The panelists talk about HealthKit with Constantin Jacob.

Transcript

[This episode is sponsored by Hired.com. Every week on Hired, they run an auction where over a thousand tech companies in San Francisco, New York and L.A. bid on iOS developers, providing them with salary and equity upfront. The average iOS developer gets an average of 5-15 introductory offers and an average salary offer of $130,000/year. Users can either accept an offer and go right into interviewing with a company or deny them without any continuing obligations. It’s totally free for users, and when you're hired they also give you a $2,000 signing bonus as a thank you for using them. But if you use the iPhreaks link, you’ll get a $4,000 bonus onset. Finally, if you're not looking for a job but know someone who is, you can refer them on Hired and get a $1,337 bonus as thanks after the job. Go sign up at Hired.com/iphreaks]**[This episode of iPhreaks is brought to you, in part, by Postcards. Postcards is the simplest way to allow you to feedback from right inside your application. With just a simple gesture, anyone testing your app can send you a Postcard containing a screenshot of the app and some notes. It’s a great way to handle bug reports and feature requests from your clients. It takes 5 minutes to set up, and the first five postcards each month are free. Get started today by visiting www.postcard.es] **CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to episode 90 of the iPhreaks show. This week on our panel, we have Alondo Brewington. ALONDO: Hello from North Carolina! CHUCK: Jaim Zuber. I’m Charles Max Wood from Devchat.tv. And this week, we have a special guest and that's Constantin Jacob. CONSTANTIN: Hi from Hamburg, Germany! CHUCK: Oh cool! Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? CONSTANTIN: Sure! My name is Constantin. I’m from Hamburg in Germany up north. And I’m mainly an iOS developer but I fiddle with everything – all platforms. And I just learned how to do Ruby stuff and Rails stuff. I’m getting there somehow. CHUCK: Somehow, huh? CONTANTIN: Yeah. CHUCK: Yeah. Those Ruby on Rails, they're hard! CONTANTIN: Yeah [chuckling]. CHUCK: Alright. Well, we brought you on today to talk about HealthKit, which was announced in June if I remember right. CONSTANTIN: Yes CHUCK: Do you want to give us quick overview of what it is and what it's supposed to be capable of? CONSTANTIN: Basically, HealthKit is just a local database for all these health applications to store and retrieve data into. So basically, you initially make a request to read and write data. Or maybe you just want to read or maybe you just want to write data. And so, user has to set all the permissions they want and you get the ‘ok’ or you don't and you can – as a developer, you can, after, read and write as much as you want out of that database. And I just guess it's just like an SQL light database or something because every once in a while, it's really slow like with queries. But on general, the APIs are really, really good and everything works really well. CHUCK: Yeah, I really like the idea of HealthKit and I’ve opened the health app on my phone but it doesn't show anything. I just barely figured out how to get it to integrate with my Fitbit. And so, I’ve been looking into that. What kind of information are we talking about here with HealthKit? CONSTANTIN: Out of the box, you only get some kind of step counter and with having the information of your steps, it tells you how far you went – like distance; and with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, they added a way to measure height so they – all that kind of stuff they measure like if you went upstairs or down stairs. So, those exercises or activities you do over the day. And something really nice is if you have an accessory – like Bluetooth accessory for any stuff like heart rate like a monitor or something. You can just connect it over Bluetooth and HealthKit will detect it and just get the data right out of it and stores it into HealthKit. ALONDO: Now, are these values that you're storing – the metrics – are they all predefined or is there any flexibility in the ability to add new health data? CONSTANTIN: No, they are all predefined. So you can't do like half of a step or something. So it's steps. And so it's all these information, they’re predefined by Apple and you can use these. So all the metrics are predefined. CHUCK: So let's say that I build an app. Maybe it's a running app or a jump roping app or something and I want to integrate it to HealthKit. How do I get started with that? CONTANTIN: There’s the really nice framework reference on the developer.apple.com website. And I got started with the example application they posted there it's called fit and it shows you how to do it; and it shows you neat little tricks to make your code better. So they boost you with that. And because there's a crazy amount of variables and validation – everything you have to remember to get the correct information you want to do or you want to retrieve or write or whatever. So there's really complicated in my opinion. But I understand why they had to go there because they have, for example, all these units they support. It’s crazy amount of units they support. So you have to make that really wide and support a lot of stuff. And therefore you, as a developer, you have to go a long way but they have to go a long way as well. But from how stable the framework and everything is, it's really, really good. CHUCK: Very