Live Report and Self Surveillance - Data Trends

The Feltron Annual Reports have become something like an institution. On one hand for the graphics they celebrate but on the other hand also for the content or topic each report focuses on.

In the current design climate of hyped data visualisation the Feltron Report is one of the leading publications. Even though the series started earlier in 2004, it became an icon with the 2007 report. It features for example in the great documentary 'Journalism on the Age of Data'.


Image taken from Feltron / Page 3. The 2010 Annual Report on personal activities.

How are these reports compiled? Feltron explains in the FAQ: "The first and most difficult step is to keep meticulous records of the year. On top of my own records, I rely on services like Last.fm, Netflix and Flickr to keep records of my music-listening, movie-renting and photo activities. For my offline activities, I make daily recordings in iCal which are later poured into spreadsheets to enable counting and comparisons within the data."

The rising interest has lead to the creation of the logging platform Daytum. Here individuals can start collecting data about everyday live activities as a sort of log book. Further more the page offers the option to also visualise the data, of course very much in the style of the Feltron Annual Reports.


Image taken from asis&t / The personal logbook at EMoore.

Other Self Surveillance Services could be Moodstats or lifemetric. A more embedded approach takes grafitter. It monitors your twitter account and picks up on defines hashtags. This can then be graphed out. So you can tweet away your log book.


Image taken from farm4 / The settings and hashtag definition page at grafitter.

The lates Feltron report departs from the personal log book and maps out a third persons life line. In this case it is Feltron's father. This relates very much to the Travel Pattern Over Generations report compiled by David Bradley. It is an interesting documentation, not so much in it self, but very much as a personal comparison. With the personal dimension of the data it is very easy to relate to it and the primary reading of it will be in relation to one's own history.


Image taken from Feltron / Page 4. The 2010 Annual Report is an encapsulation of my father's life, as communicated by the calendars, slides and other artifacts in my possession.

The Feltron Reports are available for purchase in the Feltron Shop.