Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with tracking

Gimme 20 more!

brokeaspoke — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:40:17 -0800

Looking for a website to help me, a late thirties male, who wants to get in shape. Not obese by any stretch of the imagination, but not as slim and trim as he and his doctor feels he should be. BMI of about 26. I know the general range I tend to feel best at and in that range I do tend to fall into the healthy BMI range. I’m more concerned with feeling good than with being at the exact right weight to get to the right BMI for my height and age. I want to lose a little weight, trim up, look better, abs of steel, ass to match, etc. A silly pushups contest here in the office has spurred me on to wanting more. We’re halfway through an eight week contest, I’m in third place and I can do more consecutive pushups than I have ever been able to do at any previous stage of my life.

I want a website at which I can track all of my exercise and fitness related numbers. I looked at WeEndure. I like it a lot, but find it limited (can’t track my pushups, weights or even my body weight for that matter.) Livestrong seems too “mainstream” (or is there something I don’t know from looking the site over?) So, what I want is a MetaFitness; Something fun, flexible, challenging, snarky at the right moments, possibly downright rude at times. What are you MeFites using? The ability to easily use it with iPhone or even another smartphone in the future would be a very nice feature.

So, what have you?

Fleet GPS Tracking

Tavern — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:52:14 -0800

I'm looking for a GPS system for the fleet at my business. We have 6 trucks and run a small service company. I'm having a hard time finding what I need. Admittedly, I don't know much about GPS systems.

There are so many options out there but I can't seem to find one that suits my requirements.

I want each truck to have a GPS like a TOM TOM or Garmin so that they can program their job location in and find directions to the next job. But I also want my service manager to be able to track each vehicle in real time.

So far all I can find are either the TOM TOMs of the GPS world, or a hidden GPS system in the trucks so that I can track them. There doesn't seem to be a blend of the two.

If you have any experience with this, I would love some help. Thanks.

What are other examples of interactive - "volunteer needed" type websites?

MrBCID — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:02:00 -0800

What are other examples of interactive - "volunteers needed" type websites like WheresGeorge.com, CoCoRaHS, BOINC, Folding@home, Geocaching, BookCrossing?

Is this a Jimi Hendrix song, and if so, which one?

XiBe — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:24:17 -0800

Is this a Jimi Hendrix song, and if so, which one? This audio file is a mp3 export of the module titled "Electric Church" (download link) by musician HitHansen.

This musician is known to sampling guitars from records, even tracking covers (such as "Experienced(x)" (dl), which covers Hendrix's "In From The Storm").

Thing is, while Electric Church obviously seems to be a cover (the synth "chorus" reminds me of...something), and a Hendrix one at that (the title being the clue here), I can't put my finger on which one. Listening to a hefty part of Jimi's discography on Deezer didn't help thus far.

Hive mind, will you?

Thank you.

Seeking shared online multi-part project managing solution

Scram — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:59:36 -0800

I am working with several other people to seek sponsorship for a non-profit event. There is a fairly simple but lengthy series of actions that needs to be completed to track each unique sponsor. We've thought about having a binder with a printed page showing tasks for each sponsor, but it would be preferable if there was an online solution any of us can access for checking off and date-stamping completed tasks, with a place to add notes. A sample workflow would be something like: page is named for a sponsor, sponsor is contacted (checked, need room for notes), sponsor is invoiced (checked, date), check is received and deposited (checked, dates), sponsor is thanked (checked, date), sponsor info is added to website and event map (checked, dates).

Is there some simple, preferably free, way of doing this? We are already using Google Documents to share some text-based information, but none of us is a whiz with the various tools there, and perhaps we're overlooking some obvious solution. Our event website is running Drupal, and one of us knows how to code it.

Thanks, hive mind, for any suggestions you can offer.

Is there a website that will notify you of media releases?

mephesta — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:57:54 -0800

I am looking for a website or convenient trick to notify me when an item I am interested in is released or acquires a release date. I will be hoping to use this for Books, Games, Movies (both theatrical and dvd). I know I can always just jott them all down into Outlook Calendar but I suppose I am wondering if there is a faster, easier way.

