Dani 3.0

Get more from CraigsList

// May 16th, 2008 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

Craig’s Little Buddy is very close to being a killer app. It lets users search multiple cities in CraigsList, a huge time saver if you’re trying to track down an elusive item and want to maximize your chances by adding surrounding areas to your search. I live in Houston, so for hard-to-find items, I’d like to be able to include Lafayette, Baton Rouge, Lake Charles, Austin, and San Antonio. Craig’s Little Buddy will allow me to do that.

The interface is slick and very easy to use. Choosing cities is accomplished by checking boxes on a pop-up; Select All and Restore defaults are provided options but they could really benefit from a Deselect All choice here as well.

Search is straight-forward. Choose a CraigsList category and/or use keywords, just as you’d do on CraigsList. One of the things I really like about the search is that it displays a list of the cities you’re searching – very handy, that, if you’re searching multiple cities. Each search result is appended with the city it’s located in, another handy feature.

It’s Craig’s Little Buddy’s handling of images, or rather their lack of handling, that keeps this from being a truly killer app. It would be nice if they’d include the ability to search only ads with images. It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard for them to integrate as Craig’s List already provides this functionality. Also, there are very few preview pictures, and what preview pics there are seem to be for dealer ads. I do like how they’ve handled the display of the preview pics, however – integrated right into the search result. Another nice feature to have would be to display the full-size image on rollover, much like the Firefox extension CraigsList Image Previewer. (In CLB’s defense, it is most likely CraigsList’s stingy nature that have prevented them from displaying preview photos.)

For the moment, I’ll stick with my combination of CraigsList and the FF CraigsList Image Previewer extension, however, if I was just using CraigsList, I’d switch over to this option in a heartbeat. If they’re ever able to more fully integrate images into the search results, this will be a hard site to beat.

SparkPeople.com Helps with Weighty Matters

// September 18th, 2006 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

SparkPeople.com, a free, online weight loss and fitness application, might truly be the best thing to hit the Internet in a long, long time. SparkPeople launched in 2002 as a FREE way “to help millions of people reach their goals using health and fitness as a springboard to success” but somehow I’ve only found it now, four years later.

SparkPeople was founded by Chris “Sparky” Downie, one of the architects of Up4Sale.com, and Ebay’s first acquisition right before it went public. Presumably this left Chris pretty comfortable financially, and he was able to start development of SparkPeople.com, his long-time passion, when he left Ebay three years later.

SparkPeople boasts a clean, if somewhat dated, design and an intuitive interface, but the sheer amount of information may overwhelm some people. Even though SP advocates taking your time and getting to know the site, it took me over a month to work up the desire to wade through all the information.

A wizard makes the initial set up quite easy, and once your current weight, target weight, fitness level, and nutritional preferences are entered, a meal plan and nutrition and fitness targets are generated. (A note on the nutritional preferences: While I found the options to be quite flexible, i.e. vegetarian, low-cholesterol, etc., I was disappointed that low-sugar/diabetic choice wasn’t offered.)

SparkPeople is so feature-and-content rich that it would be impossible to accurately review it in anything less than a volume the size of War and Peace, so this examination will focus on just the highlights.

Nutrition
In addition to a comprehensive food database that contains over 10,000 entries, including fast-food and name brands, SP includes a food journal to track your daily food intake. From this input, SP will calculate your total calories, fat, carbohydrates, and any other nutrient you’d like to track. If you’re not near a computer at mealtime (who is?) and you own a camera phone (who doesn’t?), you can email a photo of your meal to your account so you can enter an accurate accounting later. Both the food journal and meal planner are flexible and allow you to add your own foods and meals. In addition, a bank of healthy recipes is included and can be added individually to your meal plan.

Motivation & Goal Setting
Goal setting and staying motivated are an integral component to the SparkPeople concept. As mentioned in a SparkPeople article, most diets just tell you what to eat and don’t even address the #1 roadblock to weight loss – lack of motivation. SparkPeople.com counters this obstacle by teaching users to start small and develop effective diet strategies. A thriving user community provides support and encouragement along the way.

The points system provides additional motivation, and of course, the comprehensive progress reports offer great feedback.

