Kiva micro-lending

I'm getting weirdly addicted to the Kiva micro-lending website - think one of those 'buy someone a goat' gifts, except you get to choose who gets the goat (or solar panel, or water filters) and they pay you back again so you can lend the money to someone else afterwards.

I've got a few active loans on there and an auto payment jobbie of a few dollars a month so that my credit will build up enough to make new loans after a while, esp as the current ones are starting to do repayments - loans are done in lots of US$25 spread across a lot of lenders and repaid in instalments over a period. Trouble is I've got $16 credit just sitting there now! Must... not... add... credit......

IFTTT - taking the social out of social media

I've been playing with IFTTT (If This Then That - an Internet gizmo which does basic tasks when particular things happen). It features some great efficiency things such as automatically posting Happy Birthday messages on FB or messages of congratulations to LinkedIn connections when they get a new job.

I can imagine a whole world of awkward when you actually see someone and don't know about their birthday or new job, but I think everyone knows I'm vague enough to post something and forget about it immediately anyway. :-)

Last time I looked at it, I got as far as thinking "hey, that's cool" but it kinda looked too hard. There are a lot of preset "recipes" available now, including ones which will run little jobs on your phone like texting when you leave somewhere. I'm currently running a couple of things to collate data from my Misfit Shine and save it to Evernote (I hope) and also email me a weekly summary (probably).

And goodbye Hello

Evernote Hello has ceased to be. If it wasn't nailed to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It is an ex-Evernote application.

I had an email this week that Evernote Hello is no longer going to be supported. From the 7th of February 2015 it will stop syncing to Evernote and some things will stop working (as against working in a dodgy way like it does now).

Shame, but at least I never wasted time reporting the glitches that annoyed me. :-) I can easily start using the Evernote app to scan the few business cards which come my way but it really was such a lovely idea.

MyFitnessPal

I've been using MyFitnessPal to track what I'm eating vs calories used (steps from my pedometer app) lately. Not every day, just now and then to get general trends.

One of its useful features is the helpful way it suggests other foods usually consumed at the same time as the one you've just entered. Apparently I often have cheapo Icypole knockoffs at the same time as eating huge amounts of Nutella. Seems legit.*

* It actually does. Those would be days when The Possum hasn't been sleeping much.