NC #1008 Elgato Prompter, Old Macs, PulsePoint, MyNetDiary, Happy Scale, and Life Cycle

Hi, this is Jill from the Northwoods of the NoCillicast podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com,

a technology geek podcast with an ever-so-slight Apple bias.

Today is Sunday, September 1st, and this is show number 1008.

I'm here because Allison's on vacation, getting a well-deserved break.

I just hope next time she remembers to pack me in her luggage.

And as advertised, she left us fantastic documentation of every step of the process

to get these episodes recorded and published.

You know what?

They're so detailed, I haven't had one stitch of insomnia since she left.

The theme of this episode is going to be taking technology, making ourselves healthier, happier,

maybe even saving a life, or saving the life of our old Macs and giving them new purpose.

You might have heard that.

But on Allison's August 8th episode, I set up a whole video system so that I could start

a YouTube channel and get good at it.

One of the pieces she wanted me to do a bit of a deeper dive on was the Elgato prompter

and the software that goes with it.

I said in my other interview, I was having trouble looking at the camera.

I was always looking at my notes.

I was always reviewing what I would say, and my eyes were not focused on the camera.

That's fine for podcasting, but for videos, it was a real problem.

It was a real problem.

It made unappealing video.

I couldn't remember the whole thing I was going to say.

I usually keep an outline, but I don't read word for word.

And then it came across to me, too.

I have four podcasts.

I create a lot of content every week.

With all this content I already have, transcripts already written for them,

I could break them all up into smaller videos.

I started researching teleprompters.

They usually have some kind of app that control them.

They're big pieces of hardware, and they can be expensive.

Or there are iPad teleprompters, which are just an app, but most of them have subscriptions.

If this thing's going to be on my desk, if I'm going to spend money doing it,

isn't there anything else I could do with this item?

And as I was doing some research, I found out that Elgato had just come out with a new device

they called Promptr.

As I mentioned in Allison's review, there's a flat panel that goes horizontal to the bottom

of the screen.

This is the true monitor that hooks up to my computer.

It reflects up into a 45-degree double-sided mirror glass, which to me shows the image

I want to see right side up in the right direction.

I can read text.

I can see everything in there.

But where the magic comes in is that the camera is shooting out the backside of this whole

device.

It can't see the text on the screen because the focal length is far beyond that.

When I am looking at my notes in this teleprompter, I'm actually looking right at the camera.

With many of these teleprompters, I can't see the text on the screen.

I can't see the text on the screen.

With many of these teleprompter devices or iPad apps, you're still looking at a screen

and the camera is somewhere else.

This is that perfect blending of having the camera shoot right through the teleprompter.

And so my eyes are always targeted on the right thing.

And in the end, it produced videos that were more engaging, more entertaining.

They felt like they were more professional.

And I'm actually looking at the people I'm talking to.

I'm a corporate trainer, and I know one of the most important things is to

always look people eyeball in the eyeball when you're talking to them.

This prompter by Elgato helps me do that.

Most interesting thing about the prompter in general is, of course,

I can put text on it and scroll through the text and read it.

That's the fundamental purpose of a teleprompter.

But this also acts as a tiny monitor.

So 99% of the time when I'm not recording videos for YouTube, it just acts like a tiny monitor.

I put Telegram or email or something very small in there that I can just look up and

refer to every once in a while.

That's something I don't want to look at all the time because it is pretty small.

But that makes it handy and gives me something useful to do with it when I'm not recording.

Big hit.

The other nice thing is that whenever I'm on a Zoom call,

I can put the Zoom meeting inside of the teleprompter.

And so if I'm talking to Allison, I can look at her eyeball to eyeball

while still looking at the camera.

This gives me a chance to be more personal with whoever I'm having a Zoom meeting with.

Or if I'm on a Zoom call, I can look at them.

If I'm on some kind of a multi-person panel, see people's faces, see their reactions.

It's really nice and I feel like I'm doing a better job with video

now that I have this Elgato prompter.

I won't go over all the stats because I talked about them in that August 8th interview.

But in general, it's a 9-inch display.

It's a 1024 by 600 pixel monitor.

If you've met your maximum amount of monitors you can get on a Mac,

you'll need to use DisplayLink to bring it out.

And have it be an additional monitor.

The real power of all of this has to do with the software app itself.

It connects to something called Elgato Camera Hub.

This is the same app you use if you bought FaceCam Mark II or FaceCam Pro.

They're camera devices from Elgato that uses that same app.

You control the camera and all the settings for it.

App initially gives you a tab for those cameras.

But now, if you have the Elgato prompter, it gives you a third tab.

And that allows you to control your...

The first thing I can do is very simple.

I can turn on and off the power of the prompter.

I noticed that when I turn the prompter off, there's still a little dull glow of the lower monitor.

I think it's off, but it's not really off-off.

Well, whatever.

I can also adjust the brightness of the prompter.

Some people say that when they have very white backgrounds in this teleprompter, maybe a chat channel or their notes,

it can reflect into people's glasses or their eyeballs.

So people will sometimes...

I don't want to dim the brightness of this monitor so it doesn't quite reflect so much.

I can also decide I want this prompter to be a third display for me, or I want to see text.

And if I want to see text, it has a new area that I can put in what is called scripts.

This is just what I'm going to talk about.

I can copy and paste my text into this app, into a brand new script, and that will put it on the teleprompter.

A lot of people wish that they could hook it up to a computer.

They could hook it up to some kind of a document or some kind of document management system instead of just putting it directly into the app.

I can see their point of view.

I really haven't had much problem with it because I'm not retaining a lot of scripts.

I will read a script, I'll delete it, and then I'll put the next script in.

But I understand their point.

Not much formatting that you can do with the text once you put it into the software.

You can add emojis, but some people want to have more formatting in there.

Maybe like a highlighter.

To emphasize something they were trying to say.

Or some kind of a paragraph system.

It's very simple.

Which is another problem I haven't had much trouble with, but I can see where they're coming from.

