I apologize for letting w8track’s SSL certificate lapse yesterday. For about 24 hours, users have been seeing a security warning when trying to use the site. The problem should be resolved, at least until this time next year.

Thanks for your patience!

The site was suffering from a bit of weirdness today for users who were trying to sign in with their Yahoo! identities. I made a few minor configuration adjustments, and the problem appears to have been fixed.

Now’s a good time to remind everyone that you can associate more than one identity with an account key. Just re-use the secret key assigned to your account each time you sign in with a new Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, or OpenID identities. If you do this and one identity provider fails, you’ll have the others as backup.

You’ll notice yet another facelift here at w8track. I’m going to keep working on it until I get it right.

Is shedding a few pounds one of your New Year’s resolutions? If so, tracking your weight every day might be your ticket to real resolve rather than wishful thinking. Sign up for your free w8track account now!

I wrote w8track to scratch an itch.

Earlier this year, a major project I was working on was abruptly canceled, and I suddenly found myself with a shortage of work. Determined to stay active during my downtime, I started hiking nearly every morning in the beautiful mountains here in Phoenix. It didn’t take long to realize I was losing weight from my increased physical activity. I started weighing myself every morning and logging the results in a notebook. It was helpful, but it didn’t allow me to visualize my weight over the longer term. Some days I gained weight, other days I lost, and it was difficult to spot trends. I wanted to know what my weight was doing on average. So I wrote w8track.

After a hot summer mostly spent indoors, I steadily put some weight back on. I use w8track to keep myself in check. Rather than examining the raw data, I focus on the chart w8track produces. Although the green daily line is interesting, I look primarily at relationship between the purple 7-day line and the pink 30-day line. Since I’m overweight, I’m looking for the purple 7-day line to be at or below the pink 30-day line. If it is, I’m trending in the right direction. If not, like right now, I need to review my levels of diet and exercise.

Here’s an interesting thing I’ve learned since I started using w8track: I weigh more on Mondays. When I was tracking on paper, I was frustrated with a noticeable increase every week. With w8track, I look at the 7-day average, which drops a Monday weight every time it picks up a new one. As a result, my Monday bumps cancel out!

I’d love to hear your personal stories about how you use w8track. Leave a comment!

Just so you know, w8track probably won’t display correctly in older versions of Internet Explorer, like 5 or 6. Most people have upgraded to version 7 or later, and w8track should work with those versions. It should also work with the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

If you’re using an older browser and are having trouble viewing w8track or other websites, download and install the latest version of Firefox, Safari, or Chrome. You’ll thank yourself.

The first w8track screencast has just arrived on YouTube:

In this brief video, I show you how incredibly simple it is to start tracking your weight with w8track, using your Facebook account to sign in. For the demonstration, I assume you’re a first-time w8track user and you already have a Facebook account but are not signed in.

As many of you have already noticed, you can now sign into w8track with your Facebook profile by clicking the Sign in with Facebook link on the Sign in form.

The first time you sign in with Facebook, you’ll need to follow the instructions for authorizing w8track. This ensures w8track has permission to identify you with your Facebook profile. w8track does not publish anything to your Facebook stream, and your weight entries are kept private. w8track only uses Facebook to identify you when you sign in.

Existing accounts

If you already have an existing w8track account, you can associate your Facebook profile with your existing account. You may want to sign into w8track first with your existing identity (Yahoo!, Google, etc.), so that you can retrieve your secret key. When you arrive at the New account screen, follow the instructions for I have an account.

Become a fan

Even if you prefer not to sign in with Facebook, we’d love you to become a fan of w8track on Facebook. Help us spread the word!