cool. So does it sync data in? So it seems like the health app pulls data from other sources and then aggregates it on to my iPhone. So the health app then shows the dashboards, which have all the information. So if I went running today, then it would show the activity that my Fitbit logs and it would put it into the health app. Is this done by some syncing of the data from one app on the phone to another or is it a more direct, "Hey, here's some information. Go for it"? CONSTANTIN: No, it's more like direct information. It’s like if you have the permissions to write data into HealthKit, basically it's just a database. You can just store everything in there. And you have to provide the amount you want to store and like a start date and end date and all that kind of stuff. And you also get the source, which is nice because if you want to, for example, do some fitness calculations or something, but prevent people from cheating, you can just query for sources. So you can say, “I accept everything”; accept the data that was manually entered into HealthKit or into your health application and therefore you can prevent people from cheating or whatever, which is really, really nice. CHUCK: Hmmm. So does Apple do anything with this? Or is there a way to read the data out of HealthKit so that I can build my own reports? Or do other things with it? CONSTANTIN: Ah yes, you can! You just have to ask permission. When you get the permission, you can read the data. And after that you can do some of your own statistics. Apple uses – I forgot what the name was – I’m looking for the name of the little extra sensor that was added in the Apple 5s I think like the motion sensor? ALONDO: Yes. CHUCK: Uh huh. CONSTANTIN : I think was it M7 sensor? Whatever. That kind of sensor. And with that came Core Location – oh not Core Location, Core Motion. Basically, they use Core Motion to get the step information. So the steps you've taken, count that and they just calculate how far you went and all that stuff. That’s what apple uses to provide this kind of information. And when you open up HealthKit for the first time, like on the dashboard, I guess having the dashboard entirely empty. So getting started for the user, they provide the steps you've taken and they use Core Motion for that, I believe, but I guess that's quite plausible. CHUCK: So the reason it doesn't track my steps then is because I have an iPhone 5 and it doesn't have that sensor in it? CONSTANTIN: I believe so. CHUCK: Because one of my friends has an iPhone 6 and it shows all of his steps and this and that and the other – and I was like, "Holy cow!" And so I opened my app and nothing. [Chuckling] CONSTANTIN: It was like empty. CHUCK: Yeah! And I was like, “Oh man!” ALONDO: Because I have the 5 and the 5s and I noticed that when I did accept that one of the apps – the pedometer app – actually had the previous 7 days of motion data captured already, so I can see without having to start. And that was a nice thing to actually see what I have been doing the previous week. Not having to keep track of it once I started and wait another 7 days to get an idea of what type of walking I was doing. CONSTANTIN: Yeah. I know. You can. When you ask for Core Motion, it’s like this activity data. You can ask. It stores up to two weeks, I believe – the information. And you can retrieve the data from the past two weeks and then show it. So when you use Core Motion, you actually have to save the data yourself; and if you use HealthKit, which is a big advantage, it’s a huge database and it just stores everything forever if you don't delete it, basically. And you can reach back to information from any time as long as it's in there. ALONDO: So are you saying, like for right now, it seems just from an initial look at the HealthKit data, I think it's nice. I actually use a couple of pedometer apps just to try to track my motion but I haven't really seen much outside of step tracking. Are you seeing some other uses using some of the other information that's available inside of HealthKit? CONSTANTIN: Yes, There is. I, for example, have a Polar H7. It's like a belt you put around your chest to measure your heart rate that directly works with HealthKit. For example, you don't need any extra application from Polar whatever. You just connect it over Bluetooth and you have instant information in your HealthKit, which is really nice. So, if you want to track any kind of workouts or something, you can buy yourself appropriate accessories. You might not even need extra applications from these developers. So HealthKit works with these third party accessories you try out of the box. And Apple has an – in the store has an extra – when you go into accessories, there's an extra category. It’s HealthKit. ALONDO: I was curious about that. And that leads into one of my follow-up questions, which is just it seems like as a developer, I’m trying to find a way in to take advantage of HealthKit data. But it seems like it’s at the stage where it requires some sort of hardware device versus just being able to use the phone directly. Am I correct? Am I maybe not being a little too pessimistic there? CONSTANTIN: Yes and no. For most data obviously, it comes from outside the iPhone because the iPhone just can’t provide the data. There's no real way to get the heart rate or something. There's an application that uses a camera and some crazy algorithm for it and apparently, it's quite accurate but like what I’m trying to say is not really a