Getting in shape for Geeks

Most geeks usually don't care much about "getting into shape". We've got our toys, and our fingers are usually pretty "buff" from playing our games, typing or using our smartphones. Well this blogger has gotten a little angry at how his body has been responding lately (sluggishly to not at all) so I took advantage of the new year to start with some new goals.

Diet and Fitness

I've started out pretty strong this year on my diet and fitness goals. For those of you that don't know, my wife and I have been on the Carb Lovers Diet for the past 6 months or so. We slipped a little during the holidays but we are back in action this year and I've lost 3 pounds since Christmas. Carb Lovers lets you eat good carbs (whole grains, fiber rich foods etc.) and its secret is resistant starches that come from things like green bananas, beans and potatoes. Its also portion control and some calorie counting. Basically its the way you should be eating for the rest of your life.

My wife's cousin and good friend of mine for years, Jen West (@thejenwestquest) was recently featured on the Rachael Ray show talking about and showing off (in her bikini!) the benefits of Carb Lovers. She has a great blog called The Jen West Quest that follows her daily fitness writing and health goals.
Another great benefit of the Carb Lovers book is that my wife Andrea (of the blog Annie's Angle) has become somewhat of a great cook with all the gourmet and yummy recipes in the book.

I've also been bustin' out a daily arm workout almost every day for the past two weeks and I can already see some results. (ie. my Droid X is easier to pick up above my head). Next... (ugh...) RUNNING.


Best Diet and Fitness Apps

There are some great apps that you can get for your phone to help you keep track of your diet, calories, run and workout.

1. Livestrong - both Jen West and my wife love this one. Mostly a calorie counter (helpful for Weight Watchers and Carb Lovers), the Livestrong app makes it very easy to track your calories and its extensive database of more than 525,000 foods is huge! Its hard to NOT find something. (only for iPhone right now)
2. Cardio Trainer + Racing - A great app for Android that motivates you to keep doing better with voice prompts. Also tracks your run / bike route with GPS and shows you the stats and your best times so you can keep pushing yourself. Features music integration so you can play your music while using the app and Facebook updates.
3. Calorie Counter by FatSecret - Android calorie counter with a large database and features a bar code scanner to scan your groceries.

Geeky Fitness Gadgets

My friend at work (Best Buy) showed me her new Fitbit - Wireless Personal Trainer which I thought was kind of neat. This personal trainer collects data about your daily activities, such as exercise intensity levels, calories burned, sleep quality, steps and distance. The collected data is automatically uploaded to your personal Fitbit website where you can track your progress towards personal goals.

Its basically a super geeky pedometer! It even keeps track of your sleeping habits and automatically uploads to your own personal Fitbit website (which is similar to Livestrong.com) to keep track of your eating and workout habits as well.
  
The Garmin - Forerunner 405CX GPS Watch is another geeky fitness gadget that we sell at Best Buy (as well as Amazon ;-). Its an all in one type, GPS, heart rate monitor and distance and calorie computer. A little pricey but if you want a separate all in one solution that you just snap on and take off when you're done, then this gadget will work for you.


Do you guys have any awesome apps or geeky fitness gear that you use? Leave me a comment below!

Droid X vs. the world

So, I just got my new Droid X last month and I did some extensive research before I made my purchase. I was using a Blackberry Curve 8330 for over two years and I loved it but I had this dream about finally owning an Apple product. I was originally considering the iPhone 4 but I REALLY hate AT&T. Being a long time Verizon customer, I had just rolled on to an awesome $50 credit for a new phone every two years (with a new contract of course) so, the choice was obvious...

Droid X

(angels singing glorious praises!)
As I have played with, tweaked, customized and learned about this glorious phone, I love it more and more. I'm not going to post every single tech spec about the Droid X but here are some of the advantages that the Droid X has over the other top tier smartphones out right now:

• 4.3 inch screen! (biggest in the industry at the time of writing)
• 720p HDMI video out
• 8 Megapixel camera with dual LED flash
• Live wallpapers (interactive and moving wallpapers)
• Android Ap store (just as cool and probably more useful than the Apple Ap store)
• Flash support (with Android 2.2. Froyo)
• Mobile hotspot!

The only real competitors for the Droid X right now would be:

• HTC EVO 4G (and soon the HTC Desire)
• iPhone 4 (no HDMI out, no hot spot, smaller display, DOES have a forward facing camera and higher resolution RETINA screen)

So, I guess the final point I would like to make is: unless you are on AT&T get the Droid X. Its the most powerful and most customizable phone out right now for the techy types (that means those of you reading The Horse ;-)

What is your favorite phone right now? And why is it not the Droid X?

How is FourSquare changing marketing?

A little mobile ap called Foursquare, that was introduced last year at SXSW has exploded in popularity this year and is being rumored to be the next Twitter as a new generation of "location based services" (or LBS) including Foursquare and GoWalla are set to take over the mobile social networking scene in 2010.

What is a Location Based Service (LBS)?

A LBS is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device via its GPS (global positioning system) sensor. (Wikipedia)

Some examples of LBS could be:

• Turn by turn navigation to any address
• Locating people or places on a map displayed on the mobile phone
• Receiving local alerts, such as notification of a sale on gas or warning of a traffic jam
• Location-based mobile advertising

Some of you may have followed our honeymoon journey last year as I used the Google's Latitude LBS on my Blackberry Curve to chronicle our road trip to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia. I also used it as a pseudo-turn by turn GPS unit when we were in the "big city".

