Cronometer. a MyNetDiary replacement review

 So far, Cronometer is almost as good as MyNetDiary was before the recent changes. Some basic research suggests it is the current favorite among most people.

Core Feature Comparison

Feature	Cronometer	MyNetDiary	MyFitnessPal
Best For	Athletes, clinical diets, and strict micronutrient counting	General weight loss, diabetics, and fast, frictionless logging	Large social circles, recipe inspiration, and restaurant menus
Food Database	~1.1M verified items (USDA/NCC)	Over 2M staff-verified items	~20M+ items (largely crowdsourced/user-generated)
Barcode Scanner	Free (no premium required)	Free	Premium only
Free Tier	Basic app with ads	Ad-free, highly capable	Ad-supported, basic tracking

Feature Breakdown for Trend Tracking

1. Cronometer (The Analytical Choice)

• Custom Biometrics: Create personal metrics (e.g., "Bloating Scale 1-10", "Brain Fog") to track alongside your food.
• Advanced Charting: Overlay any two variables—such as charting your iron intake against your daily energy levels over a 90-day period.
• Gastrointestinal Tracking: Includes specific, built-in features to monitor caffeine, alcohol, and symptom flare-ups.

2. MyNetDiary (The Visual Choice)

• Pre-made Dashboards: Offers excellent, clean charts for weight, blood glucose, and standard macronutrients (carbs/fats/protein).
• Limited Custom Correlation: Tracks standard health metrics beautifully, but lacks the deep, multi-variable correlation tools needed to spot subtle, custom cause-and-effect trends.

3. MyFitnessPal (The Baseline Choice)

• Basic Premium Graphs: Shows general macro and calorie trends over time.
• Data Hurdles: The massive amount of unverified, user-generated food data creates "noise" that can heavily skew your weekly and monthly nutrient trend lines.

A couple of things I would change/add to be more like the old MyNetDiary:

• Medications need to be either added as a food or a biometric. There ought to be a separate grouping for medications. Digging pills from other lists seems unnecessary. Especially if you take a lot of pills every day.
• An optional note field on biometric and medication entries would be less confusing. You can add a note like the comment entry in MyNetDiary, but you need to match it on the timestamp to know they go together. Having it in the entry form or having labels, again like MyNetDiary, would make seeing what hurt or why you took a medicine a lot easier.

Otherwise, it is very much like the old MyNetDiary with similar device support, charts, and logging of food and measurements. It also adds fasting, though I don't need that. The biometrics are not sortable, but they do auto-sort by most recently used, which makes it pretty simple to find all your morning options near the bottom of the list in the morning and the evening ones at night.

Both are $59.99/yr.

One of the things I am looking forward to trying is having AI look for possible things that might affect how I feel. 

Research on this yields:

Cronometer is the best choice for discovering cause-and-effect relationships due to its highly accurate, lab-verified food database and advanced data correlation tools.

To find true correlations (e.g., how a specific food affects your energy, sleep, or digestion), your data must be flawless. Crowdsourced apps often have massive errors in their food libraries, which ruins data analysis. Cronometer manually verifies every single entry, making its data reliable enough for clinical studies.

Here is how the three apps compare specifically for tracking trends, causes, and effects:

Feature	Cronometer	MyNetDiary	MyFitnessPal
Data Accuracy	Highest (Lab-verified entries only)	High (Verified, but some crowdsourcing)	Lower (Massive, user-generated database)
Custom Biometrics	Yes (Track symptoms, mood, pain, etc.)	Limited (Mainly standard health metrics)	No (Strictly weight and basic measurements)
Trend Analytics	Advanced (Chart overlays for any variables)	Moderate (Standard progress charts)	Basic (Calorie and weight graphs)
Export Formats	CSV & Data Share (Full raw data access)	PDF reports (Visually clean, less flexible)	Premium CSV (Basic daily summaries)

How to Use Cronometer for Cause-and-Effect Tracking

To effectively map out your health trends, combine Cronometer's AI logging with its custom tracking features:

• Use the AI Logger for speed: Snap photos or type descriptions using the natural language AI to keep your log complete. Missing days or meals will break your trend lines.
• Create custom biometrics: Do not just track weight. Go to the biometrics tab and add custom scales for energy levels, bloating, skin breakouts, or sleep quality on a scale of 1 to 10.
• Overlay charts in the dashboard: Use the desktop web portal to build custom charts. You can plot Vitamin D intake vs. Sleep Quality or Sugar Intake vs. Energy Crashes over a 30-day or 90-day window to visually spot the exact moments a cause triggers an effect.
• Sync external hardware: Connect wearable devices (like Apple Health, Oura, or Garmin) to automatically pull in biometric effects like resting heart rate or sleep stages alongside your food data.

