The purpose of this app is to keep track of your stats while skiing. I hate to quote a line from an infomercial, but with this application, you really just need to “set it and forget it”.  It sits in your pocket while you ski or snowboard and keeps track of everything you do, from your speed, to your slope and everything in between. If there was anything you were curious about in your performance while on the slopes, chances are great that this app will have you covered.

How It Works

Ski Tracks uses GPS to keep track of your statistical information while skiing. It is able to find your location using the phone’s built in location service. The thing that is incredible is that you do not need to manage it manually. It knows when you are on a chairlift. This means it is able to start a new run automatically. You do not have to pull your phone out and fuss with it each time you ride to the bottom of the mountain. It is incredibly impressive.

Since Ski Tracks uses GPS, it can also track where you are on the mountain. This is awesome if you need to see what runs you have missed. In all honesty, the fact this app works as well as it does seems like some sort of voodoo magic to me. I am certainly not complaining, because it has made skiing even better.

Stat Tracking

This application’s main selling point is its ability to keep track of your performance on the mountain. To get it to track your stats, you simply need to open the application on your iOS device and click the start button on the bottom right corner of the screen. From there, you can just throw your phone into your pocket and it will keep track of everything automatically.

I suppose saying it keeps track of “everything” is a little broad and perhaps I should narrow it down. To start with, it keeps track of speed, which was the statistic about which I was most excited. It tracks your top speed throughout the day as well as your average.

Another of my favorites is distance. It lets you know how far you have skied and how far you have ridden on the lift. This gives you an amazing feel for how much ground you have covered throughout the day.

The complete list of stats the app tracks is as follows:

• Speed
• Distance
• Ski Vertical
• Altitude
• Number of runs
• Slope
• Duration

It will also break all of this information down run by run, so you can see how you compared on each run down the mountain. It is impressive just how much this application can tell you about your ski day.

Social Features

After you finish skiing, click the ski icon on the top right corner of the screen to edit the name of your day and give it some information such as the current weather and the snow conditions. Click “save” and the track will be locked in.

After you save the track, you can click the share button on the bottom right of the screen to email it to a friend, upload it to Facebook or send it to your computer with iTunes document sharing. This is an awesome way to show you friends how well you killed it on the slopes on your last trip.

The app will create an album in your Facebook photos and add all of the images there. It will add your charts, maps and any photos you took during that ski trip for all of your friends to see.

Of course, you can also access your ski tracks at any time from the application. This way, if you wanted to see how you did last time at a particular mountain, you can do so quickly and easily.

Other Features

Ski Tracks has iPod controls built right in. You can control your tunes while on the slopes without ever exiting the app. It also features a camera, so you can quickly take photos from the mountain.

They also added a proximity sensor that works similarly to using the phone. It will automatically turn the screen on when you remove the phone from your pocket and turn it off when you place it back. The app has surprisingly low battery drain. I was able to have it running for about 7 hours straight before my phone died. That is impressive considering it is constantly using location services.

On top of these cool features, you can also choose to have the app measure in metric or imperial units, depending on where you live.

Conclusion

This is without question the best ski application I have ever used. It keeps very accurate stats that make skiing a lot more fun. For example, you can try to beat your best speeds or cover a greater distance that you did on a previous trip. This app allows you to take the act of skiing and make it into a competition with yourself. The data it provides is awesome, and it is so useful for any skier or snowboarder.

iTunes Download Link

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The first is that keyword phrases do matter and will always matter, to an extent. Search engines will always need the ability to extract relevant and important information from the web. The text of your site makes up the content that must get judged, one way or the other. The last two truths are just as important. The first is that social networking also drives relevance. If you aren’t taking advantage of that, then you’re letting your site stagnate. The second is that links still matter as well.

Evaluating Your True SEO Ranking

With those three truths in mind, I’m going to help you judge your own site’s accurate SEO ranking. I did not call it “PR” ranking, or pagerank, because that is truly an artifact of the past. There is a new sort of “ranking” that you should use based on all factors that search engines take into account. In this article, I’m going to help you determine the true SEO value of your site.

Make Sure You List Highly For Important Keywords

You should already have a list of about 5 to 10 critical keywords that you want to perform well for in Google. They should be focused on the content of your site.

Take those keyword phrases and search the Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines for them. File through the listings and determine what position you land in. But beware of false rankings when you are logged in, such as shown here.

When I’m logged into Google, I rank #2 for the search term “secret societies”. That’s a false positive. If I log out, I find that I actually list somewhere around #10 for that term. However, when logged out of Google, conducting a search for “top secret cults” shows that I really do list second, so that’s an accurate result for that term.

Go through each of your keywords and then give it a score based on the following formula that I developed. (x is placement position)

(100/x) * .60 = Google score
(100/x) * .20 = Bing Score
(100/x) * .20 = Yahoo score

If you rank 10th in Google, 5th in Yahoo and 4th in Bing, then your “keyword” score is  6 + 4 + 5 = 15

Anything above 10 is good, 30 is very good, 50 is excellent and above 70 is top-tier.

Determining Your Incoming Links

There are countless tools that help you determine your number of backlinks. I’ve covered Traffic Travis previously, and a while back Linda covered a number of sites that will show you your incoming link count. A couple of my favorites are Domain-Pop, as shown here -

- or Backlink Watch, as shown below. This is one of my favorites for a quick overview of my most recent stats for incoming links.

By far, my favorite tool – because you can get the most accurate picture of incoming links to your site – is definitely Google Webmaster Tools.

Take a look at the “Total Links” and also pay attention to “How your data is linked“. Those links can show you what people value about your site and feel compelled to link to.

Judge Your Influence On Social Networks

Today, more than ever, social networks are playing a giant part in how search engines judge you. Only a year or so ago, only Twitter and Facebook were key. More recently, Google Plus is critical. So, to determine your value to search engines, you need to evaluate your site’s value on the social networks. Mahendra wrote a great article listing some great tools for this. My favorite is Klout.

I love Kout because it incorporates everything – Twitter, Facebook, Google + and more – add whatever networks you want to use, or leave any of them out.

You can use your Klout score as a baseline to work on improving your overall social networking score. The higher you can move this score, the higher you will rank in the search engines, guaranteed.

Of course, if you really love Facebook, you need to have a Facebook Page for your site, and so you should be using Facebook Insights.

It’s the best way to see what impact different posts have on how many people link or share your articles – so use it, study it, and learn from it.

Check The Number Of Broken Links

Once again, the single best tool to analyze your site links is Google Webmaster Tools. Just click on “Diagnostics” and “Crawl errors” to see a report of Google crawler errors. Most of these will be broken links – 404 not found errors. You should work hard to get this list to zero.

The number of broken links listed here is another factor for your overall “SEO Ranking”. For every broken link, you are hurting your search engine value significantly. A part of any good SEO regimen is going back constantly and removing or fixing broken links. Do this, and you’ll see your search engine placements skyrocket.

There are many issues that determine your value and relevance to search engines – far too many to list in this one article. However, the four factors that I’ve listed here are the four issues that will have the greatest affect on your SEO quality over any other factor out there. Just improve any one of these factors, and you’ll almost immediately notice results (or at least the next time your site gets crawled).

So give it a try and let us know if you were able to improve your standings in the search engines. Do you have any other tips for readers in addition to these? Share your own thoughts and insights in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

I have a subscription to Lookout’s Premium version ($2.99/month), but we’ll be looking at the free version, both via the Android interface and via the website. If you don’t have a solid device tracking solution installed on your Android smartphone, you owe it to yourself to read this post.

The Android App

That snippet you see above is one of the most important things Lookout offers. Whenever you install or update an app on your Android device, Lookout will scan it to make sure it doesn’t contain malware. As iOS fans like to remind us, malware is a very real problem on Android devices. Using Lookout can mitigate the risk, much like using an antivirus on your desktop computer.

Now, let’s look at the app itself:

You can clearly see what features Premium users get, and we’re not going to get into those. When you hit the + button next to each feature, it expands to show just a bit of status information:

Next, let’s look at some of the settings the app offers:

In addition to live scanning, Lookout scans the entire device on schedule. You can set the frequency (off, daily, or weekly), as well as the days and times you’d like it to scan on.

One other important setting you should know about:

This option lets you set Lookout as a Device Administrator. One of its side effects is that screen lock can’t easily be toggled on and off, which is the main reason why it’s not switched on for my phone.

That’s pretty much it for the app itself. The free version offers virus scanning and missing device functionality, which is a big deal but doesn’t expose much of an interface on the device. If you lose your device, you’re going to want to use the Lookout website, which is what we’ll look at right now.

The Web Interface

As you can see, the Web interface offers several tabs. The Security tab includes a summary of scans done on your device, and is basically a boring logfile. The Backup tab offers remote backup, but I consider the solution offered by Titanium Backup to be vastly superior to anything Lookout has to offer, so we won’t spend any time delving into that. But the Missing Device tab… that’s what we’re here for.

The Locate and Scream options are available for free. Let’s look at Scream first:

This option is handy if you misplace your phone somewhere in your apartment or office. You know it’s in there somewhere, but can’t find it, no matter how hard you look. “Why not just call it?” you ask. Good question! If it’s not on silent, you should go ahead and call it. But what if it’s in silent mode, or doesn’t even vibrate when you call? In those cases, you need Lookout’s Scream functionality.

When I tested Shout, it took its sweet time. It’s definitely not an instant feature, and I had to wait for several moments before my phone started sounding a siren and blinking the screen like crazy. If it were lost anywhere in hearing range, I am sure I would have heard it.

Locating A Lost Device

When you click the Locate button (and the Scream button, for that matter), Lookout sends an SMS to the device to initiate a connection:

If you’re using anything like SMS Popup, that SMS message will be displayed just like any other message. This means if someone actually stole your phone, they now know you are trying to locate it. That’s a potential downer, but it’s unavoidable, given how Lookout works.

After a few moments, Lookout displays your location on an embedded instance of Google Maps. I won’t share a screenshot (for obvious reasons), but it is remarkably accurate in my case, even indoors and without a GPS lock.

Final Thoughts

Getting infected with a nasty bit of malware can be a serious problem, and losing your device is no laughing matter. Lookout Security is a free and simple way to stay safer from such threats. Use it, or, if you prefer another antivirus/device tracking solution, tell me about it in the comments (don’t forget to say why!).

If you care about your weight and health even remotely, read on. As you will see, Libra will not solve all of your problems, but it makes it easier to get a clear picture of where you stand.

About Tracking Your Weight

Above is a screenshot of my own personal weight graph, extending back from May 27th, 2008. That’s over 3.5 years worth of data, more than 1,300 data points in all. That is not a screenshot from Libra: Android didn’t even exist when I started this graph. It is my own home-brew weight tracking solution. I coded the first version with AutoHotkey, and the next one with Ruby, and I use it to this day, in tandem with Libra. But the idea is certainly not my own, and it’s the same idea Libra uses.

Let’s take a closer look at how the graph works:

As you can see, there is a trend line, and dots which go over or under the line. The dots are individual data points, while the line is a moving average. Having a trend line is extremely important, as it is the only real way to see where your weight is going. The trend line is calculated according to a formula from The Hacker’s Diet, a book by John Walker, founder of Autodesk. The Hacker’s Diet is a classic reference for geeks trying to lose weight, and that’s the graphing system Libra implements.

Looking at the graph above, it is easy to see that I’ve been gaining weight over time. The lowest point on this graph is September 2009, and since then it has been going up in fits and starts. Despite all this (actually, because of it), I remain confident that graphing your weight is essential to losing it. I will tell you why later on, but first let’s look at Libra itself.

About Libra

Let’s look at the same period within Libra:

As you can see, the principle is exactly the same, only Libra adds a bunch of vital information. It knows my height, so it can tell me I am considered overweight now according to the body mass index. Overweight, by the way, is 25.0 and above – so I am just barely above normal. It also shows me I am actually gaining weight at a rapid pace, which is why it is “unknown” when I will get to my final weight goal (62.0 kg, which is about 136 lbs). I know this post would have been more dramatic if I could show you an impressive weight loss, so here is a screenshot of a real one from my past:

This is a period of several months during which I am steadily losing weight and tracking it with Libra. Note that the stats down the bottom don’t change, because they reflect the current situation and project the future.

Entering Your Weight

Every morning when I wake up, I enter my weight using the screen above. The date is automatically selected, and the tape scrolls smoothly when you flick it left or right. It’s a beautiful way to enter your weight, and it sure beats fiddling around with the keyboard. Libra lets you create a shortcut that launches you right into the “Insert value” screen, for maximum speed.

Statistics

Apart from the graph, Libra lets you see numeric stats showing your trends over various periods of time, as well as “records” of highest and lowest weight/trend values. Libra also offers a homescreen widget showing three quick stats:

Why Tracking Your Weight Is Important

Now we go back to the big question – why even do this in the first place? Well, because it is usually easy to gain weight, and it is easy to ignore the problem until it is way too late. Tracking your weight on a daily basis and graphing it is crucial, because that way you know where you stand. And as they say, knowing is half the battle.

I know some people who are overweight, and are actually afraid to know how much they weigh. But if they can’t face even that simple number, how will they be able to face the slow process of weight loss? I think that without tracking my weight, I would be much heavier right now, and would feel more hopeless about it.

Of course, once you do begin losing weight, tracking your losses is an essential part of staying motivated.

Why Tracking Your Weight Is Not Enough

Above is a period of several months when I was tracking my weight daily, but also gaining a lot of weight. So, sadly, tracking your weight may not be enough. You need to make some lifestyle changes to lose weight, as well as some public commitments. We’ve featured social fitness websites before, as well as 8 Websites That Help Couch Potatoes Take Up Running For Fitness & Fun, and I feel these are an important part of the equation. The idea is to care, and not give up.

Tracking your weight is the first step – once you take it, it may be easier to take the next one, but you will need to do something more. I’ve recently started exercising again – maybe next year I will be able to share a different-looking graph. At any case, I will probably still use Libra to plot it.

Let us know what apps and methods you use to track and lose weight.  What do you think of Libra?

There are lots of solutions for PC usage monitoring and logging, and we’ve covered a lot of them here at MUO. We’ve even offered a giveaway of the Elite Keylogger before, and I’ve written a few articles on ways that you can monitor how your employees or your family members are using your computers. They are still good solutions, but after coming across iSpy, thanks to Matt’s awesome review of the free webcam surveillance software, I realized that there’s an even better solution than anything I’ve ever covered before.

Use iSpy to Track What Others Do On Your Computer

Why is iSpy the best solution? Well, if you’ve followed how most of the webcam surveillance systems that we’ve reviewed work, they typically watch the camera area for movement, and whenever any activity takes place, the system jumps into action in whatever manner you’ve told it to. This can include recording the video, sending an email, or even launching an application.

The iSpy Camera Security Software does all of that – just as Matt described. However, there is something else that it does that I’m very excited about – it provides a powerful feature where you can set up a remote view of a computer desktop, just like you’d remotely view a webcam, and capture all movement on that screen.

To do that, once you install iSpy, just click the “Add” button and select the “VLC Camera Source” option.

You’ll need to choose from a variety of camera sources. The magic one is the “Desktop” tab on this screen. Choose the display that you want to monitor, the frame interval and what view size you want to resize the desktop to when you view it remotely. To set this up on remote PCs that you want to monitor, you’ll need to install the iSpy Server software, rather than the full-blown version of iSpy.

So, here I’ve installed the desktop camera to monitor all activity that takes place on the other monitor that I have set up. Here’s that monitor displayed in my “webcam” view inside the iSpy software. As you can see the live screen is marked at the upper right with the current date and time.

You could simply watch the screen remotely if you want to see what the person is doing there, but obviously that would take a lot of time and patience. And, if you’re more interested in seeing what’s going on at your PC when you’re gone, then you’re going to want to set up iSpy on a different PC to monitor your computer when you’re not around.

When you add the desktop webcam, you have to go through a few steps to set up that automatic “motion sensor” monitoring feature. The first tab is the camera tab where you’ll set up the recording frame rate. If you don’t have a lot of space to save recordings, just cut back on the “when recording” framerate. If you want to hear what’s going on as well, then yes, you can even activate the microphone (using the add button) and then “pair it” on this tab.

The Motion Detection tab is where you set up the sensitivity of motion when you want to start recording what’s going on at the screen. Also, if you want to monitor the motion over just a smaller portion of the screen, you can create a “detection zone” by drawing a box around that area.

The “Alerts” tab is where you’re going to configure the behavior of how the application monitors motion. Change mode to “movement” and then select how many seconds of movement there should be before recording begins.

That screen is also where you can select a program to execute in the “Execute file” field.

Then, on the “Recording” tab, you set up exactly how the app records. This is where you set how many seconds inactivity will last before recording stops.

The coolest part of this application is its ability to automatically FTP the files to any FTP account you have set up. This makes it easy for you to monitor the activity from anywhere at all. The software will FTP the files and you can access them from anywhere.

If you don’t want to focus on the motion feature, but instead want to see what people are doing on your PC during certain times of the day, you can enable the “scheduling” feature of iSpy on the “Scheduling” tab. Just set the days and the times you want to record, and let iSpy go to work recording all activity on that PC for you.

