Mark Stout
Media General News Service

In my Twitter feed I often see how much someone has run, or how much they weighed this morning.
Health-oriented phone apps now let you share your health information with the world. The idea is that knowing people out there will know if you went running today or not, encourages you to get out there.

Apps like the free Run Keeper on both the iPhone and Android track your runs using your phone’s built in GPS. It will show you on a map where you have run, let you share your run information via Twitter and Facebook, and maintain a history of your runs. If you program in a pace you want to maintain, it will give you audio cues letting you know if you are keeping the pace up.
With optional hardware, it can even track your heart rate as you run.

It can still let you listen to your music as you run, but also give you audio cues as to how long and far you have been running.
Nike+ GPS for the iPhone has similar functionality for $1.99, but adds a variety of cheers, power songs and motivational speeches by top athletes to keep you moving.

Nike has other apps for the iPhone for planning and tracking workout goals. Nike Boom is available for both the iPhone and Android phones for free and plays motivational music and words of encouragement during your workouts.

Both app stores are full of apps that will help you plan diets, plan and track workouts, and other ways to improve your health. There are even apps that let your phone replace pedometers. They not only count steps but tell you the distance, pace and calories you have burned on your walks.

A company called Withings makes The Wifi Body Scale. It uses its wifi ability to send your daily weight to apps on your phone, iPad or computer. You can then maintain a database of your weight over time and graph the data to see how you are doing.
The $159 scale can support multiple users within the same home. It also tracks body mass index or BMI.

The truly unique thing is you can have the scale send out a Tweet every time you weigh yourself. This is thought by those who do it to motivate them to lose weight because the world will know if they have stuck to their diet. By checking his Twitter account, I can see where podcaster and radio host Leo Laporte’s weight was 219 in December of 2009, but by July of this year had grown slightly to 227.

These scales were all the rage among tech pundits when they first came out, but only with men. I do now know of a single woman who Tweets her weight.

Withings also makes a blood pressure gauge that sends your data to your computer, and shares it via email and Twitter.
These days if you run a marathon or other organized run, the number you wear may have a small RFID chip in it. Sensors around the course record when you pass, so you can later get a an idea of your pace. The Marine Corp Marathon, and probably others, track your progress on a map available to others on the web. A few years ago, my church checked in on the associate minister’s progress at the beginning and end of a service.

Read more at the link page at http://bit.ly/FamilyTech. Visit Mark’s blog at http://markstout.blogspot.com His e-mail address is markstout@gmail.com.