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Reporter for iOS tracks your life through mini surveys and pretty graphs
Nicolas Felton is something of a data nut. (Hopefully he won't take umbrage with that characterization.) The man has been reporting various metrics of his personal life since 2005 in the annual Feltron Report. Eventually he created Daytum so that others could join in his obsessive tracking, but while the web and iOS apps were slick, they could be quite daunting for the uninitiated. A person needed to make a habit of tracking their habits -- counting how many cigarettes they smoke, how often they make it to the gym, etc... So, after a stint at Facebook, the world's premier self quantifier went back to the drawing board with a few friends and came up with Reporter. The new app is iOS only, sadly, but does offer a much lower barrier to entry while maintaining the nearly infinite level of customization that Daytum did. Instead of aiming for completeness, Reporter asks you at random times to track specific things with "lightweight surveys." This allows the app to still monitor broad trends in your lifestyle, without worrying about ruining your data by forgetting to log each cup of coffee you drink. Felton says that through randomized push reminders that "sample your life," you can still learn a lot without becoming a slave to meticulously monitoring your every act. Reporter still requires plenty of manual tracking, but the creator argues it's the best way to answer the most interesting questions. There is some help provided through data harvested from Foursquare and your contacts for autocompletion, and it can also tap into the power of the M7 processor for tracking your steps. While there are no concrete plans at the moment, Felton left open the possibility of expanding the number of sources that Reporter can pull data from. For instance heart rate or sleep-tracking information from a wearable, or the media you consume on your Apple TV. Reporter is available now in the iTunes App Store for $3.99.
TUAW's Daily App: Daytum
Just a couple of months back in this feature, I posted about an app called Dayta that allowed you to track and monitor any type of data you wanted to follow. Now, here's another app that will do basically the same thing, but with a few more features and a little extra style. Daytum is a newly released iPhone app (though the website itself has been around for a while) that will help you keep track of any numbers you want: your calories or weight, your sports team's records and stats or even a business' information. Once you've collected that information, you can display it in any number of ways, allowing you to see and track all of your numbers easily. It's a very flexible system that's limited only by the way you decide to use it. The iPhone app is only part of the equation, but it allows you to both enter data on your own and monitor it however you'd like. It's very well designed, and it has an excellently simple look and interface for entering data. Unfortunately, seeing your data back is not quite as well done, but that's all right; that information is also available on the website from any browser. Best of all, it's free -- the mobile app is free to download, and the service is free to use. There is a premium subscription available for US$4 a month with more space (and the option to keep your stats private -- that may be a major drawback for a lot of users), but the free version works just fine as well. If you need an app to track some custom data, but didn't want to jump on Dayta, give Daytum a look.