As you can guess, some of these services can and will provide a whole new way of targeting personalized advertising, rewards or services to the end user if you follow the model out to the next logical step.

Just a game?

Both FourSquare and GoWalla started out with a level of social game play and quickly grew in popularity as users vied for the coveted badges and points for checking in. Then, businesses in the New York and San Francisco areas started noticing the usefulness of having regular customers check in and started offering physical rewards or freebies (ie. free beer, french fries, discounts) to the visitors that checked in the most (on FourSquare this is called being the Mayor). Now that FourSquare has been opened to the world, more businesses are jumping on the band wagon of the reward concept for FourSquare players.

The market share of smart phones in the U.S. is up to 17% as of January 2010, according to Forrester Research, and is predicted to be above 20% by the end of the year. Based on this growth, I predict LBS will become more interesting and useful to targeted marketing as more smart phones are purchased in the next few years and marketers and businesses look for new ad venues other than the traditional "old media" outlets. FourSquare is also getting a head start in the LBS race by already opening up their API to the public for open source ap development and there are already a few interesting aps on FourSquare's developer's page.

What are some new and innovative ways that LBS and FourSquare could be used to improve humanity, make us more efficient, have more fun? Hit me up with a comment!

How Google Maps Saved My Marraige

So, I'm back. Where did I go? Oh, you didn't miss me while I was gone on my honeymoon? That's alright, I didn't forget about you guys... just taking some chill out time with my new wife @Andrea915 now Andrea Self (as soon as she gets her new Social Security card). We had a great time and got to visit all the cool places that I mentioned below (Outer Banks, NC; Washington DC; and Philadelphia). Now we're getting everything moved in and starting to plan for this new "together" thing. Other than the fact that she wants to throw out all my cool posters and collections, I think we're getting along fine.

Thanks to everyone who came to the wedding and contributed to our new life. We got alot of great gifts and got to see alot of friends and family that we hadn't seen in a while.

There was one thing that really saved a lot of fights during our honeymoon. Believe it or not it was a little piece of software from a little company called Google called Google Maps. I used Google Maps every day during our honeymoon to navigate and find our way around the strange an large cities that we were visiting. The version I used was on my Blackberry Curve 8330 and it worked perfectly every time updating in almost real time with the GPS function as to what road we were on. The only time it even tried to flake out for a second was in the rural town of Legget, North Carolina where we stayed at our friend's plantation house called Cedar Lane. (Check out some pics of this awesome historic house on my Flickr page) And I assumed that we only had one tower in the area so it couldn't triangulate my position. I also actually set up Google Latitude on my phone to follow us around so people could see where we were real time during our expeditions around the east coast.

After that, we used Google Maps and my Blackberry to navigate the streets of Philadelphia (isn't that a Bruce Springsteen song?) flawlessly. I looked like I knew where I was going and my wife believed I was an exellent navigator for the week. So, thank you Google. You've saved another marraige (yea, they're in the business of saving marraiges too... didn't you know?).

New at CES, Palm Pre - iPhone killer?

With CES 2009 winding down this weekend, one product stood out in the smartphone category. The new Palm Pre smartphone from Palm.


And now for something completely different...

::Arrow shoots into Concorde::
LANCELOT:  Brave, brave Concorde!  You shall not have died in vain!
CONCORDE:  Uh, I'm-I'm not quite dead, sir.
LANCELOT:  Well, you shall not have been mortally wounded in vain!
CONCORDE:  Uh, I-I think uh, I could pull through, sir.
LANCELOT:  Oh, I see.
CONCORDE:  Actually, I think I'm all right to come with you--
LANCELOT:  No, no, sweet Concorde!  Stay here!  I will send help as
  soon as I have accomplished a daring and heroic rescue in my own
  particular... (sigh)
CONCORDE:  Idiom, sir?
LANCELOT:  Idiom!
CONCORDE:  No, I feel fine, actually, sir.
LANCELOT:  Farewell, sweet Concorde!
CONCORDE:  I'll-uh, I'll just stay here, then, shall I, sir?  Yeah.
(from Monty Phython and the Holy Grail)

Pardon the interruption, but this is how I see Palm (the company, Palm = Concorde) these past few years. Lemme 'splain...

Palm was riding along the smartphone highway happy go lucky, and all of a sudden - an arrow (Blackberry, and iPhone)! Palm insists that they can go on, but they know that they are dying. The bad thing is, that everyone else (Lancelot = the smartphone community) thinks that they are dying too, so poor, sweet Palm is left behind in the swamp.
The question is: Will Palm pull the arrow out of its chest with the Palm Pre and move ahead to take the victory at Swamp Castle with Lancelot? (sorry, my analogies are a little strange...)

Some stats on the Palm Pre:

• slide down full keyboard
• 3 MP camera
• USB 2.0, GPS, Wi-Fi & EV-DO, Bluetooth 2.1 with stereo support
• 8GB of storage, and 3.5mm headphone jack
• all in one calendar view (syncs Outlook and Facebook)
• 3.1-inch, 320×480-pixel touchscreen
• Cut and Paste functionality (try that on an iPhone!)
• wireless charger (First of its kind!)
  
• should start around $200 later this year

This weekend the Pre was awarded the coveted Best of CES 2009 at CES in Las Vegas. No sooner was this announced than Palm's stock shot up over 38%! So, its definitely got some buzz going on right now in the mobile world.

One good thing to come from this news is maybe this new competition will bring the price down on that BlackBerry Storm I'm wanting to buy this year!