Making a recumbent bike "desk" with off-the-shelf parts for under $400. Is it possible? I'm finding out.

I've needed to get back in shape for a while, but I'm working full time, then add 3-4 hours a day for day-care pickups, dinner prep, baths, bed time stories, etc. Then add another 60-90 minutes after the kids are off to bed that I have to be at home because the wife's still at work. The only way to get to the gym is to go at 10 p.m. or 4:30 a.m. The rest of my day is mostly booked.

But I'm sitting at my home office's desk right now, writing a blog post. I'll be sitting at it tomorrow, working on my novel. And I'll be sitting at it next month, working on learning Flash and programming a game. So why not get in some exercise while I'm sitting at my desk?

I could do a treadmill desk but they run pretty expensive, in the neighborhood of 2-4k. Additionally, the point of an exercise desk is that you exercise slowly enough that you can still concentrate on work, but you end up putting in more time because you do it for a few hours.

So, because it was cheaper, lower impact, and it looked more comfortable for putting in hours per day, I picked a recumbent bike. But when I went looking for an office solution, there was nothing. There were some hobbyists and a cheap upright bike with a desk. There were some stand alone pedaling thingamajobbers that go under your desk, but there were no solutions with completely "off-the-shelf" products that guaranteed I would not be bumping my knees whenI pedaled or having to sit too far back from my desk to reach the keyboard.

I started looking for something that I could fit over or around a recumbent bike, adjust to accomodate the movement of my legs, and maybe tilt up a bit in back and down in front to make it more friendly.

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As I've been investigating frameworks that would let me create an installed app for Mac/Linux/Windows/iPhone/Android, the two words that have come up most might surprise you: JavaScript and WebKit.

Most of you know what JavaScript is. It's a programming language that allows you to do client-side tasks in the browser (programs you embed in a web page that are run by the user's browser, rather than on the web server). Fewer might know about WebKit.

WebKit is an engine for powering a web browser. When Apple went to create Safari, they borrowed and built upon an open source engine called KHTML which was created by the KDE project. Over the years, it's stayed open, stayed free, tried to stay ahead of the technological curve, and by many opinions, is less bloated and burdened with legacy code than the open source engine that powers Firefox.

And it's spread. Webkit powers Safari on Windows, Mac, iPhone, and the upcoming iPad. It powers much of the new Google Chrome browser and the Google Chrome OS. WebKit powers the built-in browsers on Android and the Palm Pre. It also underpins multiple cross-platform application frameworks, including Adobe Air and Appcelerator Titanium. I haven't spent a lot of time researching it, but it seems that Blackberry's going WebKit for it's main browser and you can get a WebKit browser for your Windows Mobile phone.

Basically, you get the broadest range of targetable systems not with Flash, not with Java, but by targeting development to WebKit.

Most of your smartphone users will go with the built in browser. Even if they downloaded something else, it's hard or impossible to delete the built-in browser in many phones, so they'll have it. If you want to make sure your desktop/laptop users are running a WebKit browser, just package up the front page of your web application in Adobe Air or Titanium Appcelerator and the framework's runtime will bundle your app around a runtime that gives you all that WebKit functionality.

With client-side databases, "offline" mode (web scripts can determine when the browser is offline and continue to offer various services), some pretty cool JavaScript libraries for user interface animation and 2-D gaming, HTML5's native handling of video and audio, and the ever-expanding functionality of the Canvas element, applications will continue to migrate to the browser. As more browsers offer a standardized option for user scripts (3rd party scripts that run after a page loads... with the user's permission), even more ways to blur the line between desktop and web app enter the picture.

Don't get me wrong. You're not going to see the whole computing experience handled inside the browser. For some computationally intensive tasks like video compression and 3-D gaming, you just need the pure, throaty roar of compiled code running natively on the platform you're using. But where pure speed, power, and access to various hardware devices isn't needed, you're going to find enterprising souls creating online competition for your favorite desktop apps, and it's all going to be handled in your browser by its built-in functionality.

After a week of trying to figure out the best way to structure my latest secret project, I've decided to target WebKit, because with a combination of a WebKit-based framework for the desktop and WebKit powering the default browsers on a huge portion of the smartphone universe, it's going to give my project the broadest possible reach.

I've been using Twitter for a few weeks now. Following a few friends and a few favorite artists has been fun, but one useful follow was Step Forth Web Marketing (suggested by my good friend, web diva Cathie Walker). They try to limit their tweets mostly to useful links about web design, site building, and marketing/SEO.

On Wednesday, they twittered: "Pretty darn cool software for anyone wanting to ensure credit is given to your content that is copied http://tcr1.tynt.com/." I went over to the site and discovered the beta version of a funky little javascript tool called Tracer. I just got approved for the beta and installed it here on Brainhandles.

I'll quote their technical FAQ here...

Q. What user actions does Tracer measure?
A. Tracer is designed to measure user engagement in a completely new way. Currently, Tracer measures when a user:
1. Copies text
2. Copies an image
3. Highlights content while reading

Read more: "FAQ - Technical topics « Tynt Blog" - http://blog.tynt.com/?page_id=130#ixzz09f8QfCOp

Notice that "Read More" line at the bottom of the quote. That wasn't on the page. That was added by the Tracer script when I highlighted and copied if from their FAQ. Now, in general, it's really very easy for someone to just delete that line when they paste your content to something, but it also sort of acts as a reminder that they should credit the source and gives them a direct link for doing it.

Overall, though, I'm really interested to see what kind of stats they generate and how those stats break down. Understanding what bits are being highlighted and/or copied on my pages is an interesting insight as to how people are engaging with my content. Are all the highlight/copy actions going to be the bits of PHP code I post occasionally, or am I going to be finding people copying favorite quotes from the novel I've been publishing here?

If you've got a blog and you host it yourself (installing their code in the footer.php file within WordPress was a buh-reeze), you might want to consider signing up for their beta and trying it for yourself.

In the old days of the Internet, there was a simple reason chain letters were evil: they wasted precious bandwidth. They were basically a form of non-destructive virus that got people to voluntarily propagate them. But if you look at your average chain letter, there's something much more insidious underneath. Many of them are evil.

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