Fat-off Archive

I have received a couple emails over the last few days asking how the Fat-Off is going. So here is the update. NYC is great, and so I am walking a ton. It is amazing how for me here in NYC I choose to walk, yet anywhere else, I choose to car. I could easily hop in a cab, but instead I walk. Anyway, that is one of the reasons I want to be back here perm.

I have selected the new tools to add to the Fat-Off and next week they will be published. And at this point, Skinnyr has been put on hold so it will be removed for now.

If anyone is in NYC and wants to do a CN meetup, drop me a line!

RunFatBoy is a tool created by Jim Jones to help newbies lose weight. RunFatBoy provides customized workouts based on your weight and then you can customize the workouts from there.

Pros

• $5 per month
• Very customizable to create the workout that will work for you
• Lots of Web 2.0 goodness
• Offers both Metric and Standard
• Easy to use, functionality works well

Areas for improvement

• Ability to go back in history – appears you can only look at the current week
• Algorithm for initial workout – not sure where the weights come from but they seem heavy for an obese man (I would assume just as bad for a woman)
• Some information on where the pre-defined workout comes from – this is an issue I have with every tool I have looked at.
• Needs graphs of workouts and weights

General thoughts:

I think RunFatBoy is for someone who wants a little bit more than Skinnyr, but less than Traineo. If you want a way to track your workouts in an easy to use manner with a diary, then RunFatBoy is for you. If you are the type that needs a community for motivation, then look elsewhere. For me, the suggestions above would need to be implemented for it to be worth the $5/month charge.

Screenshots – click to enlarge

I decided to take today and use it as a public relations day for the Fat-Off. Thanks to Scott, I sent about 20 PR e-mails to other weight loss community sites to see if they would either participate or provide some coverage for the Fat-Off. And I contacted PRWeb about creating a press release. They want $299 to create the release which frankly I would rather not spend right now. So I may have a friend work on the press relase. Let me know if you have any other ideas for getting the word out about the Fat-Off.

I have the review for RunFatBoy about 85% complete but decided to do some exciting PHP code for the evening. I figure I have enough weight to lose that RFB can hold for another day :)

You will see some changes and you won’t see other changes I made. But I assure you that all of them will help enhance your experience in using CenterNetworks. Some of the changes include:

• Addition of a Get Involved bar at the top of all content pages – this should help with the viral ability of the site
• New style for comments – still working this out a bit
• Faster page rendering
• Other misc tweaks which I cannot share since we are on a code orange alert level

We will be applying to be a 9rules site on Wednesday, I wonder if they will accept us.

Tonight I was supposed to post my review of RunFatBoy. However their site is having a small tech issue so I will post the review on Monday.

I have received several emails from companies asking how to participate in the Fat-Off. It is really easy. Just send me a note with your company web site address and I will review.

Right now, I expect to update the list of participating companies on November 15, and then every 45 days thereafter. Some will stay, some will go, some will be added.

Thanks for all of your interest, I really appreciate it!

The first interview for the Fat-Off is now live. Stephanie was kind enough to interview me for her blog. Stephanie runs a site called "Back In Skinny Jeans" where she gets real about beauty and fashion. There is another side to her site, which I think is even better (if that is possible). It is about talking tech for the non-techy. She has a very popular article titled, "RSS the Oprah Way" – if you haven't read it, you should. It will show you how to explain something technical to a non-technical audience. If you expect your web app to hit the masses, you need to speak like this.

Anyway, here is a link to the interview:

Fat-Off Interview »

Thanks again to Stephanie!

Ok – this will be another short entry because I have been swamped with work today. I will be presenting the review of RunFatBoy on Friday of this week.

Also, I just completed my first interview for the Fat-Off. I won't ruin the surprise but will post a link on the Fat-Off page once it is live. It is so exciting that after completing so many interviews of others, I am the subject of an interview!

Today begins our in-depth look at the web applications that are part of the Web Apps Fat-Off. First up is Skinnyr. This is the most basic of the tools so this review will be short as well.

The idea with Skinnyr is that you can create a graph with your current weight. You can put the graph on any site you are associated with like MySpace or your blog. Here is a test graph I just made to demonstrate:

Pretty cool, eh? What’s nice is that you don’t need to know how to code HTML or any programming languages to get this measurement tool into your web site. You can also grab a RSS feed of the measurements which will allow you to keep track from anywhere that accepts a RSS feed.

I think Skinnyr does a good job at what it set out to do. It does not claim to be a fully-featured health and fitness site. It is an online scale. And it is a great online scale. A couple of suggested improvements would include:

• a way to add past weights, for example if I forget to add yesterday’s measure, there is no way to backdate the weight
• perhaps a converter from metric to British
• maybe look at a more friendly name than Obfuscatr :)
• more options for the graph – colors and so forth for better integration into various sites

I have spoken with the Skinnyr team over the past few weeks and they really are a bunch of good guys. They have been very open with me about the site and listen to ideas I have. And that’s what Web 2.0 is all about… creating a site for the user’s needs.