The videos are all stored in mp4 format. Here’s a 10 minute video I captured of someone using my computer to search YouTube for “crazy stunts”. Those silly kids…

As you can see, iSpy goes well beyond your typical keylogging or screenshot applications that most people use to monitor computer usage. iSpy actually lets you record a screencast of every movement and every action that the user makes on that PC.

Give the screen recording feature of iSpy a shot and see what kind of interesting things you capture on your computers. Did you catch anyone trying to do anything they shouldn’t be doing on your computer? Share your thoughts and insights in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Mindbloom is actually a bit of all these, but primarily the concept of the Mindbloom life game seems to follow the old adage that a giant oak grows from a tiny acorn. Mindbloom believes that the journey of life or at least its planning should be fun. Mindbloom says it’s a fun, simple and effective way to improve the quality of your life.

The Metaphor of a Growing Tree

Mindbloom uses the image of a tree to symbolically show that like a tree which grows from an insignificant seed, life improvement is the result of continuous actions – little by little. Each positive step nourishes our life and fills it with passion and purpose. Thus the building blocks of life growth can be set with goals and goal setting exercises.

But all this need to be an exercise in drudgery; it can be turned into fun with motivational boosters like music, images, social support, and a little bit of play. Mindbloom is designed to be an interactive platform for such life building activities. Just how it does all this is the moot reason for this article.

Grow the Life You Want With the Step By Step Animated Game

Start growing the tree of your life by choosing an area that you would like to improve. You can just as easily choose multiple areas. Each area of life (for example, health) is represented by a young sapling. Music and the super cool interface help to make this an exercise in fun.

Just like a real sapling, you have to nurture this too with the right ingredients like sunlight (music, images); and water (simple actions). The music and images are the motivational boosters for simple actions.

The basic tutorial continues and you are then introduced to the Enlightening Bug who helps you through the registration and log-in process with your first ‘tree’. Careful attention to detail and the fun element marks this life tracking app out. For example, check out the following screen which selects your gender. Isn’t that a bit different from the humdrum!

At every step, you can choose to get inspired (nourish the tree with sunlight) or take an action (remember, water). Just like a real tree, proper nourishment will require a balance of both. If you decide to start off with a bit of inspiration, you didn’t do wrong as the browser fills up with beautiful high-resolution images related to the life area you had chosen. In my case it was health, and I got this to perk me up:

You can personalize the slideshow with your own images too.

Now, Take Some Actions

The little helpful bug says that you can create your own actions or get some help from the community. Every action you complete helps to water the tree and unlock points. Earned points give you new stuff to look at and play around with. For instance, I earned a few points and unlocked for myself a package bundle of images and action packs. A typical action pack looks like this:

And this is how you can get inspired:

I hope you understood how Mindbloom balances action with inspirational tidbits to help you along the path of self-improvement. Better still you cannot just waltz through as you have to use your actions to unlock the advanced stages. The rewards of achievements could lead to more discoveries at Mindbloom. You can even buy “seeds” and unlock more inspiration packs.

The Circle of Life…and Friends

Self-improvement need not be a solitary exercise. That’s where Mindbloom’s own community and your friends who are on other social hangouts like Facebook come into the picture and form the “forest of friends” around your growing sapling.

The community serves two purposes – Firstly, it introduces social accountability and secondly, it builds your support group when you need a push up the motivational path. For example, you can post inspiring images in the gallery and invite comments over it.

The Mindbloom Life Game Is Fun

Mindbloom is sheer eye candy but beneath the beautiful design everything comes together, well – beautifully. It is a mind mapping application but a zero effort one. It is a goal setting tool but one which forces you into a fun game. And yes, it is a social community too, one which you have to ‘answer’ to for motivation.

Join in and tell us if you think that the Mindbloom life game is one of the best personal development tools out there. It certainly is the most fun. I haven’t been able to cover all the interesting sidelights of the application, so do explore it and tell us yours.

Once again, we have another unusual way to use Reddit, and this time, it comes in the easy-to-digest form of the Reddit Investigator, a covert web app for all you Internet snoops out there. So grab your binoculars and your notepad (and maybe a first aid kit), for today, we’re jumping into the Reddit Investigator.

