Off-Line Data Storage

One of the things I like best about DietPower
is that it is a stand alone software program,
and I don't have to be online to use it.

If, in the future, it changed to an online program,
as much as I love it,
I doubt if I would purchase the online program.,
For certain, I would still choose to use the current off-line DietPower
which I can load from a purchased disk.

DietPower works with Windows, but not with Macintosh.
In order to do videos for DietHobby, I got a Mac as an additional computer.
I installed the parallel program which allows it to run windows programs,
and then installed DietPower. At first it LOOKED like this was operational,
but after entering new data in the DietPower program inside the Mac,
a technical glitch occurs which makes the program non-operational.
In the Mac, DietPower seems fine for viewing, but is non-operational,
because it doesn’t support actual logging use.

There are similar online food journaling programs. One of these is "fit day",
another is "thedailyplate", another is “Lose it”. Some online programs
are free and others charge a monthly fee for continued access.
DietPower works with any kind of food plan.
It has a large data base of its own,
and gives me the ability to add any extra foods (using label information)
and also input recipes of my choice. Every time I make a homemade food,
I add the recipe to my DietPower dictionary, and almost all of my
all-time favorites are now inside the program.

It is important to me to have my personal data available off line.
There are times when I am unable to get online, but when this happens
I still eat, and I want to continue my Habit of logging in my food.
I also like the security that storing my own data gives me,
and a daily back-up only takes a few seconds of my time.

Online programs are managed by the owners of that website.
and my access to my own data there is subject to their whims.
At some sites if I want to retain access to my records,
I must pay an ongoing fee. Deciding against future use
also results in the loss of my past data that I previously entered.
If a web-site shuts down, my data is also lost.

A web-site owner can arbitrarily block my IP address from his site
at any time for any reason. Recently I experienced this
at a weight graphing program called” Physicsdiet” .

I’d been using the program for about a year and a half,
and liked it a great deal. In fact I posted it in DietHobby’s Links section,
and I was planning to feature the program in an article here.
However, two or three months ago a computer glitch occurred,
which caused the program to change the way it handled my file.
The program began automatically logging me out,
and would not allow me to log in.

Every day since that began, when I found myself locked out,
I left a courteous message for the site owner
letting him know the problem and asking him for help and suggestions.
I told him that I liked his program and even informed him of my plan to
recommend it here at DietHobby. He returned none of my messages,
however he was kind enough to log me in himself quite a few times
which allowed me to update my records.

But instead of fixing the problem, or e-mailing a message to me
in response to my many courteous pleas for help,
one morning I found that he had banned my IP address.
I assume that this was his solution to the problem.
However it forever shut off my access to the data I have stored there,
and made it impossible for me to contact him.
My point is that any website owner can choose to take any action
with that site, and therefore the off-line storage of data can sometimes be
very important. Fortunately, I have all my weight and calorie data stored on
my own computer, and this recent action of Physicsdiet was merely
an inconvenience for me.