Among the many emails we get here at Shoot Up trying to convince us that our readers really need to know about the latest plant that will cure diabetes, or how for just £2000 you can spend a week in a shed in Spain yoga-ing your way out of diabetes, there is occasionally something useful. This is one of the few press releases we didn’t delete. 
Glooko is a clever piece of software that allows you to download your results from several brands of BG meter onto an iPhone, add comments about what you’ve eaten or been doing and then analyse the results with graphs and the like so you can get a clearer idea of what’s going on.
Looks good to us. And so more people get to know about it Glooko would like to give one Shoot Up reader the chance to trial their software for free. In all honesty, they wanted me and Tim to do it, but neither of us have been indoctrinated into the worship of Apple, both of us are quite lazy when it comes to logging and analysing data, it doesn’t work with my antique yet beloved Optium Xceed BG meter and if I do analyse data, I just use my CGM.
But, not everyone is as pernickety as Tim and I. So Glooko have agreed that we can offer one lucky Shoot Up reader a free Glooko MeterSync Cable worth £32.50 in exchange for them writing a review of the product to be published on this here blog.
If you’re interested, you’ll need:
- One of these BG meters: ACCU-CHEK Aviva, ACCU-CHEK Aviva Nano, ACCU-CHEK Compact Plus, ACCU-CHEK Nano, Bayer’s Breeze2, Bayer’s Contour, FreeStyle Freedom Lite, FreeStyle Lite, OneTouch Ultra2, OneTouch UltraLink, and OneTouch UltraMini
- One of these fruit based mobile devices: iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation)
- The patience to use the software for a couple of weeks to get a feel for it and how it works – you can see more about what it does in this video
- The ability to string together vaguely coherent sentences to write a review about how you felt about Glooko – what did you like about it, what would you like to change, did it make any difference to you? (Don’t panic, you’ve read the stuff we write, the writing standards bar really isn’t very high!)
If you’re interested, leave us a comment below before midnight BST on Sunday 22 July and we’ll pick a winner/victim after that and let you know.
If it works with the ContourLINK and no one else has a burning desire to review it for you I’ll happily subject put it through its paces on your behalf (and shamelessly cross-post on our blog, obvioulsly…)
As you can see, my writing/editing skills are up to their usual impeccable standard this morning. Feel free to rearrange some of those words into as coherent a sentence as you can manage and mentally delete the remaining fragments of earlier versions and/or creative use of extra letters in some of the words. Thnaks, Mkie.
What I love most about that response is that you’ve now lost the ability to spell your own name 🙂
I’m awlays srupriesd by our abitily to decdoe prooly writetn snetences 🙂
I’d love to do this! I have an Accu-Chek Aviva and regularly worship at the church of Apple!
I’ve used a couple of iPhone apps like Islet and Carbfinder but didn’t find them that compatible with an insulin pump based regime so would be interested to see how Glooko measures up.
I’m also in the middle of my Ph.D. which has two benefits:
(i) I can hopefully string a sentence together
(ii) I am always on the lookout for a distraction!
Thanks, Faith
Would love to! And I’m a college professor, and while a social worker myself, I (try to) manage nurses and OTs. Plus, I love my iPhone.
Oooo would love to…I currently spend many an hour processing my son’s bg numbers in excel – and I keep telling myself there has to be an easier way to feed my obsession. I think I qualify based on the following:
1) We use the Accu-Chek Aviva Nano BGS
2) I own an iphone
3) My job includes software testing so i have the patient of a saint for this kind of thing
4) I can string a sentence together – the other part of my job is being a technical author
So all I need now is a bit of luck so I can have a new toy to play with!
Marian (mum to @sugar_boy_tom)
@alison – how are we going to decide who gets the thingy? We didn’t anticipate this level of demand. I suggest one of two solutions:
1) Pick name out of hat
2) Trial by combat
Option 2) is my preference.
I like your thinking @Tim. With the quality of the people now showing an interest, I am seriously considering invoking the immeasurable power of ‘dibs’. Possibly even ‘double dibs’. 🙂
These are powerful forces you are invoking here Mike!
I dare you not to give it to him. No, check that, I double-dare you!
I have been waiting for this product to arrive in the UK. I really would like to test it and provide a review. I have an Iphone 3GS and use a oneTouch Ultra2. I have previously used the OneTouch Ultra software which I found useful but not user friendly. It only works on Windows. In common with the lady above I have spent years software testing and report writing. I am pretty good at spotting problems from a user point of view.
I think Apple’s legal team may be getting a bit nervous about “indoctrinated into the worship of Apple” and “Trial by combat” being banded around in the same blog post.
Also, do the rules of shotgun apply here? If so, SHOTGUN!
I’m loving this. We should have an election for the site’s tester role. We could have hustings and everything!
Ah, but that would be in direct contravention of Shoot Up’s mission statement to be a benign dictatorship 🙂
Speaking of benign dictatorships… I’m still waiting to see that pic of your esteemed co-writer in a fluorescent pink mankini – oh hang on was that a *different* Baron-Cohen movie?
Believe me @Mike, if I had that picture, I’d have been blackmailing @Tim with it for a very long time by now!
well I think I should have the chance of trying it out. We have a selection of fruit gadgets, still work in lines, use my mathematical skills to work out correction dose and type everything so that spell check and grammar can be checked since it was 20+ years ago since I wrote a dissertation. Yes I need bringing up to date! Oops yes I do use a Nano but sometimes go by how I feel (either hypo symptoms or great thirst) as fingers now sore from blunt lancets!
Me, please! (Waving hand from back of classroom). Me!
Fruit-flavoured device? Check.
Freestyle Lite? Check.
Coherent sentences? Some of my sentences are almost coherent
It’s the best part of diabetes isn’t it? The gadgets.
And the winner is…..
We got so many people wanting to try out the Glooko, we thought we’d be fair and add in some extra drama by putting all the names into a half full sharps container, mixing them round and then dicing with puncture wounds to pull out the lucky winner. And that person is…. @Faith – congratulations! I’ll email you Faith with all the info we need to get the cable to you.
Thanks @mike , @sugarboytom , @bwalker123 , @underwyred , @mustard and @sweetbeets for entering
Congratulations, Faith. And thanks mods for organising this.
I’ve never been called a “mod” before. This is very exciting!