Google Fit app free
Simplification is main change in this update

Google is trying to get you off the couch, by simplifying the look of its Fit app to measure just two things: how much you move and how good that is for your heart. The company redesigned the app in partnership with the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization to reflect both the amount the people move every day and the intensity of that movement. It also looks more like Apple's Activity app.

Google's revamp simplifies its tracking program, which it first launched in 2014 as a competitor to Apple's HealthKit. Unlike the previous design — which would track, for example, walking, running and biking as separate categories — there are now only two main metrics. People will earn credit for every "move minute" they log, which tracks lower-intensity movement like walking. Fit rewards more rigorous activities such as biking, running or other workouts with something called "Heart Points." It can pull data from more popular fitness apps such as the dieting app MyFitnessPal or running tracker Strava.

Fit will be available for all Android devices and any watch that has Google's Wear OS, such as those from Fossil, LG and Huawei. Those who use it already should see the changes roll out from this week.

WASHINGTON POST

Acronis True Image $50
It doesn't get much easier than this system

Acronis True Image 2019 will take a snapshot of your entire hard drive, including its partitions and even multiple hard drives, save the backup to an external hard drive and help you restore the backup to a new hard drive or a new PC or Mac, exactly as it was on the old hard drive.

The update from its 2018 version is worthwhile. Your Facebook pages can be backed up, along with your smartphone data. You can choose which files to back up and restore them. Files can be encrypted and notarized. The latter specifies that a file hasn't been altered.

New features in this latest version attack ransomware, provide faster backup to the cloud and erase backups you don't need anymore. Acronis True Image 2019 costs from $50 to $160, depending on the number of PCs you are installing it on and how much cloud storage you need. Backing up doesn't get much easier than this.

TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE