By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

A lot of you may have heard of the diet book Eat This, Not That. It is the wildly successful diet book from Men’s Health Editor-in-Chief David Zincenko and Men’s Health food and nutrition editor Matt Goulding.
The book does an excellent job exposing the obscene number of calories in certain foods, such as Outback’s Aussie cheese fries that weigh in at 2,900 calories, Chili’s Awesome Blossom at 2,710 calories , and Lonestar’s 20-ounce T-bone — an astonishing 1,540-calorie steak. And as a result, several restaurants have removed calorie-laded items from their menus.

However, most of us presumably do not walk around with a book under our arm that will let us know what is in the foods we eat. Now comes an iphone application developed by a San Franscisco entrepreneur that was designed to enhance not only healthy eating but food safety as well. Dwayne Ratleff, the sole proprietor of a house keeping business spent six months developing the recently launched iPhone app-Don’t Eat That.
The app is based on the premise that most consumers are not able to understand, let alone pronounce, many of the ingredients listed on food labels. Their food decisions are frequently based on convenience and taste, with few knowing the impact of what they are actually eating. The Don’t Eat That app was designed to enhance food safety with the touch of a finger. Read more

By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

There are people who you know that are obsessed (not merely interested) with the latest technology releases be it the latest iPhone, Nokia Booklet, or video game release. Some of these people have buyer’s remorse the minute they pick up the latest gadget thinking about the next upgrade.

There is a new site out of St. Petersburg, Russia called PreOrder.it launched in January that has been created in order to give people who are interested in latest novelties in the world of electronics, mobile systems, photo and video equipment a possibility to contact manufacturers directly and leave an order for a product in which they are interested before the official sale starts.

This site would obviously interest any techno-savvy consumer, but the obsessive described above will really enjoy it.

The site actually has two types of users: merchants and customers. Customers can go to the site to access company’s press releases to find out new models, their characteristics, types of set and future price. If the client gets interested in something he can leave a pre-order that goes directly to merchants. Merchants can sell in advance and receive orders directly from loyal and future customers.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

There is a great deal of educational content on the Internet; Wikieducator.org, edu.com, Educause, plus many institutions of higher learning offer educational content for free.

Now comes NalandaU.com, a site launched on November 6, 2009 and based in Chennai, India. NalandaU.com is a site with free educational content from top universities and other institutions. There are about 300 courses (6000 videos) in topics ranging from finance to quantum mechanics to iphone programming to macroeconomics. You can watch the lecture videos, take notes, connect with your Facebook friends, take tests, etc.

There are sample courses on the site.  The site has one of the largest lecture video collections on the Internet. The site makes it easy to learn and understand ideas that text alone cannot teach. NalandaU.com categorizes and organizes content that makes it easy to find and discover what you need. The site also allows students to connect to each other, take notes and take tests.

As stated, they have about 300 courses in 75 subjects organized fewer than 10 top-level departments. Out of these include 47 are from MIT, 33 from Stanford, 24 from Yale, 11 from UCLA, 22 from Berkeley and 36 from Indian Institutes of Technology.
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By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:

Are you a fashion junkie? Are you an eShopaholic? Are you interested in the style leanings of Little J on Gossip Girl? (Apparently her hair is longer and her eyeliner is a little lighter) Would you like to know about the benefits of seaweed extract? If so, Stylecaster.com is for you.

Stylecaster.com bills itself as the world’s first personal discovery style platform. It made its online debut just four months ago and its already boasting 650k unique visitors per month. The site aims to take a 360-degree approach to providing visitors with the ingredients to discover new styles and profile their own. Based on the amount of content on the site, they appear to be doing just that.

The content is provided by former magazine fashion editors such as Chief Content Officer, Meg Cuna, formerly at Lucky Magazine and Carol Han who was previously at Elle. The site’s includes expert written content, short videos, original photography and patented 360- degree outfit inspirations. Stylecaster also gives stylists, models and other in-the-know individuals an opportunity to generate content and gain exposure to vast audiences. The site also provides a well-edited feed of the expansive fashion news on the web.

Stylecaster.com has also launched an iPhone app that tells you what you should be wearing based on the weather. The free iPhone app pulls in a weather feed and will give you the recommendations of styled “looks” based on your current location and weather conditions.
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By: the Editor

One of the things that I like about Mashspots.com is its simplicity. Based in Portland Oregon, this company which launched in January of 2008 has made your local searching a bit easier.

MashSpots.com is a free service. Just click on any location on the their map to get the four closest places of interest. Mashspots makes it easy to find places around any location without having to know the address of the location you are searching around, just search for the city you want to search at and click on any location on the map to get the 4 closest search results.

For example, type “supermarket” is the “What” field of the website, then enter your location in the “Where?” field and instantly a ton of matches appear in your location area. It is a no brainer to use this site, yet is is an great tool to use.

In addition, they have created a great Mashspots.com application for the IPhone. Just as easy and accurate to use as if you were using your desktop. Mashspots also makes it easy if you want to intergrate their service into your website.

In closing, simple, cool, fun, accurate and useful is what describes Mashspots. After 5 minutes, you will surely find this free service useful on a daily basis.