way to get like vital signs from the human body from like the iPhone itself so you need some kind of an accessory. But, something you could definitely do is – with Core Motion you can – well there's a method that tells you if you're walking or cycling or driving your car and whatever. Under fitness, they have distance with bicycle so you could ask for the activity like with your application just to get started to do something. Downloadable application. You could ask for the permissions in Core Motion to check the data with the bike like the distance and then store that into HealthKit because Apple doesn't do that right now, which I don't understand because they do the steps. And I actually thought about doing that myself. ALONDO: Okay. CONSTANTIN: So if you remember the moves application, which is totally outdated right now because apparently they don't care anymore. They did all this with Core Motion – basically with the Core Motion framework. And you could easily use the same framework and just store that into HealthKit. And that's a really good starting point, I guess, with HealthKit if you’re curious because it doesn't need any extra accessory or whatever. You can just do that and check your bicycle riding activity with Core Location or Core Motion. ALONDO: Okay. I was trying to think of a way to move into – integrating into auto or sports apps for tracking player activity maybe from a code chore – a fitness play and is there a way to share that data? Which leads to my next question. Is this information restricted to the current user? Because it seems like there will be implications if you were trying to share this although it would be really useful if you could. CONSTANTIN: Where would you share it too? ALONDO: So say for instance, I’m a basketball coach and I want to make sure my kids are all getting their running in when they're not at practice. And so, the kids have like a Fitbit or an iPhone or something like that. I was trying to come up with a way a scenario that I can actually get that information as a coach and make sure people are following the fitness plan. I guess it would apply to a trainer with clients as well. CONSTANTIN: Oh yeah. You could do that. From right now, the docs say – the doc from Apple say by the time you get the permission to read the data out of the HealthKit database, you can sync it wherever and like all these applications do it – like the Withings One does it and it's like one numcode or something or human. And they all do it. You’re just not allowed to store these information into iCloud. ALONDO: Okay. CHUCK: Why iCloud in particular? I mean you could store it on your own service that may not be secure. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, you're allowed to store it on your own service just not iCloud. I don't know why and Apple doesn't do it, so. I don't know. CHUCK: So all that data is on the phone and not on iCloud. Period. The end. CONSTANTIN: Yeah. But you could – if you're a third party developer, you're allowed to store it on your servers and give people the ability to synchronize their data with the server. CHUCK: Right. You can trust me. I promise. [Chuckling] I’m not working for your insurance company. No – did you just eat a cookie? ALONDO: Yeah, I used to be a little concerned about the implications of that. CHUCK: Yeah. But I guess if they're storing the data they're getting in the third party system and you know that, then you can just not grant them access. CONSTANTIN: Yeah. You always have to – the developer always has to ask for permission and the user is always able to just say no and then you get nothing. [Crosstalk 17:04] You don't even get back like ‘permission denied’ or something. You just get nil back so you just get nothing. There’s just no information for you to as developer. CHUCK: So you can't come back and go, "Come on, really?" CONSTANTIN: Yeah. No, it's just there's just no information you get back and that's the safety precaution Apple did. So I guess you just can’t be annoying as a developer for users. CHUCK: Gotcha. So what are you using HealthKit for? CONSTANTIN: Right now, I’m working actually for an insurance in Germany. I’m not really allowed to tell what insurance and what I’m specifically working on, but I can just say it's an insurance and it's more like test project just to see what's possible and what could be useful. So there's a lot of testing involved – a lot of talking with experts. CHUCK: Well, I could see one application that wouldn't bother me too much for insurance and that is if you're trying to get health or life insurance and they want you to apply. It may be more convenient to send them this kind of data as opposed to actually filling out the form. And so, one thing that I’ve experienced trying to get life insurance is they send somebody out to my house and that person then had to do this health assessment on me before I could get insurance. It would be nice if I can just say, "Well, if you trust Apple, then you can just use my HealthKit data." CONSTANTIN: Yeah, I guess the insurance system is different in the US. I think insurances trust their customers less but just today, there was a survey in Germany about if people would send this kind of data to their insurances. I think 32% said yes but only if they get benefits out of it. CHUCK: Right. CONSTANTIN: So, if you do a beneficial program, you can get a monthly–. [Crosstalk 19:17] CHUCK: You get a lower premium or something. