I'm a big fan of the Withings line of personal health devices -- over the years, I've purchased one of their Wi-Fi Body Scales and a Blood Pressure Monitor. The devices are great, and it's nice (and sometimes frustrating) to see how your health is doing over time. But the stats that were provided did little to motivate me to really exercise more, eat less, and even care about taking my blood pressure daily. The completely new Withings Health Companion app (free) is designed to not only monitor your health, but motivate you to do something about it.

Unlike the previous WiScale app, which just tracked weight and BP and is the tool with which you take your blood pressure, the Withings Health Companion app lets you set goals and reminders. Upon launching the app, you see a "butterfly" with four wings -- one cyan, one orange, one magenta, and one green. Each wing is associated with a different health factor -- sleep, activity, heart, and weight. The idea is that you should try to eventually "fill" each wing with color, indicating that you're managing sleep, activity, your heart health, and your weight.

To do this, the Withings Health Companion tries to "turn long-term goals into small achievable targets, and monitor your weekly progress toward your goals." In my personal case, I am able to monitor my heart health (BP and heart rate) using the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor and add my weight to the app every day using the Wi-Fi Body Scale. For capturing activity, I have now set up RunKeeper to report my activities to the app. I wish that there was a way to send info from my FitBit, which I wear constantly, to the app.

The last item, sleep, requires input from other devices made by BodyMedia and Zeo. Once again, I'd prefer to have my sleep information sent to the Withings Health Companion app from the FitBit, which also tracks that info. There doesn't appear to be a way of adding my nightly sleep information to the app manually, which is somewhat irritating. Since I'm not exactly thrilled about having to spend a minimum of US$149 for yet another monitoring device, I'm hoping that FitBit and Withings will work out a way for the FitBit data to be used by the Health Companion.

Of course, I could use the FitBit website to monitor all of this, since I could get activity readings and sleep information from the FitBit and weight data transferred from the Withings scale, but there's no way to track blood pressure. Sigh -- it's like these companies all want to get you tied into their particular ecosystem and don't want to make it easy for you to choose the combination of apps and devices to track your health.

At this point, one of the "wings" of the butterfly will always be withered, since this app won't let me add my sleep information. I do, however, like the way that the app displays all pertinent health information on one screen and reminds me to take readings or to exercise.

Do you have a favorite app or mobile website for tracking your health and personal fitness? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Withings Health Companion app: A new way to look at personal fitness

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZcVh1soFmA

18-08-2012 07:12 Veteran Indian batsman VVS Laxman announced on Saturday that he would be retiring from international cricket with immediate effect.

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VVS Laxman announces retirement - Video

GORHAM The most successful women's mountain cyclist in Mount Washington history, Marti Shea, is now the second fastest.

A Manchester native, Shea, 49, now of Marblehead, Mass., turned in a personal best performance of 1:03:14 and won her third consecutive Mount Washington Bicycle Hillclimb here Saturday.

Shea, a standout athlete at Manchester Memorial High School and a former all-America distance runner at Boston University, is also the only women's winner the Newton's Revenge competition, staged here annually in July, has ever known. She now has nine bicycle triumphs over the 7.6-mile Auto Road to the mountain's 6,288-foot summit. Shea's Saturday time was second only to the 58:14 turned in by course record holder Jeannie Longo in 2000.

Times were quick in the men's field as well, as 2012 Revenge winner Cameron Cogburn, 26, of Cambridge, Mass., became the first male to sweep the summer races on the mountain and the second fastest man ever, winning in 52:28.

Tom Danielson, of East Lyme, Conn., is the lone male who has pedaled quicker. His course record of 49:24, set in 2002, is one of three faster times that he has posted.

The race featured seven different cyclists completing the steepest mountain bicycle hillclimb in the world in under one hour.

Leroy Popowski, 37, of Colorado Springs, Colo., was second in 53:47 and Peter Hurst, who started in the second wave, finished third in 54:03.

Race results coolrunning.com.

New Hampshire's top male finisher was 17-year-old Chad Young of Newmarket whose bid to finish under one hour was denied by two seconds. He was eighth.

Weather conditions were ideal as a slight breeze barely stirred the 45 degree summit temperature.

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Shea is queen of the mountain once again

When I work with clients on creating a strategic plan, the first meeting is focused on developing their goals. Frequently, almost always, the initial answer is "make more money," usually delivered with a "duh" smile.

