If you’re a Twitter user, then you’ll probably be aware that you have a fairly limited area to fill in a personal profile on the site. It can be a bit of a pain, especially if you’re active on lots of different places on the web, or just want to be able to provide more information about yourself.

A new third-party Twitter service was launched today that aims to get around this very problem: profiles.im. The idea is simple – it provides you with an extended public profile to go with your Twitter account. You can fill out as much or as little info as you want, display your recent twitpics, include an rss feed of your blog and show your latest tweets all on one convenient page.

It’s very simple to use, and if at any time you change your mind, you can delete your profile in just three clicks. The developer is Dom Ramsey (of Fotonomy fame) and while the service is quite basic at the moment, he promises me that there are lots of new features on their way. He also welcomes feedback and suggestions – just send him a tweet to @domr or @profilesim.

Oh, and if you’re interested, my profiles.im page can be found here!

I am having so much fun with The Sims 3 at the moment – the AI is so much better than the previous incarnations and the game play is far less linear.

I am often surprised by what my characters get up to and it’s fascinating to watch their lives develop with only a nudge here and there (although, I confess I find it terribly hard to sit back and not constantly interfere… yes, I know… so unlike me!).

Then @akasylvia sent me this wonderful link: Alice and Kev – A Story of Being Homeless in The Sims 3. The idea was to take two Sims, give them lots of negative personality traits and stick them in a lot with nothing more than a bench and a teddy bear and see what happens. It really makes the most of the game’s AI and randomness.

It’s brilliantly funny, awesomely addictive and also a little sad in places. If you have Sims 3 (or any of the previous games or merely considering getting it) then the Alice and Kev blog comes highly recommended.

I have been practising mindfulness meditation for just over a month now. Only a little practice – just 10 minutes a day (after all, 10 minutes that I do is better than 30 minutes that I don’t) – but I feel like I’m getting a lot out of that short time span.

At first, I was using the timer function on the iPhone clock to know when each session was over, but it wasn’t ideal – mainly because of the nagging voice in my head which would repetitively tell me that I’d forgotten to set the timer, that I’d been sitting there ages, that I really should take a peek and see how much time I had left. It was becoming a major sabotaging issue.

Then I came across Meditator through the Zencast site. It’s a simple little iPhone/iPod Touch timer designed specifically for use during meditation. I was a bit put off by the price (£2.39) but the price was dropped to 59p during a sale so I thought I would give it a try.

I’m very glad I did – it’s a lovely and very useful little app. You start off by setting a start delay (useful to give yourself a few seconds fidget time before you start), when the session will end and any interval alerts you might like. There is a good selection of different sounds you can use to mark each of these, each of which is soothing and nowhere near as jarring as the alarm on a normal timer – it’s also a great reminder to your nagging psyche that yes, the timer is still working, you did remember to press the button. You can even set an ambient sound to play in the background, although my preference is to leave this silent.

Meditator will let you set up to three different meditation presets – perfect if you don’t like an interval alert during shorter sessions but like one to sound every five minutes in a longer session (for example).

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. Do I think £2.39 is worth it? Yes, I think I would have still paid that as it’s the one application I use every day and it has been a huge help. However, my gut feeling is that it is a little overpriced, and that a £1.19 price tag would be fairer for an application of this type and would encourage more people to try it.

Following on from Wednesday’s post about the Everyday Systems site, I wanted to mention the fantastic habit tracking system Reinhard’s developed: HabitCal.

It doesn’t matter what new behaviour you’re trying to introduce into your life (cutting out smoking, change of diet, reducing computer time), the simplest way of tracking how you are doing is to ask yourself each day: did I succeed, fail or was today exempt for some reason?

HabitCal tracks each of these states using the colour code of green for success, red for failure and yellow for exempt days. It’s easy to set up and you can update in seconds.

I’m finding its simplicity so useful. While I still feel I need to track something (it’s like being three years old and earning stickers all over again – there’s an incredible psychological urge not to slip up just so you don’t have to mark the entire day as a FAILURE), I’m also not over-tracking and ending up with a pile of irrelevant data.

