If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I’m a gadget guy. I’m motivated by numbers, and data, as well as outside perceptions of my progress. I’ve used heart rate monitors, stopwatches, GPS watches, ipods, iphones, websites, TVs, treadmills, elliptical machines, and countless other technological gadgets to help me along my journey.
One of my most helpful gadgets has been my iphone and a well known app known as “loseit!” But a gadget only works if you use it, and lately, I haven’t been doing a very good job using my gadgets. So I’ve been on the lookout for a new app to use. The other day I stumbled upon a new one that may turn out to be a good one called “The Daily Burn.”
Nutrition Tracking
The Daily Burn really isn’t an iphone app. In reality, it’s a website, formerly called gyminee, that has made a really good app for the iphone. It’s not a perfect app, but it’s really good. In fact, I can really only find one complaint about it. The Daily Burn iphone app is a little bit difficult to navigate. What can be done on “loseit!” in just 1 or 2 taps may take 4 or 5 in The Daily Burn. It may be that I’m still getting used to the whole thing, or that it really has a clunky navigation system. We’ll see.
The Daily Burn more than makes up for its one shortcoming when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of the application. One of my major complaints with “loseit!” is that you can’t export data to your computer. As a result, I have a hard time communicating on my blog what I’ve been eating or how I’ve been exercising. This may all change with “The Daily Burn.”  In fact, from what I can tell, whatever I enter into my phone is synced with my account on The Daily Burn.com and vice versa. It may not happen quickly, and I don’t know how to force a sync yet, but eventually, the food and exercise logs sync up. I’m very excited about this little feature.
Another feature that I really like about this new app is what I call the “eye candy.” It’s just a much better looking app than “loseit!” The colors are nicer. The graphics are better. The transitions are smoother. All of these things lead the user to believe that some real time and effort went in to the developing of this app. However, I think all of the visually pleasing elements of The Daily Burn app may tax the iphone just a little bit too much. Sometimes the app hangs up for a bit; sometimes it crashes all together. But in general, I’m willing to sacrifice a little bit of speed for the aesthetics of The Daily Burn.
Some Stuff I Ate Today
But perhaps the best feature of The Daily Burn is the huge database of foods available to help you track your nutritional goals. The website boasts 150,000 searchable items and that 99% of the things you eat are already in the database. I was a little bit skeptical at first, but after using the app for a day, I wasn’t able to find anything that I ate that wasn’t in the database. Even the sushi that I bought from the grocery store today was in there. I just had to search for the name of the company that made it and there it was. I was totally impressed and this is perhaps the best reason to switch from “loseit!” to The Daily Burn.
As you can see, I’m fairly impressed with this new little app. And I’m excited to keep using it and learning the ins and outs of it. I’m also a little bit excited to start exploring the website. I’ll write more about that as I get more into it.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m using Daily Burn now, and have been mostly enjoying it. I actually like the design/features of Livestrong’s Daily Plate better, but the Livestrong iPhone app is so buggy as to be (for me, anyways) basically unusable. Hopefully, competition between these sites will make both of their offerings better… Currently each has various tiny niceties that the other regrettably lacks.
Enjoyed the blog on the Daily Burn iPhone app. I’d encourage anyone using a diet and fitness Web site to check out FitClick (www.FitClick.com) and do a comparison with any of the following: Spark People, FitDay, Daily Plate/Livestrong and Daily Burn. I think you’ll find that FitClick is the best… and it’s 100% free.