Exercise
SparkPeople boasts an impressive library of fitness articles. In addition, there are illustrations and videos that demonstrate the proper technique. Exercises are categorized as beginner or advanced and require little, if any, equipment. (Medicine balls, Swiss balls, and a towel are the three props utilized.) Exercises can be tracked in the fitness log, and like the food log, users can use the prepackaged exercises, or add their own. Reports can be generated from the log results.

Community
This is where SparkPeople really excels. Personalized pages, a la MySpace, allow users to chronicle their weight loss, post photos, and blog. Lively message boards provide a positive place for users to offer encouragement and tips to each other, while the journal feature sets aside some virtual quiet time for reflection. There’s also a Diet Buddy forum where users can partner with another user with similar goals.

Tracking/Reporting
Track nutrition, fitness, and weight goals using SparkPeople’s extensive collection of printable reports, including weight, measurements, water intake, exercise frequency, and goal setting.

All in all, this is by far the most useful fitness site on the web. If you’re looking to lose weight, you can’t go wrong here.

Note: If you do decide to join, consider listing me as your referrer. Even though there’s no reward as such, I really am coveting that next level’s icon (think of it as profile bling) and SparkPeople awards 10 points for each member referred. While you’re at it, add me (daniesq) as a friend. No points are offered for adding friends, I believe, but I’d welcome your company!

There’s a Word for It

// September 6th, 2006 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

If you’re into word games, then you’re going to love PlayBabble.com. The premise is simple – form words of four letters or more from the grid of 40 letter tiles. However, the word has to be formed from adjoining tiles and the letters must join in the proper sequence. Oh, and you have twenty-four hours to do the puzzle before a new one is posted. This is harder than it sounds – I recommend that you play with a dictionary nearby.

PlayBabble comes in two versions; free and Pro. Pro users, of course, get more features, such as a stats panel (to view your ranking in the community), an online profile, a personal icon, and a graphic of your country’s flag.

Like all good online games, a chatterbox is available so you can “talk” in real time to other players. However, if you’re antisocial, you’ll be fine with the free account. (I use the free account. I don’t want people chattering at me while I’m wracking my brain for a word that starts with C-O-M-F and uses either an “e” or an “s” for the next letter.)

There are a lot of small features, too, that make the game more interesting, such as a points per word feature and a look up the definition icon next to each word you enter. (Although I would presume that you knew what the word meant if you entered it.)

Note: For other games like this one, visit http://www.allwords.com/Word_Games.php.

Hiveminder Gets It Done

// September 5th, 2006 // View Comments // Tech Reviews

I’m back after a long, restful weekend, only to find that Blogger is having issues. I’m not able to see any of my previous posts, but it does look like it will let me create a post, so hopefully I’ll be able to tell you all about Hiveminder, a free web service that helps you keep track of your tasks. There are other task tracking services on the web, but Hiveminder is certainly the most feature-packed, and I’m really surprised that more people don’t know about it. This might be the best-kept secret on the web.

In addition to the requisite task list features (priority,due date, notes and comment), tasks can be grouped, assigned, and even hidden until a specific date. Moreover, Hiveminder supports dependencies, a feature that should make this app a real standout, especially with all the other task features. Another standout feature is the ability to tag tasks, and to search for tasks using a tag cloud. If you’re working collaboratively, there’s also a history view to track the changes to each task.

Entering tasks is easy and can be accomplished several ways. My favorite is the “brain dump”, a huge text field that allows you to enter multiple tasks to the to-do list as you think of them. Details can be added later, if you wish. Tasks can be entered individually, of course, and even by email. (Hiveminder assigns a random email, however, paid accounts will be able choose the email address they want. ) You can be reminded of your task as often as you want using email, iCal updates, ATOM feeds and plain text or HTML files.

Another neat feature is the task review. Basically, it cycles through your entire list of tasks and requires you to assign an action to it (hide for a month, done, assign it to someone else, comment on it, or do it today) before it will move on to the next one. This essentially forces you to deal with your list, a sort-of “Getting Things Done” methodology.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another entry into the online task management space, Bounty paper towels own Honey-Do list. While not as feature laden as Hiveminder, it is cute and accomplishes basic to-do list functionality with style. A simple form allows you to add tasks, priorities, a small note, your signature, and a choice of four backgrounds. The list can then be emailed or printed out for your honey. (Thanks to Emma Sometimes for the heads-up.)