Brian's Tech Blog Feed

Fitter Happier

BrianK — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:10:42 +0000

Thu, Jan 31, 2013

We are well into the new year and for many of us that New Year’s resolution to get fit has already fallen by the wayside. For those of you still trying to stick with it, good for you and maybe I can show you some tools that will help you in your efforts. Today we are going to look at three products I have looked at to aid you in your exercise / weight loss efforts.

The first two are tech devices that will help you track your fitness coming and goings. The third is an app that some of you may have seen before.

Body Media: Core

The first device is called the Body Media Core armband. The Core is a device that you strap to your upper arm to track your efforts throughout the day, and even the night. The Core is pretty cool if you are at all a geek. In addition to working as a pedometer it actually tracks your calorie output with sensors that measure the amount of sweat you produce as well as changes in the heat coming off your skin. The dashboard provides a ton of information but it requires some steps on your part. I bought the Core model which you have to sync to your computer to upload your stats and let it recharge (it does so very quickly). You also need to manually enter your caloric intake to get the best data.

You can also wear the Core to bed and it will analyze how much sleep you get. While this sounds cool it was one of the first features I stopped using and hits at the biggest drawback of the device. As I mentioned you wear the core on your upper arm and that can get old pretty quick. Body Media says you can wear the devices 20 hours a day but once I start winding down for the day it comes off. That’s not my biggest gripe, my biggest gripe is the subscription plan. Your device is useless unless you pay $6.95 per month or $59 per year for the pleasure of using their product. This was the only product that required a monthly fee for use of its basic services.

Overall I like the device and get use out of it but it won’t be a home run product until they find a less intrusive way for it to collect data, which is unlikely given the sensors need skin contact to function. They also need to ditch the monthly / annual fee.

Fit Bit: The One

The Fitbit is a cool little device about the size of a flash drive that clips to your front pocket. Here is the manufacturer’s description: “During the day, it tracks your steps, distance, calories burned, and stairs climbed. Come nightfall, it measures your sleep cycle, helps you learn how to sleep better, and wakes you in the morning. The One motivates you to reach your goals by bringing greater fitness into your life – seamlessly, socially, 24 hours a day.” This is the device my wife has chosen for her fitness efforts. It has the benefit of being Bluetooth enabled so you can sync it without connecting it physically to any device. It is small and unobtrusive and it has a display built right in (The Core lacks this feature).

The down side is that you will not have the same amount of data to analyze after a sync and many of its results are based on estimates instead of hard data. On the plus side you don’t need to have a subscription to their service; in fact it is designed to integrate into other popular fitness programs like Map My Fitness, Spark People and My Fitness Pal.

Map My Fitness

The final product we will look at isn’t a device but a service, actually a number of services. Map My Fitness comes in many different flavors including; Map My Walk, Map My Run, Map My Hike, Map My Ride and so on and so forth. There is basically a product for every outdoor activity that takes you from point A to point B. The service requires use of a smart phone with GPS capability. The basic idea is that you turn on the program once you begin your walk, run or ride and the app will track your path, how far you traveled, how long it took and your elevation changes along the way. Once you have created a path you can use it over and over comparing your performance on each trip.

Mapping is the most obvious piece of this service but Map My Fitness also offers a number of other features. This includes calorie logging, journaling and general fitness logging. In addition there is a social media component that allows you to share your maps with friends and compare performance notes. The best part is that the basic service is absolutely free as long as you have a compatible phone.

The Upshot

So which of these products works? Which one is the best? The reality is that it is really up to you and how you use technology to help meet your fitness goals. I prefer the Core to the Fitbit but my wife feels exactly the opposite. I like the depth of real data even if I don’t like the extra costs involved. She prefers the Fitbit because it is easy to use, allows you to check progress anytime you want and most of all because you don’t have to wear it. I would recommend Map My Fitness to anyone who spends time doing outdoor fitness and has a smartphone. It’s easy to use and collects a lot of handy information through something you are likely carrying with you anyway.

