2007 has been a great year, so much has happened and we’ve grown so much. Based on how things are going now 2008 is going to be one AMAZING year for SugarStats and thank each and every one of you for helping make that happen.

Things are happening so fast and we’ve got a ton of new stuff coming out in the coming months so stay tuned!

So from everyone on the SugarStats team, to all our blog readers and diabetic users, we wish you all a very happy and safe new year!

The new year is approaching and for many that means a whole slew of goal setting and resolutions.

I had the great pleasure to be able to physically join Charlie Cherry and the gang in the studio for an episode of the DiabetesPowerShow a few weeks ago and now that has just been released.

The topic of the show was goal setting and diabetic resolutions for this upcoming year. It was also great as we had Manny from TuDiabetes.com join us on the phone and we all went over the various tools out there, especially online, which we can utilize to make those goals a reality.

It is a great episode with of course lots of motivation and enthusiasm so definitely check it out.

You can download it directly here: http://www.diabetespowershow.com/

I know my main goal has been to get my A1c into the 5-6.0 range. Though I am quite happy over the last 6 months I’ve got it down over 3%!! Almost there What are your diabetes goals for 2008? Share them over at TuDiabetes.com

Yep! I just learned about the Glucoboy today.

From their web site:

The Glucoboy is the first blood glucose meter that has been designed specially for kids, adolescents and the young at heart.
...
In addition to a stand-alone blood glucose meter, the Glucoboy contains 2 full length video games and a mini-arcade. To access the video games, the Glucoboy must be inserted into the cartridge slot on a Nintendo Game Boy® Advance System, or into the Game Boy® cartridge slot on a Nintendo DS.
...

Seems like an interesting incentive, if you ask me… However, it would be amazing if it gave you credits too for running or other physical activity, since playing games will not precisely help with your blood sugars.

If you want to chat with others about Glucoboy and other diabetes-related matters, join TuDiabetes.com – a community for people touched by diabetes.

Public Sharing

We’re introducing a small new feature for all accounts called Public URL sharing. This makes things a bit easier to share your statistics while at the same time not having to create a TrustedVue login for everyone you to see them.

What will I see?

You’ll now see a “Share” link at the top of many pages. When Public Sharing is turned on you’ll then be presented with a URL you can copy/paste and send anywhere and to anyone you like. Put it in an Email, Blog post, Social Network, Instant Message or anywhere else you like. You basically get an address you can hotlink anywhere.

What will viewers see?

When people go to this page, they’ll see your statistics in a read-only view as well as a limited navigation for common pages. It is similar to what TrustedVue users see, but with a limited subset of data and they isn’t any messaging. For your immediate diabetes support team and the people you trust, we still recommend giving them each a TrustedVue login.

Right now you can only share single day pages and multi-day statistics/trend pages. We’ll be implementing the graphs in the near future

Privacy

You’re data is of course up to you to choose to share so public sharing is disabled by default. You can easily turn it on my clicking the checkbox in your settings.

For more info on Public Sharing and how to enable it please visit the Public Sharing Help Wiki Page

Multiple Entry Single Input Form

This has been a popular request and is something that will hopefully make it easier to input a large amount of various entries at once. This makes it easy to input all your sugar, med, food and activity entries in one form at the end of the day for example.

We give you quite a few by default and you can always add more by clicking, well, “Add More” Blank entries will be skipped so you don’t have to worry about removing them before submitting.

Set time for entries input via Email or Twitter

Now you can input entries later in the day and still specify a specific time in which the entry happened earlier. Specifying the time is optional and looks like this:

Some examples Via Email:

bg 146 at 11am This is my comment
bg 190 at 1:10pm 
bg 111 @ 12pm
med [med_mobile_code] 6 at 8:15am optional comment
med [med_mobile_code] 10 @ 11pm

Some examples via Twitter.com:

d ss1 bg 146 at 11am This is my comment
d ss1 bg 190 at 1:10pm 
d ss1 bg 111 @ 12pm
d ss1 med [med_mobile_code] 6 at 8:15am optional comment
d ss1 med [med_mobile_code] 10 @ 11pm

Up next we’ll be working on ways to input food and activity entries as well as set events/tags for each entry so stay tuned. For more info check out the Mobile Input Help Page

Other changes

We’ve made a few smaller changes as well:

• Overall design tweaks throughout the application.
• Added compression to the web pages meaning things should feel a bit snappier
• Improved the messaging in SugarStats. Messages are displayed in a nicer format.
• RSS Feeds for the public view. Private RSS feeds for non-public shared accounts coming soon.
• Tons of minor bug fixes

We’ve got tons of even more great new stuff coming out very soon too so stay tuned!

