Yogi Land

Now you can check your blood pressure using your iPhone or iPad with two products that make it easy — download an app onto your iOS device, put on a blood pressure cuff, tap the touchscreen, and soon you have a blood pressure reading that you can track every day. They’re quick and reasonably priced, but are they accurate?

For my tests, I pitted the iHealth BP3 for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad against the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor, which also works with the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. Our family doctor’s been taking blood pressure readings for 30 years, so I figured he’d be a good one to give me his opinion about these devices. So I took both units to his office and comparing their readings with that of an old-fashioned manual blood pressure cuff in his skilled hands.

iHealth BP3

Like a conventional BP cuff, it's secured to the arm with Velcro.

With an iPad 2

In addition to the iPhone app, there's a free iPad app available.

Rear View

iPad and iPad 2 both fit.

Works with iPhone

Press Start to begin.

iHealth BP3

It's a charging station.

Rear View

That's a USB connector to charge the dock and your iOS device, too

Side View

There's the port for the air hose.

iHealth iPhone app

Clean interface, great graphic features, and you can share your results on Twitter and Facebook, as well as email.

This $99 iHealth BP3 blood pressure monitor also functions as a charging dock. I tested it with an iPad, iPad 2 and an iPhone 4, all of which fit easily into this attractive desktop unit. You plug the air hose into the side of the dock, and the other end is permanently attached to the blood pressure cuff.

The doctor showed me the proper way to use a blood pressure cuff, placing it about an inch above the elbow, and after touching the start button, the iHealth was doing its work, making a subdued whirring sound. Take a look at the video below that compares the two test units, and you’ll get an idea of how they work — they feel just like any other blood pressure cuff, and for this iHealth unit, the whole process took only 31 seconds seconds for each test.

The free iHealth app looks great on the iPad and iPhone. It displays systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings as well as pulse in beats per minute. I especially like its graphing feature, which works in both portrait and landscape mode, showing you the history of blood pressure readings over time. I also like the way it can share blood pressure readings via email, but I’m not sure I’d want to opt for its other capabilities: sharing on Facebook or Twitter.

After two tests on each arm (with a bit of waiting in between for blood vessels to go back to their normal state), the blood pressure readings were all in the same range of around 120/80. While none of the readings were exactly alike, all were within the margin of error of the traditional blood pressure cuff used by the doctor. The doctor called iHealth “accurate,” and especially liked the way the dock held the iPhone at an easily viewed angle. He also liked the iHealth’s blood pressure cuff, commenting that he thought it was more comfortable than the other one we tested from Withings. Here’s a video of both units in action:

An added advantage of the iHealth BP3 is its ability to function as a dock even when you’re not using it to measure blood pressure. Plug its included cable into the AC adapter included with iOS devices, and you have yourself a sleek-looking charging station. The dock itself also needs to be charged, so it can perform its blood pressure measurement duties without the necessity of being near a power outlet. The upside of that? It runs on its own power, and doesn’t use power from the iPhone or iPad. The makers of iHealth say it’ll run for 100 tests on a charge. Neat.

Withings Blood Pressure Monitor

It's a self-contained unit, but relys on battery power from an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Other Side

Secured to the arm with Velcro

Side View

Plug in the dock connector, and it's ready to go.

Top View

The flexible cuff is more rigid and not quite as comfortable as the iHealth's cuff.

Ready for Testing

Displaying Results

Here it is with an iPhone 4.

Secure Fit

It's easy to place on the arm and well designed.

Withings iPhone App

Here's the readout after a test. I like the way you can combine blood pressure readings with weight and body fat measurements from the Withings Wi-Fi scale

This $129 Withings Blood Pressure Monitor is a self-contained unit, with the universal dock connector that plugs into an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Its blood pressure cuff is more rigid, making it slightly less comfortable than the iHealth, but a little easier to manage when you’re placing it on your arm.

When you first connect the unit to your iOS device, you’re prompted to download the free Withings app. Because I already use a Withings Wi-Fi scale, I already had the app on my iPhone and iPad, and I immediately realized the advantage Withings has here: On a single graph, you can see daily measurements of your weight and body fat percentage delivered by Wi-Fi, along with your blood pressure readings from this blood pressure device. You can email all that data to your doctor or caretaker, too. This e-medicine routine gives you an idea of what the remote health care of the future might be like.