At this point, if I put text into the Elgato Camera Hub app, on the tab for the prompter,

I can now either set it up to auto-scroll, which means that it'll just scroll at a particular speed and keep going.

Or I can set it up with my Stream Deck Plus, which has knobs on it.

And that way I can rotate the knobs and control the speed of the text.

And that's what I decided to do.

Because sometimes I get a little off track.

I say more than I intended to say.

I go off into another direction.

And so I want to stop the text from scrolling until I get back to the point where I'm going to read from the prepared text.

And then I can just start scrolling again.

And by using the rotating knobs in the Stream Deck Plus, it doesn't show on the video.

You can't tell that I'm not scrolling.

I'm doing anything.

Nor does it make any kind of clicking noise.

So it works perfectly.

If I'm in a full screen of the text I'm planning on reading in the app,

I can hit Escape and it'll take me back out into the main app settings again.

The one thing that I've read in criticism of prompter is that this software that comes with it came out very simple.

And many of the people who use this wish there were some kind of an AI feature that would listen to you talk

and then scroll as you say the sentence.

And I think that's a great way to do that.

There are iPad apps out there that will do just that.

I've tried them and they work pretty well.

For me, I would much rather control the speed and the location of my text with the Stream Deck Plus buttons.

But everyone's a little bit different.

I think that would be a great new feature.

There's a lot of room to grow.

So I suspect that we're going to see a lot of new features coming out of the Elgato camera hub in support of prompter.

In fact, I've seen some come out already.

In the app itself.

I can adjust the font size, the font style, the margin side to side.

I can change the line squishing and maybe squish it up a bit together or have it be more spread out.

I can also decide that I want the text to be one color and the background to be a different color.

It has a setting for opacity.

And I thought this was interesting.

I played with this quite a bit.

You can actually put text on the screen, but have it be somewhat see-through.

That means I could still put.

With the Zoom meeting behind the text, still look at Allison eyeball to eyeball, but then see my outline, my prepared notes in front of her.

It does make it rather busy.

That is a really great setup for when I'm talking to someone.

I also want to see what my notes say.

It might just be the best of all worlds.

There's also experimental features.

And this one in particular, I have not used.

If you record on Twitch, you can embed.

The Twitch chat channel directly into the screen.

And that makes it handy if you're using this Twitch feature.

Twitch is going to be a live streaming primarily for gamers, but other people have adopted it.

So imagine I'm creating a video game video and I'm showing it to people who are paying to see my video work.

If they ask me questions or leave comments, I can see those comments and questions right away and answer them live.

It gives me more of an interaction with my audience, showing people what it is I'm doing.

That's kind of handy.

But I also could use Promptr as a third monitor and still see the chat that's going on behind the scenes, too.

Either way, works great.

To get back to the settings, you can have an auto scroll.

You can decide what kind of speed you want to have.

You can also decide if you want it to auto loop, which means when it's done, it's going to go back to the top again and start all over again.

Maybe if you're doing some kind of an.

Advertisement and you want to do a bunch of different takes on this advertisement or you want to try again and make it better the second time.

You can do that very easily.

It also has a setting for something called line marker, which means that as that line has passed, it fades out just a little bit, giving you a darker text where you have not yet read.

Some people find this very handy.

It takes your eyes away from the information that's already passed and you don't want to see it.

Anymore.

And that is something I do use and I do like quite a bit.

One of the new features, as I mentioned, that they come out with has to do with what they call overlay and overlay is an indication of where the dead center of the camera is located.

Some people use a regular DSLR or mirrorless cameras or their iPhone in this teleprompter.

For me, I'm using the face cam pro, but those different cameras are going to position the lens in a little bit different.

So I put this overlay in the dead center of my camera.

So when I'm looking at this red square box, I know I'm looking directly at the camera, which is exactly what I wanted in the first place.

What's hilarious is when I got done with my review with Allison, I was playing with the software and I moved that square box away.

And so the next time I created a video, I noticed my eyes were just ever so slightly not looking directly at the camera and it was.

Pretty disturbing.

So having that set properly is great and it's a good new feature for the software.

People were very excited to see it come out.

So in the end, the Elgato hardware is very good, solidly built, works just like you would expect it to.

I haven't run across any Elgato hardware that didn't work like I wanted it to.

It allows me to use it as another monitor or teleprompter, which was the whole reason I bought it in the first place.

I have a lot of flexibility.

I saw the process.

Problem of not looking at the camera when recording videos by myself or doing some kind of a YouTube Zoom meeting panel.

Now I see people.

I think it makes me more personable.

It has really changed the whole nature of my YouTube channel and how personal I can be when I chat.

People feel like I'm looking at them instead of below, above or to the side of them.

I'm a big fan of this teleprompter.

And so if you need something like this, I think this is a great choice.

This has quickly become one of my favorite Elgato purchases.

If you're interested, it is $279.

When I bought it, it was brand new.

And so there were no sales on it.

But now it's a year later.

And so Elgato as a company typically does do sales on their products.

So as this device gets a little bit older and not quite so new, you might see some sales on it.

I hope this helps you in understanding a little bit more about the Elgato prompter.

Up next, we have a donation from George from Tulsa.

And he gave us two of them.

They're going to play back to back.

Hi, George from Tulsa here.

Responding to Allison's request for content while she and Steve safari off to Africa.

In June 2024, Mac security company Intego published a blog article.

When does an old Mac become unsafe to use?

In Tego's answer, if your Mac cannot run the latest version of Mac OS,

it won't get all the security updates it needs.

Going further, the company writes,

Apple regularly updates the current version of Mac OS to patch vulnerabilities.

But in our research, we have found that Apple frequently does not fix some known vulnerabilities

in previous versions.

They only update the previous versions of its operating systems, even the one just prior

to the current version.

So while you may still get security updates from Apple, they may in reality be only partial

patches that only address a portion of known vulnerabilities.

While Intego provides a link to their research, they really only needed to look up Apple's

own patch.

