iChange, like so many other sites, offers guidance on losing weight and eating well…but it goes so far beyond what other sites are currently offering with a number of unique features. Let me just highlight a few:

• When you register with iChange you can choose a personal nutritionist to assist you. Right now this is either Diana Young (registered dietitian, specializes in ADA methods, served as Chief Clinical Dietitian at two major hospitals) and Linda Miner (registered nutritional counselor, specializes in metabolic typing, holistic and alternative medicine approach). These folks are really available to you – ready to answer questions and give you counsel on how to progress towards better health.
• iChange takes a really holistic approach. Many sites focus on weight loss, mood monitoring, nutritional diets, and so on – but very few talk a full-fledged and well-rounded approach. iChange offers nutritional/meals modeling, weight loss / exercise, fluids, calorie, mood, energy, sleep and stress monitoring.
• They offer a simple checklist that only has three items on it at a time that encourage you to take small steps towards increasing your health. As you finish a step you are given another task. You can bang these out or take your time.
• There is an incentive system – its minor (e.g. web-based “awards”) – but still pretty cool. We all like “earning” awards or achieving accomplishments (why else do so many people play farmville)?
• The community is proactive in reaching out. Within hours of registering I received a contact from another member (a SuperCharger) who asked how I was, introduced herself, let me know how she’d successfully used iChange, and generally provided encouragement to continue on. This is unlike other communities for health I’ve been involved in, where there isn’t that sort of proactive effort to reach out to new members.

You might think a site like this would cost something – many other health sites with more limited functionality do – or have a freemium model. But iChange is entirely free.

So, my advice – go register. Give it a try. It takes ten minutes to get yourself through the initial setup and its very intuitive. I think you’ll find it well worth your time.

In closing, I’d like to make a list of some enhancements I’d like to see in iChange. While these are enhancements that should be implemented – I’ll reiterate again that iChange is far ahead of any competitors I’ve seen thus far.

• The ability to monitor medication intake.
• Eventually, the site will need a profit model – they have a few links to Amazon associate products tucked away, but this really should be tightly integrated into the system.
• There is a nice row of boxes along the top with checkboxes that show you your progress in various areas, unfortunately they aren’t clickable!
• The iChange site is a bit slow sometimes. Need to ramp up the server power.
• Links in emails to attached documents take you to the main iChange page – not very helpful.
• When you download a document, its name is just a string of random letters and numbers, it’d be nice if the PDFs had names reflecting their purpose. Of course, I can rename them, but still…
• Create a Facebook app. – this will be a huge marketing item. It will provide individuals who view an iChange profile with a quick and convincing advertisement to use the program – e.g. when they see we’ve lost ten lbs using the service and so on.
• Eventually, it’d be pretty cool to see it allow us to “schedule” things we should be doing on a semi-regular basis – e.g. do we need to make an appointment with the dentist, doctor, or optomologist? I’d like to see this expanded to include more general task management – I used to use a service (whose name I can’t remember and has since closed) that reminded me of things I needed to do around the house and with my automobile – allowing me to take better care of my house and belonging – things like changing furnace filters, checking batteries in smoke alarms, and taking the car in for inspection/maintenance.
• I’ll add more as I think of them.

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Sometimes the problem with accomplishing a charitable objective is not convincing people to support an endeavor but simply making them aware of the need and how they can be a part of the solution[1. I do believe in the sickness of mankind - corporately and individually. In other words, I do not believe we are a blank slate capable of perfect good, but rather irretrievably corrupted, redeemable only via super-natural means. In such, I agree with traditional ideas on the depravity on man. However, too often the fact that we are sick has been used to describe us as dead. We yet bear a bit of that perfect image in which we were formed and while we will always make bad choices this does not preclude us from making good choices. Evangelacism too often has failed to lead causes in arenas such as social justice because of a misuse of the concept of depravity. I consider myself solidly evangelical but unwilling to allow depravity to overcome ideas of social justice, charity, and humanity. It is a partial explanation of, but not a full picture, the nature and future of man.]. I believe this is the case with the World Community Grid and I want to share with each of you about this exciting project that meets real needs and that each of us can painlessly participate in.

The Problem:

Humans cannot perform the calculations fast enough for many of the massive scientific and medical experiment currently in process. We need the assistance of computers to perform these massive calculations faster and reliably. Unfortunately, super-computers with massive processing power are in limited supply and expensive to either build or rent. This places a strain on medical and scientific researchers as they must secure extra funds or wait for computing resources to become available.

The Solution:

The World Community Grid allows individuals to install an application on their computer that essentially allows their computer to become part of a massive super-computer. Already hundreds of thousands of individuals participate, and well over a million machines are involved. Already we have contributed 195,000 years of processing power to various projects.

The Questions:

• Will my computer run slower? Yes and no. In a strictly literal sense, it will – because its doing something else in the background. But in a realistic sense, there are generally no tangible changes in system performance. The software automatically reduces its resource utilization when you are actively utilizing the computer[2. You can always turn off the application temporarily or permanently.].
• What sort of projects are these researchers working on? Cures/treatments for cancers, AIDs, muscular dystrophy, STDs, malaria, and flavivirus infections (e.g. West Nile encephalitis and yellow fever). The projects also model climate predictions and look for effective food hybrids (e.g. a more nutritious rice).

Conclusion:

Go to WorldCommunityGrid.org and sign up for a free account. Its easy, fun, and really makes a difference. In the U.S. alone we have a population of well over 200 million. Right now there are less than one million participants and we are already accomplishing amazing things. Join us for this exciting journey! If you have questions or encounter problems please enter them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer each one.

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