So when I went on something as simple as a diet to change my eating habits and become healthier I was sure that this would be one area that would be relatively technology free. I mean really how could anyone possibly add technology to something as simple as eating?

Well oddly enough there are a lot of technology touch points with dieting and exercise. A quick look at the Apple iTunes App Store will show you pages and pages of applications that have been written to help you make changes to your lifestyle and eating habits.

There are apps for tracking what you eat from simple food journaling to exhaustive encyclopedia-like databases that will give you facts about every food you could possibly imagine eating. I quickly began questioning where to even start.

As I perused the app store I would pick up an app here or there that sounded great or had interesting reviews to see whether it would help motivate me to stay close to the program. Before long I had several pages of applications on my iPhone each offering one piece of the puzzle. What I found though was if I wanted to track my overall health there was not one magic application.

During my search I uncovered an app specifically for Take Shape for Life the diet program I have been using. How could I have missed that? An app designed and distributed by the program had to be a perfect fit right?

I downloaded the free TSFL application and quickly entered the basic information. It asked for my name, whether I was on Weight Loss or Transition & Maintenance, and what my current week of the program. The last choice consisted of telling the app whether I was on week 1, week 2, week 3, or week 4+. That’s it for the settings.

From there I could set the time of my first meal of the day for each day of the week then create alerts that would tell me how long after eating I wanted to be reminded to eat again. Once I set all of this up I waited for the magic to begin.

At the first alert it reminded me to go into the app and log my meal. I had expected that would mean identifying the actual time I ate and what I had for that meal. That was only partially true. It did allow me to enter the actual time I ate and whether it was a meal replacement or my “lean and green” meal but there was no place to enter what I actually ate.

Once I recorded the meal the application would start the counter for the next meal and provide me with a message of encouragement or a tip. At the end of the day when I recorded my last meal the application congratulated me for becoming healthier and then suggested I come back tomorrow to do the process again.

That’s it? That’s all the application does? Sadly the answer is yes. There is no way to record the food you consumed, no way to know how many calories you had ingested. That was bad enough but I also found out that you cannot go back and look at when you recorded your meals.

When you have a busy day and only have your iPhone with you it is quick to record that a meal was made but no way to recall that to add to the Daily Success Tracker sheets that come with the program. There is also no way to record the amount of water you are drinking, the exercise/activity you have had, or even how you felt that day.

Overall the application is little more than an advertisement for the Take Shape for Life program. To really be usable serious rework needs to be done to this application. You should be able to upload before pictures of yourself and the ability to enter current pictures to see the progress you are making.

You should be able to enter all of the data that is tracked on the Daily Success Tracker which includes the times of the meal replacements, the actual food you have eaten, the components of your Lean and Green meal, the amount of water you drink, the exercise or activity you have done, and a simple good/ok/bad rating of how you felt.

That should be a minimum of what it does. You could enhance that with the ability to share any of this information with your friends on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. You should be able to send an email to your health coach with questions or comments. You should be able to find your reading assignments for each week with a link to more information for workbook exercises. Finally, instead of the canned tips and encouragement, it should allow your support group to send personalized encouragement to you. In a nutshell this should be a tool that can be used by people on the TSFL program to help them gain confidence.

After just a couple days of use I quickly deleted the application from my phone. Instead I’ll use the FitBit application. While it is focused more on the exercise portion it does allow me to track other things to remind me what I need to record when I get home about eating, activity, and food consumption.

Almost as quickly as the product was unveiled there were already mounds of press both positive and negative discussing the merits and drawbacks of the device. It was interesting to read these accounts especially considering the lack of hands-on experience these writers had with the iPad.

I have to admit I am more than mildly intrigued by this announcement and I can already see several applications for its unique form factor. Even with my tempered enthusiasm I recognize this is not a technology panacea that will be everything to everyone.

So far I have heard laments the device is too large while others complain it is not large enough. There are numerous complaints regarding what the device includes or does not include especially with regards to ports.

There were contingents complaining the iPad did not have a USB port, an SD card reader, a built-in keyboard, a hard drive, an HDMI connection, a camera, stereo speakers, multitasking, or Mac OS X. I even read one report blasting the iPad because it did not run Microsoft Windows Mobile.

Clearly Apple is learning once again, no matter what you introduce there are going to be detractors that will find fault with every design decision made. It is impossible to design or build the perfect device.

The diversity of the complaints of what the device includes or doesn’t include suggest Apple may be defining a new market segment. The iPad does not fit well in any current product category.

People who view the iPad as a computer attempt to compare it to the Apple MacBook or MacBook Air. They begin rattling off all of the features or functions found on a laptop that do not exist on the iPad.

Others look at this as a mobile communication devices ala an iPhone. They complain it lacks a camera, the form factor is too big, and the device includes too many unnecessary components.