I've got a 2022 support document that warns,

not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions of Mac OS and iOS.

Referring specifically to the current Mac OS 14 Sonoma, Apple notes that even though

Mac OS 13 Ventura does receive security updates, it will be left with known unpatched vulnerability

updates.

vulnerabilities, as will the even older Mac OS 12 Monterey and iOS 16.

That's actually kind of scary, because it was my practice for years to defer Mac version

upgrades.

First, it always seemed there were bugs that took until at least the .3 release to fix.

Then there's the question of whether a new version will force changes in established

workflows.

There were a lot of reasons to skip OS 10.7 Lion, and one of the worst was Apple removing

Save As.

And, finally, worst of all, is whether the upgrade might kill essential software or the

valuable peripherals.

Yes.

I reasoned that since Apple was actively patching our older version, we were as safe

as if we were running the newest.

Turns out, that's simply wrong.

Last week, I inventoried the dead and orphaned Macs I own and manage.

There's 27.

Three have hardware issues that could be fixed, but aren't worth the time or money.

Twenty work perfectly.

But have been orphaned since, at the latest, Mac OS 10.14 Mojave went end-of-life July

22, 2019.

There's four 2014 minis purchased new in 2018.

Those are technically still supported and received what is likely their last update

to Mac OS 12.7.6 Monterey on July 22.

But, at my work, those minis are orphaned on Mojave, because that's the last version

which supports 32-bit applications.

Like Quicken 2007, we need to access nearly 20 years of Mac accounting records.

Just because an old computer isn't safe to connect to the internet, doesn't mean it's

useless.

I'm hanging on to that fleet of old Macs, because every one runs Quicken 2007.

Sure, they'll all eventually die, but that could be a long, long time.

I have a 1992 Compaq laptop running Windows 95.

I'm able to boot, connect to zip drives, and pull up Quicken files from long before

we shifted to Mac.

On that basis, those old Macs have a longer life expectancy than I do.

Thirteen of the iMacs on my list were donated to a small-town public library in 2011.

They worked flawlessly until the library went to a phone-in, drive-by operation during the

pandemic.

When patron access was restored in 2021, I had them shelved since their launch.

I had them shelved since their launch.

The last update was High Sierra 10.13.6 on July 9, 2018.

I did wipe macOS off one and installed a direct boot of Linux Mint.

It worked fine, but where the Pharonix Deep Freeze program offers a way to protect Macs

from local hacking, my level of geekery isn't sufficient to implement a similar safe boot

method on Linux.

Tired of being pushed off the cliff by Apple's policy of abandoning old Macs, in 2015 I decided

to try switching from Mac to Linux.

That effort was mostly successful.

I converted two of my three co-workers to Linux using Intel NUCs, though all of us had

a 2014 Mini running quicker.

I extensively tested Linux alternatives to Quicken, including GNU Cache, KMyMoney, Scrooge,

and the proprietary MoneyDance.

None measured up to Quicken 2007.

For that matter, neither do the 2024 Mac or Windows versions of Quicken, now sold by subscription.

Had I been willing to convert to the browser-based Quicken, I would have been able to.

I would have been able to convert to the browser-based Quicken.

I pick upmans from our books in New York and on foot, down the theater.

Some things fit perfectly with the language we learned to use and some may not.

But I think Quicken is going to capture client kiss.

I always subconsciously think that Perkins has promised her principles and tone of man.

I hope online

I attend the business fair and when it's made to the point where its customers do not

like it, I very Kita self-honored, very knowing, and suited person.

Those hard worker days were some of theуб yang I felt like I actually wanted to experience

when modern withigs at first I did want.

I've used other unofficials for several years.

Those are pretty much what i would have to do.

it was Mac for her

or retirement.

Thus, I let a new

M1 Mini in the door

and then had to buy

another one so I could talk

knowledgeably with her about her

new computer and its operating

system.

Since then, it's been

back to the Mac for all of us.

I'm the only one

now running Linux, but

in a second setup next to my

M2 Mini.

In the next installment of this

saga, I'll report on

peripherals and software I'm using

to improve my Mini

M2 experience.

And I promise not

to rant about the new

MacQuick and Classic Business

and Personal Edition.

By coincidence,

my daughter and her family

are moving from a house

they've owned 16 years.

While emptying

the attic, they found

two old items,

including a picture

lamp G4

they'd stuffed away

and completely forgotten.

No one

wants to turn an old Mac

that works into a

boat anchor.

George from

Tulsa, back again.

Allison emailed me

after my recent discussion

of the 27 dead and

orphaned Macs I'm keeping

around, but offline.

Today, I'm just

here to answer Allison's

question. I'm paraphrasing.

Why did all

four of you go back to the

Mac when three

were using Linux?

The answer is software.

There's lots of great

free open source software

for Linux, but almost

none that's specialized

and proprietary.

Want to use standard

program to prepare your

income taxes on your local

Linux system? You'll have

to install Windows in a virtual

machine, and if all

goes well, you may

be able to successfully run

TurboTax.

Given my less than stellar

experience running Parallels on

a Mac and VirtualBox

on Linux, it would likely

be less hassle to just

buy a cheap Windows box

and not worry about the

complexities added by a

virtual machine.

Then there's my coworkers.

They just want to get their

work done and go

home, not try to

cope with keeping virtual machines

running, updating, printing, and

saving files where they need

to be saved.

Fortunately, there's a Mac

version of every software

we need at work, so

it's just easier to set Linux

aside and go back to

Mac.

Doing that reduced

my support burden, as

we're all now using M-Series

Macs, running the same version

of Mac OS and the

same software.

Though I do need to mention our

old friends, those

2014 minis on Mojave,

we keep offline

so we can continue to use

Quicken 2007.

Thankfully,

they're so familiar,

no support is required.