Small web team needs a better way to track requests than MS Outlook.

Null Pointer and the Exceptions — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:39:57 -0800

Small web team needs a better way to track requests than MS Outlook. We're not a big web team, just three guys including the designer. We manage a site, not a complex web application. 90% of our work is creating or updating content: we don't do builds (we push to the live server individual changes after they are tested), don't do rollbacks (can get backups as needed for past year), and don't track bugs (we deal with content, not features, typos are the most likely issue). Requests can be for changing content, creating html emails, rebranding sections of the site and the occasional functional enhancement (mostly associated with pulling content from a db).

Our current workflow:

1. all requests come through a shared inbox
2. as we work on items in the inbox, we flag them in Outlook, each person has their own color.
3. when an item is done, we send a reply, then move the item to an archive folder.

It's simple and efficient, but I'm looking for something the team can use that would replace this, as colored flags don't work in Entourage and Outlook is the only Windows app we still use besides IE for testing.

Ideally it would be web based, have the ability to assign ownership, to set deadlines, allow for attachments and keep a thread if there are replies. I'm on the fence if it should require a login or not (e.g. just create tickets based on emails to the old inbox).

If it can handle projects that's great, but it's not necessary as I'm the only one who does projects here and OmniFocus works great for that.

Help me help you know what I'm doing.

eatcake — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:03:39 -0800

I'm walking to raise funds for an institution that provides health care to children and I want to set up an online page or site to let donors know of my progress live on the day of the event. How can I do that as painlessly as possible? What I'd like to do is to have a central online location where the donors who sponsored me can go to and view (among other things) information like my current location, live tweeting info as I'm on the walk, or live updates on the trail (it's a 7-mile walk), maybe mobile photos of the event as seen through my eyes before, during and after the event. It would be cool to have the ability to let donors or other people contribute (comments etc...) to the website/page.

This will also serve the purpose of eliminating a mass of emails for me to send out for updates.

What I'm ultimately looking for here is to enable people to participate or be involved or to know what is going on, how their contribution is being "earned". It's one thing to donate some money to a charity and get a thank you card in the mail weeks later, it's another thing to be able to know and see the event you're sponsoring. It'll hopefully allow people/donors to better connect with the abstract of "requesting a donation, donating to this cause" thing.

I tried to figure out a way to do it on Facebook but creating a group for the event requires inviting people and then hoping that they join the group. Not every donor is on Facebook but they all can go online to a website for example.

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Who's reading?

pseudostrabismus — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:06:40 -0800

How can I juice up a foo.wordpress.com site? Specifically I want a better statcounter, but any other cool stuff you recommend would be nice, too. I have a blog at nameofblog.wordpress.com. I'm planning to move it to nameofblog.com, but that's not high on my priority list at the moment. In the meantime, I'd like to know more about my stats, but I'm not sure which is the best free stat tracker for a Wordpress.com site. Right now all I see on the default tracker are pageviews, referring links, and the posts that get the most clicks. But those "most clicks" numbers only add up to about 20% of my daily pageviews, which... huh?

Specifically, I'd like to know:
How many people are following on RSS
Stats by city & country
Average length of visit
Any other stats you'd think I might find interesting.

All this stuff used to be easy to track on Blogger blogs with StatCounter, but I don't understand how to put a different stat tracker on Wordpress (I'm using the Contempt template, and I don't know how to edit CSS). Anyone have a suggestion of an easy, free way for me to satisfy my stats curiosity until I have time to customize the whole site? Ease of use is key, though- my knowledge of programming is scant, by which I mean I know maybe 10 HTML tags and that's about it.

While we're at it, I guess I'd also be interested in hearing about any Wordpress.com site goodies you know about that are cool & easy to use, but not widely known.
Thanks!