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, percent of the amount. I don't know just 5% of your monthly fee but on a monthly basis. CHUCK: Yeah, I think the thing that people are concerned about here is that the insurance company would get information that would tell them that they are sicker than the insurance company thinks they are. And so, then their rates would go up. CONSTANTIN: Yes. And I can entirely relate to that and I wouldn't send these kind of information. But what I truly believe what is useful, is if you can save 15 dollars or something a month on insurance if you just send your daily step count or something to them, like the daily steps you take and you just do like, “Okay the maximum amount you can save of like 30 dollars.” And if people could save like 15 dollars or 10 dollars a month, I would do that because for 15 dollars, you get a lot for that if you just take 15 dollars and go to a grocery store or something. You get some stuff for that. CHUCK: Well, and depending on which gym you go to, I mean that could pay for the gym – at least the really inexpensive ones. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, like for example my gym is 20 euros a month, which is 23 dollars. CHUCK: So that’s another area of – that might be interesting is for heath businesses. So businesses like gyms or places like that where they are in the business of helping people be more healthy, it might be interesting to them to see how – what the demographics are of the people who are coming to their gym and then not necessarily the demographics as far as men, women, whatever, which HealthKit also captures incidentally. But then also just the information on, generally, our members get so many steps in a week or their heart rate is this. You know if you have an iWatch – an Apple Watch – and you have all that information being captured or whatever. “They tend to lose two pounds a week” or “We find that a certain demographic loses two pounds a week and another demographic gains two pounds a week.” All of that information could be interesting pulled together. CONSTANTIN: Yeah. So I can imagine for a gym or something, that if you collect this kind of data, their personal trainers will be able to work easier because they just don't have the information of seeing you at that moment training, but they could have access to information from the past month and look at that data and say, “Yeah okay. You slacked of there and this week you should do more of that” and their advice will be targeted better. JAIM: What type of data is likely to be on the user's phone? So I've got sleep data on my health app from Sleep Cycle. I was hoping maybe cycling information would be there Map My Ride. Not there. CONSTANTIN: For cycling, know that – I don't know how it's pronounced it's like Strava or whatever. There’s like this cycling and running community only they're saving activity data into HealthKit they're collecting from the bike ride user. And they're also featured by Apple. If you go into the App store and search for “Health” or “HealthKit”, the first match you get is like a big box of “health vacation lite” and “Promoted Applications”. And then for like [inaudible 22:59] you need real accessories for like sleep or whatever. Say for example, there are some monitors you put next to your bed and they somehow measure if you're awake or asleep and they save it into this. JAIM: It sounds like most of the data's pretty niched. CONSTANTIN: Yeah. I guess there will be more development. Like more accessories and more applications that uses and/or actively use and better use it than right now. CHUCK: Yeah, it'd be really interesting to see if there's some, for example, grabbing all these data and then building a fitness score. It has your age information, your weight information, it has how active you are off of your steps or your stairs or whatever so it could give you a score and then give you ideas maybe of how to do better and even gamify it a little bit. And I know that the Fitbit stuff does that some but it'd be really interesting to see that overall. You know here's how you could increase your score this way or that way. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, I guess it's hard to do without actually seeing the people, because, for example, if you take the body mass index which is like the center measuring tool for people to get how fit they are or not but this totally doesn't respect like muscle mass and this stuff. So just because your BMI is slightly higher does not imply that you are fat or anything. I mean like people like body builders really, really working on their body. They’re just really muscly. They’re just heavy because they train a lot and not because they're fat. So this is hard to calculate. CHUCK: Yeah, I suppose that's true. But it still might be interesting to – just to see – you should be able to tell from their movement and stuff at least how active they are and it'd be interesting to me at least to see how that would work out. So even if you just ignored BMI, but maybe you had a measured body fat percentage or something like that then you could say, “Hey, you might want to improve this and it looks like you don't get very many steps. So getting steps might be a good way to do it.” CONSTANTIN: Yes. Just a lot of possible choices that could lead to a false fitness score. What I’m quite interested in what people would do with HealthKit and – for example you have all these information. Like what kind of minerals and all that stuff you put into your