thebaldgeek

Yes, yet another use for wearable data.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3037347/this-app-will-raise-or-lower-your-insurance-deductible-based-on-physical-activity

This App Will Raise Or Lower Your Insurance Deductible Based On Physical Activity

Your phone is judging you. All you have to do is submit to monitoring and you’ll have all the incentive you need to get to the gym.

If you’re a regular gym-goer who can resist the temptation to ditch the free weights every time you’re feeling lazy, Pact Health has a proposition for you: If you keep your gym commitments, you’ll get money off your health insurance deductible. Miss a planned gym trip, and your deductible gets bigger.

“We saw a very interesting opportunity,” says Yifan Zhang, the CEO of Pact. “There’s no reason your deductible has to be a dumb deductible—an incentive that doesn’t change. If we can change people’s behavior, we’re generating value for insurance companies.”

Pact (formerly known as Gym Pact), already has an app that allows users to make commitments and make or lose money depending on whether they follow through. There are currently three kinds of pacts available: Gym Pact, which counts any run, bike ride that takes more than 30 minutes, visit to the gym, or 10,000 steps of walking as a workout; Veggie Pact, where members take photos of their fruit and vegetable consumption and get them verified by the community; and Food Log Pact, which lets members make money from consistent food logging on MyFitnessPal.

Not a bad perk? They simply took their existing app and got into bed with a few health insurers and made some kind of deal.

My question for you is would you sign up for this?
Would you feel Ok having your health data exported for review by another company and then pass that data onto your health care company?

Me? Duno.
I’m all about the quantified self. I keep track of stuff I eat, stuff I do (pushups and runs) and how much I sleep (or don’t)… but even so, its me. It’s my data. I’m not sure I want that out in others hands…..

Ok, Ok, I can hear it now…. why is an Android guy blogging about an Apple watch?
(Closely, followed by ‘Of course he does not like it – hes a Google fanboi’).

Just hear me out.

First up you need to know this….. I am selling my Google Android Ware watch (a Moto360).

So, yeah, I am dumping the little green droid from my wrist….. I tried, I really tried…. I waited, I tested, I tweaked, I prodded, I read forums and really tried to make it work…. But after 4ish months, I can’t live with it.

Why? For the exact same reason(s) the Apple watch is DOA (Dead On Arrival) for most people (once they get it on their wrist).

1. Most of the time, the watch screen is off.
Black.
Pitch. Black.
You glance at your watch to, uh, see the time, and its off. Nada. Nothing. Pitch. Black.
You need to lift the watch to your face so the electronics can get the wake up signal and turn on the power hungry screen.
Most times that does not work. The motion sense thing does not do its thing and you look like a twit staring at a black watch face.
Also, put a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other, now, tell me what time it is.
Pitch. Black.

2. Touch screen.
They don’t work when wet.
Sweat is wet.
Water is wet.
I’m talking one single drop. It really takes very little to render the little touch screen totally worthless.
Since touch is the primary way of getting stuff done (even with a fancy digital crown), its a frustrating experience.
Not to mention that fingers are not always squeaky clean.
The watch face always seems to be smeared with something or other……

So thats why the Apple watch is just not going to fly for most people.
Yes, they are going to sell millions of them, but I suspect that there will be millions in the top draw of bedrooms and kitchens in 4 to 8 months from now.

There are other problems with the Android version, that Apple might get right, but those two reasons are so fundamental, so baked in, so critical to everything that follows that it does not matter what neat functions they get right, if the screen is off, its dead.

Not that it matters, but in case you are wondering, I am going to give Pebble another go.
Eink (ePaper) display that is always on.
4 buttons for interface control.
(Time will tell if they get the other bits right).

A few thoughts worth picking up from this one.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/12/computational-power-and-cognitive-augmentation.html

Here’s a look at a few of the ways that humans — still the ultimate data processors — mesh with the rest of our data systems: how computational power can best produce true cognitive augmentation.

Over the past decade, we fitted roughly a quarter of our species with sensors. We instrumented our businesses, from the smallest market to the biggest factory. We began to consume that data, slowly at first. Then, as we were able to connect data sets to one another, the applications snowballed. Now that both the front office and the back office are plugged into everything, business cares. A lot.

Now the common man, you and me, might pause here and question such a sweeping statement.
We have talked in the past about how we really are not people, but money. Business. Our digital lives are ‘worth more than our physical’ ones. (Going a bit far, but you get the point).
That’s a given.
But, who cares?
How will we, the common man be impacted by this?

Tomorrow’s interfaces won’t be about mobility, or haptics, or augmented reality (AR), or HUDs, or voice activation. I mean, they will be, but that’s just the icing. They’ll be about interruption.

In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson said: “We are drowning in information…the world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.” Only it won’t be people doing that synthesis; it’ll be a hybrid of humans and machines. Because after all, the right information at the right time changes your life.

That interruption will take many forms — a voice on a phone, a buzz on a bike handlebar, a heads-up display over actual heads. But behind it is a tremendous amount of context that helps us to decide better.

Right now, there are three companies on the planet that could do this. Microsoft’s Cortana, Google’s Now, and Apple’s Siri are all starting down the path to prosthetic brains. A few others — Samsung, Facebook, and Amazon — might try to make it happen, too. When it finally does happen, it’ll be the fundamental shift of the 21st century.

Most of us reading this blog are already using AI.
Siri and Google Now.
I think we often dismiss this whole AI / IoT thing and think it has not really touched us, or that we don’t yet have easy access to this whole artificial intelligence thing…. But I hope that by now, you have followed along and can see that we are indeed already deeply entrenched in it.

Most of the readers of this blog have at some point talked to their phones (a computer) and received the information you were looking for.

The computing power in your phone is more than it took to put man on the moon.
Via your phone, you have easy access to a very solid AI.

Pretty mind blowing when you stop and think about it.

Remember when a light switch turned the lights on and off?
Yeah, me neither…..

http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/12/we-need-an-internet-that-performs-flawlessly-every-second-of-every-day.html

“In the past, hardware existed without software. You think about the founding of GE and the invention of the light bulb — you turned it on and you turned it off. Zero lines of code. Today, we have street lighting systems with mesh networks and 20 million lines of code,” says Ruh. “Machines used to be completely mechanical. Today, they are part digital. Software is part of the hardware. That opens up huge possibilities.”

Love the thought of how a light switch is zero lines of code… When I read that, I was shocked at my reaction… ‘Really?!’
I had to double take / think to make sure that the statement was true.
Just too used to having even simple things have some sort of software attached to them.
(Quick example, you can’t turn my garage light on and off without a web browser – its true – the light switch only exists on a web page).

“People today assume they have a certain set of inalienable rights, such as the right to see water flowing when they turn on the tap and the right to see the lights go on when they touch a switch. People feel very strongly about those rights, and they will get upset when they feel that their basic needs aren’t met,” Ruh says.

Is the industrial Internet — the Internet of Things, the Internet of Everything — prepared to deliver that kind of service? Are products designed for the new age of smart devices capable of delivering on expectations such as continuous improvement, 24/7 reliability, and zero installation?

How solid is your Internet connection? When was the last time it went out? Do you remember what happen? How it got fixed? How long was it out?
What about your power? Did your internet stay up when the power went out?

The thought of a 100% reliable network is truly scary, but thats what all of us are building our lives around….. And if you think this does not include you, think again.
Your bank relies on the Internet. No web surfing, no money. It really is as simple as that.
That’s just one quick off the top of my head example…..

Remember when you used a light switch to turn the lights on and off?
Yeah, me neither.