One presenter from Fujitsu demonstrated his around-the-clock blood pressure, heart rate, and blood oxygen monitoring results in an effort to understand which medications influenced his sleep apnea. Esther Dyson showed her 23andMe genetic profile and compared it to her family members and colleagues, while another researcher showed the challenges of posting his genome on Twitter. (Hint: at 140 characters per Tweet and 1000 Tweets per day, it takes two years and you have a high risk of being flagged as a spammer.) Others logged symptoms and environmental factors related to medical issues, analyzed language to passively capture information and insights on mental health, while one person showed his 10 year mind map.

The common denominators at the Quantified Self meeting were that everyone was interested in taking notes on their life experience in a quantifiable way in order to better understand their own experience and to solve problems. In each case, the limiting factor seemed to be the ability and persistence to take notes that could be converted into something useful. It’s just too much darned work.

Simplicity is the key to any kind of self-monitoring and information capture, because no one needs a bunch of extra work. I learned the strength of simplicity working in the field of personal health monitoring for many years as the founder and former CEO of Health Hero Network, the developer of the Health Buddy System, a pioneering effort of electronic “lifestreaming” to improve chronic care.

Initiated over 10 years ago, Health Buddy started as a rather limited pre-scripted four-button survey system to collect symptoms from patients while providing education and motivation on following a treatment plan. Despite its simplicity and limitations (or more likely, because of them), Health Buddy was tremendously successful in positively influencing health behavior and in reducing health complications for complex conditions ranging from diabetes and heart disease to mental health and obesity. Tens of thousands of patients are using Health Buddy daily. The Medicare project that we spent years in winning and implementing is showing great results where many others have failed. The company is now Robert Bosch Healthcare.

Earlier this year, my new company, 3banana Inc., introduced note-taking applications for iPhone and Android smartphones that offered the ability to sync with a free online notebook and share with social networks like Twitter and Facebook. My interest in Quantifed Self is to learn, share and discuss ideas about how to use smartphones to enhance our working memory and augment our brains by capturing information and connecting to useful services that can help us achieve our goals — and to do so with less work.

Can we shape our brains around mobile technologies to expand our working memory in much the same way we do in developing software? In developing software for mobile devices where memory resources are more limited, we don’t store all of the content in short term memory. Instead, we store the links to where we know we can find the rest of the information when needed, wherever it might be on the network. The same can work for our brains. Once we have a trusted memory accessory where we can easily park and retrieve notes, we can free up both short term and long term working memory.

The key to capturing information is simplicity, which is why 3banana Notes is freeform and unstructured. Who needs the work of thinking up titles and categories when you want to jot down a thought? Instead, structure can emerge from inline hashtags (the ubiquitous # sign that gives semantics to Twitter) and from context awareness: Knowing where you were and what you were doing when you took the note can improve pattern matching services that add value to your notes by appending useful information and filling in the blanks. On our Android smartphone app, for example, addresses within notes automatically turn into links to Google maps, and phone numbers automatically link to dialing a call.

The other way that 3banana on Android works to enhance your working memory is to enable you to store links to your content directly on physical objects by generating and scanning your own personalized two dimensional barcodes, or QR Codes. We have brain maps dedicated to the physical objects we find around us every day, and these objects can be powerful cues to recalling the information and actions associated with those objects if we can link to them in context. Simple examples include putting a QR Code on your furnace that you can scan with your phone to recall the logbook about changing the filters, or putting a QR code linking to your music practice chart or exercise log on the music stand or on the exercise bike.

At Quantified Self, I showed the example of scanning bottle of wine with a smartphone to access shared wine notes and wine tasting discussions with friends. Remembering bottles of wine is one of those “note to self” categories that always got lost until I started connecting it to my digital world. Now I can quickly snap a photo into my #wine notes, share with people who like wine, or post to social media sites Twitter and Facebook, using Twitter’s OAuth and Facebook Connect for one-click integration. Perhaps a wine distributor or retailer will want to use 3banana to tag expensive bottles wine so that each sale becomes a potential viral marketing channel leading to new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing customers.

Finally, we know from brain research that emotion is the most powerful trigger in the brain to put something in long term storage — to remember something rather than to forget it. That’s great when we need to remember something for survival, like how to get away from the lions and bears, but it doesn’t serve us well for all the non-life threatening content we might want to remember for business and personal interests. Just as teaching is the best way to learn something, I have found that writing, sharing, and discussing new ideas with real people is the best way to remember something. Sharing with other people using social media connects that information to our brain maps associated with people, and relationships are loaded with emotional content.

In the world of the brain, three is a magic number because we can remember and work with things in threes better than any other number. 3banana has three meanings: In the geeky world of code monkeys, 3banana describes those smart, flexible, fast learners adept with new technology. In the world Twitter and jotting down notes, 3banana is a unit of time that represents the minimum latency to capture and absorb an idea. And if you are looking at three bananas on your kitchen table, you probably know that bananas are brain food. Bananas are rich in potassium, which helps the brain transmit messages. But bananas don’t last long sitting around, so if you are looking at three, better share one.

