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SendMeHome Simplifies Recovering Lost Items
Posted by Lifehacker US Edition at 12:40 AM on September 19, 2008
It's a great big world out there for a tiny thing like a lost iPod or mobile phone. SendMeHome is a free web based application that generates unique ID tags for your items, so that should a good Samaritan find your lost item, a short trip to SendMeHome.com is all it takes to send you a message indicating that your item has been found and how you can get it back. The site has packets of labels you can purchase or print, or you can write the SendMeHome ID number on the object with a permanent marker. If you have a different method of tagging your items to help them return home, share it below in the comments.
You don't need to plunk down $150 for a Wii Fit to track your progress toward a healthier body—even if that downhill skiing game looks mighty fun. If you're trying to curb unnecessary calories and stick to an exercise plan, there are tons of free applications that want to see you succeed. Whether you're facing a fast-food menu or polishing off a light entree, you can log, track, and make healthy decisions from your desktop, or just as easily from a phone. Take a look at a few suggestions for accomplishing your fitness goals, after the jump. Photo by 
US-centric - Free fuel-tracking service FuelFrog provides a service you could technically do yourself, but it's a lot more convenient than keeping a paper journal and doing monthly division work. Whenever you fill up your car, you can Twitter FuelFrog with your miles since the last fill-up, price per gallon, and gallons pumped, and your data will be graphed and tracked to show you how many miles per gallon you're getting. It can serve as visual reinforcement to start 
If you've ever sent out an email or link to a friend and wanted to know if they actually clicked on the link, webapp LinkBlip will inform you. LinkBlip is an easy-to-use application that notifies you by email as soon as someone clicks on a shortened URL that is generated by the service. Additionally, general geographic information is listed so that you know where the person is located. While LinkBlip has potential for large scale mail blasts, it only works once—so that you're not emailed multiple times if your friends decide it's fun to click on the link again and again. LinkBlip is free and requires a valid email address for registration and to review the status of the link.
Got data to graph but not much in the way of spreadsheet skills? Web app Track-n-Graph gives you all kinds of bar, line, and other graphs and chart templates to use or create, as well as a simple interface for putting in the data to create them. There's a number of handy templates on the site already, including mileage and health-related trackers, and you can collaborate on your data projects with others or embed the results in a web site. A free sign-up limits you to five data projects, with unlimited use available for $25 or a single-graph upgrade for $5. For more personal project data trackers, try 
Windows only: Free, open source application Personal Task Manager (PTM) tracks how you spend your time at the computer. The application is developed to look and feel a bit like the Windows Task Manager, but it's goal is to help you manage a completely different breed of tasks. As soon as you run PTM, it starts tracking what applications you're using and when you're not using your computer and logs all of that data to your database. Once it's been running for a bit, take a look at the mile-high stats and charts to get a better idea of how and where you're spending your computing time. PTM is basically an open source version of previously mentioned trackers like 
