I'm still using the On-the-Go software I reviewed negatively before. It may suck, but it's at least just a little tiny bit better than nothing; truly a ringing endorsement. However, I've since learned it's even worse.

I had gone for about two weeks without synchronizing to the web site. Not a big deal, since I don't use the web much anyway. In particular, I've learned that using the website is a recipe for trashing my data, so it's best to stay way. However, suddenly the software popped up a warning. It informed me that not only was I not up to date and that I might lose old data, it threatened to disable itself. Nice software. Okay, so I tried to synchronize. Unfortunately something had gone wrong and the software refused to synchronize, asking to be reinstalled. The only way to reinstall? Re-visit the web site so I can re-download the application. Of course, as noted before, visiting the web site trashes my data.

So, I've reinstalled the software. I've lost my last weeks worth of tracking information. Thanks to Weight Watchers almost entirely worthless software, my tracking for the week is totally shot. All so Weight Watchers could be sure that no one was "stealing" their super precious pile of crap. Way to get your priorities straight.

Mind you, nothing the program does is particularly special. They sell books with the data. They sell paper trackers. Why not just sell me the stupid program without any of these stupid crippling misfeatures? I'd happily buy it.

I have a theory, however. They're afraid that I'll reach my goal weight and earn lifetime membership. That entitles me to free meetings, pretty much forever. However, I won't get free access to their website. However, their website is pretty much worthless to me. I only pay for it because getting the bundled deal which includes the website is the cheapest way to do Weight watcher. Perhaps they think that I'll keep coughing up $17 a month just to use their crappy software. I think not. Their software is not worth $204 a year. For that money I can buy software that doesn't trash my data and threaten to cripple itself.

One of the benefits provided by a Weight Watchers Online membership is access to their Palm tracking software, On-the-Go. The idea is really good, it lets you track what you eat in your Palm. It includes the Weight Watcher's database of foods, so you can look things up on the fly. It will synchronize with the Weight Watcher's web site.

This is a perfect match for me. I carry around my Palm all the time anyway, so this saves me carrying around a paper tracker and pen. Before using the software I simply used a memo on my Palm, but it didn't sum things up and generally was a bit of a mess. Easy access to the database is useful so I don't need to plan my meals out ahead of time.

So why did I even bother with using a memo on Palm instead of jumping straight into the On-the-Go software? This is problem one: You can't install the software if you don't have a Microsoft Windows computer that you synchronize your Palm to. Ours is not a Windows household. I went about six months without a working Windows computer in the apartment. Mac only house? Too bad.

A case could be made that you need the Windows computer because they need to provide what is called a "conduit" to connect the On-the-Go software to the web site. Supporting conduits does cost money, so they picked the largest platform and ignored the rest. It's a reasonable theory, except that the conduit has not once worked on my computer. Every time I synchronize, I get errors from their software.

Given this, how do I use the software? Turns out that if your Palm has internet access, the On-the-Go software is willing to synchronize using that. And that works just fine. If your Palm has internet access, then you don't need their conduit and there is no reason to only support Windows. They could simply ship a ZIP file and Mac and Linux users could happily use their software.

Of course, why even synchronize at all? Even a low end modern Palm should be able to hold several weeks of history without a problem. Unfortunately, On-the-Go is only willing to store one week's worth of history. If you want more, you're expected to go to the web site. I suspect this is intended to keep you locked into their web site and paying for their Online product. For now that lock in isn't a big deal; Weight Watcher's Online is included in the monthly fee I pay. However, when I reach my healthy weight, I get a free lifetime membership. But lifetime membership doesn't include Weight Watchers Online. Given that I really don't use the online service, I'm sure as hell not paying $17 a month just to use their Palm software.

Even if you're willing to live with only one week's worth of history, you can't escape the need to synchronize. You need to synchronize at least once, because the database of foods isn't built in; you need to synchronize to load it onto your Palm. I feel bad for people using a Treo who pay per byte for their data plan. I appreciate this means that the database is up to date, but they could at least provide a starting point to speed up the process. Again, this is designed to keep you reliant on their web site. Using the normal Palm tools their food database doesn't back up, so if you replace your Palm or need to reset it, you're forced to synchronize to get the database again. (If you're using superior synchronization software, like that on Linux, you can back up their database.)