Many of these arguments were similarly waged when the iPod came out. No one knew what it was supposed to be and therefore could not grasp the concept. It was not until the market began to evolve and users became familiar with where the iPod could fit within their lives did the device begin making strides in the market.

I predict a similar flow for the iPad. A few early adopters will take up the iPad and begin to establish where its capabilities fit in society’s information model. This coupled with applications that can take advantage of the iPad’s unique technology will hopefully help to define the market parameters and where the iPad makes sense.

While I would love to continue waiting for delivery of the mouse pad I bought, I have to move on especially now that I have a glass top desk. As everyone knows, the laser mice that are popular on the market now just don’t work on a glass surface or if they do the performance is lackluster to say the least.

I started by assessing what my requirements were for a mouse pad. I know, it is kind of sad that I would take the time to list requirements for something as simple as a mouse pad. But given the amount of time I work on the computer, the last thing I wanted was to introduce a point of frustration into my workflow.

As a graphic and web designer it is imperative that the mouse track well. Accurate mouse movement is imperative especially when I am retouching photographs or designing graphics.

Another important criterion is mouse pad real estate. There is nothing worse than running to the edge of a too small mouse pad in the middle of a critical edit.

Finally I am looking for durability. I have gone through more than my share of neoprene mouse pads where the cover peels away from the pad itself making the mouse surface uneven.

Once I had the requirements list I began searching for mouse pad options. After looking at several sites and visiting several local stores I finally came home with what I think will work well for my needs.

I settled on the Rocketfish Gaming Mouse Pad. Gaming is about the lowest thing on my priority list and to be honest I haven’t played a game on my computer since Zork was popular.

Despite its name, the Rocketfish Gaming Mouse Pad is not just for people intent on piling up the body count in a video game. It is designed for high performance as well as precise mouse movement making it perfect for artists and designers.

The mouse pad itself is fairly large giving you ample space to move your mouse even when you have a 24 inch monitor. The pad itself measures approximately 10 inches by 13 inches.

The Rocketfish mouse pad is actually two pads. On one side the surface is designed for quick response and fast mouse movements. This is perfect if you want to quickly move around the screen.

Flipping the pad over gives it another surface that is designed for accuracy, perfect for when you are working with precise image file edits. While you may sacrifice a bit of speed, you more than make up for it with a surface that precisely tracks mouse movements.

In the few days I have used this mouse pad I have quickly become a big fan. Its expansive surface is perfect for the large desktop areas afforded by today’s monitors. Having a dual surface comes into play a lot more than I anticipated.

I find myself flipping the pad over depending on the type of work I am predominately doing. That’s not to say I have to flip it over, to be honest either side works well for most tasks. The control surface just gives me a little more peace of mind making me wonder if there really is that much of a difference or if it is more of a mental edge.

If you find yourself looking for a new mouse pad I would definitely recommend the Rocketfish Gaming Mouse Pad. Now if I could just get them to offer different edge colors it would be perfect.

As 1999 was coming to an end I like most others in the Information Technology industry was preparing for the impending Y2K doom that was being predicted in the media. Of course nothing happened and that was a non-event.

When the clock counted down the final seconds of the 20th century I wondered what life would be like in the next century. I envisioned life being like the Jetsons with flying cars that folded up into briefcases and we would all live in apartment complexes catered to by Rosie the Robot.

Unfortunately as I sit here now I wonder if anything really has changed at all? It feels as though life as we know it really hasn’t changed that much; or so I thought. When ABC News posted a news story naming The Top 10 Products of the Decade I was curious whether these products would be revolutionary or just an updated of version of something that has been around for ages.

Reading over the list I was shocked that many of the products listed have become a part of my everyday life. I don’t think of these things as the amazing 21st Century technology that I had been anticipating. Strangely I could not think of living a day without them they have become so much a part of my daily life.

The list of products ABC News identified as the best of the last decade are:

1. Apple iPod
2. GPS Devices
3. The Blackberry
4. Digital Camera
5. TiVo Digital Video Recorder
6. Nintendo Wii
7. USB Flash Drive
8. iPhone
9. E-Book Readers
10. Netbooks

Perhaps the first thing to note is that without exception I own or have owned every single one of these products during the past decade. I am not sure whether that means I have successfully helped select these products or if it just means I am a techno-geek that buys way too many toys. If you ask Trina she will definitely say it is the latter.

When I stood back and pondered these products I realized that without exception each of these have changed the way I live my life now versus before they were developed.

I remember when I began college in 1980. I saved up my money and made the splurge buying my first Hewlett-Packard calculator. It was the size of a brick and came with a one line LED display that was painfully difficult to read unless you were in a dark room.

