ShopWell – ShopWell “is a free food information site that scores products on how well they meet your unique needs.” Get a personalized list of food product recommendation, based on your health state (lactose intolerance, athletic training, osteoporosis, high cholesterol and many others) while fully understanding food products’ nutritional info. Once you’ve signed up you can set your personal parameters (including age, weight , sex and age and the health state driving your nutrition, stated above).

Next, you can check ingredients you wish to include in your diet such as folic acid, saturated fat, whole grain, and ingredients you don’t want (such as corn syrup, added sugar, preservatives, etc.), and even state any allergies you may have so ShopWell will know what to avoid. See the image below.

The end result of ShopWell is a customized list of recommended products, each with a nutritional value score from 0-100, based on its suitability to your set of parameters. Getting your profile ready for smarter shopping in the supermarket is easy; ShopWell’s interface is appealing and user-friendly, and it’s free! (a free iPhone app is available). Why not make use of this healthy tool?

Every year it’s the same story; we promise ourselves this time we’ll get a grip and stop smoking, lose weight or better manage our expenses. For some reason, most New Year resolutions end up being nothing more than a good intention listed in our to-do tasks, but never really coming into fruition. Well, this year we have some excellent Web aids to help you stick to your resolutions and make them happen.

43 Things is a great site we’ve already recommended as a useful New Year resolution helper, and for a good reason. It’s a well known fact that kicking a deep-rooted habit is difficult, especially if you’re doing it on your own. 43 Things offers the community support -the ‘buddy system’- to make sure you make that change successfully. 43 Things is a terrific New Year resolution tool since it’s your security net, regardless of what change you vowed to make in your life.

The relevance of Match.com and other dating sites to New Year resolutions is, on one hand, redundant but on the other, extremely important. Don’t let bad date stories scare you when it comes to online dating. Match.com is one of the best you can find, and there are many happily married couples who have met each other right here on this site. Give it a try, you might find the love of your life!

One of the most effective personal finance tools you can find on the Web, Mint.com (an Intuit company) is a top-notch (and free) budget software to help you better manage your funds, expenses and future financial plans. We’re not the only ones who think Mint.com is a champ (we’ve listed it on our Business page under Personal finance)- this site received high-profile coverage from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and it received prestigious awards from TIME, PC Magazine, and CNN’s Money Magazine. Let’s put it this way; if you’re looking for a simple and efficient tool for managing your money, Mint.com is your answer.

If you’re a smoker, there’s no need for me to list the life and money loss you’re risking by keeping this literally dirty habit. If you decide that 2011 will go down as the year you quit smoking, make use of the government site SmokeFree.gov to make this a clean-lunged reality. This portal is packed with practical tips, facts, starter kits and lots of support to help you in every step of the way (including well after you’ve stopped smoking). Here’s to a better and longer life.

Going green used to be an expensive ordeal, but that was years ago. These days minimizing your ecological footprint is so feasible it’s a crime not to do it. The Daily Green is your one-stop place for living better, healthier, and helping the planet. Although the site’s news section is fascinating and inspiring, the Daily Green’s Tips & Advice page offers all the info you need to change your life for the better, both now and in the future. It’s all very easy and not as expensive as you would think. Go Green and be happy!

Getting fit is perhaps the most challenging New Year resolution of all, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. That’s Fit, a  comprehensive diet and exercise blog from AOL is a perfect starting point for losing weight and instilling a regular exercise routine in your life. Explore the variety of diets and workouts, see what tips celebrities share, and most importantly, check out That’s Fit’s success & motivation section to help you stick to your plan.

Learning something new or simply reading more, the Google eBookstore takes care of both New Year resolutions. Whether you’re interested in science, science fiction, history, art, business or anything in-between, the eBookstore by Google has a world of knowledge waiting to be explored (and read). It’s super accessible, and the reading interface Google has created makes the experience all the more wholesome. What a great example of some seriously good reads!

Prolific Living – A Weekly Blog winner, this inspiring little piece of blog heaven is brought to us by Farnoosh, who promises to deliver “Smart Habits for Rich Living.” Armed with a knock-out experience in management, communication, organizational skills and witty writing, Farnoosh offers grade A tips for a fuller life and a satisfied soul.