On the subject of lock in, the On-the-Go software doesn't support entering your weight or how many points you get each day. You need to update the web site, then synchronize. I barely use the web site, so why make me log on?

Fine, so you've accepted their selfish lock in, how's the software itself? The good news is that it works. It tracks your intake, exercise, and healthy eating guidelines (excepting, oddly enough, the healthy oils guidelines). There is a large database of foods for looking things up, and a calculator for handling other foods. A good solid baseline. They support tall and wide Palm screens for devices that support it, a really nice touch that too many developers miss. The tall screen support is handy for scrolling through long lists of foods in the database. It's more than serviceable, and better than carrying around a paper tracker or just using a memo on the Palm.

Unfortunately the software (which they think is worth $17 a month), has many, many rough edges. It could have been great, and instead coasts along at just good enough.

The first problem is obvious before you even start the software up. I go to the Applications list in my Palm, and "WeightWatchers" is the first item. That's odd; my Palm sorts things alphabetically, and I'm pretty sure "WeightWatchers" should come after "Artelope V," "BigClock," "Contacts," and almost everything else. Except if you closely, perhaps by using the Info menu, you can see that the program isn't called "WeightWatchers". It's called " WeightWatchers". It's subtle, but there is a leading space there. Why is this? I see three possibilities, none of which are good. One is that it's a simple typo, and no one noticed that their product's name was wrong. That would be amazingly sloppy and doesn't bode well for the quality of their software. Another option is that it's a programmer's trick to make testing their software easier so that it's always easy to find. Again, that the trick would make it out to customers is amazingly sloppy. Finally there is the most evil option: that Weight Watchers is so arrogant that they assume they are the most important piece of software on my Palm. I can only hope that's not the case.

So now you're actually using the program and the more subtle problems start to pop up. You can search the database of food, but the search functionality has strange failure cases. The database contains an entry for "spicy tuna roll (2-in diameter, 1-in thick)", and it shows up if you search for "sushi", but not if you search for "tuna" or "roll". Similarly for the entry "inari sushi", which shows up for "sushi", but not "inari." For something more mainstream, why does "mocha" fail to turn up "Starbucks Coffee Caffe Mocha, Made With Non-Fat Milk, Without Whipped Cream"? (And Why the Title Case Capitalizations On a Simple List ?) The database has "Clam chowder", but not if you search for "chowder".

The search functionality itself is fundamentally limited. You can only search for eight letters, so I'm looking for chocolate chip cookies, I can search for "chocolat" and dig through 464 results or search for "cookie" and dig through 836 results. ("chip" returns nothing relevant.) There is no way to "chocolate cookie" and get that subset of about 100 items. I can limit my search using the categories, but in a world of Google I expect to type what I want and get a result.

The database itself has a number of obvious sloppy mistakes and strange decisions. First there are a number of cases where a restaurant has two different categories for two different spellings of the restaurant's name. Auntie Anne's is listed under both "Auntie Anne's Hand-Rolled Soft P..." vs "Auntie Anne's® Hand-Rolled Soft...". To see all of the options for "Eat 'n Park", you'll need to check "Eat'n Park" and "Eat'nPark". Other duplications includes "Jamba Juice"/"Jamba Juice®" "SONIC®, America's Drive-In"/"SONIC®, America's Drive-In®". "Pollo Tropical®" is simply duplicated; perhaps there are spaces at the end of one of them. You also have strange capitalization for some of the name. My best guess is that this is how the company wants their name spelled, but Weight Watchers should serve me, not them, and give normal spelling. Highlights include "ARBY'S", "BLIMPIE", "BRUEGGER'S", "BURGER KING", and "Papa Murphy's(R) TAKE 'N' BAKE P...".

It's easy to see these by using the software's useful ability to limit the list of foods by restaurant. Unfortunately the software's support for tall screens fails here as you're forced to scroll through about 140 restaurants 8 at a time.