The real question is, do any of these products help you get fit? As someone who struggles with my fitness I can say honestly that they help but it will always come down to you. What they do offer is a lot of reinforcement, and that is great for me. The fact that you always know you have the BodyMedia Core on when you are wearing it serves is a reminder that you need to be active; it sort of acts like a string around the finger. The data you pull off the devices allows you to compare your progress from day to day so you know when you have been sloughing off. Finally all of these devices / services have a pronounced social media component. You don’t have to share your information with others but once you start sharing your achievements it becomes kind of a personal expectation that you have to keep it up so people won’t know you fell off the fitness wagon.

If you decide to try one of these devices let me know how it goes and good luck meeting your goals!

fitness

apps

Brian K

Hope it's not a zombie...

blooker — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Wed, Dec 5, 2012

I've been wondering why my home computer has slowed down recently. I swear, I went outside one Saturday to do some raking, came back in to find I'd left my laptop on and open, which would be fine except one of those four-legged furry animals I somehow love had decided to stomp and sit all over it. Dell Media Center had opened. I've never submitted my computer to the horrors of Dell Media Center (which I'll be removing when I get a round to it).

But could my cat have zombified my computer?

According to a recent and fantastically informative MakeUseOf.com post, zombie computers use communication programs, like Outlook, to send spam email after having been infected by the bot pulling the strings. The post gives a better description of what a zombie computer is, how you can prevent it, and some tips on curing it.

My cat could very well have sat on the perfect combination of keys and mouse buttons to open my spam folder and send Firefox off to some opium den of a malicious web site. I'll be trying out some of MakeUseOf's tips when I get home.

Image Credit: "Zombie's Computer" by Landahlauts, used under CC license.

Is Internet Addiction for Real?

blooker — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 21:00:00 +0000

Mon, Nov 5, 2012

I like learning about the human brain and behavior. A couple years back, I read Nicholas Carr's 2010 book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains, in which the author investigated whether his internet usage was affecting his ability to concentrate. It's a fascinating book that includes a good deal of historical background--I believe the history of reading and writing was covered--and it convinced me to keep some time each day dedicated to activities that do not require screens of any sort. And obviously as our internet use continues to evolve and change--like navigational hardward, going from using a mouse on a laptop to physically caressing the internet with swipes and taps on a tablet--I remain attuned to Pew research and other news about human-computer/web interaction.

So, when I came across this infographic on MakeUseOf.com, I was drawn in. The source, bestmastersinpsychology.com, while psychology-related is a somewhat unlikely source being focused on helping those interested in an advanced degree in psychology find information on programs and career paths. Anyhow, it's an interesting infographic, though take it with a grain of salt. One of the sources sited at the end (the Time article, "Does the Internet Really Make Everyone Crazy?") questions the assumption of the brain's rewiring being shocking and harmful--people can get the dopamine hit from different inputs depending on their habits--but the idea of an FB notification causing something like Pavlovian dog salivation makes me a bit dissatisfied with our internal reward mechanisms. It should also be noted that the American Psychiatric Association's DSM site lists Internet Addiction Disorder to be printed in the section of DSM5 reserved for disorders that require more research--it's not a recognized disorder, but a proposed one that requires more research for confirmation.

Those quibbles aside, I believe every internet user should be conscious of their use--how long they're on, what they're doing online, what they want to do but don't because they got wrapped up online, and so on. Really, being mindful about how we live our lives and spend our time in general is important. One small piece of that is ensuring that our needs and our families' needs are being met before we head back to Farmville or try to crack out a good one-liner page update.

Without further ado, the infographic. And below it, links to the sources sited in the image.

Statisticbrain.com - Attention Span Statistics

CNN's topic page for Attention Deficit Disorders

Health.com - "Depression, ADHD Increase Teens' Risk for Internet Addiction"

American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder's page on Internet Use Disorder

Time.com - "Does the Internet Really Make Everyone Crazy?"

Forbes.com - "Internet Addiction is the New Mental Health Disorder"

Pew Research Center Publication - "Facebook: A Profile of its 'Friends'"

Annenberg Public Policy Center Report - "Media in the Home 2000"

Newsweek - "Is the Web Driving Us Mad?"