Our mission at 3banana is to create tools that enhance your working memory and augment your brain. In addition to taking notes, we will keep enhancing these tools to become more and more useful in those areas of your life that you want to improve, both personally and for the planet. Give it a shot and let us know what you think.

3banana Notes has been nominated as one of the best Organization & Productivity applications for the new Google Android smartphone!

3banana is a notebook that you can keep on your phone and on the web at 3banana.com. On your computer, clip stuff from the web or jot stuff down on your private 3banana page, and you also have it handy on your phone. Take a note or tag a photo on your phone, and you also have it organized on your computer. Your notebook is private, but you can selectively share and discuss pages from your 3banana notebook with your friends, like notes about books, restaurants, or wine.

3banana is free and simple to use. It functions like a private blog or private Twitter. We have been adding lots of new features to the Android smartphone app, like hashtags for organizing your ideas, barcode scanning and printing so you can connect virtual notes to physical objects, and easy sharing with Twitter and Facebook.

For a little more detail on 3banana, here’s my presentation from our launch at the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations conference on March 17, 2009. I presented some examples of how you can use 3banana to organize information and notes around the home and attach virtual notes to objects using your own personalized scannable QR Codes, or two dimensional barcodes.

Next up, I will be speaking at CTIA, the International Association of the Wireless Telecommunications Industry, at the Wireless I.T. & Entertainment conference in San Diego, October 7-9, 2009. My talk is in the Mobile Healthcare Track. An easy to use mobile journal comes in very handy if you are tracking your health, especially when you make it less work, more useful, and easier to share with services on the web. Look for some special new features at CTIA on October 7, 2009!

1. 3banana Inc. develops mobile apps and services that help people capture and share more information in more ways with less effort. On March 17, 2009, we introduced 3banana Notes for Android smart phones, connecting shared online notes and discussions to physical objects by creating and scanning personalized QR Codes from your phone. You can follow our talk in these stickies. Dow Jones Wireless Innovations Redwood Shores CA, March 17, 2009 Steve Brown, Co-Founder and CEO
2. 3banana Notes for Android smart phones helps you capture information and take notes with less work. 3banana also makes it easy to share and discuss your notes with the people and services you choose. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 2
3. How often have you made a “note to self” of a nice bottle of wine you wanted to remember? (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 3
4. With 3banana Notes on your Android, it is easy to capture that information on your phone, and keep it synchronized with your free online notebook. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 4
5. With inline labeling and titling, you never have to repeat yourself. The first line is always the title and any word you place a # mark in front of automatically becomes a label. More information with fewer keystrokes. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 5
6. Add photos to your notes using your Android phone’s built in camera. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 6
7. Keep your notes private, or selectively share links to notes and discussion threads through a variety of services including email, Facebook and Twitter. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 7
8. When you post a note to Twitter, your 140 character Tweet connects your friends to your own richly threaded online discussion group. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 8
9. This is my “social graph,” or set of friend connections, on Facebook. When you use 3banana to share your notes with your friends on Facebook, you retain more control of your content. You also can easily invite non-Facebook users into the discussion. Your friends can use their Google accounts to login without creating yet another login to remember. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 9
10. Sharing notes with friends independent of social net work membership is particularly useful, for example, when the people you want to share your wine tasting notes with are not on Facebook! (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 10
11. Sharing and discussing notes with friends can enhance the value of the information you want to capture — and reduce the work — for everyone. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 11
12. With 3banana, you can connect your notes and online discussions to physical objects by creating and scanning QR Codes, or two dimensional “quick respose” barcodes, right from your phone or computer. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 12
13. Trying to decide if that wine in your cellar is ready to drink? Scan it in on your phone and see what your friends are now saying about it! (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 13
14. As you and your friends add more information to your notes, they become more and more useful over time. Compare that to your old paper notes or emails to self! (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 14
15. Notes that turn into conversations over time can be particularly helpful for assets that might be around for a while. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 15
16. What was in this box in my garage, anyways? And who has added to it or removed something in the last year? Label it with QR Code attached to your notes using your handy label maker, and you can scan with your Android to pull up the notes you share with your family. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 16
17. Sharing a book with a coded link to your book notes can be an invitation to your private discussion group. Ask your friends pass the book on to their friends and see how the conversation grows. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 17
18. Another example: Have you ever used your GPS for the global treasure hunt knows as Geocaching? Now you can leave objects that link to your notes. It’s like putting a message in a bottle or tying a note to a balloon. What stories and adventures might unfold? Try 3banana Notes for yourself. Scan to link to this note, and leave a comment with your own stories! (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 18
19. 3banana Notes: Capture, Share, Label Come up with your own ideas, and stay tuned for new applications and uses! (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 19
20. Steve Brown Co-Founder and CEO 3banana Inc. steve@3banana.com Twitter: Follow @3banana (c) 2009 3banana Inc. Patents pending. (c) 3banana Inc. Patents Pending March 17, 2009 20

Taking notes can translate a fleeting conception in our brain into action, and that action usually involves sharing our experience or idea with someone else. As we carry more and more powerful technology around with us every moment of the day, might it be possible that we can start to translate more of our otherwise forgotten notes-to-self and fleeting experiences into shared experiences? Into the start of conversations that make our lives richer?