How can I get a google map to display my current position automatically?

krautland — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:56:10 -0800

How can I get a google map to display my current position automatically? I have a google map on my webpage that displays the city I currently live in. I would like for this map to be automatically updated with my current position. How can I achieve this?

I was thinking about a cell phone updating my server with my most current coordinates. It's fine if this only happens every eight hours, it's great if it's always up to date (like flightaware.com trackings), it has to be automatic. I do not have an iphone, so a specific iphone app won't do it for me.

It doesn't have to be free - I'm willing to spend a few bucks to make this happen. What I don't know is just how much of a budget I need and what to ask my programmer for. I'm looking for a this is how I would solve this brief* kind of answer from you.

additional specifications:
- no flash
- must work in germany (I would love for it to work worldwide as I travel frequently)
- bonus if it could automatically archive my positions (so that you could click on a link and see a google map with all the places I've been to in the last 1,6,12 months)
- must work in all relevant browsers, even IE.

*I have someone in mind who I want to hire to code this for me but while I'm willing to pay him a nominal fee he's way busy with "really paying gigs." if you happen to feel that this is something you'd like to take on, feel free to let me know. (this is not the point of my post but just an addendum. I would have made a jobs post otherwise.)

Help me track this package from Iran!

estherbester — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:40:09 -0800

Help me track this package from Iran! I have a tracking number but no idea who the carrier is. Someone in Iran mailed us a package for work (a video cassette) and I don't know where I can enter the tracking number: in the email they said they sent it "by coliy post no:RRxxxxxxxxIR from IRAN-TEHRAN-15" (where each x is a digit)

The most promising lead was http://tntsearch.post.ir/ but the number doesn't work when I enter it.

What's your favorite on-line fitness tracking tool?

scblackman — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:34:43 -0800

Fitness 2.0 quesiton: I'm a big fan of Fuelly. It's one of the few Web 2.0 tools that I've stuck with. I want to be as disciplined with tracking my workouts as I am my gas usage. For me, a user-friendly tool makes a big difference. Can anyone recommend a high-quality Web 2.0 fitness tracking tool (preferably a free one)? I've looked at Traineo and a couple of others, but wanted to see if the hive mind could come up with a strong recommendation. If you can let me know why you've stuck with it (or why you've dropped it, if it's a negative review), I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

Pain in the Asset

parallax7d — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:07:22 -0800

Mostly mac based school looking for an IT asset tracking system, and an equipment checkout system. (not necessarily combined) There are lots of solutions out there, what has worked in your organization, that you would recommend? I don't want to be too specific about our goals, things are up in the air and planning is foggy. TrackIT is out for sure (bad past experiences). I'm more interested in the systems that you are proud of, or enjoy using, because they WORK.

Referral tracking / Refer a friend for contest entry

letitrain — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:55:58 -0800

Refer a friend / referral tracking system? I'm running a contest and would like to try a referral system where an entrant can refer five friends and receive extra chances to win. Is there anything simple and web-based out there that can accomplish this?

Help me detect hidden cameras/microphones

kampken — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:33:12 -0800

Help me to detect hidden cams/microphones in a room. I have reason to believe that my friend's house has been bugged by her ex-husband and im looking for easy ways to find and remove these bugs. It may sound a bit paranoid, but there have already been other examples where he has tried to "track" her. First by putting a tracking program on her cellphone, and then by putting a GPS-tracker in her car. He then proceeded to follow her around and she involved the police at this point. He just got a warning and the devices were confiscated.

Now we have reason to believe he's at at it again. He's showing a eerie knowledge of what hours of the day she is home in, and information about personal matters he can't possibly know. Hence the suspicion that her home may be bugged with cameras or microphones. (i've checked her cellphone which is clean).

I've seen some detector devices on the internet, how effective are they? Example: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/security/5a42/
And is there any other method to detect them? Im guessing the microphones are sending out low-frequency noise and the cam must be using some other wave-length emissions i can somehow detect. Also if its wireless there's bound to be some RF noise.

