Over at The Verge, Paul Miller on fitness trackers and the data they capture:

At CES this year, a horde of companies brought devices that track every metric of fitness: steps, runs, weight, heartbeats, skin temperature, air quality, and even how fast you eat. Much of the choice seems to come down to ergonomics (wristband or beltclip?), and color (pink or blue or gray?), but there’s another important distinction that needs attention: does the data this device tracks belong to me, or to the maker?

Miller brings up some great points in this post.

I haven’t thought about this since I started using my Nike FuelBand this past Sunday, but it’s true, there’s no reason I shouldn’t have access to my fitness data so I can back it up or export it to another service. Sure, Nike can keep their proprietary ‘Fuel’ score. But steps? Calories? Those are universal measurements. They’re my measurements.

We’re already seeing Twitter opening up access to users’ tweet archives. I think it’s only a matter of time before fitness trackers do the same.

I smell a Kickstarter opportunity.