body and the applications which have like huge databases of food and all the ingredients and how much of these ingredients like for example minerals in these kind of meals and they calculate all this and save it into HealthKit and this is very interesting to – obviously, this is not entirely correct, this information – but I think it's still interesting to see like how much of what you're putting into your body just from what you eat. JAIM: We're talking about trying to quantify fitness health. It’s a really – it’s a hard problem from another points. We’re very early in the ability to quantify any type of health from inputs into a device. CHUCK: I think if we really truly understood this stuff, then we would be able to more accurately diagnose things. We would be more able to tell people exactly what they need to do to fix their health. But in a lot of cases, our doctors don't have enough information to make the right diagnosis all the time and I’m really curious to see where this will go as we start to measure this stuff. ALONDO: Yeah, I was curious about the idea of the metrics that we are able to measure. For instance, I’m coming from a sports background and working on a sports app, my concern a lot of times is daily workouts. And a lot of that's not easily matching some of the health metrics that we currently have. But it would be nice and this maybe something that opens up in the future, the ability to log things; like it would help if I knew how many pushups someone was doing or how many reps of a particular exercise like squats someone was doing. I could track that. I could make sense of that data without having to have some sort of predefined definition of quantifying what's good and what's bad there and if HealthKit was opened to be able to share those kinds of things because they're counting to know their people know what they are but they’re not really metrics of health. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, I know. It’s more – it’s always more like workout related. It’s way easier to calculate how much calories you've burned or doing this work because there's some kinds of standards that are known for these stuff. So if you take, you've been running at like at a speed of ten kilometers per hour something for half an hour, we can calculate almost precisely how many calories you've burned running in that half an hour. But to re-quantify how fit in general a person is, is really, really hard. And I don't entirely believe that there will be a fixed measuring point for anyone to really get this. CHUCK: Yeah, I think my point really was that I really enjoy the gamification aspect of things that we measure. Something that gets me going if I’m working toward a badge or trying to solve a particular issue in my own life or health. I get motivated by that and so, that's where I think it's really interesting is, “Okay, we're measuring all of these health metrics so let's go ahead and make a game out of giving more steps or make a game out of this or that” and so it's not really that there's some number or some measurement of how fit or healthy I am but more just something there that motivates me to get up and move or to go do specific things. CONSTANTIN: Yes it's – I will – I believe by now that health kit is more like a database to store all these information. People are able to put all these information they have put together from all these different applications they use and can easily show like what they have done; like how far they ran and like how many calories they burned. And show to friends like maybe if you go two or three times to the gym every week with a friend and you both have similar devices or the same devices and you measure how – who's better or who's more efficient, who burned more calories. This stuff so it's like somehow a gamification and you get all these information right at your fingertip. I think that's really, really good for the user. Because you really empower the user because you give them a lot of information about their body like really, really easily so I think it's really, really good. Even though I’m not a fan of all these wearables that are announced or about to come like there are a bunch announced at CS a week ago, two weeks ago. And I’m not a fan of all the stuff that was announced but a lot of them do the right thing and go into right direction. ALONDO: Yeah, I think it's going to be a shakeout there as far as the devices. And also think that there definitely needs to be a – how open they want to make it but I like the idea of HealthKit as a store house of information that's available (when granted permission of course) and allow app developers to interpret that data as needed for the application that they're working on. I think there is some power there and is just the matter of, right now, of getting bearings on what's there, what can be placed there, what we can use. Once we sort of get clear and a little more openness there, I think you can start to see some really cool applications developed. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, definitely, and I feel they did with the health kit similar to the passbooks. They we're just all these application have their own system how to get these in store to use and how they look and what not. And they say we do all the heavy lifting for you and you just implement it and we empower the user together and it's really easy for everyone. And they did the same thing with HealthKit where they empower the user and do all this for the developer. They do all the heavy lifting and, like I said, their APIs are really, really nice and I’ve only come to one thing I don't like and that's if you want to query data from a specific data type and you want to query against sources. You can only specify one source. And that's stupid in my opinion because obviously there are a lot of sources when you have a lot of accessories just for steps, may be it takes information from your phone or your Upband or FitBit or whatever. I think they really have to add the ability to query against more than just one source. ALONDO: So if I understand correctly, I thought I maybe misunderstanding the definition of the source. I was assuming the source would be the device itself and there was a single store in HealthKit. Or are we saying if there's data coming from say a Fitbit versus data that's measure directly by the M7 chip or M8 on the device those are considered separate sources? CONSTANTIN: They're considered separate sources because you always need a source if you want to write anything. And that is an absolute rule like you can't – even apple doesn't get past it. If you go into the health application and go into the step counter and go into all data, and just pick one of the steps and you will see that it says, as the source your – like the name of your phone, and for example, if I have the Polar H7 like strap for your chest, that's listed as Polar H7 and then you're UID behind that but that's not really important. What's really important there is like you always need a source for storing information. ALONDO: Oh, you're right. This can be a pain because if you're trying to aggregate data from multiple sources, you can potentially have things that are counted twice. CHUCK: Yeah, you'd have to do the work yourself. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, they're counted twice. Or for example, this cheat prevention you want to do like you want to say, "Ok I take every source except the ones that are from this and that source.” You can like specify the day you don't want to do and since you can’t do that, you have to ask for all the data and the more data you have, the longer the queries take. Just with the steps right now – and I have my iPhone 6 since December. Yeah, it takes forever to get just a list of all the steps and then you have to do the sorting manually within your application. CHUCK: So then if I have my phone on my pocket and my Fitbit on wrist or on my belt, and I go for a run, does it count the steps twice then if I’m pulling data in from the Fitbit? CONSTANTIN: I don't know about that because I don't have a Fitbit and I don't have an Upband or anything. I’m going to buy one by the time the new devices that were announced at CS are out because all the new devices have – like the apple watch have a heart rate sensor built-in. and they're all supposed to work with HealthKit out of the box so by the time they're available, I will go and buy one of these and have to look at it. But right now, I have no idea but probably if those devices – they don't know of each other those so they’d probably just write. CHUCK: That's interesting. CONSTANTIN: Yeah, they both write into HealthKit. My guess is just to prevent data loss, they just do it blindly which is understandable. CHUCK: Right. Well, this is something that they can get smarter at later right? CONSTANTIN: Yeah. CHUCK: I mean it's something that we've seen other companies do. For example, Google as they were developing their search algorithms, they collected a ton of data and they were able to then go back and refine their algorithms so that people were more likely to get the correct results when they did a search. And I’m guessing that Apple's probably going to do the same kind of thing where they have all kinds of information about how the health data is gathered and things like that. And then they can come back and say, “Okay we've got enough information now to tweak our algorithms and make them behave this way.” CONSTANTIN: Yes, and I guess the problem is that if nobody has done this before, like everything you do is [inaudible 36:57] so everything you do is testing and you have to think of everything and be – you have to provide the logic for everything if you write this kind of a framework for everyone to use. So I guess that whoever did this kind of stuff at Apple, they really had to think of the possible data that could be gathered by in fitness or health accessory or application and provide the proper units and everything to calculate it and store it. So I guess this is a really - that was really, really hard for them. Like I said, everything turned out really nice and really useable. Everything is really complex but I understand, by the time - and like when you start reading and you get to like the point, “Oh! This is super nice” and then you get to the point like, “This is horrible. Why is this so complex?” And when you keep reading, you understand that for example, they support the unit stones because they apparently still measure stuff in stones in England. I don't know for what but they do support it. So you actually do a lot of stuff to just get numbers, simple numbers out of it. CHUCK: Alright, anything else we should talk about with this before we go to picks? CONTANTIN: I wouldn't know anything. CHUCK: Alright, well thanks for sharing all this information. Alondo, do you want to start us off with picks? ALONDO: Yeah, I’ve got two picks this week and first one actually is health