Web sites to track just about anything

In the last couple of months I've started using a few new Web sites - some more useful than others. One can be used to track the places I've been, though with my good memory I can pretty much do that on my own. One helps me track my spending and budget my money, which I had been doing with excel. Another helps me track how many miles I'm logging at the gym.

A friend of mine told me about Foursquare, an app you can download to your phone so that you can "check in" at different places. The goal is to unlock badges and to compete to by "mayor" by having the highest number of check ins. For instance, I am "mayor" of my gym, Snap Fitness, with 78 check ins in the last Foursquare can be connected to facebook or twitter so other people can see all the places you've been. The program uses gps to locate places that are nearby, but users can also search for a specific place if it doesn't come up. And they can add new locations if one is not listed.

For a couple of weeks, I connected my foursquare account to facebook and probably really annoyed my friends with all the udpates about where I was. But I quickly realized that the foursquare updates would make a perfect storyline for an episode of "Law and Order: SVU," where victims are stalked based on their online posts. I wasn't really worried about someone stalking me, but a former boss did caution me to be careful so for his peace of mind I made my posts private.

The only people who can see the posts are a couple of friends who use it, too. I used to log in a lot in the first month I used it. But I have to admit, I don't really see the point of it. I mostly just check in at the gym in the morning.

But another site I've started using as proved a lot more useful. Someone mentioned mint.com to me and suggested I use it as a resource to track money flow. And then one of my best friends recommended it to me, too, so I signed up. The way the site works is that users connect their checking, savings and credit card accounts on a mint. It makes it really easy to put together a budget for different types of expenses - gas, clothing, food, rent - and it breaks it all out for users. I've been using it for about two months - and it's made me more aware of how I spend my money. A lot of it goes to student loan payments, and lately a lot of it has been going to wedding-related expenses for my cousin's recent wedding and a friend's wedding later this month.

The site is really easy to use and it e-mails you if you go over your budget for any category or with weekly updates.

I've also recently started using dailymile - like really recently as in yesterday. The same friend who told me about the other sites mentioned this as he set a goal for himself of running 100 miles by August. while I have no such lofty goal as that, I thought it would be a nice way to track how much I walk and run, as well as give some motivation for increasing my pace.

So far, I've tracked three workouts - and I am including my daily walk with the dog - and it will be interesting to see how many miles I can rack up.