Tanya Thompson / @thompsontanya commented about a device on Twitter this morning that caught my eye… It is the Withings / @Withings Wi-Fi connected scale, which uses network connectivity to log and track your weight loss (or gain) among other things.

You can view your trends with a web interface, and access the data with your iPhone. I believe something like this really could encourage you to lose some weight. Recently there have been news stories which cite studies about weight loss and the results indicate that those who use internet weight tracking actually do lose more weight and manage to maintain that loss better than those who do not.

The thing that bothers me is that it will Tweet out your weight once a week to Twitter. All I could think was exactly what it would be tweeting when I stepped on it… Something like, “HELP ME! This fat guy is smushing me!” is probably what it would have to say about me! Still, it is an interesting gadget and I would love to have it. Who knows, maybe I will order one. Follow me on Twitter to see what this thing has to say!

The FCC wants you to signup to shape the future of broadband in America

The FCC is looking for about 10,000 good men and women to help test their broadband connections in certain markets and from certain providers by installing a piece of equipment to meter the throughput at their home.

If you are interested in participating, you can go to https://www.testmyisp.com/ and fill out the application. You must meet certain requirements, such as having a high speed / broadband connection like cable or DSL from prividers such as Charter, AT&T, Cable One, Cablevision, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Clearwire, Comcast, Cox,  Fairpoint, Frontier, Hughes, Insight, Mediacom, Qwest, RCN, Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner), Verizon, WildBlue/ViaSat, Windstream, or “other”, which will allow you to write in your broadband provider.

Apparently, they will place a simple device onto your LAN, and you must agree to the terms of usage, such as leaving it on 24/7, not trying to reverse engineer the device, etc.

Conspiracy theories are already out there that this device will be doing more than watching your throughput, such as watching your browsing habits. Possible, but unlikely. The company that has partnered with the FCC would probably not want to get that kind of bad press if this were found to be true.

I signed up our home and will let you know if we are selected…