Sword Health's thrive program review (ongoing)

My insurance added what sounded like a great program, Thrive, which lets you do physical therapy at home instead, as in my case, needing to drive an hour plus each way for a less than 15-minute session. The tablet uses the camera to watch your movements. It appears to simulate a Kinect sensor with a single camera, which is probably the main issue with the system, since the patient needs to get the angle just right for the AI to line you up. While the tablet does show you the "stick figure" (you might have seen similar ones on ghost-hunter shows using the Kinect) as an overlay on your video to help, the only indicator is that it turns green when it sees you are in the right position. Leaving it to you to sort out how to get there,

Initial consultation

The first red flag was that, during the initial consultation, I learned they focus on only one body part. So instead of working on my osteoarthritis, we set the focus on my left wrist, which I broke twice last year and never got full movement back in. Each session is supposed to be about 5 minutes.

Day one

After getting the tablet, I started my first session seated at my desk since the exercises were just for my wrist. As the session started, I first found the AI needed to see most of me, and in a standing position. So now, while the tablet kept telling me to get into position, I needed to find a place where I could stand in front of it at the right height to be in the right position for its camera. Note, they say they do not save the video, and I'm not going to worry about being seen with my shirt off, so I did not bother putting one on. And again, we are supposed to be focused on my wrist.

First exercise

Turning my hand palm up and down. This is really more of an elbow motion, so it was not that hard, but the AI seemed to get confused, saying "down" several times. Possibly since I did not have a shirt on, and the position had my hand in front of my belly. Somehow, I received a 98% score, though.

Second exercise

Arm straight out to my side, and for some reason, head bent to the right. Thanks to the aforementioned osteoarthritis, I could not bend my neck enough to make the AI happy, which kept telling me to bend it until I shut the tablet off, despite my comments that it would not bend any further. I tried to text the "team" back, but noticed the number did not accept replies. So I opened the tablet again, which wanted to start the "second session". The tablet seems to accept voice input only after the initial setup, and was focused on starting the next session. So after a few choice comments, off it went again. I expect a response to my choice words left with the AI for feedback tomorrow.

Day two

Started off with it, thinking this was session three. At the start of the session, I got it to confirm that it would skip the second exercise. A couple of times, in fact. It also asked for more light this time, so I flipped on my showroom-level lighting.

First exercise

Went well as I had put on a shirt and knew what to expect.

Second exercise

Again, it popped up and got stuck on me, not being able to bend my head enough to the right. After trying every response I could think of, I hit pause and finally saw the option to skip.

Third exercise

From the side, no issues

Sit-down exercises

It now wanted me to sit down, like I expected from the start. So now I needed to set up in a new location where I could hold my hand steady in front of the camera. I was almost ready to pass again on some of these because my little finger has about half the range of motion they expect.  

Optional "cool down" stretches

First, I assumed I had a squeeze ball, which I fortunately had to hand. Next, I needed to stand, place my palm flat on the table, and lift each finger off the table. This did not go well, again for arthritis reasons.

Follow up

Lastly, it asked how I felt and asked for feedback, and I again mentioned that they are not taking my arthritis into account.

Day Three

Had to skip a few exercises because the app would keep telling me to do something I was already doing. For instance, in the touching thumb to fingertips exercise, I'd be touching my little finger, but it just stopped seeing I was after about three goes. Same with the thumb-to-index-finger base exercise.

Day Four

Another day of "beta testing" their app. That's how I'm seeing it anyway, despite no response from them other than removing the standing exercise that wanted me to bend my neck in ways it will not. I'm not seeing any improvement in my range of motion, but I am getting better at finding the right angles so their AI can properly see the position of my fingers in the sit-down exercises. For instance, the thumb-to-little-finger exercise appears to have failed, not because it did not see them touching, but because my ring finger was not straight enough. For the fist-making exercises, I found that getting the angle right so the AI indicated it was correct, and then keeping my wrist at that angle, improved my score significantly.

For the standing exercise, where I keep my elbow at my side and tilt my wrist up and down, I'm still trying to sort out whether it fails because of the AI or because it just expects it to bend way more than it can. It appeared to line up if I bent my elbow a bit, even though I was not supposed to bend my elbow. 

I provided extensive feedback on how to improve their app and, hopefully, their hardware for future clients. I especially pointed out that starting with a fist rather than an open hand would be a simple fix that would greatly improve their app.