When pushed to move past "more money," the next set of goals will usually be increase revenue, increase the bottom line, expand, get more business from current clients or, perhaps, increase market share. These are obviously all variations on the "more money" theme. As a matter of fact, without exception (and I've been doing these plans for close to 20 years), the answer is always tied to increasing the bottom line.

Of course, increasing the bottom line is critical, but it's not a particularly strong goal for a strategic plan. Push yourself to think beyond the obvious and generic. What about increasing employee retention by 15 percent from last year a sure sign that people like working for you? What about increasing customer satisfaction, which means your customers are happy and will also probably increase business? How about a goal tied to community service or donations to nonprofits?

Tie goals to success and spend some time defining success for you, your division and your company. Maybe you don't need more money or a larger bottom line. Maybe you need less stress, more time off, increased challenges, new markets to explore, new products or services to sell. Before you commit your goals to paper, take some time to define success. This is different for each company, and can be a combination of personal and private.

Once you have defined success, you are ready to define goals. Understand that the goals still have to be quantifiable and have a timetable, but that if you achieve your goals, you should also achieve your success. Having these two areas of your professional life goals and success working in the same direction should be fulfilling, rewarding and dramatically increase the odds of being successful.

So, take some time, reflect on your life, your job and your business. Come back when you have a tangible definition of success that you can articulate to those around you and use as a platform for developing your business goals.

Scott Harris is the owner of Mustang Marketing, a full-service marketing agency serving Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley for more than 25 years. You can reach Scott at Scott@MustangMktg.com or visit Mustang's website at http://www.MustangMktg.com.

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To create a strategic plan, first define success

Time for another lesson in the ABCs of Success. Think about these definitions in terms of your goals for your career and personal life.

Audience rating A measure of the proportion of people tunedin to a specific program at a specific time. People listen to winners, not whiners. How many coworkers really listen to you?

Benchmarking Comparing performance against that of others, typically competitors in the same industry. Be aware of the skills of your coworkers, so you can identify and fill holes in your skill set.

Change management An aspect of management that ensures the firm responds to changes in its operational and competitive environments. The skills of 2012 wont be the only ones youll need to thrive in 2017.

Differentiation The development of distinct and unique benefits in a product. If you are Brand YOU, what value does work product bring that your coworkers brands dont?

ERP An acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning. Numerous studies have shown that people with written career plans are far more successful. Its never too late to start writing.

Fortuity Chance occurrence. Let-it-happen people believe theyre unlucky. Make-it-happen people make their own luck.

Group think Everyone thinks alike. Dont be afraid to express a different opinion. Diverse opinions spur creativity and innovation.

Hub-and-spoke arrangement A process for distributing products. Ones network uses the same techniques to acquire and share knowledge.

Idle time The time a machine is not operational. Everyone needs time to relax; just not too much time.

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ABC's of Success

THE lecture at the centerpiece of higher education since Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in 1455 is about to get a massive upgrade.

The University of Washington is partnering with an elite group of top-tier schools to offer free online classes through Coursera. And it's only part of a larger change taking place in higher education.

The move to online classes is natural given the digitization of society. Before the printed books, students got their education by sitting in a classroom while the professor read to them from a handwritten book. That was the lesson -- taking dictation. The wide availability of books that Gutenberg ushered in brought in the lecture. Now the lecture is about to give way to the TV show.

If this sounds crass, in a way it may be. We are creating hierarchy in education with far-reaching implications.

Universities need the revenue that online courses will bring. The courses are free for now, but probably will not be in the near future. Like all of modern life, education is becoming increasingly monetized.

The college degree may soon be divided into three options: on-campus degree, hybrid on-campus/online degree or online degree. This gives more choices to students as well as to family budgets. If students still value direct interaction with professors, then they must pay for it. It's a pay-as-you-go model.

What young learners miss in direct contact with human professors, they will make up for by learning at their own speed and in the time of their own choosing. This will liberate us from the dreaded 8:30 a.m. lecture class.

It also forces professors to be much more tech savvy. And here we may find resistance from purists. They will argue, effectively and in many ways rightly, that education cannot be industrialized. It is an altogether different experience to teach someone face-to-face then via a software program and an online video.