Get To Know Someone (Better)

I’ve seen several instances on Reddit in which people say that they have met other users of the site, and although the chance of meeting someone is probably better than I think, it at least seems rare. This almost makes the online world “real”, and it’s at that moment when you go to these sites that you realize you are dealing with actual people. With that being said, since we’re in the social networking era, I believe it can be safely assumed that everyone still stalks their friends online on at least some level – don’t deny it.

The issue here is that Reddit isn’t so of much a social networking site as it is a link aggregator with many users. However, at the same time, it builds up quite a bit of discussion and sometimes even friendships. So there certainly is a social element, and for those lucky few whose friends are also Redditors, it can be assumed that social element is kicked up a few notches.

But let’s say that you just met someone and found out they are a Redditor….well, in this hypothetical–not–likely-gonna–happen situation, Reddit Investigator is a great way to creep up on them.

Discover Their Interests

It’s fairly simple to figure out someone’s interests with Reddit Investigator. Simply plug in their username on the front page of the site, and the web app will lurk the corridors of Reddit, peeking into every hall and scouring each electronic scroll in which the searchee has written their thoughts upon. It’s interesting that it’s able to do this, and although I’ve harped about privacy before, you have to understand that this is Reddit – it’s a rare instance if anyone knows who you really are.

Basically, on the left side of your Reddit Investigator results, you will see every single subreddit that the user has commented in since the beginning of time itself (except not really). Furthermore, you’ll be privileged to find every single subreddit that they have submitted items to, as well.

Check Out Their Stats & Data

Some of you are number crunchers (for those of you that can figure out the chances of meeting another Redditor, please do). With Reddit Investigator, you jump on those crazy little things called stats that some of you crave. Here are just a few of the things you can unravel:

• Most Active Hours Timeline.
• Link Karma Timeline And Data.
• Comment Karma Timeline And Data.
• Activity Timeline.
• User Data.
• Word Data.
• Fun Guessed Data (stuff like location, political stance, reputation).

For those of you that noticed the timeline that covers the Redditor’s most active hours, I can only hope that your boss doesn’t know your username. At least you could probably figure out how to best manage your time with this web app. Always a silver lining, right?

Conclusion

That’s pretty much all there is to it, ladies and gentlemen. Honestly, there isn’t any tool quite like a functional tool, and that’s what we have here. You really can’t beat that. Granted, I don’t know how legal your intentions are for Reddit Investigator, but in the meantime, I’ll play dumb.

What other tools for Reddit do you use besides Reddit Investigator? Did you find anything interesting about this one? Have you ever met someone from Reddit?

In fact, we’re now one week into the new year and how many of you actually stuck to your goals (or even bothered with them at all this year)?

But seriously now, let’s make this year the one where we really stick to our well made plans and finally achieve something worthwhile. Agreed? Read on for 3 solid ways to make those resolutions truly stick and make a difference in your lives.

Actionable Goals, not vague nonsense

The trouble with most of our New Years Resolutions are that they tend to be rather vague:

• Save $10,000
• Learn some Chinese
• Work out everyday

As any entrepreneur and serious self-improvement guru types will tell you, these are useless. They don’t describe anything about the steps needed to get to that goal, and things like “learn some Chinese” don’t even define a specific endpoint. Although specific goals such as “save $10,000” are admirable, they sadly aren’t actionable – meaning there isn’t a specific, defined action you can take to work towards that goal (other than say, moving $10,000 from your checking to savings account, in which case you probably don’t need to make that a resolution anyway). No, no, these will never do. Instead, make your goals into smaller daily or weekly actionable items – like these:

• Save $200 every week
• Complete one full Rosetta Stone Chinese session everyday
• Do 20 wall push-ups everyday
• Do 30 minutes of aerobic exercise everyday

Can you see the difference? We’re still saving $10,000 a year, but it’s something we can check the action for every week, or tick off every day.

If you’re having trouble thinking of some specific actionable items for your vague goals, check out anti-resolution from MeYouHealth. It’s a simple web app that’ll present you with some real, actionable items after you’ve selected your vague goal.

Now, you should have a much better resolution list consisting of many small, finite actions that you can check off as you complete each day. The next step then, is to track your progress.

Tracking Progress

Tracking your activities, or how much progress is being made in the case of weight loss etc, is in itself a huge motivator. In fact, it’s often said that simply measuring your waist every day is a great way to lose weight as it makes you eat more consciously. Here’s a mixed bag variety of tools that I think might help you, but remember that a trusty Excel/Google Docs spreadsheet can work just as well sometimes.