As I did with the iHealth BP3, the doctor and I performed three separate blood pressure readings on each arm (each test taking 35 seconds to complete, 4 seconds slower than the iHealth), and compared those the readings taken by the doctor using the traditional blood pressure cuff. All the readings from the Withings unit were within the same range as the blood pressure cuff and the iHealth BP3. The doctor proclaimed it equally accurate, but thought the Withings self-contained blood pressure cuff was bulkier and less comfortable than the iHealth’s, and thought the way the connector plugged into the iPhone and iPad (without that dock used in the iHealth) made the screen less convenient to operate and view.

As you saw in the video above, the Withings system offers its results on a nicely designed app that shows the systolic and diastolic blood pressure readings as well as heart rate. The Withings app also allows its readings to be shared on Facebook and Twitter, and has the added advantage of connecting with Microsoft HealthVault and GoogleHealth, allowing you to keep all of your health records in one place.

Which is best? Both units are easy to use, accurate, and work well. If you don’t already have a charging dock for your iPad or iPhone, the iHealth would be a better choice, and at $99.95, it’s a better overall value. If you already have a Withings Wi-Fi scale, you might want to choose the Withings blood pressure monitor (even though it costs $29.05 more than the iHealth BP3), so you can coordinate your weight and body fat measurements with your blood pressure readings and see them all on one graph together.

Best of all, neither of these units require a stethoscope and medical training to use and are reasonably priced (especially if you already have an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch), giving you daily readings of your blood pressure that might make you aware of a previously unknown condition, and perhaps even save your life.

More About: blood pressure monitors, hands-on, iHealth, iHealth BP3, ipad, iphone, iPod Touch, reviews, Withings

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More than a year after its debut on the iPad, iWork, Apple’s suite of productivity apps, is now available on iPhone and iPod touch.

Apple’s iWork apps — Keynote, Pages and Numbers specifically — have been available on the iPad since the device’s debut last year. The apps, which retail for $9.99 each, provide users the ability to create presentations, documents and spreadsheets using Apple’s multi-touch interface. The apps were only for the iPad, though — iPhone and iPod touch users were out of luck. It made sense at the time: advanced word processing didn’t seem like an ideal task for the phone.

Today though, Apple announced that it has updated the iWork apps to work on the smaller screens of the iPod touch and iPhone. Pages, Keynote and Numbers each retail for $9.99 on the iPhone, although they’re free to download if you’ve already purchased the iPad versions. The apps have almost the same functionality as they have on the iPad. Users are able to write work proposals and create spreadsheets with their iPhones, though their thumbs may appreciate the larger screen of the iPad more. A few rulers and toolbars aren’t present on the iPhone and iPod touch versions, but that’s not a surprise given the smaller screen.

One other catch: Pages, Keynote and Numbers only work on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, the third-generation iPod touch and the fourth-generation iPod touch. We’re a little surprised that Apple didn’t decide to release these apps during Steve Jobs’s keynote at WWDC next week, but it has plenty of other goodies up its sleeve.

More About: iOS, ipad, iPad 2, iphone, iphone 4, iPod Touch, iwork, keynote, numbers, Pages

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Arrr! Ye Mashable readers know today be Talk Like a Pirate Day 2010, but were ye landlubbers aware that there be more ways t’ celebrate online than there are bottles o’ rum in ol’ Jack Sparrow’s locker?

Thar be danger in the social media seas — sour enemies tellin’ tales that aren’t ‘tall funny. Ye scurvy dogs want only the best when ye enjoy ye Internet memes!

These five selections be just a few o’ th’ ways ye and ye hearties can set sail together this evenin’, so be sure and parlay in th’ comments if ye be havin’ any other clever ideas.

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1. Make Facebook Speak Pirate

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Facebook supports countless languages, but one of them is pirate speak — did you know that? Just go to “Account Settings” (in the top-right corner of your Facebook home page), click the “Language” tab and pick “English (Pirate).”

The result can only be described as hilarity. Be sure and look around all over Facebook because virtually everything is affected. Events are now “Grog Fests,” all your friends’ names begin with “Cap’n,” the act of deleting comments is achieved by clicking “T’ Davy Jones wit’ it!” and the Like button simply says “Arr!”