Psychology Today - "What Your Facebook Account Says About Your Brain"

Image credit (top of post) "774 - Neuron Connection - Pattern" by Flickr user Patrick Hoesley, used under CC license

Infographic: "Facebook Psychology: Is Addiction Affecting Our Minds?"

Hurricane Sandy's Web Presence

blooker — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Mon, Oct 29, 2012

While I was thinking about what to blog today, my mind kept wandering to the storm hitting the East Coast. And it occurred to me to share the places I go for info on storms, like The Weather Channel's site, Weather Underground, and maybe even NOAA.

Then I saw that Mashable! had already done my work for me with the post "How to Follow Hurricane Sandy Online." They add a few webcams and tablet apps to my list, but I feel validated that they covered my sites, too. My infojitsu's still good.

The tech blogs have interesting Sandy-related posts.

Mashable posted video of the President's speech on Sandy
ReadWriteWeb on how the Internet might be affected if East Coast servers are hit
Gizmodo is live updating images of Sandy's destruction from users
GigaOM has a brief musing on current communication gadgets vs. our grandparents' communication gadgets in time of emergency
Lifehacker takes the opportunity

It's not all interesting, and in some cases posts just don't feel right. I may be unsubscribing to a few blogs as soon as I finish posting this. Here are some reasons why:

Mashable's songs for Hurricane Sandy feels wrong
Gizmodo's on notice, too, for giving attention to Tweeters complaining that the hurricane might delay their new iPhones
Gizmodo's post about the carbon-fiber sled you can ride after "frankenstorm" (can't believe I typed that) feels inappropriately consumerist following a devastating event

I hope your friends out East --and mine, too-- weather the storm safely.

(Image credit: "Waves crashing on Nantasket Beach in Hull, MA - Hurricane Sandy" from Flickr user jeffcutler, used under Creative Commons license.)

Take a simple quiz to pick your candidate

blooker — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Fri, Oct 19, 2012

Nonstop ads, finger-pointing debates, and 24/7 opinion news. You may feel bombarded and confused by the endless noise. You may begin to doubt the candidate you've selected because now it sounds like he might not be the best choice. And with all that "information" rattling around out there, can you be blamed for not knowing that one of the candidates for president is a woman?

Find out which of six presidential candidates best shares your worldview by taking the ISideWith.com quiz. That's right, six candidates. In addition to the two you already know, there's Libertatian candidate Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson, and Constitution Party Candidate Virgil Goode.

The quiz offers several yes/no questions in eight categories: social issues, environmental issues, economic issues, domestic policy issues, healthcare issues, foreign policy issues, immigration issues, and science issues. In addition to your yes or no answers, you can also opt to "choose another stance," which offers various conditional responses to the question. You can also select how important each question is to you. When you're done, ISideWith.com does some thinking, and will let you know which candidate is most closely aligned with your responses.

The site isn't funded by any corporate or political interest--in fact, you'll find requests for Paypal donations all over the place. The about page is kind of amusing. According to the site, ISideWith is the product of work by two friends with different political views whose goal with the site is to increase voter turnout. Does that mean it's trustworthy? That's not too difficult to fact check. You can take their quiz and then go investigate the candidate(s) who show up in your results. Do some research, pick your man or woman, and then install earplugs for the next couple-three weeks. This will be over soon.

websites

politics

Brian L

I Think I’ll Go for a Walk Outside

BrianK — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:26:44 +0000

Mon, Oct 15, 2012

One of the (many) issues I have struggled with over the years is the fact that I tend to get too excited by new, shiny things. So consider yourself warned that this might well be one of those shiny but insubstantial things. You be the judge.

Recently Google released another app for its Android Operating System. Like many applications this one takes advantage of the fact that most smart phones have location hardware embedded into them. Google Fieldtrip is what is known as a discovery tool. You don’t have to know exactly what you are looking for you simply tell your device the type of thing you are interested in and it will give you information on the location as you near it.