To give a couple of examples of Prolific Living’s insightful reads, I highly recommend reading these two posts: Self-Reflection: 19 Things I Wish I Knew Earlier in Life and From Fear to Motivation 22 Radical Thoughts. These are but two examples of the immense world of better mind and body tips Farnoosh is offering on Prolific Living. Other topics you will find here include ‘for fun,’ ‘for the body,’ for the heart,’ ‘for the mind,’ ‘for the soul,’ ‘on the road,’ podcasts and videos.  If you’re seeking well-written inspiration to last a lifetime, Prolific Living is it. Here’s an interesting video Farnoosh has published on her blog, titled Yoga Flow Series 1: Welcoming Fall. Yes, she does that, too! Enjoy.

Delish – One of the most comprehensive cooking & recipe sites I’ve seen in a while, MSN’s Delish is truly a one-stop place for all your cooking, party hosting and food how-to needs.

Delish’s various features are too many to list here, but here are the main things I think you will enjoy exploring: the obvious, recipe collection, broken down to Popular -it’s where I found an amazing list of Under-30-Minutes Recipes– Special Features, and Hints & Help. More interesting sections include Parties & Holidays, Food in the news, and Coupons. Although Delish is an all-you-need resource for cooking, I recommend consulting our Cooking and Recipes pages for complementary websites.

Teach Parents Tech – Don’t we all have at least one member in the family who has given up all efforts to learn how to make the most out of the Web? My 86 year-old grandma uses her PC offline to play solitaire, and online to read the news -she visits over 10 major news sites per day!- and receive emails, as long as these are text-only, basic messages without any attachments or links. On numerous different occasions I have tried tempting her to learn the wonders of the Web, but she would always reply with the same aphoristic claim: “Honey, I’m too old for that.”

My relentless efforts of Web-pushing (including creating for my grandma an All My Faves mini user showcasing all the news and health sites she reads obsessively every day) fail to lure my granny into deeper levels of Web exploration and interaction. It seems she’s dead set on keeping it as basic as possible, and even that, she says, is way too much. Seen as my grandma’s case is a familiar one among seniors, baby boomers and individuals with a low-tech life approach, it was wonderful to discover Google’s recent initiative, Teach Parents Tech, helping to eradicate the strong technophobia pandemic among older people.

Beautifully designed and super-easy to use, Teach Parents Tech is a two-part process; first is the form (shown above) you, the experienced Web users fills out, checking the boxes next to the online actions you wish your parents/grandparents/aunts & uncles would learn. Once you hit Preview you will be taken to a new page structured in a letter format including how-to videos corresponding to the issues you checked in the form. Next all you have to do is provide your and the recipient’s email addresses, and you’re good to go.

For my grandma I picked the two how-to videos below (how to copy & paste, and how to change the PC’s desktop background, respectively). The Teach Parents Tech project is outstanding in both its concept and execution, and I highly recommend using it for the technophobes in your family. This is a keeper!

I wonder how long it would take for my grandma to learn how to use Google Reader. On second thought, I think I’ll just take it one baby step at a time…

Todo.ly – Sounds like a task manager, doesn’t it? Well, you got it. Todo.ly is a free projects, tasks and other to do’s organization tool that endeavors to facilitate and manage your busy life. According to the website, Todo.ly is “a super easy Task Management tool. Allows you to quickly create tasks, and organize them into projects. Set Due Date, and Priority for the different tasks to focus on what you really need to do.”

Although the free service Todo.ly offers is, in terms of life practicality and simplification, a great one, I can’t really see myself abandoning my Google account wonders -including Gmail, calendar, docs, tasks and reminders- and using Todo.ly exclusively. Then again, I realize not everyone is so heavily dependent on Google’s tools for the day-to-day projects and routine as I am. These very same users will undoubtedly appreciate and enjoy Todo.ly’s excellent service. Here’s my Todo.ly frontpage after I had listed my weekly projects.

Google Hotpot – If you’re already familiar with Foursquare, the Google Hotpot service offers the same underlining service concept -social networking with friends based on geo-location and business ratings- only it does it much, much better. Google has exceeded Foursquare’s service in every possible way, thanks to a large scale combination of the various Google tools; maps and street view, altitude, and search (including images, user reviews, related articles and loads more ) all come into play to offer an ultra geo-location service.