The data itself is pretty good, although it has weird omissions. Starbucks isn't hiding their nutritional information, so why does "Starbucks Coffee Caffe Mocha, Made With Non-Fat Milk, Without Whipped Cream" only offer me the "Grande" size? If the entire point is to control my portions, knowing the tradeoffs between different sizes would be helpful. To be fair, usually the system is pretty good about offering multiple sizes, but sometimes easily available information is missing and it's frustrating.

The software shares many of the sloppy user interface decisions from the web site. Options for measuring foods are usually "cup," "tsp," "Tbsp," "pound," "oz," and "gm." First, what's a gm? Anyone who got through grade school should know that the symbol for grams is simply "g", not "gm." Furthermore, what's an "oz"? Is it a liquid ounce, or a weight ounce? The two are not interchangeable for anything that is not exactly as dense as water. Like the web site, you can't learn the actual nutritional information for the foods, so it's no good for cutting down on fat or identifying higher fiber foods.

The software is missing a reverse calculator where you can enter a food's nutritional information, tell the software how many points you'd like, and then be told how much you can have. This is endlessly frustrating, but it's pretty clear from the web site and meeting tools that no one has thought about this.

(By the way, the reverse calculation equation is this:

After all that, we get to the outright bugs. I've had the program on several occasions simply miscount a day's points. To correct this I have to delete every food for the day and reenter it. This is deeply frustrating.

Even more frustrating is when the software simply trashes one or more days of data. This is bullshit. The problem happens after synchronizing to the Weight Watcher's Online web site. When I asked customer service about it, they told me to be careful synchronize my Palm every time before using their web site. Right, so make a little mistake and your data is deleted. That is completely unacceptable in a modern user interface. Asking users to never make mistakes is not a reasonable guideline. The problem would seem to be that if the web site and the Palm disagree, the web site replaces the Palm's data. This is insanely stupid. Palm has been shipping calender software that can handle the PC and the Palm disagreeing for over a decade! Why can't Weight Watcher's get this right. Even if it is hard problem, I can guarantee you that replacing a day's worth of data on my Palm with absolutely nothing is always the wrong answer. There is no way to recover from the problem, you just have to remember the lost data as best you can and re-enter it. I've had the system destroy as much as five days of data in one shot. Since I couldn't exactly remember what I had, I lost an accurate count of not only each day's data, but of my weekly point allotment.

All in all, the software is better than nothing, but not by much. I've got a long, long list of "software I need to write, since the other options are crap", and "On-the-Go replacement" has been added to the list.

2007-09-12: I've since discovered the software sucks even more than I previously thought.

So I'm just shy of 12 weeks into Weight Watchers. I've attended 12 meetings (they fencepost the weeks). I've got a backlog of gripes, but like most of my gripes they're relatively minor things. What really matters is: Am I losing weight?

Yes. I'm losing weight. I'm losing weight more quickly than I expected or even hoped. I've lost about 35 pounds, so I'm losing a bit less than 3 pounds per week.

The only times I am hungry are when I have points to use and have delayed or skipped a meal. After a rough first week, I'm not really burning my points allocations. I'm always ending a week with spare weekly points allowance. I even manage to once or twice a week eat a big meal.

Generally speaking I'm not feeling like I'm missing much. Eating things I like, just less, works pretty well. My tastes are changing too. I occasionally get cravings for burgers, but when I actually eat a burger they're not as satisifying.

To stay on our diet, my girlfriend and I are eating in more. It's largely packaged food, but it's better for us. We're reading nutritional information and trying to eat more vegetables. Morningstar Farms burgers are a common dinner. (The Mushroom Lover's is inexplicably tasty, and I hate mushrooms. The Spicy Black Bean Veggie and Tomato & Basil Pizza are also really good.) Regular strawberry smoothies as well (recipe). Add in regular grilled veggies.

The meetings are pretty good. The actual content is only okay. Sometimes the session leader or a member will have a good idea, but all in all it's a predictable mix of motivational speaking. That the group is overwhelmingly female with a strong bias toward middle-age doesn't help. My girlfriend and I simply don't connect to what are apparently common problems: fear of the scale, occasionally failing to count points, and on rare occasions simply failing to follow the program. However, the meetings have an important psychological benefit. At the very least, they provide a marking point for my progress. It's also nice to get third party acknowledgement of my progress. Inane though it is, I look forward to the little gold stars for each 5 pounds lost.