Here in Appleton I could see using this to create virtual historic tours for instance, if all the historic homes in the 3^rd Ward were in the system information on each one would automatically be pushed to your phone’s screen as you passed it. If you were curious and wanted to learn more you could then go to your local library to do some research with the help of their intelligent and helpful staff.

For businesses, we’ll use a restaurant as an example, you get a synopsis of the type of food the establishment
serves, their price range and their Zagat score with a link to the full review. The app has many categories you can set in your Interests. You can focus on architecture, historic places, offers and deals, food and unique locations.

I can see this application being really useful to people who are traveling in new locales as well as people looking to develop a better understanding of the history of their community. Of course not everything is perfect. The key problem with the app at this point is simply lack of content. FieldTrip relies on users to input data and because it is so new there are many gaps, hopefully these will be filled as people begin using the app.

Dads, Get Your Geek On!

BrianK — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:13:08 +0000

Fri, Oct 5, 2012

So anyone who knows me knows I like technology. It doesn’t take much to impress me either; I grew up in the days of Atari 400s and Commodore 64s in my grade school. The fact that my iPad has the processing power of the room sized computers used to make the Apollo missions happen makes my brain hurt, but in a good way. What you may not know is that I take my responsibilities as a dad pretty seriously, most days I even like being a dad. As a parent you have lots of responsibilities but you also have a captive audience to share all the things you love with! And boy howdy I love to torture my kids with all the geeky things I enjoy. There’s that time when you get to share Star Wars with your kids for the first time (that low when your oldest daughter doesn’t get it, the jubilation when you son does). There’s getting to buy Legos under the guise that they are actually for your kids.

So if you are a dad (or a mom, but I really don’t feel qualified to speak from that perspective) and you have geek tendencies you might want to check out the Wired magazine Geek Dad blog. It’s free. You don’t really need to be a geek to enjoy it, but it helps. Geek Dad is edited by Ken Denmead with contributors from all over the country. The topics are broad covering things like what order to run the Star Wars movies in to board games and of course the latest in technology products. The blog talks a lot about the Maker Movement and often links to projects you can do with your child.

So I know it's Friday Fun day but to be serious for just a moment I have to say this blog appeals to me in two important ways. Obviously it deals a lot with technology so that’s cool. More importantly it talks about dads engaging their kids in real ways and actually doing constructive projects with them. It also focuses quite a lot on STEM learning which is important in today’s educational setting, so in my book it is an all around win.

Check out Geek Dad (http://www.wired.com/geekdad/), do some of the activities with your kid(s) and tell me that it was a waste of your time, I dare you. Finally, since I am doing this on the library’s dime I should also tell you that there are several Geek Dad books available.

Tools You Can Use: Unsocialize

blooker — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Wed, Oct 3, 2012

Hat tip to MakeUseOf for pointing out this useful browser extension. They touted Unsocialize's availability on Google's Chrome browser, but you can also add it to Firefox.

Have you seen an update on your Facebook page about an interesting article one of your friends has read only to click on it and be redirected to a social reader app so thatt Facebook could now announce to all of your friends whenever you read an article? And so you don't read the article because you're afraid that others will find out about your tendency to read all things Bieber?

Unsocializer takes you to the article and bypasses the "install social reader for Facebook app" pop-up. It adds a right-click menu option called Unsocialize, which will open the article in a new tab when clicked. It also avoids Facebook's tracking and metrics--your reading will not be counted and turned around on you for marketing purposes.

If this sounds like something you could use, here are the links you need to find it for Chrome and Firefox.

Facebook

Tips

Brian L

Friday Fun: Life on Mars

blooker — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 16:00:00 +0000

Fri, Sep 28, 2012

Yes, this big news is everywhere or will be by the time you get home and watch the evening news (unless you're out at License to Cruise tonight...well, I suppose if you go to any Octoberfest this weekend, you could miss or forget this news entirely). Anyhow, the Curiosity rover, the Indiana Jones of robots adventuring on and exploring Mars, has found conglomerate rock!

