How many of you watched this and was surprised as well?

I just finished watching Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead on Netflix. It’s a documentary about a guy who decides to reboot his life by going on a juice only fast for 60 days. He lost weight and everything you would expect from such a drastic change in lifestyle. He was energized, didn’t rely on his medication, and had a better outlook on life.

After many years of overworking and not paying attention to my diet, I think age has finally caught up. Today, I struggled to remember words, concepts, and experiences as I was responding to an email. Just a few years back, I would be able to do that while tweeting, listening to music, watching a movie, and drinking a soda.

For me, I’m naturally a small build. I can eat massive amounts of food and not gain significant weight. Instead, it all affects my mood and arteries. So, starting today, and my defacto New Year’s resolution, I will be going on a hybrid juice diet. I’m not going to give up eating all meals, but will replace at least 50 – 75% of my meals with juice.

Using data to analyze my progress

As a technologist, I love tech toys. In the health world, there is a lot of tech to monitor virtually everything. The advantage of doing so is the amount of data I can collect over time versus my periodic checkup at the doctor’s office.

I’m currently using:

1. a Fitbit to track activity level (flights of stairs, steps taken) and sleep quality (number of times awoken at night). The app also has a form to manually track body measurements.
2. DNA sequencing from 23andme. This is a little creepy but I sent in a saliva sample a while ago and they sequence part of the DNA and correlate it to survey data from participants.

I would like to track:

1. Weight – I would like to try the Withings wifi body scale. It tracks weight, fat mass, and BMI and transmits it via wifi.
2. Blood pressure – Withings also has a blood pressure monitor that could hook up to my iPhone.

If you own the wifi model of the iPad, you’re chained to anywhere there’s wifi. Fortunately, wifi is available almost anywhere, except when you’re away from a building or on the road. The new iOS 4.3 enables wifi hotspot on your iPhone which then allows you to tether your 3G to other wifi devices like your iPad. However, it’s a switch to flip on and then its a battery draining experience.

Enter the jailbreak community. Mywi ($19.99) by Intelliborn had provide hotspot functionality before 4.3 enabled that function. The latest update also includes an On Demand function ($4.99 extra). What this does is configures bluetooth between your iPhone and iPad. When your iPad is not connected to a wifi network and you’re attempting to use the Internet, it will automatically connect to your iPhone and create a tethering setup. When you are back on a wifi network, or when you put the iPad to sleep, the connection is broken which saves your iPhone battery.

I’ve been experimenting with this function a few days now and can attest that it works beautifully. As long as I have my iPhone with me, my iPad is always ready to be connected.

The setup was a bit confusing and there weren’t very many guides out there. Here’s my take on the process.

Setting Up Your iPhone

1. Jailbreak your iPhone and install Cydia. This is the jailbreak app store.
2. Open Cydia and click on Manage Account from the Cydia home page. You can connect with either Facebook or Google. This simply ties your login with your Cydia purchases.
3. Click Search from the Cydia dock and find “MyWi”. The purchasing process uses Amazon payments to process. You’ll only have to buy this once as Cydia allows up to three copies on three devices.
4. Open MyWi, from the home screen, click on iDevices. Choose MyWi OnDemand. This will initiate an in-app purchase for the OnDemand license for $4.99.

Setting Up Your iPad

1. Follow the same steps above to jailbreak your iPad and install Cydia.
2. In Cydia, use your Facebook or Google account to log in. You should now be able to download MyWi without paying for it again.
3. Open MyWi and follow the same procedures to install the OnDemand license. Instead of buying, click download license.