So far, so good. I'm optimistic about going forward.

I'm using Eat Watch for the Palm to track my weight. It's good software; it tracks my weight and my exercise plan. It shows nice little charts. A particularly nice touch is that it doesn't just graph my weight measurements, it also graphs a weighted floating average. The weighted floating average is the key, since it smooths out the day-to-day minor variations. If your daily data points are usually below the average, you're doing just fine and losing weight, even if day-to-day you go up a bit.

On the down side, Eat Watch doesn't present a few charts I would like to see. You can graph longer windows of time, but you only get the weighted average, not the actual data points. More importantly, the program recalculates the weight ranges for each month separately. This makes it hard to compare one month's progress to another.

Weight Watchers offers weight tracking system, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. Unfortunately for my needs. First, it only allows a single data point per week. Weight Watchers is really keen on weekly weigh ins, but why limit it to once per week? My best guess is that they don't want people to obsess about day-to-day changes. It's possible to fluctuate quite a bit from day to day, especially if you're not consistent about when and how you weigh yourself. This is why the Eat Watch uses the weighted average, to help smooth out that fluctuation. A far cruder method is to only weigh weekly. That's my best guess. If this is the case, it's a regrettably crude solution. John Walker proposed the weighted average solution in his book The Hacker's Diet in 1992, surely Weight Watchers could adopt a similar solution. This crude solution make their tool useless to me. I strongly suspect that many other Weight Watchers members are weighing more frequently than weekly, and they're probably fretting over minor changes. Weight Watchers could be providing a better solution for these people, especially one that could reassure their customers that daily fluctuations are to be expected.

The Weight Watchers web site provides a "Recipe Builder" to help you determine the points in your recipes. It also stores the ingredients and optionally the directions so you have a handy reference. Unfortunately it's only okay, missing a few obvious changes that would could make it great.

The program begins by asking for a recipe name and number of servings. Be sure to get these right, because you won't be asked again. Also, the number of servings has to be an integer between 1 and 99. If your recipe makes 3.5, you're out of luck. (It sounds weird but I have a smoothie recipe that makes 3.5 glasses of smoothie.)

Next you add ingredients. One. At. A. Time. That's painful, especially given that weightwatchers.com is frequently reeaaally sllooow. The first obvious improvement is to somehow parallelize the interface so I can enter everything at once. Another problem is that items are limited to 25 characters. I may want to enter a specific brand name for something I know the exact nutritional information for, but "Tommyknocker Strawberry Cream Soda" is truncated to "Tommyknocker Strawberry C." And once an ingredient is entered, the only way to rename it is to remove and re-add it.

So, you're entering ingredients. It should would be nice to know the points value per ingredient so I can consider substitutions at this point, but no such luck. I'm certainly not getting information like calories, fat, or fiber so I can make wise substitutions. Indeed, this information will never appear; all you get is the total point value when you're done with your recipe. You get no clues as to which parts of the recipe contribute the most points.

All in all, a deeply frustrating experience. I've given up on the recipe builder and now do the calculations myself.

(2007-05-18: Spelling fix.)

So, as is probably obvious, I'm on a diet. To diet well, I need nutritional information on the food I'm eating. Weight Watchers insists I can eat whatever I want, I just need to know the calories, fat, and fiber content and limit portions based on that. So, how do some of my favorite restaurants do at providing me this simple information? Mind you, these are all national chains, with strict standards in the kitchens, highly consistent product, and should be able to assemble this information easily.

Chipotle: F. Like Panchero's, the local store says the information is on the website, but neither Google nor myself can find it, so frankly I doubt it. Embarassingly it took a fan site to provide the information. (Update 2007-05-18: Chipotle wrote back to my request and said they used to have the information, but it was taken down recently. They say they are dealing with New York City regulations. Since I don't know when the information was taken down, I can't be sure how long it's been down. Still, it's been down since at least February 17th, so it's been three months. Other national chains aren't having this problem.)

