A recovering Green Dotter who didn't fit in with Big 4 culture for reasons which shall become evident momentarily has created a tool that basically allows you to be your very own personal NSA:
A decade ago, [Joe] Zacyck was working for Deloitte and felt out of place. A self-described “hippie” who “made my own clothes,” working for a giant corporation and following strict instructions didn’t feel right. Ten years ago, he joined up with CustomInk, a custom T-shirt company now based in McLean, as an accountant.
At the time, only about a dozen people worked at the startup, and the attitude around it — casual, loose and ambitious — spoke more to Zaczyk’s personality he said. Today, he’s CustomInk’s controller and the company is approaching 1,000 employees and $200 million in revenue and just took in a major round of investment from Ted Leonsis and former AOL CEO Steve Case.
Now to his contribution for Type A personalities everywhere. As yet, it's lacking an iOS app and integration into our promised digital toilets of the future that measure the output of our lunches but here's the concept:
What would it look like if you could track your mood over the past year? What do you think you would see if every workout you’ve done were placed on a line graph? What if every beer you’ve drank were poured into a virtual swimming pool?
This is the concept behind Everylog, a “quantified self” web app founded by Joe Zaczyk. Users can log every aspect of their life and turn it into a data set, or compete against other users. The sound of tracking one’s every move may certainly not appeal to some, but Zaczyk says he doesn’t want those people to use Everylog.
“I know that it’s not for everyone,” Zaczyk says. “It’s for ‘Type A’ organized people. I want to cater to the people who need this. I want to help those people.”
I've often thought it would be great to be able to track how much time I actually waste on Facebook or how many beers I've had in a given week but, not being one of "those people," I realized pretty quickly that I actually don't care. And I certainly wouldn't be bothered to log in every time I ate a sandwich or wasted an hour watching Golden Girls reruns, I have Twitter to keep track of that for me.
Personally I see this being turned into a powerful business tool for corporate America to make sure you aren't taking too many bathroom breaks or wasting quality billable hours, say, reading accounting tabloids. No thank you.