If you're like, "Hey, it's been awhile since high school/college geology class," I've saved you a step be getting that Wikipedia link for you. If you're fine with short explanations, conglomerate rock is the sort of rock that forms over geologic time when river beds dry up and the sediment in the bed cements together and becomes packed under layers of sediment. If you think about the stones in the bottom of a riverbed, you know there's finer sediment under larger rounded stones--which are rounded thanks to being beaten up in and by the water. In the image you can see the mix of sizes of rounded stones cemented together as found on Earth on the right and on (squee!) Mars on the left.

Why squee? The idea is that water is necessary for life to exist--it's less idea than practice, really. So if we find evidence of water on Mars, the possibility of life having existed there is increased! In a college geology class field trip, I traveled around Arizona and on one of the stops examined an exposed layer of rock that was under water millenia ago. The stones and sediment in this layer were mixed with fossils of shelled animals. How amazing would it be if the Curiosity found fossils? To find life on another planet suggests the possibilty of life on other planets, which would then make me want to be cryogenically frozen and revived at a later time when we've figured out commercial space travel.

Not so fast, day dreamer! This rock was formed from a stream that long-flowing stream scientists estimate moved at 3 feet per second and was deep enough to cover somewhere between your foot and your whole leg. What does that mean for finding evidence of life in this particular rock? From NASA's announcement, "A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment," said Grotzinger. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though. We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment." I'll just have to find ways to occupy myself while Curiosity makes its slow advance on Mount Sharp then.

By the way, apologies to geologists for any oversimplification and avoidance of technical language--I'll let the curious learn about matrix, clasts, and things I've left out on that Wikipedia page.

Robots

Mars

Brian L

Speeding up your computer

blooker — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:50:31 +0000

Wed, Sep 26, 2012

I was reading this article on MakeUseOf last week about registry cleaners not speeding up your computer significantly. This surprised me as articles I'd read previously, perhaps even on MakeUseOf, suggested that cleaning up your computer's registry could significantly speed up your system. The more recent article is convincing that, especially with newer versions of Windows, there are other things you can do to improve your system's speed more significantly and with less risk of causing harm.

One thing the article doesn't make clear for all readers is what it means by speed. I'm aware that readers of this post may have different skill and experience levels in computer use. Some of you have stopped reading or soldiered on hoping I'd make sense of this "registry" thing, while others have already clicked through to the MakeUseOf article, saw nothing they didn't already know, and moved on.

So, let me get the newer users up to speed--your computer may be slow to start up when you turn it on and to run programs on stored on your computer like Word or Solitaire. That can be different than your computer being slow to pull up a website or download your email to Outlook because in order to access anything online, your computer communicates with other computers called servers to request and retrieve the information brought back to your screen. There are programs on your computer slowing this down as well (security programs like anti-virus software that scans all of the information coming in to your machine make the process take nanoseconds longer than running your computer without security software, which you wouldn't want to do).

The MakeUseOf tips about speeding up your computer are good ones, and two of them are free. Defragmenting your hard drive will help reunite parts of files stored in different places to improve their loading time. You can access the Microsoft disk defragmenter in the Start menu--Accessories folder--System tools folder.

The third tip about bad registry edits and not downloading bad software is more of a practice than anything, but they give advice on removing software, too.

The tip that will cost you is upgrading your RAM. You can first try to free up your RAM with the suggestions in this Techradar article. If things still seem slow after that, you'll want to consider a few things. Is your computer still under warranty? To install new RAM, you'll need to crack it open, which could void a warranty. The warranty supplier should be able to provide you with a way to get the upgrade done. Are you comfortable opening your computer and plugging things into its guts? You may not be, in which case you'll want someone else to do it--check the computer repair section of the yellow pages. You may find deals at places like Milwaukee PC or Best Buy--cheap or free installation if you buy your new RAM there--check the electronics shops section of the yellow pages and ask if they have any such deals.

If you're suffering from computer slowness, there's plenty more information you can find online to improve your system. MakeUseOf, Lifehacker, and Mashable frequently provide articles on ways to improve your computer's functioning and would be worthwhile to add to your RSS reader. What's RSS? That's a post for another time.

Image credit: Entering Hyperspace by Eole used under CC license

Computers

Tips

Brian L