In 1995, Bill Gates concluded his book The Road Ahead with a prescient but disquieting idea: Carrying around mobile technology connected to networks would lead to the fully “documented life”:

“Your wallet PC will be able to keep audio, time, location, and eventually even video records of everything that happens to you. It will be able to record every word you say and every word said to you, as well as your body temperature, your blood pressure, the barometric pressure, and a variety of other data about you and your surroundings.… It will be able to track your interactions with the network—all of the commands you issue, the messages you send, the people you call or who call you.”

What made the “documented life” such a scary idea was the notion that we were not the ones doing the documenting. Someone else, enabled by pervasive computing technology, was documenting us, and using our data for some other purpose—perhaps understanding insurance risk, perhaps figuring out how to best persuade us to buy something, perhaps something more nefarious. The passive voice of the “documented life” left open the question: Documented by whom? The function of technology might be one of monitoring us rather than empowering us.

Sometimes monitoring can be a good thing—health monitoring, for example. If we have a chronic health condition like diabetes or heart disease, then we might want the reassurance that someone is monitoring us in order to identify problems early, before something gets worse. Health, after all, is rife with cognitive dissonance: We often do not do or pay attention to the things that we know consciously are healthy or are the right things to do. Remote health monitoring can help us share that responsibility with someone else, someone who can coach us and support us.

Remote health monitoring is, even if good for you, usually implemented by someone else with their own interests in mind. A telehealth monitoring device can query me at my bedside:

How are you feeling today, [insert patient name]?
Did you take your [insert prescription name] medications?
Do you have any new symptoms of your [diabetes, heart disease, asthma, COPD]?
What is your [blood glucose, blood pressure, weight, peak respiratory flow, temperature, blood oxygen saturation, pulse]?

Of course, remote monitoring systems can be more thoughtful and personalized than the example above, but the fact that remote patient monitoring encounters are pre-scripted makes them inherently impersonal, no matter how good the algorithms are at inserting my name and my needs in the right place at the right time. And the stated purpose is the automation and increased productivity of someone who otherwise might have to pay for my hospital bill.

Social media, on the other hand, is all about me sharing my experience, through my networks, with others that I choose, or with the world at large, if I so choose.

Wikipedia, the global experiment in sharing knowledge that has replaced every other encyclopedia, currently defines social media as follows:

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

This is the current definition of social media, but it could change. In fact, if you are so inclined, you can register at Wikipedia right now and try your hand at improving on this or any other article. But you better be a great writer and know your references, or the TheRedPenOfDoom will undo your work. Wikipedia has become so robust and accurate because the collective intelligence of an extensive community, constantly checking and curating the content, is far greater than any individual writer or editor. In Wikipedia, together we are documenting the life of the human race.

Social media enables a documented life, but unlike The Road Ahead, the subject is clear: We are the primary actors doing the documenting. We can share our photos on Flickr, our videos on YouTube, our friends on Facebook, our musical tastes on MySpace, what we are doing right now on Twitter or FriendFeed, news and websites that interest us on Digg or StumbledUpon or Delicious, our resume on LinkedIn, our contact information on Plaxo, our ideas on WordPress or Blogger, and much more.

Despite the plethora of opportunities to share using social media, we remain challenged by the fact each service only feels appropriate for a subset of our ideas, for a subset of people with whom we might want to share. With all the fragmentation, sharing becomes work. But in the end, each service aims to do the same fundamental thing: Help us record and share our ideas. And each service is based on the same fundamental premise: That our lives are richer when we share.

When we participate in social media today, we need have a good sense of what we want to share, with whom, and with which type of media, before we even login. It doesn’t matter that every idea I might want to share starts with a private mental note to myself, that every idea that starts with a mental note might evolve to include many media types and might be something to share with many different audiences. I need to be comfortable enough with what I want to say, to whom, and how I want to express it to thrust myself into a particular public space when I login.

What I am looking for is a better way to capture and share my thoughts and experiences—first as mental notes to myself, and then later, after I refine and edit them, after I decide with whom and when and where, to share them. I am looking for something that requires no effort, no work, yet can help me record rich and detailed information. Something that can capture my shorthand chicken scratches, but knows what I mean enough to fill in the blanks and complete the sentences. I am looking for something unscripted, yet intelligent, so that the right services can do something useful with the information I collect in ways that help me.

Every WordPress blog, every Facebook update, every Digg news post, started with an experience or an idea that, for whatever reason, someone thought might be worth remembering. When we want to remember something, it is because we want to act on it; if not now, then someday. Time slips away, but some of the stream of ideas and experiences beg to be captured so that they can be shared. Each note that we want to remember has a purpose; it is an idea that seeks to achieve some result. That result is most often achieved by sharing.

Note taking is a social act. A fully documented life enabled by technology might scare us, but a life that we document more fully, so that we can share more fully, is one that just might be richer.