Six weeks in

A few lessons learned:

• Reboot the tablet every few weeks. It gets slower over time. About 5 weeks in, it slowed down so much that it was dropping frames, making it almost impossible to know when you were in position for the "hold" exercises, as you would already be past the correct position by the time it said you were there.
• The video of a person doing the exercise is just a starting point. Angles are everything here. Watching the "Kinect style" stick figure is more important. Especially with the standing exercises, I've found that "parallel to the floor" often meant tilted down a fair bit instead of parallel to the tablet; an angle of up to 20 degrees away from the tablet worked better. Even when the stick figure is clearly not "parallel to the floor". Same with the thumb-to-index-finger exercises. In the thumb-to-index-finger exercises, for example, the small finger is the one that takes the tightest alignment. Get that one set and leave your wrist angle there for the rest of the fingers.
• Be sure to say when an exercise is not doable. Despite my age and arthritis being known, they suggested some yoga poses for "cool down exercises". I told the app to skip them the first time. The second time, I made a point of telling the AI coach that getting down on the floor is not going to happen. After that, they seemed to get that I might have limitations.
• Lighting and background are very important. For the standing exercises, you really want a blank wall behind you and wear a plain short-sleeved shirt. The best lighting appears to be one aimed straight at you, casting the only shadows behind you. You want similar lighting for hand exercises. Even whitening out your palm a bit helps the AI see your hand against the background. Though too much light makes the white stick figure of your hand hard to see.

Things that need improvement:

• Indicators of where the AI thinks you should be. The "Kinect style" display shows you the points the AI uses to reduce you to a stick figure, making it easier to check positioning. The "figure" is white when you are in the start position and until you reach the goal position, then it turns green or red if you get too far off course. What is needed is an indicator, say in yellow, of where the AI goal position is. Even better if it could highlight which part is out of alignment. As mentioned above, changing the angle of my hand to the tablet was the magic needed. Knowing that, instead of the vertical tilt of my wrist being the issue, I needed to rotate my wrist toward the tablet so it could better see my knuckles would have saved me so much time figuring this out by trial and error.
• The tablet really needs at least a second camera. Better yet, a real Kinect sensor. They use multiple cameras and IR to really see you in 3D. People are using these fairly cheap sensors to DIY ghost sensors, and they are already simulating one, so adding one to this setup should be easily doable.

Why I will be leaving MyNetDiary after being a customer for 11 years

 I have been using MyNetDiary since Fitbit removed custom trackers in 2015. I mainly chose MyNetDiary over the others because your custom trackers most closely matched the ones Fitbit removed. A while back, you replaced dailyTracking.do URL with the abomination that is health.do on the menu, but at least dailyTracking.do was still reachable directly. I told you at the time that the new page's awkward interface made it very time-consuming to use. As of this morning the dailyTracking.do URL redirects you to the health.do page.

As a web developer with over 30 years of experience, I do not use the term "abomination" lightly. In this case, I refer to:

The rather random order of the trackers on the page makes it harder to find the one you want to add an entry to. A later update inflicted this loss of order on dailyTracking.do as well, though you do seem to be able to order trackers within groups now. This still requires you to switch between groups for some values, such as your "custom" values and grouped values like blood pressure, so it's still not as convenient as the original interface. Even hiding trackers from view is more complicated now. Instead of clicking an item icon in the list, you are taken to a page that requires you to switch an option and click save, making the process of hiding unneeded trackers included by default tedious, adding two unnecessary clicks to every item changed.

But the larger issues are with the entry interface. 

The dailyTracking.do entry interface appeared on the page so you kept your place on the tracker list. health.do opens a new page. Not a usability issue as such but a step backward in web page evolution.

Unlike the old entry form, the new entry page opens with focus on the tab linked to health.do instead of the value field requiring multiple tabs or mousing to the field.

Unlike the old entry form, the new entry page requires clicking a save link to save the entry. In the old form, you could just hit enter in the value or time fields to save the entry.

Unlike the old entry form, the time entry on the new entry page is very awkward. In the old interface, you would just enter the time, and it would validate on save. The new interface tries to format the value as you type digits, which requires a leading 0 for most. Getting a digit off and getting it back on track is a chore.

Optionally, you can pop up a wheel interface by clicking on the "calendar" icon.

Then there are the labels. They have never had any sort of order. You would think they would at least default to alphabetical.

Unlike the old entry form, the label search is now case sensitive. Why?

So it's back to looking at alternatives or setting aside a lot more time to log trackers and medications. Or maybe I can create an agent to log them for me. 

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491 review

 

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491
by

Charles C. Mann

David Abigt's review

Jun 17, 2026  ·  

it was amazing

bookshelves: history

A great look at the Americas before and after Columbus, including the probable origins of the tribes that have lived there. Also, how those tribes shaped the land and how large a role European diseases played in the shaping of the tribes, and even the United States, 300+ years later. As the book points out, today we are still discovering just how much these tribes modified the land and how widespread they really were. Most were wiped out ahead of the waves of pioneers and Spanish conquistadors. In fact, many of the Spanish conquistadors and pioneers owe their very survival to mass die-offs in tribes. Despite being a relatively short read, it is packed with information probably not mentioned in your school history books.