For example, a list of the exact number of calories I ate every day for a month isn’t actually that useful if I end up not losing lost as much as I hoped. With HabitCal, though, I’m getting an immediate visual picture where I can see that Friday is a real problem day, or that there’s a huge bunch of reds the week I had a friend to stay.

You can use HabitCal to track anything you like, not just the systems outlined at Everyday Systems. One thing you do have to be aware of, though, is that your data is completely public. So don’t put anything on it that you wouldn’t want anyone else to know!

You can see my HabitCal tracker here. I’m currently tracking the No S Diet, Weekend Luddite, Glass Ceiling and Exercise (this last row is deliberately blank as it’s an established habit of mine so I’m only tracking failures). It’s currently a pleasant display of greens and yellows, but feel free to hassle me if any reds start appearing!

I have recently stumbled on a fantastic website called Everyday Systems. If you’re the sort of person who loves productivity hacks and self-improvement systems (like me) then Everyday Systems may well interest you, too.

Whereas most lifehack systems I’ve seen are at the micro-management level (how to keep to-do lists organised, how to keep your email inbox empty, etc) most of the systems on this site are at a macro, life-improving level. At first glance they seem overly simple, but that’s because they are simple – beautifully so – and that’s what makes them so effective.

There’s several different ideas there, some which may be more relevant to you than others. The one that jumped out at me most, though, was Weekend Luddite – mainly in an “I could never manage that” kind of way, followed by a “well if that’s the case, I really ought to be doing that”.

As I’ve mentioned before, I spend far too much time at my computer randomly surfing the net and wasting time. During the day, the computers are never off and the internet is always on. Even if I’m doing other stuff, I will pop back for a couple of minutes between chores or activities with the kids, just to see if anything interesting happened while I was away, check my email, read a few new posts on bulletin boards.

Add up all the time and it amounts to hours of wasted life.

I’ve tried to tackle it before with the occasional Screen Free days to counteract my excesses, but what I really need are better and regular life habits.

Reinhard’s Weekend Luddite system solves this problem by switching the computer off between breakfast and dinner, every Saturday and Sunday. He found that not only did end up doing more interesting things with his day, he became more productive with the more limited computer time at his disposal. A very effective form of “distraction management”. I’d like some of that.

However, I found the idea of that amount of time away a bit scary, so I’ve started out with the computer off between the hours of 10am and 12 noon every Saturday and Sunday. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but last weekend in the time I would otherwise have wasted website-hopping, I got some weeding done in the garden, cleaned out the fish tank earlier in the day, went for a long walk with my youngest son and even sat down with an actual book! It felt a much more relaxed AND productive weekend as a result.

So, I’m going to keep it up. I’m not including the children in the computer ban (I’ll even be sociable and play Mario Kart Wii with them if that’s what they want to do – just no internet enabled computer for me). Eventually, I hope to be able to increase the time away until I’m doing the full breakfast to dinner computer-break.

Following yesterday’s review, I’ve since found a great comparison review of the Wii Fit and My Fitness Coach games over at Wayrift.

It’s a very well written and comprehensive review. The author has obviously had similar issues to me with both games, but goes into more detail on how My Fitness Coach works. It’s worth taking a look at if you’re still deciding which fitness system to get.

In other news, I’ve finally unlocked a new location and new music! I’m making progress!

This Christmas, the Naan family got a Wii Fit – something I’d initially been quite sceptical about but after reading great reviews was quite excited about finally getting it. Two weeks ago, for various reasons, I also bought My Fitness Coach (Wii) – another personal virtual trainer style product.

I’ve been asked by several people how they compared with each other, so it seemed sensible to compile my thoughts into a single blog post. Rather than describe each one separately, I’ve decided to split the post into various categories to give each a fair comparison: price, navigation and tracking, quality of the workout, longevity.