But for many students who can't afford to attend a campus class -- because they work, or are far away, or simply don't see the need for it -- should they be cut off from quality education?

This is not a simple elitist-versus-populist argument. Education in any form, whether it's a children's cartoon or a lecture on astrophysics, is ultimately an elitist activity. Almost all of human history is about working and slaving away under a hot sun. Education is a privilege and it always will be.

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Pro: Are online courses good for higher education?

AUSTRALIA'S newest world-record holders have an average age of 90.

In a swim that brought a crowd of about 200 screaming spectators to tears, the four Melbourne ''golden girls'' set a world masters record in the 4 x 50-metre relay, swimming the race in about five minutes, 45 seconds.

''It was great to hear the applause and think, we're not so old after all,'' said the team's fourth or ''anchor'' swimmer, Hazel Gillbee, 84, the ''baby'' of the team. ''It's pretty good to feel fit.''

The women, members of the North Lodge Neptune AUSSI Masters Swimming Club, recently discovered that no one had ever entered a world record for a relay swim in the ''360'' masters division (representing the total ages of team members).

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As members of the same swimming club, they were eligible to try to set the first record, and chose last night's swim meet at the Jubilee Park Aquatic Centre for their attempt.

While the four women swim at least weekly and were confident of succeeding, the event had all the drama and anticipation of an Olympic meet, with the bleachers packed and TV news crews and local media vying for position at the end of the 25-metre pool.

''We are a bit concerned about the changeovers,'' said Ms Gilbee before the race, ''I said to the girls, 'Make sure you do it right, it doesn't matter about the time - we don't want to get disqualified'.''

Eldest team member Clarise Artis, 97, started swimming competitively when she was 86 (four years after having a quadruple heart bypass) and swims 800 metres twice a week.

But she has recently recovered from pneumonia and said: ''I've not been swimming as well as I could.'' As the team's first swimmer, her nerves were rattled further after the starting gun failed three times.

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Life turns 360 for our oldest world champions

Time's ticking away in the fourth quarter and you're down, but not out. Is it time to throw caution to the wind, put in the spread offense, and start throwing long to the end zone?

If we're talking about football, the answer may indeed be yes. However, if we're talking about your retirement, you'd better think again. A financial advisor with your best interests in mind would likely counsel you to be realistic about your retirement -- that is, if funds are short, smart moves might be increasing your current contributions, planning to retire later, or adjusting your expected budget in retirement. Drastically increasing your portfolio's risk profile, on the other hand, would almost certainly be a gamble not worth taking.

Yet when it comes to the country's major pension funds, many are doing just that in an attempt to overcome recent poor returns and sizable funding gaps. As Reuters reported yesterday, many major pension funds are ditching stocks and bonds, the traditional mainstay of pension funds, and turning to riskier alternative investments like hedge funds, venture capital, and even catastrophe reinsurance.

There may be some upside to the shift -- for instance, many alternative investments aren't correlated to stocks, which means that when stocks zig the alternatives may zag, increasing stability for the funds. But alternative investments tend to be far more expensive, with many hedge funds and private equity funds charging something near the classic "2 and 20" that hits investors for 2% of assets for management and also grabs 20% of profits. Alternative investments also tend to be riskier. As Brad Pacheco of the giant California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, fund put it: "There is a premium that goes with investing in alternative investments because they typically are a little bit riskier."

For some funds, like CalPERS, the turn to alternatives has been fairly measured. Reuters noted that CalPERS upped its exposure to alternatives to 14% in 2011, up from 12.5% in 2010. For other funds though, the move has been far more drastic.

South Carolina's South Carolina Retirement System, the largest pension fund in the state, faces a 35% funding gap with assets more than $13 billion short of its liability based on actuarial assessments. Back in 2006, that fund had more than 40% of its funds in various flavors of bonds, and 53% in equities through common stocks and trust funds. The 7% of the fund in "Financial & Other" was a small part of the picture. That was hardly the case in 2011, as the SCRS fund is now more than half alternative investments. Stocks now make up just over 12% of the portfolio.

Not only is this change an expensive one -- thanks to the high fees involved with alternatives -- and a risky one -- because of the higher risk involved with the asset class -- it also appears to have been an ill-timed one. Though the fund's annual report lauded hedge-fund and private-equity returns of 11.6% and 20.2%, respectively, as a highlight of fiscal 2011, the return on its U.S. stock portfolio roundly topped both with a 39% return.

