Author Archives: schatzi

Best iPhone Apps for Losing Weight and Tracking Calories

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When it comes to dieting, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You have to keep track of calories, stick to an exercise routine, monitor your progress and, of course, find time to brag to your friends when the new diet works. iPhone owners have access to lots of apps that help with dieting by offering education, tracking software, nutrition calculations and much more. Every app is set up in a different way, so you may want to test out a few until you find the one that works best for your personal dieting needs.

To help you get started, take a look at this list of the best apps for dieting and weight loss.

MyFitnessPal Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker

This is a great free app that has information for over 600,000 foods. This app allows you to list all of your exercises and meals. It carefully logs all of your calories in an easy to read format. The app syncs with your computer, allowing you to input your food entries from multiple locations. You can set your own goals or used recommended ones based on your demographics. You can also view progress charts.

DailyBurn Fitness Companion

This is an excellent app that helps you keep track of your diet and exercise. You can use your smartphone to scan the bar codes of many foods that you eat. That saves you a lot of time. In addition to calories, you can keep track of fat, protein, and other vitamins and minerals. You can easily customize a diet and exercise plan to help you meet your goals. There are also a lot of helpful tips for eating and working out.

Lose It!

Lose It is a free app with a very simple interface. You can set your goals and easily enter your calories. Everything you enter is stored. That allows you to easily enter items you already entered. This app provides you with a calorie budget that easily fits your needs. Each day, you can see if you came in under your calorie budget. You can also use the app to share progress with friends.

Fast Food Calories

Even if you’re an avid dieter, you still might eat fast food. While nutrition facts are posted in restaurants, many people don’t take the time to notice them. Therefore, they don’t really realize what they are putting in their body. This app tracks thousands of menu items from every major fast food establishment. You will be able to see exactly what fast food does to a diet.

Slingplayer Now on Android – “Bellyvision”

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I would like to extend a warm welcome to Slingplayer. It’s nice to have this functionality again, which I’ve enjoyed for many years on my Windows Mobile devices. Now I am happy to report that it’s available for Android handsets.

In case you are not familiar with Slingplayer, let me introduce you. It’s all about the use of placeshifting technology, which enables you to stream video from your TV, DVR or other video source such as a DVD player or home security camera over a broadband Internet connection.

What this means is that you can view your favorite TV programs from your home TV on your Android phone. You can also view programs you have recorded on your DVR. If you have Comcast or Time/Warner with On Demand, you can also view these offerings.

In order to make this happen, you will need a Slingbox that connects to your home TV/DVR/receiver and then connects either through a cable or wirelessly to the router of your home computer. In my case, my Slingbox in on a different floor from my router, and I am able to connect wirelessly with two little Vudu units purchased separately. Of course, if your TV is near your router, you can connect with a standard Ethernet cable.

You have your choice of two models, the Slingbox SOLO for $179 or the Slingbox PRO-HD for $299. The basic difference is that you can receive HD quality video with the pro model.

Set up is usually a simple matter accomplished by connecting your Slingbox to a TV receiver with a set of RCA cables for standard video or an additional set of component cables for HD quality. You may wish to purchase a set of remote adapters if your router is not close to your TV.

Then it’s just a matter of a little fine tuning, entering your registration code, and you’re all set to go. If you have any trouble, Slingmedia maintains excellent free customer service on a 24/7 basis.

You can download the software for a desktop or laptop computer free from Slingmedia.com. Unfortunately, however, it will set you back $29 for the Android software.

Once you have installed the software on your phone, you can control your TV and DVR remotely for viewing list for recorded material. You can completely control your TV/DVR from anywhere in the world from your phone.

Navigation begins with a bar across the top of the screen with four options: Back, Navigation sidebars, Keypad for channel selection, and Misc. The Misc. button evokes an in-depth menu that includes Program Guid, My DVR$, Volume UP, Volume Donw, Mute, Channel Up, Channel Down, Power on/off, Menu, Last Channel, TV/VCR, Favorite, A, B, C, Help, HD Zoom, On Demand (for Comcast and Time/Warner), Stop, and Swap PIP–just like the big boy clickers.

It’s such a pleasure and a bit of a comfort to be able to access my favorite recorded shows when I’m on the road in a strange hotel room with different channels and program schedules.

Warning: Don’t leave home with our TV receiver turned off or you will not be able to receive any remote streaming.

Frankly, I was feeling deprived using a Droid until Slingplayer became available. Now I’m a happy camper. I cannot recommend this system more highly. It has given me hours of pleasure at remote locations around the world. It’s just so cool to be able to stream HD quality video into my trusty Droid. I call it my “Bellyvision”.

It works seamlessly on my Droid X, and it is compatible with all Android models. When you are ready, you can grab a copy of Slingplayer for your Droid from Google Market.

Mobile Phone Insurance – Get Guaranteed Protection For Your Valuable Gadget

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Gone are the days when mobile phones were used by the selected persons, but now it can be seen in almost every hand and there are millions of handsets in use. People from each category use handsets of different features to execute their works of different purposes. And now it is not merely a communication device but being used for multi-functional purposes. The incidents of mobile stealing, damage, lost in anonymity so on and so forth are also increasing day by day. So people want to have a insurance protection and be covered from the high risk that may happen to these gadgets. Seeing it as a lucrative business area, there are many insurance companies that are coming forward to protect your handset. They treat mobile as a valuable item like jewellery, car, house and other costly material of the life.

People witness many incidents that generally occur with the electronic gadgets such as stealing, damage, lost in the cesspit and others as shown by many studies and reports. Its vulnerability can be seen all around as many users are worrying because these heartening incidents are happening to them. The probability of lost and stealing is very usual with the adolescents and many of them never expected that incidents may have happened in that way also.

In the modern time the option of mobile phone insurance not only protects your valuable gadgets but also provide full compensation of your loss. In case users lose their handsets, they are not needed to pay whole amount to buy it again and insurance providers will help you out in patching the loss substantially. There are many branded mobile phone companies that have alliance with the insurance providers, so you need not to go anywhere else to search for its protection. But if you are not interested with the attached insurance service then you can register as per your choice. In the era of information technology, there are many websites that provide the options to purchase your favourite model and insurance company altogether. There are also several categories of affiliated websites where users can find both, a well performing mobile phone as well as a reliable insurance cover.

Talking of the beneficial offers that come through the policies of the mobile insurance companies, we find mainly three types of policies that are very usual. These three policies include Economy, Standard and Executive that can be found by the users as per their needs. Many offers come with one month free of cost insurance so after paying for 11 months one can avail its service for one year.

The mobile insurance companies also facilitate users to cover the data saved in phone memory. So in the condition of lost, users can claim to get their data back if they have registered for such policies. In this way it is proving to be more fruitful for the people involved in the business and they don’t want to lose the valuable data anyhow. The mobile insurance companies impose different terms and conditions depending upon their policies. For example, people have to give report to police about the incidents within 24 hours and insurance company can also investigate into the matter.

Overall, the cover of mobile insurance is a very much affordable service that mobile user should take, especially who use more expansive gadgets but pay very less attention to protect them.