Thanks in advance

In hot pursuit of clever pursuits

np312 — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:24:58 -0800

Any clever ideas (based on truth, fiction or anecdote) of how a resourceful character might potentially track down someone who's fled the country? For a story I'm writing: a father leaves the country in haste via plane. The following day, his exceptionally clever and estranged son wants to find out where he went, and as a civilian, only has access to his father's property and computer. What are some clever ways the son might track down the father?

I'm thinking more than one trick, but several in a row (A leads to B leads to C type deals.) But one really smart one would do.

I myself am not exceptionally clever, and though I imagine the son could sort through his father's garbage cans to find receipts of purchase, check a google cache to see where the plane ticket was purchased for and hotel reservations, etc. But I am hoping for something more interesting and challenging than that.

To clarify, I'm looking for something along the lines of, having the son see the indentations on a memo pad underneath where the father had written a phone number for a hotel, the son dusts it with some chili powder or something to "reveal" the phone number that was pressed into the bottom sheet. But I suspect that trick's been used a million times already, and it seems like a bit of a stretch.

I don't watch cop shows so I'm not well versed in this stuff, therefore I am mining the hive mind. What interesting tracking methods, that don't involve the police or super technology, might a clever but regular Joe use to track someone who doesn't know he's being followed?

Many thanks.

Looking for the best litter-tracking solutions

phoenixy — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:27:44 -0800

Looking for the best kitty litter-tracking solutions. My cat is a prodigious spreader of kitty litter. I tried to solve the problem by switching to a covered litter box and then getting a little plastic litter mat but it doesn't really do anything; I think the problem is that she tends to jump out of the box, which just sends litter everywhere--I guess my problem is really more litter flinging than litter tracking. I know that there are more-enclosed types of litterboxes I could try, but she's a bit of a fat cat so I'm worried that she wouldn't be able to use them. I saw this Paw-Path litter mat thing that seems like it might work, but I can't find any unbiased reviews (all the reviews are positive ones cherry-picked from their email) so I'm a bit skeptical--has anyone tried it? How do MeFites tackle litter tracking?

tracking computer

dead cousin ted — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:02:42 -0800

I'm looking for a tracking solution for a laptop I have almost complete control of but still want to know who is doing what and when. I need to track the usage of a laptop that I have pretty good control of (password protected and limited user use) but i'd really like some kind of software that would monitor all computer usage, cost isn't a factor.

How can I track and log all the changes to a website?

kaudio — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:17:36 -0800

How can I track and log all the changes to a website? Ideally, I would like a program for Linux (Ubuntu) or XP that I could get to automatically check a particular website each day and log any changes for my records. In a perfect world, this program would be able to save and archive the website (and the pages that link from it) each time there is a change. I currently use Specto on Ubuntu to notify me if any changes are made, but then I have to manually save the changes and record the date.

The website is a job postings website that my union has to monitor in order to verify that all new hires can be correlated to a real job posting, and that any employees on layoff with recall rights are contacted regarding new jobs.

Good iPhone workout log application?

jagalt — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:40:09 -0800

Good iPhone workout log application? I am trying to find an iPhone application that would let me keep track of my workouts, preferably as I am doing them, and there's just too many in the store to make sense of. I'd like to be able to:

- Create custom workouts (weightlifting and cardio)
- Keep track of my weight
- Sync and backup to my computer / online service

I am fine with purchasing an app, so it doesn't have to be one of the free ones. If anyone has had any personal experiences with any of the apps and can recommend anything, it would be much appreciated!

RF Position tracking?

helltoupee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:59:00 -0800

Anyone know of a reliable way to quickly & accurately track position over a 200 foot range? I am trying to get a camera to follow a moving subject over medium range distances outdoors.I have seen several products on sparkfun that transmit/receive RF, but do not know if they will work for position tracking. THANKS!

Tuesday, 12:45. Mood: weird.

