Healthcare & Fitness
I've lost over 50 lbs in the past year primarily by doing a good job of sticking to my diet. However, it's time to step things up a bit and get back into a regular exercise routine. I have an elliptical machine and swimming pool at home as well as some free weights. I'd be lying if I said I knew what I was doing on any of them. Sure I can set the elliptical machine to 30 minutes and go! However, is that enough? Probably not! So if I were to design a fitness App for the iPad I would want to have tons of different exercises in it with pictures, explanations of the exercises as well as videos on how to do them. I'd want to be able to build an exercise program with my own workouts as well as suggested routines and the ability to track my progress.
iFitness HD is exactly what I'd ask for and more
I was quite surprised at how comprehensive this App was and how loaded it is with info. There are over 330 exercises built-in. If that's not enough you can even add your own custom ones. Although there isn't a video for every exercise, the short videos showing you exactly how to perform the exercises are a huge plus. It's rich with tracking abilities too. You can monitor your schedule via a nice built-in calendar and even export your logs via email in CSV (txt format) or PDF. There's even a built-in BMI calculator (I hate looking at that thing! LOL) If you have the iPhone version you can sync the data between them. There's a built in timer for many of the workouts too. This App definitely seems to have it all! However, there's one thing that I would definitely like to see added. One of the problems working out alone is that, well you're alone. There doesn't seem to be any audio in this App. I'd love to have the App count out my repetitions as I do them as well as having an audible time. In other works I'd want more of a workout "video" trainer when possible. The iPad has a nice large display and is great to prop up and watch as you work out. I often sit it on my elliptical machine and watch podcasts while working out. It would be cool to have a workout instructor guide me verbally as well as visually. The only other thing is that the App for some reason doesn't work in landscape view. It's not a big deal just surprising that everything is portrait. Otherwise this App has it all.
You can get iFitness HD for the introductory price of $3.99 here from the 
Let's face it! The health care system in the US is FAR from perfect and while I'm not going to get into the healthcare debate (as passions on both sides are high), I will take a few moments to highlight an App for my local community. The Detroit Medical Centers must be pretty proud of their Emergency Room efficiency because they're willing to tell you what most hospitals won't. They released a FREE App for iPhone, iPod touch (and it works on iPad) to show you at a glance at any given time what the ER wait times are for DMC hospitals. The App can detect your current location and give you the distance to the nearest facilities and their current wait times. Let's face it, a few minutes can make all the difference in the world when you're in an emergency medical situation. So I while I hope I NEVER need this App, it's great to know that it's available and on my iPhone. The App not only gives you the wait times, but if you tap a facility you can get the phone numbers and see where it's located on the map.
You can get the DMC ER Wait Times App for FREE here from the App Store: 
I can't sleep on planes, I can't sleep when my mind is going a thousand miles a minute and I don't like to take drugs. So the promise that there's an App for that really intrigues me. This app comes as a recommendation from one of my colleagues at work. She said, "you gotta get this app!" So I did and I gotta say, it works.
Ambient Music on Demand
The goal of Pure Sleep is to provide you with ambient music to help you sleep at the tap of a button. The app features 9 original tracks plus 3 additional Entrainment Effects called Sleep, Deep Sleep and Power Nap. As you would expect the app provides seamless loops and of course a count down timer and auto quit feature.
But does it work?
There are two things I always tell New iPhone owners. The first one is to lock your iPhone (or iPod touch) with a 4 digit PIN. This way if your iPhone is ever lost or stolen no one can just pick it up and go town with all your information. The second thing I tell people is to create a custom wallpaper image that displays not only your favorite picture, but also some information about you and emergency contact info. While this could be done on your computer in an app like Photoshop, there's actually an app for that and it's FREE!
Close Call – Just get it!
There are apps out there that let you log in all of your emergency contact info and allergies, but these apps don't you much good if you're lying there unconscious and your iPhone is locked. Close Call is a free app for the iPhone/iPod touch that let's create a custom wallpaper image with an emergency phone number and up to 35 characters of text that you can use for things like your name, allergies, medicines that you are on, etc. This info is perfectly positioned on the image of your choice from your library so that it displays even if your iPhone/iPod touch is locked!
This app was recently featured in one of Apple iPhone commercials. I believe the line was "if you want to count calories, there's an app for that." I was sitting there watching LOST and when I saw the ad, I picked up my iPhone and downloaded it. I was blown away by this app from the start. It's so much more than just counting calories. This is a complete fitness, diet, nutrition tracking app. I was using Weight Tracker (another fine app) before this one, but Lose It! does everything Weight Tracker does and a lot more.
Getting Started
You start out by simply inputting your current weight and then your goal weight. Lose It! then prompts you with number pounds you would like to lose each week to meet your goal. In my case I could have either chosen 1 or 2 pounds a week. Then it tells you the date by which you should meet your goal. Next it figures out a per day Calorie Budget. Whatever this number is, if you stay under it, you should reach your goal. It even takes into account exercises that you do and adds those calories burned back in to your budget for that day.
Figuring out how much you can eat
I was also blown away by the extensive database of foods that are already in its database. You simply tell it what you have/had for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks and it will subtract those calories from your budget. Of course it can't possibly know the calories for everything. So you can easily add your own custom foods or foods that aren't in its database. Many restaurants now have their nutrition information on their websites. This has been very helpful for me. I was surprised to see how many calories there were in some of my favorite foods at like P.F. Chang's vs. some of the other foods I eat at the same restaurant! It was really eye opening.
Tracking your progress