WARNING: this is an excessively long post and a thorough review. I will not be in the least offended if you just skip it. The rest of the post continues after the jump…

[Read more →]

I have a lot of sympathy for Akra at the moment, his beloved MacBook Pro went very wrong and after crashing lots then refused to boot up. It’s not a total surprise as he’s managed to brutally murder three laptops in as many years – he is just not kind to portable technology.

The good news is, that despite the laptop being out of warranty, the Apple store we bought it from have kindly said they will repair it for free (yay, go Apple!). The bad news is that it’s going to take a whole week.

So to tide himself over and get some work done, Akra has resurrected my old Vista computer. Now, long term readers will remember that I had one or two or more issues with Vista. In fact, they were the major reason that I threw in the towel and now have my much loved iMac.

I think to a certain extent, Akra thought at the time that I was overplaying my Vista troubles a little. Suspected that I was not being suitably techy enough to cope.

Until it took him several hours just to install an IM program.

Bwahaha.

I told you so. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.

I mean, “Oh no, darling. How terribly frustrating for you.”

Continuing my trip through the iTunes App Store, this time I’m giving you a run down of the games I downloaded. I am always grateful for other recommends, so if you have played an iPhone / iPod Touch game you think I would like, please feel free to let me know in the comments!

Aurora Feint II: Lite – Free

I don’t normally like “line up the blocks” type games, but this is beautifully done. It’s sort of a cross between Bejewelled and an RPG – clearing levels gives you XP to gain different abilities.

But mostly, it’s the way its animated which brings you back to play it again. The blocks feel like they have weight. Tilting the screen affects the direction of gravity and is a vital part of gameplay strategy. Worth downloading.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D – £3.49

We’re all addicted to Mario Kart on the Wii within just a few days here, and the boys have had Mario Kart on their DSes since Christmas. I was reliably informed that Crash Bandicoot was the closest equivalent for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

And yes, gameplay is very similar. It also makes good use of the iPhone/iPod Touch tilt controls. But… it’s just not as good as Mario Kart. Sorry. It’s a pale imitation and I dislike playing it simply because it’s almost but not quite as good.

Crayon Physics Deluxe – £2.99

This is such a beautifully simple game. The idea is that you have to knock a little crayon scribbled ball into a star on the page. This is done by adding shapes by ‘drawing’ with your finger on the screen. Each puzzle requires a different solution and can be quite challenging at times.

It gets a bit tedious over a long play session, but for the odd five minute time-waster it’s perfect.

Enigmo – £1.19

Another physics-related puzzle game, this time your task is to get a steady flow of water droplets into a bottle using various different components. Think of The Incredible Machine without the balloons, cats or mice…

Fieldrunners – £2.99

I had so many people recommend this game to me when I mentioned I had an iPod Touch, that it was the very first thing I went on iTunes to buy.

If you have EVER lost hours of your life to a Desktop Tower Defence style game, then you need to buy this application.

Fish Tycoon – £1.19

I used to have the PC version of this game and loved it then, so seemed a natural one to buy for the iPod Touch. It’s still as brilliant.

The idea is that you keep an aquarium and breed your fish, selling some off in your shop to make money to unlock better equipment and research. The ultimate goal is to find the 7 Magic Fish, but to be honest, it’s just as fun to ignore all that and just enjoy having a little aquarium on your iPhone/iPod Touch.

If I had one criticism it would be that, as what seems to be a direct port from the PC Game, the buttons are really teeny tiny and hard to click the right one with your finger.

Super Monkey Ball – £4.99

Doesn’t everyone get this game as soon as they get their iPhone/iPod Touch? It does seem to be the classic one that makes good use of the tilt system.

It is insanely difficult though, and also does the job of reminding me at how bad I am at the balance games on the Wii Fit too – I am terrible at over-compensating and can’t seem to do the tiny movements these games require.

It is addictive though so I’m going to keep trying and ignore the fact that my 7 year old is better at it than me.

TanZen Lite – Free

Another puzzle game which should be instantly recognisable if you ever had a Tangram puzzle as a kid. The idea is that you manipulate some very basic geometric shapes to fit a picture – a jigsaw puzzle where the images vary but the pieces stay the same.