Looking at the entire investment universe, it was a pretty terrible year overall to be heavily weighted toward hedge funds. A handy table included in the SCRS' annual report showed that the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index returned 4.2% for the fiscal year, while the S&P 500 (INDEX: ^GSPC) delivered 31% and the Barclays Capital Global Aggregate fixed income index returned 10.5%. Heck, the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate bond index nearly matched the hedge funds with a 3.9% return.

I can't sit here and say that the shift that SCRS made absolutely isn't going to work -- if for no other reason than the fact that even a low-probability gamble can pay off if you're lucky enough. But the moves that they've made provide a good opportunity for retirement investors to remind themselves of a couple of key points:

For the sake of South Carolina public employees -- of which my sister is one -- I hope that the current SCRS portfolio works out. But investors saving for retirement on their own probably don't want to take their cues from its hail-mary approach.

Originally posted here:
How Not to Save for Retirement

They might have called it Occupy New Delhi.

In an Indian incarnation of the burgeoning social protest movement, one of its most celebrated yogis Baba Ramdev this week led thousands of disciples through the streets of the capital, protesting against what he claimed was endemic political corruption.

The focus of his attack is black money the estimated trillions of rupees said to be parked illegally in Swiss and other foreign bank accounts.

Much of it is controlled by the countrys elites, maintains Mr. Ramdev, the bare-chested, richly maned, 41-year-old head of a multimillion-dollar international yoga empire.

The gurus campaign, however, is only the latest manifestation of a growing cultural phenomenon the politicization of yoga.

At first glance, that might seem oxymoronic.

Traditional yoga is about a seeking state of tranquil separation from the world.

The essence of the teachings is to act without motive for gain not to seek the fruit of any action, says Divya Prabha, founder and director of Halifaxs Shining Bay Yoga Studio. And if you are motiveless, there can be no agenda.

More practically, most of the millions of students who have lately discovered the joy of yoga are too busy perfecting asanas in hip leisurewear at hot-yoga studios to join campaigns for reform.

Blessed with an aura of credibility by celebrities Sting, Lady Gaga, Shaquille ONeal, Jennifer Aniston more than 20 million Americans are now flocking to yoga classes. In the United States alone, its a $7-billion-a-year industry, with more than 25,000 studios and all manner of merch.

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How yoga is turning into a protest movement

By Allison Martell

(Reuters) - Lululemon, the hip Canadian chain that made yoga apparel fashionable, has taken its fight for market share to the courts with a patent lawsuit, as new brands of active wear seek to undercut its premium prices.

The lawsuit filed by Lululemon Athletica Inc (LLL.TO), which cultivates a mellow yoga vibe in its stores, comes as investors indicate growing unease over the company's future. Whether the lawsuit, filed in a U.S. court, will shore up the company's position remains to be seen.

Patent lawsuits are uncommon in apparel and can be difficult to win. The suit could deter imitators, and thus help the Vancouver-based company cement its growth. It also highlights how tough the competition is.

"This is a low barrier-to-entry industry. Lululemon, their success, has drawn new competitors throughout the mall," said independent retail analyst Brian Sozzi. "The valuation is so high. It's tough to warm up to a stock when you see so many new competitors."

In the suit filed in federal court in Delaware on August 13, Lululemon accused PVH Corp's (PVH.N) Calvin Klein brand and manufacturer G-III Apparel Group Ltd (GIII.O) of infringing three patents on the design of its yoga pants. Design patents protect the appearance of goods, in contrast to more common utility patents, which focus on how things work.

"What Lululemon is doing here is staking its turf," said Jeremy de Beer, an intellectual property expert and law professor at the University of Ottawa.

Founded in 1998, Lululemon took Canada and then the United States by storm with costly, colorful, fashionable workout gear targeted at professional young women. Its shares are up seven-fold since its 2007 initial public offering, and now trade at 46 times earnings.

De Beer compared Lululemon's suit to tech sector patent wars, such as the high-profile trial between Apple Inc (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd <005930.KS>, now drawing to a close.

"The business strategy is to deter other people from even trying to copy designs, because it's going to cause them legal problems," he said.

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Analysis: Lululemon patent claim highlights cutthroat yoga world