EpicWin (iTunes Link – $1.99)

This is my personal tool of choice, and can be summarized as a comprehensive to-do list with RPG game elements. After having created your character and added some repeating actions with associated point value, you hold the action for a few seconds to trigger some battle music and complete the item, thereby adding the points, maybe levelling up, and possibly even finding some loot!

Ok, so there is no actual roleplay ‘game’ in that there are no real fights or adventuring, but it’s a lot more fun than simply ticking off a daily item, and you could even compete with friends if you agreed on point values I guess. Check out the awesome video:

1daylater.com

If your goals revolve around spending time on a task or saving money daily, this might be the perfect tool for you. The interface is incredibly simple and allows you to track multiple projects with ease.

DailyTodo.org

A single purpose web app that would be great for your homepage. Unfortunately, it literally only tracks daily actions, so if you have weekly or monthly actions then forget it. Very simple, very fast.

GoalBot

We covered this in the directory before – it allows you to break down large goals or projects into a number of smaller steps, rather than a repeating daily task, as well as having social features. The interface isn’t exactly friendly though.

Still Got No Ideas?

If you’re in the mood for some change but really don’t have anything specific in mind, try the Daily Challenge. Saikat covered this in depth last year, but basically the system will email you random challenges every day which you can either skip or complete in one click.

Get Motivated!

Even with specific small steps to our goals, it’s often easy to forget to do them for a day, then another day, until ultimately we just don’t care anymore. No amount of web apps is going to help you there, but it does help to be in the mental state of constantly thinking about self improvement. Sign up to some newsletters or RSS feeds from motivational speakers and self improvement experts to keep yourself on track and motivated to complete your goals.

When I was first into self-improvement, Steve Pavlina was a big influence and motivation for me, and while his blog is still active it does seem to have moved away from the core teaching lately. I highly recommend the old podcasts and article archives though.

TheChangeBlog is a great general-purpose self improvement blog with a fantastic zen design to help you focus on the fantastic advice within (like learning how to set specific goals!)

That’s all from me today, as I’m busy sticking to my rigorous new daily action schedule! Don’t forget to check out all our other Self Improvement tagged posts too. Here’s wishing you all the best – happiness, health and prosperity this year! If you’ve found some other great tracking tools or motivational podcasts etc, do please share with us all in the comments – or maybe you’re brave enough to tell us your new year resolutions?

Though New Year’s resolutions and goals could easily be typed and printed out on a sheet of paper,  43Things.com offers more useful features than pen and paper, and it provides a simple method for managing your goals without having to invest in complex personal management software.

The following are some suggested tips for using 43Things.com in a more dedicated manner.

Creating A List Of Things

First off, there’s no requirement that you must come up with a list of 43 things in order to use 43Things. To keep from feeling overwhelmed, you might start off with a short list of to-do’s that you can complete in the next three or four months.

Secondly, it’s a good idea to develop a mixture of goals consisting of personal, job-related, fun and relaxing activities. You should also include goals that you can accomplish in less than a day, and a few that you might work on each week throughout the year.

As you develop your list, keep in mind the S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relative, and Time-bound) goals strategy made popular by the management consultant Peter Drucker, to ensure that your goals are well-defined and achievable. For example, instead of writing, “Improve my finances,” be more Specific with the goal of paying off a credit card debt, or saving a specified amount of money.

Use the “Add entry” feature in 43Things to make a short to-do list for some of your more challenging goals. Include how you will Measure the progress of your goal (e.g. saving 20% of your monthly income); how the goal will be Attainable (do you have the resources that will help you do it?); is it Relevant to your own personal life or professional needs?; and Time- bound, with a beginning and ending point.

And since this is the beginning of a new year, you definitely want to add new resolutions to your list, as well check out the list of 43Thing’s worldwide most popular goals for more ideas.

Setting Reminders

The number one reason I didn’t use 43Things on a consistent basis in the past is because I never set up a way to go back and monitor and review my list on a regular basis. In 43Things you can click on a goal and set up a designated e-mail reminder.

43Things also includes a Personal Challenge feature designed for you to home in on one particular goal and achieve it by a certain date.

Though 43Things is an online site, it is still a good idea to also print your list of goals and post them where they can be viewed on a regular basis.

Getting Motivated

43Things also has built-in motivation features. For example, each time you visit the site take the time to “cheer” the goals and resolutions of other site members. In turn you will also receive cheers for your own to-do’s.

