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Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale: Upload your fatness to the Web

This Wi-Fi connected scale could be just the ticket if you're longing to shrink that post-Christmas belly everyone's talking about behind your back

Charles Kloet

This morning, as we were sliding on our backside down the icy pavement towards CNET Towers, watching our grotesquely swollen post-Yuletide paunch wobbling unattractively, we steeled ourselves for some New Year abstemiousness. Fortunately, the £120 Wi-Fi Body Scale is here to keep us on the lime and soda.

Sleek and super-flat, unlike our unshapely selves, this 802.11g Wi-Fi-connected scale, from French company Withings, can automatically recognise up to eight different users. It measures their weight, lean mass and fat mass, and sends the results to a secure Web page that keeps track of past results with a pretty graph. It can also calculate your body mass index.

Those who've laid off the crisps long enough to be able to afford an iPhone can take advantage of Withings' free WiScale app to track their weight. If you've developed a taste for public humiliation, you can upload your data to Twitter, as well as share it on your Web page with other users of the scale. The Body Scale is available now, direct from Withings' Web site.

What do you think, Cravers? Could such a gadget help in the quest for a smaller stomach? Or would the constant reminder of your failure to tackle your corpulence only encourage prolonged bouts of comfort-eating? Pass the poppadoms.