With the variety of mobile fitness apps available many of us carry a personal trainer in our pocket, so why not use it to our advantage? There are numerous apps and other downloadable content available to help you either get in shape or stay in shape, without the cost of hiring a personal trainer. Below are a few of my favourite fitness apps.

101 Yoga Poses
For yoga lovers 101 Yoga Poses is the ultimate mobile yoga resource. High quality photographs illustrate each pose and the app provides step-by-step instructions. Practice yoga anywhere with your mobile yoga instructor!

Women’s Health downloadable content
Women’s Health has numerous step-by-step workouts on their website that readers can download to their iPhone or Blackberry and do at home or gym. Come on ladies, download these workouts and get in shape for summer!

FitDeck
FitDeck is an application that ‘uses digital cards to guide you through a unique and fun physical fitness program.’ FitDeck includes Pilates exercises and is perfect to use anywhere, whether it is at home or in the gym.

The Strength and Toning Deck
The Strength and Toning Deck app provides iPhone users with 50 easy exercises to achieve a toned and fit appearance and the app allows users to track their progress. Download the Strength and Toning Deck from the iTunes app store.

Now there are no more excuses, with these mobile apps it’s easy to exercise anywhere, anytime.

More and more magazines are moving into the mobile sphere with Glamour being the latest. The magazine recently launched a mobile app with the aim to increase readership and offer readers a multi-sensory experience.

Through the app users can buy the latest issue of Glamour magazine for $3.99 (an exact replica of the print edition) to read on their mobile device as well as stay up to date with the latest blog posts on the Glamour blog. The app also features exclusive content like extra photos and shopping information and app users can directly purchase items showcased in the magazine. Ladies, lock your credit cards away!

In terms of advertising on the app Glamour made a clever move. Advertisers can not buy space only in the online edition of the magazine, they have to buy advertising space in the print edition too. Through this technique Glamour increased its advertising revenue by 57% (September 2010 compared to September 2009).

Through the interactive features and additional content available exclusively on the app Glamour may build a strong customer base for the app yet a few users have complained about the cost ($3.99) of downloading the magazine each month. The other issue is that at the moment the app is only available for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. What is your opinion, will you buy your favourite magazines online and read it on your mobile device?

Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream (a division of Nestlé) recently revealed their “Share the Love” campaign for their Skinny Cow ice creams.  The aim of the campaign is to create awareness for the Skinny Cow brand among women aged 25 – 54 and their multi-channel approach includes channels like print adverts, billboards and online video adverts.

As a complementary component to the campaign Dreyer’s introduced a mobile game that is available exclusively on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and features a daschund delivering Skinny Cow snacks to her animal friends.  In short, the daschund is in a balloon and every time she delivers a snack to one of her animal friends the players receive points (or love).  ‘Love’ keeps the balloon going and the goal is to evade potential obstacles.  If the player can’t collect enough love the balloon deflates, sink back to the ground and the player has to start over.  (Read the full game instructions here).  Players can post their game scores to The Skinny Cow’s leader board and compare their scores with friends and other players.

The stand-alone website for The Skinny Cow includes a number of useful features including a flavour finder, skinny tips and a question and answer section.  The campaign integrates social media platforms and The Skinny Cow has a presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  “Share the Love” is a fresh, interactive campaign and according to the number of fans and followers she has on Facebook and Twitter The Skinny Cow’s campaign is a hit!