You should also use the “Add an entry” and “Ask for advice” features to write journal reflections or set up a plan of action for achieving a goal.

You should also click on the 43 Things Zeitgeist page and read the comments and questions by other members working on their goals and resolutions. I find that cheering and helping others with their goals motivates me to achieve my own.

Celebrate Accomplishments

After you complete a goal, 43Things asks you if the goal was worth accomplishing, and how you achieved it. This is not only a good reflective tool, but your responses could very well help others who are seeking to accomplish your achievements.

In addition to keeping a list of things you have accomplished, your 43Things profile also includes a Year in Review page that charts your activity on the site. It’s useful to look back and see what you have accomplished.

So will you be setting goals for the new year? Have you used 43Things.com before? Let us know about your experience.

Normally you’d be able to turn over couch cushions or survey the floor, but not now. Now it’s time to rely on your inner geek.

Alert Your Phone Using A Call Or SMS

Your first step when attempting to find a lost phone is to try and locate it immediately using the oldest trick in the book – calling it. However, calling your phone has limitations. You have to constantly re-dial, and what if your phone is on silent or vibrate? You might be able to hear the buzz when you’re at home, but you won’t at even the lamest party.

That’s where apps come in, and Where’s My Droid is the gold standard for finding a lost phone. You can text your phone a pre-designated code word in order to activate Where’s My Droid, which will then cause your phone to ring even if it’s on silent or vibrate.

Where’s My Droid is free and available for Android 1.6 or newer. Other options include Lost Phone, which requires Android 1.5 and up, and Lookout Security, which also requires Android 1.5 and up.

Track It With GPS

If you haven’t been able to locate your phone by activating its ringtone, then your phone may not have been lost in the area you originally thought. It’s even possible you left it at home, or someone carried it off, either accidently or not.

That’s where GPS tracking comes in. Almost all modern phones have a GPS device built in, which can then report location remotely. Apps like Where’s My Droid and Lookout Security & Antivirus offer this feature, as do most free or paid mobile security apps. Some mobile security apps (including Lookout) can provide a rough location even when a phone’s GPS is turned off.

If you did not have the foresight to install a security app beforehand, you can try something like Lookout’s Plan B. This works by installing through the Android Web Market. Your phone will have to have mobile data reception and at least Android 2.0 for this to work.

Don’t count on GPS as a miracle worker. With a phone it is accurate to within a few feet if you’re using it outside, under a blue sky, without any large structures to interfere. Change those conditions and it becomes less accurate. Indoors, under a couch, it may have some trouble. The results should at least be accurate enough to tell you if your phone has left the building, however.

Wipe The Phone & Reset Passwords

You’ve tried ringing your device, and you’ve tried to track it with GPS. Still, no dice. Maybe it ran out of battery, or maybe a thief took it and was smart enough to turn it off and let it sit for a few days or weeks. Either way, your phone’s gone and you don’t know who has it.

In this grim situation you’ll want to wipe data so that your phone can’t be used as an avenue for ID theft or harassment, two rare but troubling possibilities. Most paid security apps, like Lookout Security, will allow for remote wiping of data from your phone.

However, there’s some doubt as to how well this feature works. In a recent AV-Comparatives test researchers were able to recover some or all data from mobile phones after they were allegedly wiped. It it was also possible to access Google Mail account data after the wipe. Only Kaspersky Mobile Security successfully protected Google Mail in the test, which is one of the reasons I’ve been recommending it despite a $9.99 price tag.

There’s always the chance that someone might be able to snatch data before you wipe your phone, however – or they could disable the phone’s networking capabilities, rendering wipe attempts invalid. As such, you should treat the loss of a phone the same as the loss of a computer. Reset all passwords that were stored on the device as soon as possible.

It might also be wise to send an SMS or email to friends and family letting them know your phone is no longer in your possession, as well. They can be on the look for it, and treat any calls or texts allegedly from you with suspicion.

Conclusion

Despite the advanced features in modern smartphones, there’s still only so much you can do to find your phone. Most options rely on preemptive measures. Attempting to locate a phone without a phone-finding or security app is extremely difficult, so don’t doddle. Install Where’s My Droid or a security app as soon as possible.

Have you lost your Android phone before?  If so, how did you locate it?  With one of the above apps or with another?  Let us know your experiences in the comments below.