This implementation is very easy to use and is also very relaxing. I’m enjoying it so much that once I’ve finished the puzzles in this version, I will almost certainly upgrade to the full version – it’s only 59p and has 423 puzzles as opposed to the 27 that come with the free version.

Tap Tap Revenge – Free

This is a rhythm/music game in the “tradition of Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution”. I’m not very good at it, but it’s suitably diverting and I was amazed at how many songs you can download free for it.

Akra bought me an iPod Touch for my birthday, and I absolutely love it. The interface is beautiful and in just a few days it’s become so much more than just a device to listen to music/podcasts or watch a video.

I accidentally went a bit mad in the iTunes App store, so I thought it’d be a good idea to post about what applications I got and what I think of them. However, there’s so many I’m having to split this into several blog posts!

1Password – Free

I can’t make up my mind about this app. I use the Mac OS X version on my iMac which is brilliant, but it is a pain to have ultra secure passwords if (when using a mobile device to use the internet) you can’t remember them.

The problem is, the iPhone/iPod Touch OS doesn’t have cut/paste or the ability to have multiple applications open at the same time. This app tries to resolve the problem by being its own browser as well.

I had no problems syncing my passwords from the iMac to the iPod Touch. The problem is, it’s just not intuitive to navigate round the mobile version, and 3 out of 4 sites I tried it with didn’t even manage to login correctly. I really want to like this app, but I guess I’m just going to have to wait for some improvements to the software before it becomes remotely practical.

Facebook – Free

I love this application. It’s 100 times easier and more enjoyable to navigate the Facebook site using this than it is to use a browser on my main computer.

Essential if you have a Facebook account.

IM+ Lite – Free

This is an IM client for most of the main IM services. Was very easy to set up and is pretty usable for the occasional IM conversation.

Not earth shatteringly brilliant, but does the job nicely, and it’s free. Can’t complain at that.

NetNewsWire – Free

Just an awesome RSS reader. I already have a NewsGator account (I use the MacOS X version of NetNewsWire on my iMac) so whether I check my RSS feeds on my iMac or on the iPod Touch it syncs with my online account so I don’t end up reading the same posts.

It’s a beautiful interface and easy to navigate. I actually find it easier to catch up on my RSS feeds via this than on the iMac – I think it’s something about reading a small screen in your hand, but also because navigating through is much more immediate with finger scrolling and one touch to the next unread post.

Romance – £1.19

This is a collection of 10 classic romances for Valentine’s Day – using the iPhone/iPod Touch as an e-book reader. The text scrolls at differing speeds depending on what angle you hold the device which is supposed to make it very intuitive and easy to read but I just found it annoying. Much prefer to scroll with my finger when I’ve reached the end of a page.

All the books in the collection are in the public domain, and as there are other free e-book readers for the iPhone/iPod Touch, I regret buying this now.

Shakespeare – Free

Okay, it’s another e-book collection and yes, you could just get an e-book reader and download the plays and sonnets individually, but it’s rather nice having the complete works at your fingertips.

The interface is basic and doesn’t get in the way of reading. I like it.

Stanza – Free

A free e-book reader with a very extensive selection of free books to download. You can also purchase books through their online catalogue.

Instead of scrolling, you tap to turn the page (a tap on the left of the screen takes you to the previous page, a tap to the right the next page) rather than scroll – it felt a bit odd at first, but soon became quite natural.

Most importantly, the interface is nice, clean and free of distractions.

TwitterFon – Free

There are a whole host of Twitter clients out there for the iPhone/iPod Touch but I’ve stuck with the first one I tried as it’s free!

It’s a great interface and a pleasure to use. Can’t see the point of trying any of the others.

Wikipanion – Free

This is essentially just a browser for the Wikipedia site – you could just use a Safari bookmark to the front page, but it’s rather nice to have it as a stand-alone application and makes it much easier to quickly look something up.