Creating the Connection

1. Open MyWi on both your iPhone and your iPad.
2. Click on iDevices and then OnDemand. Click Setup MyWi OnDemand. Your iPhone should say waiting for ondemand clients.
3. Open up MyWi on your iPad and then click on OnDemand. Click Setup Mywi OnDemand.
4. Your iPhone name should show up. Click on that.
5. A notification should show up on your iPhone called OnDemand Request. Click accept.
6. You are done

Using OnDemand

With most installations, I do suggest you restart both devices. You can do so by holding down the home button and the sleep button until it powers down and then powers up again. Carry your iPhone with you and turn off wifi on your iPad. Open up Safari and try opening up a webpage. It should take a few seconds and you’ll see the bluetooth logo light up on your iPad and the page should load. Make sure you have bluetooth turned on in your settings for both the iPhone and iPad.

Watch the YouTube video that shows the click through steps as well.

Google has announced that it’s going to build a gigabit fiber network to nearly every home in Kansas City. See Google’s blog for more details. Consumer internet lines today are typically less than 20 megabits per second. That’s a cap, meaning your actual speed will be much less. Also remember that a bit is different from a byte. So downloading at 20 megabits does not equate to download at 20 megabytes per second. To do the conversion, a gigabit line will provide 125 megabytes per second service to your home. That’s a gigabyte (GB) of data in 8 seconds. For context, a DVD is 4.7GB. That will take 37 seconds to download. A blueray disc is 50GB. That will take you a bit under seven minutes.

All this is theoretical of course. In reality, we’re not really downloading raw data files. We’re streaming.

Gigabit access will allow new applications that don’t exist for consumer use. For example, HD video conferencing. Or streaming HD videos, or steaming high quality music. Even then, the applications aren’t even invented yet because the infrastructure isn’t available.

Google’s project is aimed at proving to the industry, and ultimately to the consumers of the possibilities of truly high speed Internet. The hope is that this would spur demand and be a kick in the behind to the telecom companies to build out the infrastructure.

I can’t even imagine what other applications there will be. How would you use a gigabit line?

There’s many studies out there on the difference between writing notes and typing notes. I’ve done both, primarily handwriting during my K-16 years, and typing in my graduate studies years. Anecdotally, I can say that I comprehended and remembered more when I wrote my notes by hand. My handwriting will never be able to capture notes verbatim as my typing can but I find that I remember more when I write.

Lifehacker wrote a great piece that includes links to several studies on why you learn more effectively by writing than typing.

As a personal experiment, I’ve been migrating toward using ink and graphite as an alternative to these nice keys on my Mac Book Air. Conceptually, it makes sense. Writing a “p” or a “d” is significantly different than pressing those keys. The peak of my comprehension and memory from notes came from my chemistry class in undergrad. My notes were full of doodles and imagery. They weren’t verbatim recordings of the professor’s verbal speak. They were synthesized thoughts that summarized the concepts and ideas of the lecture.

To commit to this, I signed The Doodle Revolution manifesto by Sunni Brown.

Graphic facilitation and visual thinking is one of my personal interests. I’ve been reading up some a variety of topics. This community is very tight knit and there’s always a common set of players. One of them is Dave Sibbet of The Grove Consultants International.

Below is a very detailed webinar (90 minutes). I’ve watched the entire recording to confirm that it’s very valuable. I definitely recommend you watch it. Dave also demos Sketchbook Pro as a digital recording device.

Infographics are fun. They visually stimulating and is very loud, bold, and sometimes obnoxious. However, good statistical and data principles still apply. Present the data objectively and fairly. Don’t create conclusions where none exist. However, infographics is to data as newpaper headlines are to news. Below is a fun poke at infographics by Think Brilliant. Click through to see the full size image.

Little details are everything. For example, Google Chrome marks the scroll bar with little yellow marks where search terms come up from a ctrl-F command. These little details, while not noticeable to most people, creates the overall user experience. For more great examples, check out the Little Big Details Tumblr.

via {Little Big Details Tumblr}

Here are three concepts designed by IDEO on the future of books. Each shows an interactive world where reading is more than just the text in a book. I still find that for certain books, particularly books that require detailed images that paper still provides the best experience. An eBook will never be able to have multiple pages open at the same time (maybe when they have flipping screens that spread out). What do you think? Do you see paper books going away?