Other companies have piggybacked their own gags on this. Visit Mint.com’s Facebook page in your native language, then return in English (Pirate) and you’ll see what we’re talking about.

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2. Use Google Maps to Find Pirate Parrrties Tonight

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Pirate Parrrties are being held across the globe in celebration of Talk Like a Pirate Day 2010. Some people dress up, drink rum, bring parrots and actually talk like pirates, so if you’re into that more power to ya, but some folks just show up for good conversation and a beer or two. And there’s no arguing with the appeal of that.

There’s a Google Map that shows the locations of numerous parrrties around the world. Just click one one of the blue markers for more information and set sail for a night of plundering, grog and adventure.

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3. Watch Funny Pirate YouTube Videos

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This one’s pretty obvious. Just search YouTube for “Talk Like a Pirate Day” (or just “pirates”) and you’ll uncover a treasure trove of hilarity from the past few years of celebrations. We don’t have much to add to this — just try it!

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Read the Funny Pirate Tweets

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This is really the heart of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and it’s where it all began — with people talking like pirates on Facebook and Twitter. Search Twitter for “Talk Like a Pirate Day” and you’re bound to see some retweets of some very funny messages.

Our favorite so far is the one we’ve included above from NPR News. “N-P-Aaarrrrrrrrr!!!” Get it? Yeah, you get it. Now go get some more funny tweets.

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Play Most of the Monkey Island Saga For Mere Pennies

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Ron Gilbert’s The Secret of Monkey Island, produced by LucasArts, is one of the greatest computer adventure games of all time. It’s chock full of gorgeous artwork, hilarious characters, hysterical dialogue and ridiculous puzzles. The series was recently rebooted with remastered, high definition versions of the first two games (so far) on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Additionally, a well-respected adventure games studio called Telltale Games produced episodic new adventures called Tales of Monkey Island. The only two Monkey Island games you can’t play recent versions of are Curse of Monkey Island and Escape From Monkey Island, though if you’re crafty you should be able to get those to work on your PC.

However, both of the Remastered re-releases and the entire Tales series are on sale for practically nothing this weekend in celebration of Talk Like a Pirate Day. These deals are simply incredible, especially the iPhone ones and the Tales bundle. Here are the links:

The Secret of Monkey Island (iPhone) — $0.99
The Secret of Monkey Island (iPad) — $4.99
Monkey Island II: LeChuck’s Revenge (iPhone) — $0.99
Monkey Island II: LeChuck’s Revenge (iPad) — $4.99
The Secret of Monkey Island & Monkey Island II: LeChuck’s Revenge (PC) – $7.49 for the set
Tales of Monkey Island Episodes 1-5 (PC, Mac) — $4.95 for the set

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, JerryPDX

More About: adventure, Events, facebook, Google, Google Maps, international talk like a pirate day, international talk like a pirate day 2010, iOS, ipad, iphone, iPod Touch, language, lucasarts, mac, memes, mint, mint.com, monkey island, monkey island 2, monkey island 2 lechuck's revenge, parties, pc, pirates, ron gilbert, social media, social networking, steam, tales of monkey island, talk like a pirate day, talk like a pirate day 2010, telltale games, The Secret of Monkey Island, twitter, video games, videos, youtube

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As I have mentioned several days ago, iPhone can become very helpful when it comes to productivity. Its applications provide great helps from "finding the closest McDonald's around you" to "Manage Your Monthly Budgets". As I surfed  BargainBin on April 4th, 2009, I found another great application called "Project Manager says…".

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A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers can have the responsibility of the planning, execution, and closing of any project, typically relating to construction industry, architecture, computer networking, telecommunications or software development. Many other fields in the production, design and service industries also have project managers.

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I purchased an iPhone in January 2009. It is very helpful when it comes to productivity. I can organize my personal and business calendars, contacts, notes, finance, musics, videos, etc. in one device. Applications such as Facebook, Pandora, Skype, EnCamp, BofA, etc. are very helpful, but some of them do not come with no cost. Luckily, I found an iPhone Applicationthat can tell us when there is a bargain on a non-free application. It is called BargainBin.

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