Thanks, George. That is diligent

work for sure. And just like

George donated a clip

so that we could play it and have a new perspective

on this podcast, you could do the same

thing. Or you can

donate to all the hard work that Allison

does on this podcast. I did

one episode of it, and I can tell

you, it is a lot of work. She

puts a lot of detail into every

episode. So if you look in the

show notes, there are links to how you

can donate to the podcast in monetary

ways so the podcast doesn't cost

her money, except for all the great time

she puts into it. I know she would appreciate

it, and I appreciate it too.

You know, at times you see an emergency,

and perhaps you just want to know what's going

on around you. There are some apps

out there, like Citizen, that will show you

videos or people reporting what's

happening. I traveled to Los

Angeles quite a bit for work a few years ago,

and I didn't have much to do

when the day was done, so I would hang

out at the La Brea Tar Pits

every night. And once in a while,

there would be an incident going on there.

I was able to use the Citizen app

to decide whether or not I still

wanted to go to the La Brea Tar Pits, or

should I avoid it? Was something dangerous

happening? There's another

app that will tell you more

than just what's happening around you,

but maybe you could be someone

that could help someone. This app

tries to save lives in an

area where someone needs help.

This app is called

PulsePoint. It's a 501

3C organization, non-profit,

and it has a foundation

behind it. It was made by

a fellow named Richard Price, who was the

captain of a fire department in

California. He said that one day

he was going to lunch, and he heard a bunch of

sirens, and he saw one of his own

engines pull up to a

restaurant. Turned out someone was

having a cardiac arrest inside the

restaurant. He was right there.

He realized,

quote,

because there was no way

of connecting me where

I am with whatever incident

is going on. He said he's CPR

trained. He has an AED,

a defibrillator device,

in his car. He could help.

So in 2010, he came up with the

idea for this app.

And the next year, he won the Webby

Award for the application.

Great job, Richard Price. How it

works is it uses location-based

technology and connects

people who are trained in

emergencies. For those who

are not, they can just look and see what's

happening around them. Maybe

they know someone who could help.

So when I look at the app, I'd see

fires, car accidents, medical

emergencies in a map.

You can also see what agencies have

responded. But let's

imagine someone's having a cardiac event.

The ambulance is over on

that side of town, and boy, the traffic's

bad right now. Every

minute it takes for an emergency

vehicle to go somewhere

where there's an incident, the

less that person will have a chance to

recover. I'm as of the essence.

And so what this will allow

you to do is to say that

you want to be alerted in case

a CPR event

because you are CPR certified.

But then if a cardiac event

does happen, you'll be alerted,

you may be able to run there.

The idea is to notify people within

a certain walking distance of this event.

The municipalities themselves

can determine how far that

notification range should be.

Now for me, I used to

be a lifeguard, but it was when I was

pretty young, and I was

CPR trained and certified

several times. That was a long

time ago. They have been providing

CPR training for people so

they can be first responders.

I am a firm believer that we

as people are the very

first responders, not just the police,

fire, and medical people.

So if someone's having a

cardiac event, and I'm right there,

I could be notified and

be able to help. I was watching

some videos of this in action, and

it's really heartwarming what happens

to people in real life.

There was a story about an event

on the web.

Some fellow was on a fun run, and

he started having a cardiac event.

The person who was right there

was CPR trained. A little bit like me.

He had training years ago,

but he started doing CPR

right away, the best he could.

But immediately, a

lifeguard was notified,

and he was nearby. He comes running,

takes over the CPR

from the guy, because he knew a little bit

more. He knew how to do it properly.

Someone else saw this

event and knew that

every county park had an

AED device. She was

able to grab the defibrillator

and run to the place

that was marked on the map.

This man recovered. This was an

important, life-saving situation,

and time was of the essence.

They all were able to save this

person's life because this app

connected everyone who could help.

In the end, where the true power

of connected devices shine

is that combination of

an iPhone, location

information, and people

who say they should be notified

in case of an emergency.

In 2019, the app

went beyond just recording

defibrillators and CPR

registrations, and they started

including Narcan,

bleeding kits, epinephrine,

and EpiPens for those

who are having allergic reactions.

To sign up to be a CPR

person, you just have to indicate you want

to receive CPR notifications.

That is something

you manage yourself.

But there are officially registered

professionals. That is managed

by your local government, agency,

professional responders,

fire, police, medical staff,

stuff like that. They can manage their

own list of who has

certain kinds of training.

There's also a map as well,

so you can see what the

traffic looks like. I know where the

hospital is, and I can tell

why the traffic is really bad between me

and the hospital. By using

the device's notification system

for an emergency, it's a

great way of getting the right

people to an incident.

As I hinted, the

municipalities can keep their own list

of professional responders, but

that also means that your

community, county, city,

something like that, has to agree

to be a part of

this program. I noticed

on many official

county, city websites,

they will indicate they are part of the

PulsePoint system.

They will give instructions on how it works,

and they'll show you how to set it up

so that you can be a part of the system

and be someone who could be

a CPR first responder.

Or if your municipality,

like mine, doesn't indicate that

on the official website,

you can just download the app and see if it

starts working. Sure enough, I start

seeing events happening on there.

I know that my area is

using this system.

They also created now

a second PulsePoint app

called AED. This

shows on a map all the locations

of the AEDs,

the defibrillators, in that area.

I noticed, for example,

my church has one of these devices,

but we never registered.

So right from the app itself, you can indicate

this building here, they have one.

You can just walk right in and get it.

Both apps have instructions on how to do CPR

and how to use an AED

device. That can help each

of us become a first responder.

Check with your local agencies

to see if they're using PulsePoint.

Or again, like I said, just download the app

and see if it starts populating with events.

And if you do, make sure

you put on the notifications

if you are CPR trained.

Let the app know that you want to be

part of the list of people who will get

notified if there is a CPR

event near you.

In the end, PulsePoint shows the real

power of sophisticated

devices and how they can connect

people to life-threatening situations.

As you might have guessed if you've heard

of any of my past reviews, I like

tracking things. I track sleep,

I do some journaling.

