April 2013
1 post
Lots of excitment!!!
Hello fellow Health Month-ers,
It has been quite some time since the last blog post (we do apologize), but please don’t take this to mean that we haven’t be hard at work - we have been! And we’re pleased to announce a new batch of changes coming your way. See below for a list of updates that will hit the site within the next week. As always, if you have any questions or...
January 2013
2 posts
Email Bug - "Ongoing game..."
It appears that with our last update, we introduced a new bug to the system that many people seem to be affected by. An email is being sent out with the subject “Ongoing game on Health Month” that is suppose to remind people who haven’t played their turns in awhile to come back and do so. Unfortunately, it is sending them to everyone currently playing a game with us.
I just...
Update Changelog - Monday Jan. 14
Sorry for the short notice (and delayed notice in a couple cases below), but we will be updating the site with a few items on Monday January 14th. The primary reason for the upgrade is that a security hole has been found in the version of coding HealthMonth uses currently, and therefore, it needs to be patched. So we’ll take care of that, along with adding the following changes:
- fix...
Happy New Year Promo 2013
Tired of setting resolutions for the new year that you don’t stick to? Try something that works - HealthMonth.com.
To kick off 2013 with a bang, we’re offering a deal that is too good to pass up. For just $20.13, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of a premium account to HealthMonth.com until the end of June. And, if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also throw in 2...
December 2012
5 posts
Update Changelog - Friday Dec. 21
We will be launching some new updates tomorrow that we have been working on. Most of these updates are bug fixes, but there are a couple of changes as well. If you have any questions, please let us know.
Problem with top-nav displaying in Firefox on a Mac (bug fix)
Buying sponsorship chips doesn’t go to PayPal screen in Chrome (bug fix)
Improvements for team organizer sidebar (enhancement)
...
Team Points Now Correct
Just a quick note to let everyone know that we’ve upload a fix for the bug regarding team points. For the past couple of weeks, team points were not being calculated or displayed correctly - causing rankings to also be thrown a curveball. This should now be fixed.
If you notice anything still wrong with them, please let us know.
Thanks.
HM Gift Certificates Available
Stuck for a Christmas gift, why not give them the gift of HealthMonth? Available in 3 and 12 month certificates, follow the steps below to acquire one:
1) Purchase the gift certificate amount you want via PayPal. - 3 months @ $15.00 - CLICK HERE
- 12 months @ $50.00 - CLICK HERE
2) Once you have made a payment via PayPal, make note of your Transaction ID - you’ll need it for the...
Usernames now displayed by default
Due to popular demand for more privacy measures throughout the site, we have started making changes in that direction. One of the consistent requests we got had to do with the display of usernames vs. real names - depending on what page people were viewing, they would see a username or the person’s real name. The obvious argument became “why do I have a username, if you’re...
November 2012
1 post
Hamsters at Work
We’ve been working hard the past month to bring a major update to the Health Month community. And now, the wait is over. If you have gone to www.healthmonth.com and you are seeing this post, it means we’re doing some upgrades that require the site to be offline (sorry!).
So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that by popular request, we’ve made major improvements to...
October 2012
2 posts
Rules Import Wizard
A big thanks to the Health Monthers who notified us of a bug in the system, where it would not let you import last months rules into next month.
Good news - the bug has been squashed and it is now fixed. As soon as we heard about the bug jumped to action and cracked the whip on our dev crew.
So once again you can import your rules as expected. If anyone runs into any other problems or bugs...
Per-Rule Email Reminders
Ever setup a rule for yourself and wished you could be reminded by more than just your daily nudge email? Well now you can.
All right, no more infomercial talk.
But seriously, you now have the option of being reminded for each individual rule - on a schedule that you setup. However, full disclosure on this one, you do have to be a paying member of the site. This means that even if you setup 3...