Cousin's Subs: B. The baseline everyone should meet. There is a poster showing a truncated list of menu items with information. Perhaps more information is available if you ask, but oherwise there is a complete set of information online.

Culver's: A+. The food may be unhealthy, but they're honest and up front about it. Complete nutritional information is sitting right next to the condiments in the restaurant. It's also available on the web. I can't ask for more.

Outback Steakhouse: F. Not only does Outback fail to provide the necessary information, they insult customers with completely useless "Nutrition Information Guide". Check out the Healthy Weight Loss section. It's an insulting joke. No nutritional information; they've just flagged a few things as "good" in some non-specific way. My first thought was that their food is so horrible that they are afraid of admitting it, but calculating it by hand some, (especially the Griller) are quite reasonable.

Panchero's Mexican Grill: D. No information visible on site, no online information, not available upon request. A damn shame, since they're nearby and before I started my diet I visited weekly. Like Chipotle, the local store says the information is on the website, but neither Google nor myself can find it, so frankly I doubt it. Apparently they promised one web site information... in 2003. Shameful. (Update 2007-05-07: If you use their contact page and ask for the information, they will email you a PDF. Since that's a bit of a nuisance, I've put Panchero's Mexican Grill Nutritional Information up on my web site. Update 2007-07-25: Upgraded rating to D, since it is available if you ask.)

Qdoba: A-B. Embarrassing Panchero's and Chipotle, Qdoba has a handy calcuator that gives you nutritional information for the specific burrito you order. I just wish there was one near my apartment. (I don't know if they have information in store, which is necessary for an A, as I haven't visited since I started my diet.)

So as noted earlier, Weight Watchers gives members a slide rule for calculating points for food. There are two striking flaws with it:

1. Occasionally you'll end up with a result right on the line between two values. It's not clear how I score that. (I've been using the half point between the two. This seems reasonable since the web site sometimes returns half points anyway).

2. It won't handle more than 20 grams of fat in a dish. Okay, fat's bad for me. But the point of the Flex plan is that I can supposedly eat whatever I want. And sometimes I'm prepared to blow a huge number of points on a tuna salad sub. The web site is perfectly willing to handle high fat items. The restaurant guide has entries for plenty of such items. The slide rule has enough space on it to easily handle 30 grams of fat, probably more. It's frustrating to be told that the slide rule can give you all the answers you need, only to discover that it will fail in the situations when knowing the points value would be most valuable.

Right, that's enough being positive about Weight Watchers. On to the complaints.

Today's highlight comes from the week 2 pamphlet, which is about eating out. It has some suggestions for different types of food. The highlight is this: "Out for Japanese food? Ask that your sushi be made with brown rice instead of white." Brown rice? Right. Thanks to my sushi-loving girlfriend, I'm eating sushi moderately regularly now, and I've never heard of sushi made with brown rice. I don't know for sure, but it seems like the bran coating might hamper the stickiness that is essential for sushi. But just to be sure, I checked at three sit down sushi places in town and asked if they would make sushi nigiri and sushi rolls with brown rice. I happened to eat at Takara and asked our waiter. He said no, it would taste wrong. The hostess at Ginza of Tokyo seemed surprised and a bit confused by my request, but ultimately said they did not offer it. Finally Wasabi's hostess quickly confirmed that it was not an option.

Three strikes, and they're out. Where is Weight Watchers finding this highly unusual sushi offering? I have no doubt you can make sushi with brown rice, but I'm skeptical that many Japanese restaurants offer it.

I expect I'm going to have at least a few more posts bashing Weight Watchers, so I thought I should say a few good things about them.

I'm two weeks and three meetings in. We'll see how I'm feeling in a few months, but for now I like the fundamental system.

Weight Watchers now offer two different plans. The "Flex Plan" is what most people think of; you get a daily point (or as they call it POINTS™) allotment (and a weekly "slop" allotment), different foods cost different values. The "Core Plan" doesn't track points or calories, instead giving you a pretty strict list of things you eat; you can splurge a little with a weekly allotment of points, just like the Flex Plan.

The Core Plan seems to brutal to me. The list of acceptable foods is much, much too short for me. It definitely seems implausible if you eat out regularly. I can see it working for other people, but I don't ever expect to try it.

