To lose weight and get it: Write it down

It’s springtime and time to slim down for summer. Watching what you eat and getting exercise is critical to get in swim suit shape and I’ve found some Websites that can help you plot your way to… well… a new you.

The idea is to write down everything. What you eat and what you burn in calories by working out, bicycling and running. The Fit Day site is a great place to do just that. It’s totally free, and all web based.

Set your weight loss goals, allot how many calories you can consume a day and then enter in your food and workouts. FitDay then keeps track of everything. A lot of people have lost a lot of weight and credit this site with giving them the motivation.

A similar and also very popular free site is The Daily Plate. Again, the idea is to keep track of what you eat and what you burn. Information is power. As long as you burn through physical activity more than you take in through food, you lose weight. And if you write down everything, you’ll know… there’s no room for excuses to NOT lose weight. the Daily Plate has a huge online database of foods with full nutritional information that it automatically totals for you.

And if you still need more help, a site called Shrink Yourself offers helpful online courses aimed at helping you to stop overeating. Some, which they charge for, are quite in depth and intense. But there is also a free four-day online course called Emotional Eating 101 you may want to check out.

Improve your vocabulary and help feed the world

Spend a lot of time surfing the Net? Now you can help others as you get smarter with the freerice.com site.

The idea is pretty simple: Learn a new word - help feed the world. It starts out slow, asking you the definition of a word. As you pick the correct one, the words get progressively harder. There are 55 levels of increasing difficulty. So far, since the site went online last fall, few have gone past level 48,

But with each correct answer, the site donates 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.
How so? Ads, that’s how. Advertisers attach banners at the bottom of the vocabulary screen. The money they pay the site pays for the rice. You can even see a video of the rice being distributed.

The site makes no money. It has just come up with a way to help feed the world: To date,about 47 tons of rice to 22 countries.

Handy gizmo of the day

Now here’s a cool idea: A TV Silencer that mutes when the phone rings.

Actually, it also works with DVDs and stereos… as long as it has a remote control.

You install a gizmo at the landline connection (it wont work with cell phones) hook it up to a small infra red emitter aimed in the direction of the television and, whenever the phone rings, it mutes your TV. Just like magic. Cost is $69.

Spam: How to get it under control

Spam now makes up 80 percent of all email. Put another way, only two of 10 emails are good. Fighting back can be daunting but I have some suggestions that can ease the burden on your in-box.

Spam is out of control. Guess how much junk mail has accumulated over a 30-day period with my PCMike e-mail address? Over 164,000. Now it used an old e-mail address that has been heavily linked on the Web and I allowed the spam to accumulate to demonstrate just how bad it is.

Here are my top three suggestions on how you can fight back against spammers.

1)First, never unless absolutely necessary, write out your e-mail address on the Web. Spammers have harvesting programs that capture them.

2) If you do have to post it, don’t use the “@” sign. Spell out the word AT and D-O-T for the dot com part to trick those harvesters.

3) Finally use an anti spam program that has a Bayesian filter. Bayesian filters detect spam through smart analysis and the programs actually learn and gets better over time.

There are two Bayesian spm programs I recommend.

Spam Bully is the best tool to block the spam that I’ve tried for Windows and PC users, especially those using Outlook.. For Mac users, I like Spam Sieve. These programs are easy to set up and powerful tools that identify and trap the spam and get it down to a manageable amount.

Spam can never be eradicated but if you follow my suggestions, you’ll get it under control.