The Stackpile

New Year’s Resolution? One of the most common and popular resolution is weight lose and I have one workout that I highly recommend – spinning! Ever heard of it?!

Here is a definition of spinning according to Wikipedia:
Indoor cycling is a form of high-intensity exercise that involves using a stationary exercise bicycle in a classroom setting.

I’m a spin fanatic! After the recommendations of my instructors and fellow spinners, I decided to get Johnny G spin-certified through Mad Dogg Athletics. It was an 8-9 hour course that I would suggest to anyone who is seriously considering becoming an instructor. More information on becoming certified can be found at www.spinning.com.

The Benefits of Spinning:

1.) Spinning makes your heart pump at 80 percent of its capacity as opposed to 50 to 65 percent normally. This improves all your metabolic functions like digestion, repair, etc.

2.) A one hour spinning session can burn anything between 800 to 1,200 calories per session. This doesn’t mean you gorge on food and then spin four hours a day. It’s important to note that your body can only tolerate 1 hour of spinning a day.

Considering giving spin a try? Here is a little dialogue of how an average class runs:

Warm up

Everyone has their bike set up, seated, in hand position one, shoulders relaxed, arms down and starting to pedal as the beat of the music begins — the warm-up session is started.

Low resistance to begin with as a small amount more is added on for stability and to get the legs pumping. There is a resistance knob on all bikes and is manually operated. By turning the knob, you can fix the resistance at a level that feels best; listen to your body. By being able to control the resistance, your body exerts at the level at which it can perform best; at the same time, you do not under-perform.

Warm up lasts approximately 5 minutes.

Work those muscles

From the warm up we launch straight into the workout and don’t stop until it’s time to cool down. You will be taken through various speeds and positions of cycling, which ensure your back, feet and stomach get excellent exercise, keeping in mind your capacity and body type. Remember your core! (What is your core? Click here.)

As the simulated terrain changes from standing hill climb, seated climb, flat road standing, etc, there is never a dull moment. Spinning is a cardio workout for the overall conditioning of the body.

The instructor will direct you with cues, such as when to stand and sit, as well as demonstrating the proper stance(s) used throughout the workout. Your legs should never stop cycling!

Keep drinking water and let the glucose pump your body; don’t let the cycling cease. The instructor not only directs but provides encouragement and inspires you to work harder.

Let’s not forget all this is happening while the driving force behind the class is the beat of the music that helps to drive you to perform better.

How much ever fun it may sound, spinning is tiring and strenuous. For newer spinners, you may be praying for the clock to reach that one hour mark; time may seem to be playing tricks with you.

And then before you know it … your time’s up!

Cool down

You start to slow down your pace but still cycling; decreasing the resistance and gradually start on an easy, rolling phase.

Stretching

The last, best and most important part of the work out!

While seated in the sadle, you stretch your leg and hand muscles to ease them of the pain and tension. By the end of the one hour spinning session, sweat will have enveloped your body like water on a fish, so beware!

Posted by Marissa on January 22nd, 2008
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January is normally considered a graveyard month for movies—it’s where bad films go to be buried. But there is one movie that has me excited this winter: Cloverfield.

The weird thing is, I have no idea what Cloverfield is about.  But then again, neither does anybody else.  That’s what’s got us all charged up.

Other than a brief, extremely shaky and confusing trailer, Paramount Pictures has released very little information on the film.  Instead, they’ve opted for a risky marketing campaign whose central driving force is secrecy and speculation.  The trailer was released months ago, but it’s hard to glean any facts from it.  New York appears to be under attack, but by who, or what?  And Cloverfield—what does that mean?  As cryptic a title as it is, the original trailer actually aired without a title of any kind—only the numbers 11808 (the release date). In fact, the film was reportedly shrouded in secrecy from the beginning. During auditions, for example, actors were not allowed to see the full script.  Some were given decoy lines written specifically for audition purposes.

Of course, the film’s producer, J.J. Abrams, is no stranger to hype.  He is the creator of two TV series founded on the interplay between mystery and revelation: Alias and Lost.  But it will be interesting to see if his bet pays off this time.  This sort of gimmick has been pulled before in the movie world—similar internet-heavy, uber-secretive campaigns were launched for the Blair Witch Project and Snakes on a Plane.  But pre-release hype does not always translate into cash flow. Blair Witch was a huge hit, but Snakes…well, all I remember from that is Samuel L. Jackson screaming, “I have had it with these [expletive deleted] snakes on the [expletive deleted] plane!” And that I got for free, from YouTube.

I guess we’ll see this Friday if Cloverfield goes the way of the witch or the way of the snake (on a plane).

Posted by Simon on January 16th, 2008
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And with the new year comes the annual “Very Funny Ads,” show from TBS. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of watching this show, it shows the funny ads from the past year from all over the world. They also have a website where people can view all of the ads and then rate them on a scale of 1- 5. The majority of the ads are from other countries, mainly because they have more advertising freedom than the U.S.

My favorite ad from this show was one from Canada for the Hearing Foundation of Canada. I love this ad because it makes you die laughing and I actually remembered what the ad was promoting. Usually in ads with humor you forget two seconds after the commercial has ended what the product was. I recommend taking a look at this website and checking out some of the very hysterical and very creative ads from Europe and other countries. Another favorite of mine is for Hydro Energy, this is one of the most creative ads I saw while watching the show.

Posted by Kristin on January 7th, 2008
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Constantly there are articles and opinions on Google – the recent merger efforts with DoubleClick, the criticism on the familiar elements and new layout of YouTube, the development of Knol, and on and on.

A lot of the critics are right – Google is building a empire to own the online experience, but they are also trying to improve it for us online users. Google has developed a number of free tools for public use, continues to develop and integrate new technologies for easier searching and is hopefully going to help provide a competitor to Wikipedia that provides some level of accreditation to the information being posted.

I understand everyone’s frustration with the Google empire, but if we let them continue and build functions and ranking that makes sense and allows us to quickly locate the information we are looking for, we may just find ourselves enjoying the search experience. Well, that is if the remove ebay from their listings again and discontinue the use of the keyword term replacement feature in their Adwords system. And, if they can reduce the constant movement of the new TestTube Warp functionality a bit, maybe some of us with motion sickness will be able to enjoy this tool a bit more.

Personally, from the examples of Knol that are available to view, I am interested in this new opportunity as an online user that finds Wikipedia as an untrustworthy resource. Check out an example of Knol. I do agree that if indeed all the top search results through Google start presenting only the Google owned partner sites, such as Knol and YouTube, that this will surely become an issue. And, if the Google executives are that ignorant of the online community’s intelligence and allow this to develop just as the critics are warning, then they are eventually going to end their own success story.

Check out another great feature from Google to help broadcast Nonprofits.

And, if you are still undecided for a candidate in the Presidential Election, although most of the videos are long, the YouChoose’08 page is very interesting.

Posted by Christina on January 3rd, 2008
Filed under Miscellaneous, Search Engine Marketing, Web | No Comments »