Another Thanksgiving come and gone, lots of food happily consumed and delicious beverages had by all. I hope everyone had a safe and responsible Thanksgiving with friends and family.

It is usually a tough thing for a diabetic to be completely in control on Thanksgiving day, so much temptation! But thats what we Bolus for right?

In fact, I think maybe Thanksgiving should also carry a second name, maybe “Super Bolus Day” or “Happy Fast Acting Insulin Day”?

In any case, we though it might be cool to get some aggregated stats and see how all the SugarStats users did on Thanksgiving (or at least from those who remembered to record ).

Overall, the stats community stats were fairly good:

Sugar Average: 142 mg/dL
Lowest: 52 mg/dL
Highest: 469 mg/dL

In the end I hope the day was enjoyable (and delicious) for all and that no one ended up in the ER for hyperglycemia.

I woke up to this piece of news today. Very promising!

“Two teams of scientists have independently discovered a way to turn ordinary human skin cells into stem cells with the same characteristics as those derived from human embryos, a breakthrough that could open the door for advanced medical therapies.”

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16470482

If you want to discuss this news with others, visit: http://www.tudiabetes.com/forum/topic/show?id=583967%3ATopic%3A71467

For those of you out there still wishing for an better inhaled insulin solution there just might be hope yet. Or at least as long as Alfred E. Mann can help it. He believes in it so much he is going to invest $966 Million of his own money.

“I believe this is one of the most valuable products in history in the drug industry, and I’m willing to back it up with my estate,”

NYT has a great article/interview in whch they talk to Mr. Mann about it, discuss Pfizer’s 2.8 billion dollar Exubera inhaled insulin failure and what things are to come.

The product, called Technosphere Insulin (They made the inhaler slightly larger than a cell phone), holds promise they say:

“The distinguishing feature of Technosphere Insulin is that it goes to work faster than any other insulin on the market, even so-called fast-acting injected insulins. That could be better at helping control the spike in blood sugar levels that occurs after a meal.

Technosphere Insulin also finishes its work of helping the body use glucose in two or three hours, faster than other products. That might reduce the risk of dangerously low glucose levels several hours after a meal – a big concern for diabetics.”

It certainly sounds interesting, something I might even use if they put it in a portable, easy to use device that doesn’t look like a gigantic bong. But I think Mann has identified that as one of the huge mistakes that Pfizer made and has learned from it He says Pfizer’s Exubera was:

“an expensive way to fairly inconveniently deliver insulin in a manner which has no clinical advantage.”

Like many of the other drugs there still has to be a ton of testing done before its available. But it might be something to look out for in the future.

Read the full article at the New York Times: Betting an Estate on Inhaled Insulin

Thats right, its Nov 14th and that means its world diabetes day. A day that we all unite, across the world, to bring attention and awareness to diabetes.

Last year we wrote about it too, there were some great events they had lined up. This year they got some even cooler things going on.

And though there are many out there struggling with diabetes daily and hate it, I think today is also a day to be grateful that we’re still alive. That we still have the gift of life and the opportunity to manage it the best we can. The opportunity to live deliberately and with joy.

Diabetes in Children

This is the 2nd annual WDD campaign and it is themed around Diabetes in Children and Adolescents. From worlddiabetesday.org:

“The theme of this year’s World Diabetes Day campaign is Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases of childhood. It can strike children at any age, including pre-school children and even toddlers. Yet diabetes in children is often diagnosed late, when the child has diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), or it is misdiagnosed completely.”

Find a Blue Monument near you!

Another cool thing is that over 200 monuments around the world are lighting up in the world diabetes day color (Pantone 279). See them all on a map

If you have a blue monument near you, take a video and upload it to the WDD site
Learn more about World Diabetes Day at http://www.worlddiabetesday.org