The end result is an all-you-could-possibly-need geo-location service, aimed mostly at the wine & dine aspect of entertainment (search restaurants, diners, cafes, etc.). You can see the screen shot below of the restaurant search I did, ending up with the Spotted Pig, a British restaurant in the West Village neighborhood of NYC. You will see how one page includes all the basic information (phone number, map and driving directions, menu), BUT there are also photos of the restaurant and its dishes (including a street-view), actual reviews of former guests of the restaurant, a list of related places and more formal, critic-based restaurant reviews.

I didn’t stop at the Hotpot’s eating-related business search and looked for cool museums to visit in San Francisco. Did Google Hotpot live up to my expectation? Oh yeah.

Just think of this service’s extreme usefulness in the mobile context. You could search for practically any kind of business or entertainment venue near you in real-time, in a matter of minutes, see what bistros your friends have been to and recommend others to visit as well, how to get there, even what to order. As expected, this is another phenomenal service by Google.

Expensify – Owning a business is challenging in an of itself, but keeping a close eye over your company’s expenses is even harder. Expensify is here to treat many small businesses’ Achilles heel by offering a sophisticated yet easy to use expense management tool. It lets you “automate expense entry and recording by importing expenses, many with an eReceipt, directly from a credit card or bank account. Track mileage, log cash expenses and their receipts on the go with our mobile expense apps on the iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and BlackBerry phones or on the iPad.”

The Expensify system is so beautifully designed and executed, its complexity is left behind the scenes so you, the business owner, can have a seamless and super efficient expense management experience. Track your credit card expenses (the system is highly secured, so don’t worry about providing your credit card info), produce reports, allow other employees of your company to access the system, upload receipts, set up an expenses policy (for contractors, etc.) and connect to your QuickBooks/FreshBooks to sync expense accounts. You also have the option of customizing expense categories.

This huge bundle of goodness comes free -as part of the basic Google Marketplace app– and more active submitters are welcome to check the paid track (which is ridiculously cheap and totally worth it). If you are a small-medium business owner, Expensify is a must!

I Can’t Find My Phone – This one action only website treats a most common problem most mobile device owners face at some point in their life. Lost your phone? No prob. Go to this site (it’s a one page website), type in your cell phone number and hit “HELLO?” Yes, the system will call your mobile phone, and hopefully you’ll hear it ringing under the pillow of your sofa. If you hear nothing, try to remember what you did in the past 24 hours. For your sake I hope you were not flying in from another country or state…

DIY Life – I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but AOL has recently emerged as a strong blog creator in practically every lifestyle field. DIY Life is no exception, and this blog constitutes an interesting and valuable resource for home improvement.

AOL’s DIY blog is neatly organized to allow you full access to its various sections: Kitchen & Bath, Know-How, Living Spaces, Outdoors, Crafts & Celebrations, and Experts (currently only featuring Eric Stromer).  Explore this cool blog and I’m sure you’ll be inspired to renovate at least one area in your home. This cool post on the unusual uses of Vodka in your home inspired me to start cleaning my jewelry…

MapCrunch – Google is the undisputed expert when it comes to maps and street view. We already know that. And here is a nice website that uses Google’s wonderful geo-visualizations to create an exciting platform for exploring the world’s mainstream as well as less obvious locations.

MapCrunch neatly presents the world to you in various options to choose from: either hop from one location to the next at random (simply click on Go!), or choose a more specified location (by selecting continent or country). This site is simple and entertaining, which is why we loved it so much. By the way, if you’re wondering why some European countries are saying no to Google Street View, check out the MapCrunch’s sidekick site, StreetViewFunny.com and you’ll see why.

Rentalic – Now there’s finally a solution to all those unused household items and old appliances you keep stored away in your basement: rent them to people who need them. Sounds surreal? Just visit Rentalic and a whole new world of income and sharing opportunities will open up to you.

Rentalic’s basic concept is so simple and useful, it’s surprising no one had thought of it before. Rent out your bicycle for a week or rent someone’s 4-persons tent for your weekend camping with friends. All these and numerous other options are available to you on Rentalic, all with the added value of saving money, helping others and making the world a more sustainable place. Rentalic is the perfect rental marketplace! See the photo below as an example of what people from San Francisco are renting out.