One thing became quite important,

I decided to start tracking my

calories, primarily to lose weight.

And then I started running into some

health issues and tracking food became

even more important to me.

It takes time, primarily when you're

entering food into a tracker.

Every food tracker out there will have some kind

of a database of food that you'll commonly

find in a grocery store

or chain restaurants.

But when it comes to the databases

in some apps that are very small,

you don't find the food you're looking for.

This can be frustrating and

time-consuming because now

I have to enter in all the nutrition

of some food that doesn't exist

in this database.

There's about 108 nutrients you could

record for every food item.

That takes a lot of time.

You either skip most of the

stats, but then you're not getting a full picture

of what you're eating, or you spend

the time and you add in all the stats.

Nobody loves food tracking

in the first place, and then making it more

time-consuming and more frustrating

just leads to rebellion.

I needed to find

something that I could easily track food

and not have it take

so much time.

This is the point that I found something called

MyNetDiary. This is either

an app or a website.

MyNetDiary.com

And the more I dug around it,

it was the perfect thing.

It wasn't giving me advice,

pretending to be some kind of an AI

buddy. Hi there, this is your

AI friend. I notice you haven't

exercised today. Don't you think you

should? That is kind of the modern

thing right now. That's the thing that's going

with many of the food apps that are out

there. Some people really like that

kind of coaching. I found it

a little bit annoying, to be honest with you.

I just really wanted to know the facts.

Then I could run some reports,

hand it off to my trainer,

or if I'm seeing a nutritionist,

then they could look at the food analysis

and decide whether I'm doing

the right thing. This app is

great for that.

First of all, it has a database of

1.6 million food items,

which is huge. Let's say

I want to create my own recipes,

add it into the system. This app will

allow you to do that, too.

I can add it to the food diary,

type in all the ingredients

that go into it. That's the special thing.

It's the ingredients. And as

I add those in, in the right quantity,

and then tell it how many

servings of this recipe I

created from what I just typed

in, it will break it down,

per serving, or whatever

amount I want. It could be ounces,

it could be serving size, anything.

And now I can add it directly

into my food diary. It'll even

create a cute little food label

for my own recipe, so I

know exactly what's in it. You can

decide at that point if you want to make

this new item public

so anyone could use it. It'll even

track exercise in a very basic

way. You can, first of all, indicate

that you're going for a bike ride,

or a run, or a walk. And then

it will use your internal GPS to

calculate how far you went, how

fast you were going, and then calculate

the calories. Very simple.

But it has a very

large exercise catalog.

I weight lifted with my trainer.

And it will give you an estimate

in general, based on how

much exertion you say. I lifted

weights and it was a medium effort.

It'll give you a little bit of a guideline

of what kind of calories you burn.

Or, let's say you're on an exercise

machine, and the treadmill says you burned

200 calories. You could just enter

that amount and be done with it.

That adds to your daily diary.

That also can calculate

into how many calories you have

remaining for the day.

So if I was allowed to eat

1,600 calories before, and

I exercised for 200 calories,

I now can eat 1,800 calories.

And with the premium account,

I could say, no, I don't want my

exercise calories to go into

my daily calorie intake. Up to you.

If you look at calories

as a math formula, which it generally

is, 3,500 calorie

loss is about a pound.

If you're looking to lose 50 pounds in a

year, that's going to be one pound

a week. And it'll calculate

how many calories you should be eating

in general, and then

giving you a suggestion of how many

calories you should reduce every day

so that you can lose a pound

a week. That makes it nice and easy

for you. It tells you

suggested calories for your day.

And then as you track food,

and your exercise,

you can decide exactly what it is

you have left to eat, and how much

you should be eating.

Another thing that people will track when they're tracking

food, and it's called their macros.

And a lot of people do this,

and it's very important to many people

who track their food

to track their macros.

And essentially what the macros are is

it's referring to how many grams of protein,

fats, and

carbs you are eating.

It will suggest how many,

grams of protein is a good number for you

based on its math.

You could also set it to something else if you rather.

When you start using

the app for the first time, it asks you

what your weight is, how much weight you want

to lose, and then some basic

stats about you. And then it

analyzes the data and gives you a basic

plan for losing weight, or maintaining

weight, whatever it is you want to do.

But it'll calculate and say,

this is how many calories you should eat.

Now, you can just start tracking your

food and exercise.

And while you're tracking your food,

you can also track your water.

It'll give you an analysis of

how you did on your eating.

It will give you a grade for the

food you took in.

Track how much you exercised.

It'll say something like, great job.

You kept your saturated fats

and sugars under this level.

You ate a little bit more sodium

than is really recommended.

It doesn't do it in that weird AI

way. It just does it as a stat.

It'll show you then what

food you're eating.

What food you ate that had the most sodium in it.

So maybe you could avoid it or find an alternative

to that in the future.

And if you don't like that kind of thing,

you can just take it off of your dashboard.

But every day it's going to give you that summary.

You're going to see the scale, if you wish

to see the scale, and you'll see your current

nutrition markers increasing

as you start eating.

The free account will do all sorts of

things that I previously mentioned.

It will synchronize with the Apple

Health Kit or the Google Health Kit.

The app will connect to your weight,

sleep steps, and pull it

into the system. In the end, this

app, it becomes a homepage

for your entire health. There's also a

community message board where you can talk to other people

who are in the same situation you

are in or just transfer good

ideas. And perhaps you

all want to share tips, recipes,

meal plans that have been successful

to you. In the end,

MyNetDiary has been incredibly healthy

for me in losing weight. But

of course, there is a premium part.

And the premium costs about $60.

a year. They do occasionally

have sales.

About five years ago, I started heading

towards diabetes. And I decided

I wanted to try to work on it

on my own. So I ended

up getting a premium account because

it has the features I really

need in order to do that. First of all,

when you get the premium account, it

will suddenly give you a breakdown of

all 108 nutrients.

Not just the calcium, not just the

saturated fats.