Metroid Baby — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:45:41 -0800

I’d like to track my moods for a few weeks. How should I go about this? What should I record, and how, and is it useful? My mood tends to swing up and down a bit over the course of a typical day. Nothing drastic, but as an example I was feeling pretty upbeat and happy at 7 am today, and by 11:30 I was mad at everything. I tell people I feel “weird” a lot.

My mood swings aren’t extreme, nor do they impair me much, but I have found myself stopping and thinking “Why am I feeling like this right now? What’s going on? Is this normal?” I can usually answer the first two, but I have no idea whether this is normal. I’m hoping keeping track of how I’m feeling during the day for a while will help me figure this out.

I’ve looked around online and seen a few mood-tracking applications, but nothing that really jumped out at me. I could probably whip up a spreadsheet that would work well, and I’ve also been thinking about skipping the computer entirely and carrying around a notebook, since I’m not always near a computer.

Some of the things I’m considering keeping track of: brief description of mood, energy level, whether it feels “good” or “bad,” possible precipitating factors. I’m sure there are other things that would be good to track and I’m open to suggestions.

If you’ve done something like this, what did you use and what did you track? How frequently and for how long? Did it help you? Any advice is appreciated.

I know I recorded it somewhere

b33j — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:23:46 -0800

How do I maintain a successful personal diverse information tracking system? How do you find what you know you kept? I want my information in one place, where I can search it. (This is not about GTD or keeping track of my responsibilities and tasks). I have a bunch of RSS feeds where I clip occasional articles. I have a bazillion internet favourites/bookmarks. I make notes out of library books. I have lecture notes from the last three years.

The topics might include gardening in my region, career information, design tutorials, philosophy, books I want to read, people's birthday gift ideas, music lists with the right beat for exercise, ideas for clothing when I'm working full-time again, including style and colours, budgeting and frugality, project ideas that are not ready for a to do list. And more.

I reckon, at the moment, with the different systems I have now, I can find about 10% of anything I've captured, and I can't easily search it. How do I know, for example, if that great tutorial I remember seeing was in a metafilter thread, or on an RSS feed, or in a library book?

It's like this but more varied. The way I ended up solving this was having a directory folder for Design Ideas, and sub-directories including typography, illustration, etc. This means that every image I capture has to be electronic, which I can mostly do with a scan or a camera, if I didn't find it on the net, but it's not going to work for books etc, and it's not particularly searchable.

If you've tried and failed, please tell me. Maybe I can let this idea go.

Old guy walks into a bar...

kenzi23 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:52:53 -0800

Is there a way to track a human being electronically for their own safety and not entirely with the person's consent? I'm asking this for a friend whose father has mild alzheimer's and wanders off. I'm not really asking if it's moral to do this but if you feel the need to give your opinion on that, knock yourself out. I want to know if there is a technology that will allow her to track her father's movements electronically, not through a cell phone or a bracelet or implanting something under his skin. If it matters, this is in New York City.

Help me analyze how much time you spend looking at my stuff!

twiggy — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:26:47 -0800

Help me become a master of Google Analytics - especially as it pertains to time spent in sections of a site, etc... I'm a little confused with Google Analytics, and I'd love some insight. Googling around hasn't really answered my question...

What I really want is to be able to track the average time spent within a section of a site, not just a page.

So, let's say I've got 10 pages within a subdirectory of a site. We'll call them /content/1.html through /content/10.html, I can click on "Content" in google analytics, and narrow the results to these pages by searching for the string "/content" .. awesome!

Here's where I get a little confused: I see the average time spent on each page, and that makes sense. But I also see an average time spent up top, where it's summing up the number of visits. Is this just an average of the averages listed below, or is it really an average time spent on that whole section? So if someone viewed 1.html, 3.html, 8.html for 1 minute each - does google call that 3 minutes spent in /content? or can google not even do that?

In reality, I'm doing this with flash applications, so I can make up any hierarchy of paths I want, and there don't really have to be files there -- I'm just looking for an accurate way of tracking how much time a user is spending doing something that may involve several hits to google analytics "in the meantime"...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!