Leaked from today's 404 episode:
- Order a slice of 'za from Da Hut with your Xbox.
- Is it possible to lose weight playing video games?
- Has anyone ever taken a good photo of a live band?
- Michael Bay apologizes for Armageddon.
Bathroom break video: Dodgeball: White Goodman's necklace does magic.… Read more
Mountain Lion roars onto Mac computers and Netflix is getting some new competition:
Mac users can now upgrade their operating systems to version 10.8. The official CNET review praises Mountain Lion for its cloud functionality and useful updates to some core apps. However, a lackluster gamecenter and a dictation feature that requires an internet connection are a bit disappointing. So should you upgrade? If it were any more than $20 we'd say no, but the price for this update is just right.
Apple also announced its Q3 earnings, and while iPad sales soared, a drop in iPhone consumption … Read more
When it comes to getting fit or losing weight, there's no shortage of books, blogs, diets, workout videos, or group exercise classes to help you out.
Now, tech fiends can add another category of helpful resources: mobile apps. Androids and iPhones both have a large selection of exercise and weight loss apps, but how do you chose among them all?
To help you reach your fitness or weight loss goals faster, I found the most interactive, effective, and fun apps available. Here are three of the best, free apps for Android and iOS to help you get in shape (in no particular order):
RunKeeper (iPhone, Android): This free app lets you track your outdoor activities like hiking, jogging, and running.… Read more
MP3 players serve many purposes in our lives. They drown out the crazies on public transportation, keep our road rage in check during rush hour, ensure that we're entertained on long flights, and help us stay motivated at the gym. In fact, one of the top reasons why people buy portable audio devices is to have them as fitness companions. And you may not know it just by looking at them, but the iPhone and iPod Touch are excellent tools for watching your weight and keeping in shape--you just need the proper enhancements.
First and foremost, if you're … Read more
If you're looking for a weight loss boot camp, the Tent City Jail in Phoenix may be your solution. Controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who dubs himself "America's toughest sheriff," is providing the inmates there with a new amenity: cable television. But to watch their favorite shows, they're going to have to pedal.
Arpaio installed an energy-generating stationary bike (PDF) attached to a TV when he found that 50 percent of the inmates were overweight, many morbidly so. As long as an inmate is pedaling, the bike will produce 12 volts of energy--just enough to power a 19-inch tube TV. But if an inmate stops pedaling at a moderate speed, the TV shuts off.
Because inmates can't be forced to exercise, access to cable TV could provide incentive for them to do so. Female prisoners will test the program first, because they were more receptive to it, Arpaio says.
This isn't Arpaio's first attempt to trim inmates' waistlines. Some years back, he cut inmates' food intake from 3,000 calories to 2,500 calories. "You're too fat," CNN reported Arpaio as saying to the inmates. "I'm taking away your food because I'm trying to help you. I'm on a diet myself. You eat too much fat."
"America's toughest sheriff" hasn't always had an easy time implementing his standards, which have included assembling a female chain gang and making inmates pay $10 every time they need to see a nurse. Human-rights groups consider Tent City jail to be among the harshest in the nation, according to CNN, and numerous civil-rights lawsuits have been filed against the sheriff.
The program that Arpaio is calling "Pedal Vision" might be received with less criticism, though. Watching TV while serving time is a privilege, not a right, so inmates are choosing to take advantage of it. But what if every prisoner pedaled to produce energy? … Read more
The business intelligence community has made much of its ability to transform the way enterprises operate, and even the way the world works. Open source takes this to the next level, as OStatic recently described. And yet, as exciting as open-source business intelligence is, it's not what gets me out of bed every morning before sunrise. What drove me out of bed to climb 2,474 feet on my mountain bike this morning is the personal intelligence movement or, more accurately, the personal data movement.
Tim O'Reilly talks eloquently about " data as the Intel Inside" of … Read moreEating tends to be a social thing. Dropping the pounds that result from such sociability, however, is mostly a solitary experience, requiring lonely denial in the kitchen and often lonelier miles on the footpath or bike trail. Small wonder, then, that most attempts to lose weight fail.
It doesn't have to be this way, of course, and an application I've been using on my iPhone suggests a way to open-source the weight-loss experience, making dropping pounds a social, fun experience.
CNET recently profiled several weight-loss applications for the computer, some of which have a social element to them.
It's a good list, but my favorite application by far in this category is Lose It!, a free app for the iPhone.
Lose It! makes it easy to track calories, monitor exercise, and track progress toward weight-loss goals. Because my iPhone is always with me, Lose It! follows me around, too, reminding me how much that bar of chocolate is going to cost me in terms of gym time, facilitating rational calorie intake/burn.
Where Lose It! fails, as do all of these weight-loss applications, is in making this process truly social.
Fixing this would give FitNow, the developer of Lose It!, a serious revenue model that would turn a seemingly universal human desire to look/feel better into a great way to make money.
Here are a few ideas for the FitNow team, several of which Bryce Roberts, a good friend and fellow Lose It! junkie (in fact, it was Bryce's example that got me using the application), offered up while we were mountain biking last week (so that we could gorge on high-calorie foods later in the day :-):… Read more
Trying to lose weight? Forget the diet du jour: It all boils down to math. If you burn more calories than you consume, presto: the pounds come off.
Fortunately, there's a tool that makes this math incredibly easy: Lose It! This terrific little program lets you create a weight goal and log your daily food intake and exercise.
Yep, it's a fancy calorie-counter. But it's a really good one, and I've found it has numerous advantages over traditional calorie-counting methods. For starters, because it lives on your iPhone, it goes where you go. There's nothing … Read more
With primaries in more than 20 states next week, MTV has announced "Super Tuesday" coverage plans for its hand-picked citizen journalism corps.
In each state with a Super Tuesday primary, a member of the "Street Team" will be streaming live coverage from the video camera of a Nokia N95 handset; N95s can upload video directly to the Web, and this will be the first time that MTV has experimented with live mobile-to-Web coverage.
The content can be accessed on the MTV News site and on MTV's "Choose or Lose" election site. An online … Read more
Internet & Media
Internet & Media
1kFacebook Likes
400Tweets
354Google Plus Shares
The one stop shop for all things iPhone
What's the #1 music streaming-app for iOS? Who wins in an iPhone v. S4 faceoff? We've got it covered with iPhone news, rumors, app recommendations, and more.
Manage updates with the Download App