That's a big bonus for me. Because

I also care about how

healthy I'm eating. It's not just about

getting my macros in, but am I getting in

the right kinds of nutrition?

I can also run a report

with the premium account

for the entire week or

whatever time frame I care to.

With the premium account, too,

I get more flexibility, more

settings, more choices. I can customize

my dashboards

more thoroughly. I can turn

certain things off, like saying I want to

add my exercise calories,

into my daily calorie budget. I don't

really want to do that. So I can turn it off

when I have the premium account.

They also have something they call

autopilot. And autopilot

will start adjusting your calories

as you lose weight or if you're

bulking up, gaining weight.

If you're on a plateau, it will try

to help you bust through the plateau.

When you lose weight, your metabolic rate

starts to go down.

This autopilot feature

will start shrinking your calories

and then also adjusting

your calories.

Your various nutrients and macros

to go down with it.

If I have to eat less calories, I might not

be able to get in as much protein

as I would when I weighed

at the beginning of my weight loss plan

than when I weigh at the very end

of it. So it'll keep

adjusting that for me automatically.

And it can even do something that is

called calorie cycling,

which is actually something I do.

Which means that there are some days

I have a higher calorie

allotment than I do

on other days. You also

get more sophisticated weight charts.

You can see exactly how you're doing

over time. You can run reports.

You can get charts of your

measurements. So I happen to be

using a tape measure and every week

I enter in my measurements to see how

I'm doing. For the free level,

I can see those charts.

With the software, you get daily reports of food

as I mentioned. But my trainer

was looking for a weekly summary

or whatever time frame I wanted

to use. So with

the premium account, I can run those reports.

It was nice because today

I had my doctor's appointment.

First one since seeing this brand

new doctor. He put me on a medication

two months ago and so I was

able to run reports for him

and show him my progress.

And he thought that was funny that I came

with all this paper and said, here you go.

Here's how my health is doing.

But with MyNetDiary, that was easy

just to pull out and print off.

For free, I mentioned I can connect

to the Apple iOS Health Kit.

Or Google Fit Kit.

But the premium account will connect to

Health Connect, Samsung Health,

Fitbit, Withing

Scales, and Garmin.

So you have more ways to

engage with your devices

with the premium account.

One of the features in the premium account that I've

really enjoyed recently is something called

trackers. And trackers could be

a medication. How often are you

taking it? What's the dose?

You could also track your measurements. Those are a kind

of tracker as well. My

official A1C and cholesterol

tests, trackers.

But I can create my own. And this

is where I thought it was really interesting.

So my doctor gave me

two new medications. And I know

that for both of these medications, sometimes

people don't feel very well.

I wanted to see if the dose

was affecting how often

I didn't feel well.

So I created a tracker to indicate when my

stomach was unhappy. And I can see

how often it's happening and relate

it back to how high it was.

The other two

premium features that I just

got started with are premium recipes

and premium meal

planning. The premium

recipes are typically healthy.

You can find ones to

meet certain standards. Low

sugar for diabetes

or high protein or

keto. Whatever it is you're interested in.

You can find recipes for it. And you can

break it down for breakfast, dinner

meals, family meals.

And if you decide that you're going to eat

one of these recipes, you can click

on it and log it as your

breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Easily

and it goes directly into your food

diary. But you can also plan

your meals in the future.

Say that on Monday I'm planning on eating this

and on Tuesday I'm planning on eating this

other set of foods. There are

other diaries that you can select as

a program for yourself

if you have the premium account.

Maybe you prefer to go keto

or a low carb diet.

Or maybe you're interested in the Mediterranean

diet. The macro

numbers, remember fat,

carbs, and protein,

will readjust to meet

these other diary standards as well as

primary nutrients

that you're looking for.

Here's the part that came in for me

and that was the whole reason I got the premium

account. I said before I was

having trouble with my blood sugar and it had been

going up for probably the last

five years. I went on Amazon

and I got a glucose tracker.

One of those finger poking

types that you can put it in and it'll tell you what

your blood sugar is. And I just started

testing it throughout the day. With

the premium account, you can enable

the glucose tracker in the system.

And this made a huge difference

for me. First of all, there are a series

of tags that you can attach

to the glucose testing.

This was before breakfast. This

was fasting. This was after

exercise. This was two hours

after lunch.

And when I tagged them,

I can now report on them side

by side. So today, when

I visited my doctor, the report

I ran for him was

all the fasting blood sugars

I had in the system. And

he could see it drop over time.

It put a smile on his face

and by him having a smile on his face,

it put a smile on my face too.

With this information,

I could see what I ate.

I could start changing my behaviors.

It was teaching me what

I could do and what I should

and eat. I also have

a number of glucose reports that I can

run. In fact, like I said, I brought

one of those reports to my doctor.

With the premium account, it also removes

any kind of advertising and of course

gives you premium support.

This app has been very good. I feel it's

very secure. They have never spammed

me with offers. It's a very

serious weight loss app

that makes it very easy. So if you don't have

very serious issues, you still can use it.

But if you do have serious issues,

this is the right app for you. It will

be able to set your targets,

set your macros, set your calorie

goals, and then show you how you're doing

so that you can have some accountability.

This app has

made a world of difference to me,

helped me see improvements in my own health.

Now I'm really looking forward to achieving

my goals.

I was looking for

a better weight loss chart.

I like the one in my net diary just

fine. But I wondered,

is there anything else better out

there? For a long time, I've

heard about an app called HappyScale.

I heard that it could make

stepping on a scale less scary,

maybe even make it a little bit more

fun. When I'm losing weight,

I want to see that big chart

showing me a big slope

downwards to help me

stay motivated and stick to my diet.

I looked at a couple of different apps

and there's some good ones out there.

But some of them had bad privacy rules

and some of them had expensive

premium accounts or

had a lot of advertisements

on them. When I started

using this HappyScale app, which, like I

said, I heard of for a long time,

it soon became my favorite.

It's a favorite of a lot of dieters

too. My net diary,

like I said, has good charts.