September 2012
2 posts
New Month Reminder Emails
As you have probably noticed by now, your inbox was the lucky recipient of a freshly minted reminder email yesterday informing you that a new month is coming - and therefore, you should be thinking about a new set of rules.
Due to user feedback via the Idea Tracker, we’ll send this reminder email 7 days prior to the end of a given month.
Thanks for the feedback and continued support. ...
Dress Well (Better than Usual) now a rule...
It’s true that clothes make the man (or woman) - both on the outside and inside. People will notice an improvement in your wear and compliment accordingly. The lasting effect of those comments will increase your mood and self esteem.
Fore these reasons, and more, we’ve added “Dress Well (Better than Usual)” as a new rule. Give it a try for September, or if you’ve...
August 2012
4 posts
Team Health Month is here...
Teams are great. They can support you when you need a pick me up, they can challenge you to go the extra step, they can make you feel like you belong to something bigger than yourself, etc.
That’s why we’ve created Team Health Month. Looking for a team, join ours. Want to compete against the owners (Billy and Derek), sounds good to us. Want to appear like we hand picked YOU to...
Limit Video Games now a rule
At the request of some lovely members, we have added “Limit Video Games” to the list of “Mental” rules. If you’re an avid video gamer, perhaps you should try it out for September and let us know how it goes.
Thanks, Derek
Health Month page loading errors
At present, this is the first time we have word from our provider regarding these issues. You can read them here: https://status.heroku.com/incidents/417
In lay terms, the piece of equipment that allows people to access the site flawlessly had a heart attack and didn’t make it. I “think” we should be good now, based on the rest of the status updates, but please let us know if you have any...
Currently down for maintenance
Health Month is taking a quick water break! We’ll be back online and ready for your check-in before you can jog two laps around the block. We promise!
Regards, The Health Month Team
July 2012
2 posts
Last Week's Announcement...we apologize!
Hey all,
So it seems that a number of users received our announcement regarding the ownership change multiple times (some, upwards of 10x)…eeek! Please accept our apologies. This certainly was not intended and was not how we wanted to start out here.
However, we’ve got a new roll of duct tape and a hammer and we’ll be working on the mailing code so that this doesn’t...
Health Month has new owners
Hello Health Month friends,
I’m both happy and sad to report that I have sold Health Month. I’m happy because I believe that Derek and Billy (with their 20+ years of experience in the web industry) will be much better stewards of the vibrant Health Month community going forward. I WILL continue to be involved in some small way, but I’m sad that through a myriad of circumstances...
May 2012
3 posts
1 tag
Health Month is up for auction on flippa.com
This morning, my listing for Health Month went up on flippa.com. Check it out! Pass it around! Make a bid! Etc.
(As a sidenote, so far my experience with flippa.com has been great. My contact at their company is a big fan of Health Month, and is doing a lot to help me make the listing as useful and informative as possible.)
It’s bittersweet to have to sell this site. The number of people...
1 tag
Do any of you lovely people want to buy Health...
Through a series of personal realizations and business inevitabilities, it looks like I’m going to have to try to find a new owner for Health Month.
Ideally, it would be someone from the community who loves it and has the time, energy, and resources to keep it going in the same spirit. If this sounds like you, PLEASE make check out the listing for its sale over on flippa.com. After...
No more Foursquare badges :(
Unfortunately, May is the last month that Foursquare badges will be awarded for completing a month with one or more life points. They’ve decided to discontinue the very generous third party integration that we’ve been using.
Let me know if anyone has already paid for their June game and would like a refund. Email be at buster at healthmonth dot com with your Health Month username...
March 2012
1 post
1 tag
November 2011
1 post
1 tag
Happy Thanksgiving from Habit Labs!
At Habit Labs, we’re grateful for:
All of you awesome Health Month people!
A chance to keep building things that we think will help solve the problem of sustainable health-improvement for everyone. We promise to have something to show you before the end of the year!
Our team (Jen, Buster, Scott, Amelia, Alex, and Adam), our family, and our friends who help us on a daily basis.