This calculator was my constant companion throughout college and I truly thought I was on the cutting edge of technology. I took great care with the calculator as it cost as much as a semester of tuition.

At the end of my first year of college Sony introduced the Walkman that would allow me to take a cassette with me around campus and listen to music while I studied. It was an unheard of concept and changed the way I listened to music.

Fast-forwarding to this past decade I suddenly realized how much things have changed. My iPod now holds 36 times more than my first hard drive the Apple Profile. Now I not only can listen to my music but I am able to take my entire library of music and videos with me at all times and go days without having to recharge the battery.

I no longer wait for the local disc jockey to introduce me to new artists and music. Instead my iPod and iPhone recommend music to me based on what I have listened to in the past. Music has become files where it used to be tapes or discs.

My phone and my car can now tell me within 10 feet where I am on the planet regardless of how far away I am from my destination. It can tell me where traffic is the worst and what is the best route to get to my destination all without stopping to ask for directions.

Phones have morphed into multi-tasking devices and I communicate with voice, video, email and text all from a handheld unit that has more computing power than the combined first ten computers I owned.

My first computer had 4K of memory and I had to program it each time I booted. When Apple introduced the cassette tape storage device I was in heaven. Now I have a USB drive with no moving parts that is the size of a quarter and holds the equivalent of 12 CDs of information. I can move the data from computer to computer simply by inserting the drive into a USB port.

When the decade first began most homes in America still had a VCR, which flashed 12:00. Although it was possible to record television to tape it was a complicated process that always ended in frustration. Now with my TiVo it not only records all of my shows without me having to feed tapes to the machine but it also finds shows I might like based upon my previous viewing habits.

On those occasions when I forget to tell TiVo to record a program I can still do it even if I am not at home. I simply open an application on my iPhone and give instructions to my TiVo even if I am hundreds of miles away from home.

I have always been a book connoisseur and have literally hundreds of books around my house. Now I find myself buying less paper books instead relying on electronic books such as the Amazon Kindle to provide reading materials.

I can still flip through the pages but now I can house several books in a single form-factor. For those trips where I normally take 2-3 books to read I now pack just my e-book reader. If I run out of reading material more books are available if I can find a wireless network.

Looking back over the past ten years clearly we have made tremendous technological advances. So while I still don’t have a flying car or a robot maid my life is much easier than it ever has been in my life. I can hardly wait to see what advances are made in the next ten years.

When they were all young, the house was chaotic. No matter how hard we tried to instill order it never seemed to work. After our third child was born I realized that it was hopeless to even try since the children now outnumbered the parents. Oh sure the kids will at times try to make us feel like we are in control but deep down we all know that really isn’t the case.

Now that our youngest is reaching the teenage years I seriously thought it would get easier. Again I was completely erroneous in my assumption. If anything raising teenagers is substantially more difficult than raising small children. Not only are teenagers higher maintenance but they are also way more expensive.

When they were young we could get by on birthdays and Christmas with small gifts. As they grew older the holiday gift giving has gotten substantially more expensive. There are probably several reasons for this and I am sure most of it is my fault (at least that is what my wife continues to tell me).

She is probably right; I really didn’t set us up for success when it came to the kids. I have always been someone fascinated with new technology and wanting to tinker with the latest and greatest device as soon as it came out.

Couple that with the fact that I live and breath computers and the Internet and you can soon see that I have created an environment where the children are fascinated by technology and just assume that every family is engulfed in evaluating new hardware and software.

Each of the children has had their own computer since the time they were old enough to walk. When we moved to Arizona and built our house I wired it for networking (then unheard of). The kids have been exposed to the Internet even before it was known as the Internet.

With such an experimental environment they have adapted to change differently than what I would have anticipated. Rather than worry as operating systems or technologies come and go, they tend to shrug this off as a natural phenomenon. They don’t cling to technology or have any preconceived notion of backward compatibility.

Instead they look at technology as an enabler that will allow them to expand their knowledge. When it ceases to provide that function it is recycled and replaced with something new. This was never anything that we taught them but rather something they learned through trial and error based on their environment.

It has had a fascinating effect as the kids have grown. They seem less worried about uncertainty than many of their peers. They tend to embrace the unknown and view it as an adventure rather than something to fear.

I would love to take credit for developing some sort of secret to parenting but instead I’m left standing here scratching my head wondering how exactly this happened. Despite my failures as a human being and as a father my kids seem to be turning out ok. Now just because I said that they will all come home completely whacked out of their heads tomorrow sporting some odd colored hair and piercing their bodies with who knows what.

But like every other change we’ll learn to adapt and embrace the unknown and try to figure out how it can be used to make our lives more interesting. I only wish I would have taught them the value of a good back-up. There have been more than a few times I would like to rewind and fix an error I have introduced into the system.