But HappyScale is slightly

different. One of the things that

HappyScale allows you to do is

smooth out your numbers.

You know, weight loss is never that

slope downwards like a ski slope,

right? Some days you,

lose weight, some days you go up 0.6,

the next day you go down a pound

and it's sort of bumpy. It depends

on how many carbs you ate, how much

salt you ate, did you drink a lot

of water, did you exercise,

did you sweat a lot and lose

a lot of water? Weight,

unfortunately, is one of those math

problems that's not

exactly quite as mathy

as we wish it would be.

A lot of things go in to determine

what your weight for the day is.

And sometimes scales make people

unhappy because they see

all the ups and downs. I tell you,

I've been going through a tough time this last two

weeks. I lost a pound

and then I went up 0.6 and then

I went down 0.2 and then

I went up 0.8

and now I'm

down a half a pound for the week

but it has been a rough up and down

week. But that's what

HappyScale tries to make it easier for you.

It smooths

out the bumps with a

general slope of the line so you

can see how you're doing. Overall,

I'm doing well.

I shouldn't get so freaked out about the

little ups and downs.

One way it works to keep people motivated

is it takes your total weight loss goal

and breaks it up into 10

smaller steps. I've said this on my

podcast, Start With Small Steps, that

if you want to have a goal,

you don't want it to be so

large and overwhelming.

You want to break your goal into smaller

steps. Instead of saying,

I want to lose 100 pounds, can you say, I want to

lose 5 pounds, and then just do it over

and over again. For me,

I really want to lose 110 pounds

and that is intimidating

and a really long-term goal.

It can make a person demotivated.

Some people, it makes them depressed.

But this app will automatically

break your goals into 10

smaller goals. I just succeeded

in accomplishing goal number one.

It means that 10% of my goal

is already in the bag.

With these mini-successes,

I can take a moment and go, yay!

10% of my goal.

Celebrate a moment, give myself a pat

on the back, and then start working on

that next goal.

Boy, that helps make things a little bit better.

But,

of course, everything has a premium these days.

And, for this app,

the premium is $1.99

per month, or

$11.99 per year.

I decided to try it for a year.

This is going to be my big push

this year. Losing weight is the

number one focus of my life.

This app has been very

motivational for me.

What the premium will allow you to do is, first of all,

synchronize with other devices through HealthKit.

You can either pull

information automatically from HealthKit

or manually.

If you decide that you want to do it on your own,

it will also predict the future

for you with an estimate of when you'll get

to certain weights, benchmarks,

or when you're done with your final

weight loss. Previous, I lost

weight and I got to a level I felt pretty

darn good at. And, even though it's not

my perfect weight, and it's certainly not my goal

weight, I feel great.

So, I want to know, by next

birding season, am I going to be

at that weight? If I keep

going the way I'm going right now,

the answer is yes. By next

March, I will hit that weight.

And, I'm really looking forward to next year's

birding season. Being

at a weight I feel great at.

But, I can also look even further

into the future and see when

I'm going to be done with this diet entirely

if I keep going.

So, it motivates me,

first of all, by having the smaller goals,

but now it's motivating me by

showing me that big picture.

If I keep going the way I'm going,

by 2026

summer, I'm done.

So, it's encouraging me to

keep going and keep doing those big

moves, exercising and eating

right, all the things that I should be doing.

That is incredibly motivating.

It will also synchronize with

Dropbox on the premium account, or

export your data in a CSV.

Again, it's not terribly expensive.

And, the developer has

made a place where you can tip money

to him if you wish. It's one of those

apps that's been good for me.

Really encouraging. I see

other people where the scale

actually makes them quite upset.

It makes them

worry about food.

And, it's hard for them to look

at the scale. And, maybe their doctor or their

nutritionist or their trainer has asked

them to weigh themselves. This app

makes it a little bit more

appealing. You don't, again, see

those ups and downs. But, for

me, I'm not very scared of the scale.

But, I find it encouraging

to give me those small goals and then

the big picture. So, to me,

for just two years, I'm planning

on keeping Happy Scale and seeing

if I can motivate even more

towards getting my goals.

In 2018,

I started using an app I really

enjoy. I call it my Automatic

Journaling App, which,

is called Lifecycle.

Despite liking it quite a bit, I was

always a little bit worried it was completely

stealing and selling my data.

The good news is, is that Apple

came out with a description of how data is used

and it reports that there is

no data linked to you

and it only looks at diagnostic

and usage data.

It gives me a bit of comfort.

We'll talk about this app

and the data it tracks and why security

is so important in this case.

But, if you really get what

out about security, for example,

maybe you're going someplace you don't want

other people to know, you can put

a passcode on the app and ensure

it is even more secure.

The app is created by a company called Northcube

and they have a description of their security

policy and it says,

you own your personal data

and you're always in control.

I said a while ago on this podcast

that I use journaling apps,

but I'll tell you a deep, dark secret.

It's not always that same day

an event happened. Sometimes,

it's a couple days later,

maybe within that week

or within the month.

So remembering what I do in my

life is always helpful.

First of all, the app starts

by tracking your location.

It must run in background

mode to even work.

But I noticed it does not have battery drain.

I never saw it as any

big part of my battery usage

despite the fact it is always

running. And when you're at a

location, it will record how

long you were at this place.

It will ask you about the friendly name for the

location and what you were doing.

This is the part where you

indicate your answers. Maybe you

were at a restaurant or at the gym

or at your favorite flower shop.

And perhaps you were shopping,

exercising, or eating

out. Once you tell

it these answers, it will always remember

that location and it will start

tagging those events when you go there

again. The only action

that you need to take is when you're

going to a brand new location.

It also can detect whether or not you're

walking, probably by the speed,

or you're driving to a location.

So, I could see how much

time I was spending commuting

every week. Guess what?

By working from home, I save myself

27 minutes a day.

When I was in Los Angeles working

remotely, I saved hours

a day. First of all, when you

look at the location, you can see

how many unique places you have been.