related. It’s a New Year and a lot of, myself and my co-workers are kicking off the New Year trying to get healthy. So I picked up the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferris. And I don't know if people are familiar with this four hour workweek book but one of my co-workers has also had read the book and recommended it so it is my first pick for the week. And my second pick is a book called School for Startups. It’s sort of a guide for startups to get ramped up really quickly and make money. Actually, one of the authors is Jim Beach, Chris Hanks and I’m blanking on the third author. But Jim Beach was my professor when I was in business school. He’s a really great professor. He did a great job of explaining starting a new business the way the school wants you to teach it and then the way he actually did it. So, he has a really approachable method. He’s really relatable and I think people would get something out of it. So those are my two picks. CHUCK: Jaim, do you have some picks for us? JAIM: Uh, no picks today. I can't give more than four seconds in. CHUCK: That sucks. Sorry, I’ve got a couple of picks today. The first one is Slack. I think that might have been picked on the show before. Slack is a chat application it's a web app. It’s based online. I’m really digging it. It’s really awesome. So I’m going to pick slack. One other pick I have and this is something that I brought up in a previous episode. I got some encouragement from Jaim. I went to a toastmasters meeting last week and it was awesome and I’m probably going to be going in the future. I paid my dues so I can be a member of the club. And got the books and I’m going to be trying to get my competent communicator. So anyway, it's really cool. And I set a goal for myself to get better at speaking but I really need to get some debt paid down and so I’m probably not going to be travelling which precludes me from going out to the SCORRE conference which is in Orlando, Florida. So anyway, I’ll probably do that next year and this year, I’ll just be doing the other awesome stuff with Toastmasters. And Constantin asked in the chat this “Is kinda like IRC?” Yeah, it's a lot like IRC. The thing I like about it is that it's persistent. In other words, I can ask a question in there and it stays in there. I’m pretty sure I can go in and change my chat but you get channels. I can bring people to just one channel and it doesn't cost me anything or I can bring people into multiple channels and just pay for them to have an account on my account and it's really nice. So, yeah, definitely liking chat and there's a ton of other stuff you can do with it as of well. I’m looking at getting into Hughbot, which is an automation bot for IRC channels or I think github actually built it for I want to say Hipchat. But anyway, you can actually use it or modify it to run in IRC and slack and stuff so that's another thing I’m really looking at doing and I’m liking about it so. Yeah. Those are my picks. Constantin, you have some picks for us? CONSTANTIN: I have three picks. I have – first one is the Polar H7, which is really nice. If you want to check like your heart rate, it's comfortable to wear and it's really not annoying and it works right out of the box with Healthkit because I really them because the polar applications are not very nice and since it works directly out of the box with Healthkit, there's no need for me to even touch the polar applications so that's really nice. And the second pick is having little projects like weekend projects that's easy to maintain. That’s really, really nice. It’s like little challenges you always have and you always better yourself so for example I just ordered little Bluetooth beacons like iBeacons. Well it's like an auto-renew chip with a Bluetooth chip on it, and it's fully hackable and programmable it's amazing. I will provide a link if anyone is interested, and they're really, really nice - like I wasn't able to do a lot with them yet but they're really nice. And the third one is travelling because I just love travelling and I love going abroad and I love going to different places and see different cultures and it's always keeps you open minded and interested in – well not just travelling in the ways people do it in different places. And they might do it better in different places than people do it in your country or in your tow. So I really like travelling. CHUCK: Awesome. Well thanks for coming. I don't know that I have any announcements other than that I’m considering doing and in person meet up out here in Utah, maybe in Parks City or Salt Lake City. So if you are interested in coming out for something like that, maybe spending the night in one of those cities, just let me know. It's probably going to be like a dinner get together hack night that kind of thing. I’m also looking at just pooling something together for some of the conferences out here that I’ll be attending but none of those are iOS conferences so anyway, if you're interested just send me an email or tweet me and let me know. Um, my email is chuck@devchat.tv. And with that we'll wrap up. Thanks for coming, we'll catch you next week.[This episode is sponsored by MadGlory. You've been building software for a long time and sometimes it gets a little overwhelming. Work piles up, hiring sucks and it's hard to get projects out the door. Check out MadGlory. They're a small shop with experience shipping big products. 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