buy. Stephens is a pretty technical guy, even going so far as to say that Best Buy ought to get rid of their DVD section and replace it with an Arduino section! As you might imagine given the crowd, this was well received.

The thing that really stood out for me as a mobile payments developer, however, was Stephens’ discussion of the many issues with NFC deployment. He said Best Buy may bypass at least some NFC generations completely, going straight to purely cloud-based payments solutions. This joins the rising tide of anti-NFC sentiment and pragmatism that seems to be building, and echoes some of the many things PayPal has said publicly about NFC weaknesses in recent months. Takeaway: Watch major retailers such as Best Buy closely to pick up the beginnings of big shifts in mobile payments.

Day 2 saw a couple more morning keynotes that stood out for me. The first, “Android in Space” by Will Marshall (@wsm1) of NASA, dealt with building very cheap microsatellites based upon Android-based Nexus One smartphones, aka “phonesats“. “Very cheap” in this case means tens of thousands versus millions or billions of US dollars.

Marshall noted that because of the conservative nature of space flight, the CPU in phonesat Nexus Ones will actually be the fastest CPUs onboard a satellite to date when they’re launched into orbit later this year. He also asked the audience some provocative questions such as “What if we could each have personal satellites?” and “What if satellites became a software domain?”. Thing to note: Android software and off the shelf mobile phone hardware can reduce costs in some areas by two or more orders of magnitude versus traditional ways of doing things, and that could change everything in those areas.

You can read more about the phonesat project from this report from O’Reilly correspondent Alex Howard (@digiphile). Among other things, Alex links to an excellent documentary on early phonesat rocket launch testing.

The final keynote that fascinated me was “The African Laptop Killer: Android and the Developing World” by Claire Hunsaker (@chunsaker). Hunsaker discussed the tremendous rise of mobile technology in Kenya and elsewhere and how that technology is revolutionizing lives and economies. Some of the statistics quoted include:

  • 99% of Internet access in Kenya is via mobile device.
  • Cheap Android phones have dropped Internet access in Kenya from 31% of an average worker’s annual income to about 5%.
  • Fully 20% of Kenyan GDP runs through the mobile wallet (predominantly M-PESA).
  • According to Hunsaker, “Facebook will have access to most (Kenyan) users before thy can even own a mobile handset themselves” via borrowed/shared mobile handsets.

Please watch Hunsaker’s talk. It may change your perspective on the power and importance of mobile techologies.

Session highlights

There were a lot of great sessions at Android Open. Here are some notes from my favorites:

  • Aleksandar Gargenta (yes, Marko is his brother) presented an excellent “Securing Android” session discussing how security is enforced. He made a number of comparisons to Java ME and desktop Linux security, noting that “Anytime something is in RAM, there are ways of recovering it”. I’d recommend spending a little time reading through Aleksandar’s slides (click here).
  • Eric Burke (@burke_eric) from Square gave a nice “Beautiful Android” talk. I’d been hoping for a few payments fireworks, but Burke stuck closely to how to build attractive and functional Android apps. Among the things he noted, Android clip paths don’t handle antialiasing. This leads to very ugly interfaces unless you use offscreen bitmaps.
  • Nick Farina (@nfarina) spoke about the importance of using WebViews in “From iOS to Android” (also, XCode is painful).
  • Sean Byrnes of Flurry knocked it out of the park with his “Android App Engagement by the Numbers” talk! In particular, he called out the importance of releasing early and quickly to your followers, as statistics show that on average, an Android developer loses 38% of their users on the day they install your app, 50% in one week.
  • Jesse Vincent (@obra) talked in “Dancing App Stores” about the somewhat suprising fact that new app versions dramatically increase sales, even with minimal changes to the app itself. He also made some good suggestions on secondary and tertiary app markets besides Google’s Android Market; check out his slides for more details.

All in all, the sessions had enough code and technical details while still being able to spark ideas in a wide variety of attendees, some Android programmers, some not.

Additional coverage and news from the conference

Conference organizers made a number of other news and information sources available to attendees. You can search some of the best via these links:

One more highly recommended resource: The online show “All About Android” (@androidshow) broadcast live from Android Open at the end of Day 1. The conference co-chairs along with several speakers including Tim O’Reilly make appearances on the show. It’s probably worth your time to watch and get their perspective on the major Android developments flowing out of the conference.

Did it blend?

I found this first ever Android Open to be a great mix of community and technology. It struck the right tone of openness and provided both developer how-to and business oriented material. If you are interested in Android and appreciate a balanced perspective of the entire ecosystem, I would recommend this conference as a good place to tap into all things Android.

Click here to access the full article on X.com.

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