The...
October 2011
1 post
August 2011
4 posts
Let us be your Health Month buddy!
Update: Thank you to everyone who applied! We’ve randomly selected our batch for this month but really really enjoyed reading all of the applications and are hoping to open it up to more of you in the next month or so!
Is this your first time playing Health Month? Are you skeptical that you’ll be able to make any sustainable health changes with it? Are you a multi-month veteran, but...
Come and get it! Private rules and more custom...
Happy Monday, friendly Health Monthers! Are you ready for September? To help, we’re launching a couple great new features today that I think you’ll like.
For a long time, the most requested feature on our UserVoice Forum has been the lack of more than one ‘custom’ rule.
Until now, we’ve allowed 1 custom DO rule and 1 custom DON’T rule. We’ve always...
A couple small features to streamline your Health...
I’ve spent the last bit of time refactoring Health Month behind the scenes. You shouldn’t see too many big changes on the site, but here are a couple of small features I couldn’t help but squeeze into this update:
You will now only be asked to spin the Wild Wheel if you are up to date on your turns. In other words, if you’re 2 days behind, or a week behind, you...
Company news!
Hello!
Today we’re happy to announce that we’re merging Health Month, Inc with Jen McCabe’s Contagion Health and now we’re called Habit Labs! Learn more here (secret prize inside if you click through).
All this means for you Health Month users is that we’re now able to start growing the team (we’ve hired our first 2 people and are looking for more as we...
May 2011
1 post
Update! →
A lot is happening, though I haven’t said much about it here yet.
Here are a few bits of Enjoymentland news:
I’m no longer a 1-person company! (real announcement coming soon)
I sold Locavore…
April 2011
1 post
1 tag
Should the 4sq badges stay or should they go?
Weigh in on this controversial topic here.
March 2011
1 post
2 tags
Health Month hearts Fitbit
I’ve been a fan of the stylish Fitbit since before it was born, stalking the blog where the founders talked about building a little gadget from scratch, and I believe I pre-ordered one well over a year before it was available.
Their little pedometer is actually fun to carry around, and whenever I show it to someone they’re like “Oooh, I want one!” Who knows how many...
February 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Woah! 11 new rules!
I haven’t added any new rules recently, so I thought I’d go through the Uservoice Forums and the list of popular “custom rules” to find those that keep popping up.
As people start planning their March rules, I’ve added 11 new rules for you to pick from:
Wake up before X o’clock
Walk your dog!
Do yoga
Stretch
Do your household chores
Walk at least X steps...
Health Month Recommended Behaviors, version 1 →
I worked on the Personalization team at Amazon from 2000-2004, and more specifically on things like “Personalized Recommendations”, “Customers who bought this also bought…”, “The Page You Made” (a…
1 tag
New feature: import your rules to new months with...
New feature! See that yellow box on the “Choose your rules” page? It will now be available for anyone who’s played more than one month, and will help you easily import previous rules to the next month, improving them at the same time.
Here’s an example of how it will look:
The design’s a little rough at the moment, but the basic functionality is there. I am...
Excerpts from New Yorker article, Social Animal
Just read a slightly tangential article in the New Yorker all about happiness, identity, education, the subconscious, and many things in between. Here are a few of my favorite lines.
On happiness:
Joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income. According to research by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily...
Most health solutions aren’t medical, they’re...
It’s becoming more obvious to people that our friends and family have a huge impact not only on our current health, but our future health changes. From the ever-wise Jay Parkinson:
This is a significant paradigm shift. The companies that realize the future of health is about life and happiness rather than sickness, death, and medical solutions are the ones that will lead in the next...
January 2011
9 posts
February... the real start of the year
Some new things for February!
1. If you’re a team-coordinator, you can now invite all of the members from your previous month to play again this month (and I’ll make sure to remind current team leaders to do this before the end of every month).