The Flex Plan is pretty straightforward. WW gives you a booklet of some common foods showing the points per item. They'll sell you more complete books, or access to their web database. If you know the nutritional information, you can use the provided cardboard slide rule to calculate the points of anything. For people with calculators, the equation is pretty simple:

Calories are as Americans measure them, or "kilogram calories." Fat is in grams. Fiber is specifically "dietary fiber," is in grams, and is limited to 4 grams in a given dish. Results are rounded to the nearest whole number (matching WW's books), or to the nearest half (matching WW's web site).

(Weight Watchers doesn't, to my knowledge, admit that this is the equation, but it's widely known. No surprise, as it's clearly documented in their patent, 6,040,531. (Backup patent link.) Using my slider I've confirmed that the equation is correct. The observant will notice that the patent was granted in 2000; apparently Weight Watchers changed their system recently.)

WW has an equation for determining how many points you get each day, then they assign a flat 35 points as extra to use over a given week. (I'd share the equation, but it's less clear that it's public information. For a sense of scale, it bottoms out at 18 and tops off at 44. The last page of the patent has a table with some example ranges, but it's clear that the equation and that table don't quite jive.)

Limiting myself to the points I have each day hasn't proven too hard for me. So far hunger hasn't been the problem; the problem has been limiting myself, especially at restaurants. For example, my favorite meal at Culver's is a cheeseburger basket and a chocolate shake. It's 41.5 points (1730 calories, 86 grams of fat), more than I get in a single day. Based on the meetings, many people do have hunger problems, so this might just be me.

The points system has proven very enlightening, and I'm getting a much better grip on how much I eat. Of course, this isn't WW specific, by all accounts a key to any effective diet is learning how many calories you're actually consuming.

You're also given some general guidelines, encouraging you to eat a certain amount of fruits and veggies and to drink milk.

The points system is fundamentaly calorie counting mixed with generally good nutrition. I'm not convinced that it's better than simply calorie counting and good nutrition. However, WW provides guidelines and structure which I do think are effective. I wouldn't think anything of tracking calories, fat, and fiber directly, but I'm a geek who carries around a Palm PDA, so the simplification into points may help others.

You're encouraged to attend one Weight Watchers meeting per week. You start by optionally weighing in (only the staff know your weight). You're given a pamphlet or small booklet based on how many weeks you've attended. Presumably after some number of visits you'll have collected the entire set and won't get any more. You're also offered a little paper booklet for tracking points for a week. Then you head to the meeting proper.

Based on my experience (I gather each meeting group is different), you get a group of about 40 people, the majority of whom are women. A leader gives a short talk and motivational lecture about weight loss, frequently asking audience members for examples of what works for them, or what has proven problematic. It seems very female oriented to me, but the meetings are hyped as being important and I believe it probably is. The weekly meetings act as a sort of chapter marking, giving a concrete marker to your progress. Hearing from other people helps focus the mind and provide some reassurance that weight loss is possible. You get little stickers and later on keychain charms for achieving various goals, and everyone applauds when you do. It's just using peer pressure as positive reinforcement, and I know it's a trick, but it's still an effective motivator. Presumably one can learn useful tips from the meetings, but I haven't hear anything noteworthy yet.

So, fundamentally you've got a simplified calorie counting, good nutrition guidelines, and some positive peer pressure. I can't see anything wrong with it. It sounds reasonable to me and research suggests that it's more effective than other diet plans.

That's probably the last good thing I'll say about Weight Watchers. I'll try to report back later with more on how effective it is, but in the meanwhile I'm going to complain about the stupid and sloppy things WW does.

(For any fellow geeks interested in dieting on their own, I suggest checking out the Hacker's Diet.)

(2007-03-29: Typo fix: proben to proven. Later fix: apparent to apparently.)

So I'm giving Weight Watcher's a try. Normally I wouldn't share such information, but I'm so frustrated with them that I need to share. These are only my initial impressions. We'll see how I feel in a few weeks.

It's just slow. The site regularly timed out or was very slow. Resubmitting a given form or reclicking a link sometimes sped things up.