And if I look at a location,

I can see how often I go there,

how much time I've spent in this

particular location. I can look at

an all-time chart over the years.

I can see how often I go

to each birdwatching locations

I visit on a regular

basis. And I can see a calendar

of all the times

in the last year I've been there.

But at the very bottom, I can see

a total list of the times I've gone

to this place. When it comes to activity,

I can see a chart of how often

I've done this activity.

The last few times I've done this.

An all-time chart, year by year.

The top locations I do

this activity. The averages

per day of the week. Guess what? I go

birdwatching on Saturday more than I do

on Tuesdays. That calendar

view of the last year of how many times I've

gone birdwatching. Strangely enough,

very populated in March, April,

May, but not so much in July

and August. Did I mention it's really warm

outside? And then I can see the

top locations that I've done this

activity and a top location.

total amount of the times I've been there. I've gone to my favorite marsh 259 times. That's not

surprising. But again, I can look at a day and the day will show me what I did today. I can look at

a week, month, year basis, and I can see the stats of how I've done this month, this year. Am I bird

watching quite a bit? Do I go hiking a lot? Am I sitting at home way too much? It will remind me

of how often I do an event. I went to a restaurant last week and it suggested that I hadn't eaten out

in a long time. It called that a returning habit. But if you're doing something all the time, it

will call it a continuing habit. I go to the gym three times a week. Yay me! It creates a nice pie

chart. It calls your daily donut. But now I really wish I had a donut. But that pie chart shows me

how I'm spending my time. How much time was sleeping? It takes that from Health Kit. How much

time was sleeping? It takes that from Health Kit. How much time was sleeping? It takes that from

walking? Driving? How much time did I spend at the doctor's today? And how much time did I spend

at the gym? If I'm looking at it on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, it will create line

charts for me so I can see how much I've done this recently, what are some habits I'm doing

still, and what some habits I'm doing again. And at the very bottom of the page, it will show you

any location it doesn't know about and is wanting you to sign an activity to. So if I go to the

park, I can say, this is Bob's Park. And what do I do there? I go birdwatching. Now it will always

remember it. At the end, it's not a lot of detail, but it does give me the ability to remember what

I do and on what days I do it. I can share data if I wish to do it. There are some methods that

I can share this on Facebook, which I don't do. It can also synchronize across all my devices,

which makes it nice and handy. It does not have a web page. And it says that,

if I ever came to the point where I wanted them to delete all the data, I can just email them and

they will delete the data. It also asks me if I want to connect this journal to my photo library.

Maybe while I'm out birdwatching, I want to show what birds I saw. I saw a scarlet tanager the last

time I went. Maybe I want to add that to my journal and not just have it be a memory tracker.

The app is free and on the iOS store, but its automatic backups is part of the premium account.

And it does a great job of

this automatic journaling. Like I said, it always runs in the background and it can remind you of

when you went to a certain location. A friend and I went to a restaurant a few weeks ago and we said,

when was the last time we were here? It's been a while. And it had been a while. So sometimes it's

just for fun, but sometimes too, it's more informational. For example, do I usually go to

that marsh in April? I can see that this year was the earliest I visited that marsh. I can connect

it, like I said, to HealthKit.

And it'll bring in my sleeping and I can export the data into a CSV. But when I get the premium

account, what it'll do is automatic backups for me. So in case something happens to my phone,

it offers additional graphs and charts so I can see my trends over time. It allows me to connect

to its other app they own called Sleep Cycle. Way back in the day when I did my first review for

Allison saying that I thought sleep tracking was awesome, that was the app I was using.

I could create tags. I could label my sleep as,

too hot, I was too cold, you know, whatever I wanted to create a tag. This was really helpful

to me. But now I can type the sleep cycle to my Life Cycle app. And I found some very interesting

pieces of information. My worst night of sleep? Wednesday night. How would that be? You know why?

Because I go to my friend's house on Tuesday night and I stay there pretty much till bedtime.

That means I'm probably getting a little too extroverted, winding up my energies a little bit

too much. And then I go home and go right to bed. And then I have trouble sleeping. But you know

what? On the days I go birdwatching, hiking, or I get a lot of exercise, I sleep great. So I've

learned some stuff about myself by tying Sleep Cycle to Life Cycle. As we learn about our lives,

then we can start acting on the information and improving our lives. If you're looking for an

automatic diary, Life Cycle might be the one for you. Maybe you'll finally remember what you did

last Saturday. Maybe you'll finally remember what you did last Saturday. Maybe you'll finally remember

what you did last Saturday. Or last month. Or how often do you go surfing? If those are questions

you ask yourself, this might be the right app for you. So you see, bringing technology in so that we

can get our goals, start a new hobby, save lives, and save old Macs from going into the landfill

all comes together when we have the right technology. I appreciate this opportunity

to talk to you all. It's been wonderful. And next week, Allison is back and the live show

will be on Sunday.

September 8th, once again. Boy, I couldn't do this live. It was hard enough to do,

not live. So I admire everything she does for all of us.

Did you know that you can email Allison at podfeet.com anytime you like? And if you have

questions or suggestions, just send it on over. Remember, everything good starts with podfeet.com.

You can follow her at podfeet.com slash mastodon. If you want to listen to the podcast on YouTube,

you can go to podfeet.com.

If you want to join the conversation, you can join the Slack community at podfeet.com

slash Slack, where me and all the Nocilla castaways are. Great conversations and great

information sharing. You can tell George from Tulsa how you saved an old Mac and what you did

with it. You can support the show at podfeet.com slash Patreon with a one-time donation, or you

can go to podfeet.com slash PayPal. If you want to join the fun at the live show, head on over to

podfeet.com slash Patreon.

If you want to join the fun at the live show, head on over to podfeet.com slash live Sunday nights

at 5 p.m. Pacific time and join the friendly and enthusiastic Nocilla castaways. Hey,

I'm one of those. Thanks for listening and stay subscribed.