If you’ve ever wondered just how many lattes you mindlessly order — and pay too much for — each month, or have no clue just how much ambient exercise you get in a week of walking between your cubicle and the bathroom, then a new application using Twitter might be up your alley.
The free service from data visualization company FlowingData lets users send private tweets about virtually anything that can be quantified and tracked via their Twitter account, and then the visualization software graphs trends related to these activities. Imagine the usefulness of this application for people trying to lose weight — also smokers, chronic masturbaters, you name it.
For example, maybe you’re curious about how those sneaky cigarette breaks (you know who you are) add up in a month, or in a year. Every time you light up, you send special tweet — just to the app, not to everyone who follows you — and it’s recorded on your YourFlowingData profile. At the end of a week, month, year, or whenever you feel it’s time to review, you just access your info and see it in graph form.
The YourFlowingData site says, ”We make tiny choices every day. Those choices become habits, and those habits develop into behaviors. your.flowingdata helps you record these choices. Use your.flowingdata (YFD) to collect data about yourself and your surroundings via Twitter. Record what you eat, when you go to sleep, how much television you watch, or whatever else you want. What you track is completely up to you.”
So, in tribute to the late Michael Jackson, maybe this app is the 21st century method of looking at “The Man in the Mirror.” Or, maybe it’s just a good way to get you to stop picking your nose or checking Facebook every three minutes.