The web site is bad at guiding potential customers. I spent a modest amount of time looking around, and I never found a clear, "this is what you want" page. The closet you get is the not terribly specific The Plan page with links at the bottom. The links aren't helpfully labelled, "Do you want to attend local meetings, or work online?"

So I go to a meeting, sign up, and pay. Except I haven't really signed up. I need to log in online and re-register. Then I'll print out a temporary ID and they'll mail me the "real" one. Why can't this be handled at their store frontage?

The site demands that credit card numbers be entered without spaces. That's just stupid.

The field for entering my street address is too short. I should be able to see my entire address at once.

The subscription agreement is too long. Is five pages of contract really necessary? Back before they were so internet heavy, I'm confident they weren't dropping that much contract on their customers. Given the length, I'm confident the majority of their customers aren't reading it.

Come to think of it, why am I now agreeing to five pages of contract? I paid back at the store.

Those five pages of contract are initially presented in a little frame, showing about one paragraph of text, requiring lots and lots of scrolling to read.

Their contract is silly. There are "trade secrets" involved? I'm pretty sure if you're presenting information to millions of customers, it's no longer a trade secret.

The contract contains things I'm quite confident wouldn't stand up in court. My sole remedy in any dispute is to cancel my account? I think not.

The contract claims that I'm liable if a third party runs up charges using my credit card. I'm quite sure my credit card company will disagree with that. That this is even a risk suggests that they're willing to charge new charges (beyond the monthly fee) to my credit card on file. Can I opt out of that, because it's a bad idea? If I want to buy someting new, reconfirm my credit card number.

Between taking quite some time to read the overly long contract, then waiting The site is so slow that my attempt to sign up timed out, forcing me to restart from the beginning.

Why are the DIRECTIONS AND ADDRESS IN ALL CAPS? It's the twenty-first century now, we can use lower case.

So I'm finally set up, and I'm excited that they offer some software for Palm devices. Having their database of food and being able to track things on a device that I carry with me all the time anyway. No such luck. The software really wants to link to their web site. That's no good since I almost never HotSync. Even if I was willing, I'm not able; the only two operating systems in my apartment at Linux and MacOS X, neither of which is supported. I tried using Wine to run the Windows binary, but it refused me access since I didn't have the Palm Desktop installed and working.

So, has anyone else written something that might be a suitable tool? Yes, there's a free tool called WWJournal. Oops, Weight Watchers shut it down. It's typical scare letter that overgeneralizes WW's side of the situation and fails to point out that the tool's author could have continued to develop the software; he just needed to be careful to skirt WW's trademarks. Unfortunately the letter had its intended effect and killed off some valuable software. (I did eventually track down a copy, but regrettably since it hasn't been updated it's not much use.)

Finally, I try using the web site to figure out my points for my first day. It's still painfully slow. They have a new Flash based interface that takes forever to load. I'm having difficulty finding entries for things I had. Isn't the web site backed with their entire database? Doesn't that database have decades of research? Why are the only entries for "mocha whole" from for Starbuck's tall size? How do I adjust for different sizes? I can find rice crispies treat (under the slightly hard to find "crisp rice and marshmallow treat"), but it's only for "small." What's small? I have no idea.

Because the web is generally more convenient to me than a pair of books, I'm going to stick with the painfully slow web site. But I'm stuck with abusing the memos in my Palm and not getting any useful automatic calculations.

The local branch and the online site have zero connection. I have to tell the site information the local branch already knows. The local branch expects me to carry about a little piece of paper with my history and bring it to each meeting. The web site knows nothing about the little piece of paper.

Perhaps unsurprisingly I'm pretty displeased with Weight Watchers right now. This is an international corporation with decades of experience. Why does their online face suck so badly? The only ray of hope is that the plan itself seems reasonable and their meetings seem promising. I'm hoping that the problem is a long history of being technology free and that the non-technical aspects are much better. It seems reasonable given that their primary audience appears to be pretty non-technical people, and they high for local staff from their customer base. Absent a techie crowd to get promoted up, it may be that there is no one to beat their technical flaws into shape.

(2007-03-15: Tweaks and clairifications.)