2. We’ve got a bunch of new “official bloggers” for the month (and a few who’ve decided to continue on from January)....
Calling all bloggers
I’ve really enjoyed reading about Health Month through the eyes of this month’s official bloggers. Have you?
I’m putting a call out to anyone who’s interested in blogging their health month in February. The only requirements are that you’ve got a blog (or can get one), plan on playing Health Month, and are willing to publicly blog at least once or twice a week...
Your Nutritionista: To Carb or Not to Carb? →
nutritionista:
Ah, that is the question. The ETERNAL question of dieters. For today’s More than Mary post, I tackle the issue from all angles.
As some of you may know, I don’t think grains are great. I don’t think humans were meant to eat as many grains as we currently consume, and Idefinitely don’t…
Interesting break down of some pros and cons of health.
Sorry for the early reminders for February!
I host Health Month on Heroku, which is generally a fantastic service, but in an attempt to diagnose a server problem, they have now run my “once a month” email reminder of a new game twice! I’ve tried to get them to stop, and I have now disabled the script, so many many apologies for the extra confusion in your inbox.
1 tag
Check in with your spirit animal
Many people noticed that the weigh-ins had been taken off the site about a week ago. It was just because I wanted to improve the way it worked, and didn’t want to have to migrate data and such mid-month.
Here’s what I’ve come up with. You can specify what you want to track (weight, body fat, energy levels, stress levels, and mood). From there, you also mention how often...
Your average behavior, and your notes
I’m excited to be starting the new year with some more new big features.
I was on a roll yesterday and decided to knock out another feature that I’ve been wanting to build for a while. At the top of your profile page, you’ll see two new things as of this morning:
On average…
We make goals, and we try to hit them, but how do we actually DO on them? What’s our...
New features: Pop Quizzes! Public reviews!
Pop Quizzes!
Okay, the Wild Wheel had been annoying me for a while. It almost never chose a rule for me that was relevant. Lots of other people have let me know that they felt similarly. And yet, I didn’t want to just kill the feature because I think it’s important to add some randomness and serendipity into the game, otherwise it just becomes too boring and predictable.
I took...
Official health month bloggers!
Added a new feature for the new year. During January, 9 health month users from previous months have volunteered to take their game a step further and blog their health month publicly.
You can find them at the top of the right column on the Game Wall.
I’m excited for this development because I think the social element of the game is crucial, and as some of us start becoming more...
@ddukes: 2011 - New Me Resolution →
ddukes:
New Year’s resolutions are SO tired and generally don’t survive past mid Feb. (just try finding a free elliptical trainer at the gym before Valentine’s day, the following week, not so hard). So this year I’ve decided to make a ‘New Me’ resolution. The idea isn’t just to make a change that will…
December 2010
3 posts
My January 2011 Health Month plan →
Every year for the past 5 or so years my friends and I have adopted a rather strict set of rules to follow every January, and we called it Health Month. Here’s the old Facebook page and a rather…
1 tag
In the LA Times!
Check out this cool article about Health Month about how social games are slowly learning about how to become tools for positive motivation. I had a great time talking with this reporter, and I’m excited to see that the article opens with us and includes a quote from our conversation. It’s our first major piece of “real world” press!
“Internet game-playing as a...
My Ignite talk slides: Brains vs. Badges
I gave a 5 minute talk last night to 500+ people in Seattle about brains versus badges, or your desires versus their business models. They apparently videod the whole thing so I’ll post that once it’s available. But in the meantime here are my semi-understandable slides from the talk:
Ignite 12: Brains vs. Badges
November 2010
8 posts
Happy Thanksgiving!
Two new features for Thanksgiving weekend.
If you’re playing in the current game, you can now send fruit and even actual life points to people directly from their profile page. Eventually there will be a lot more things to give and share with each other.
You can now see everyone you sponsored on your profile page, and also see who someone has been sponsored by.
Of course, there’s...
