Walking certainly seems to be growing in popularity. Since the dawn of smart phones, technology has made it easier to count the steps. If you feel like hitting your stride(达到最好状态), then the following are some popular apps to help you put your best foot forward.

This app focuses on helping people become better runners. Users can create and join running groups and make new friends. Setting targets is a popular function. Users can choose from a variety of activities to set goals and those who achieve them may win Prizes. It also offers handy tips on how to avoid injury, input from coaches sharing their knowledge.

This app can track your performance whether you are running, walking, riding or hiking. It has an active social platform where people can share photos and videos, and it offers running programs. Users can also launch their own activities, inviting people in the same city to join them. For users who wish to engage in a variety of activities, the app provides other workout programs focused on building strength and leg muscles.

Users can choose at most 10 friends to follow and see their daily activities, though the friends they follow will not be informed. WeChat has charity programs to help vulnerable (脆弱的)groups, such as left-behind children. Users can "donate steps", which can be converted(转化)to actual amounts of money that gets donated to charity programs.

The popular mobile payment app has a charity-oriented activity called Ant Forest, where users' steps are converted into virtual energy, which can help tree planting. The app claims that affer receiving an application from a user who has saved enough energy, a real tree will be planted(干旱的)areas. They also have charity programs in Alipay encouraging users to "donate steps" as well.

This app, providing online health services, such as medical consultation, can also count steps, and these can be converted into virtual coins the next day. With enough virtual coins, users can buy health-related products from its online store at discounted prices. In some cases, users only need to pay a small courier fee to get items such as chocolate candies, Band-Aids and tissues.

I’m going to be completely honest. I have no idea how I ended up with this opportunity, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I am very happy to be here.

Last summer a friend tagged me in a Facebook post from BBC Earth and encouraged me to apply to the BBC Presenter Search 2018. The assignment was easy and hard, make a video shorter than 60 seconds where you talk about something in science you think is cool. Simple concept, but for me it was challenging as I want to talk about bryophytes(苔藓植物) forever (which is slightly longer than 60 seconds).

So I decided to make an attempt. I was going to make a 60 second video about sphagnum(水苔), commonly known as peat moss and uncommonly known as an unsung climate hero. Sphagnum is the plant genus that holds the most carbon in the world, it slowly builds up its carbon storage over hundreds of thousands of years and if undisturbed, they never let go of the carbon they gathered.

Making a short video on this was hard because I wanted to include everything. And it became even harder as I had no one to hold the camera. I tied my camera to the scrawniest little tree, swinging in the wind as a bird tried to chase me away from the mud. This chaos ended up as the video “Why sphagnum is awesome” on my channel. I submitted the video, but didn’t dare to write in the description section of the video that it was a submission, because I never imagined that I could win!

But I did.

I waited two months before I could tell people that I had won the search, and when the news came out, I received the most attention I’ve had in my entire life.

No matter your background, whether you want to pass the time or pass an exam, I really hope you enjoy the video!

Almost every day we come across situations in which we have to make decisions one way or another. Choice, we are given to believe, is a right. But for a good many people in the world, in rich and poor countries, choice is a luxury, something wonderful but hard to get, not a right. And for those who think they are exercising their right to make choices, the whole system is merely an illusion, a false idea created by companies and advertisers, hoping to sell their products .

'The endless choice gives birth to anxiety in people's lives. Buying something as basic as a coffee pot is not exactly simple. Easy access to a wide range of everyday goods leads to a sense of powerlessness in many people, ending in the shopper giving up and walking away, or just buying an unsuitable item that is not really wanted. Recent studies in England have shown that many electrical goods bought in almost every family are not really needed. More difficult decision-making is then either avoided or trusted into the hands of the professionals, lifestyle instructors, or advisors.

It is not just the availability of the goods that is the problem, but the speed with which new types of products come on the market. Advances in design and production help quicken the process. Products also need to have a short lifespan so that the public can be persuaded to replace them within a short time. The typical example is computers, which are almost out-of-date once they are bought. This indeed makes selection a problem. Gone are the days when one could just walk with ease into a shop and buy one thing; no choice, no anxiety.

Roughly the size of a soda can, sitting on a bookshelf, a relatively harmless device(设备) may be turning friends away from your home. The elephant in your living room is your Internet-connected camera, a device people are increasingly using for peace of mind in their homes. But few stop to think about the effect these devices may have on house guests. Should you tell your friends, for instance, that they’re being recorded while you all watch the big game together?

"It’s certainly new territory, especially as home security cameras become easier to fix," says Lizzie Post, president of the Emily Post Institute, America’s distinguished manners advisors. " I think it will be very interesting to see what manners appear in terms of whether you tell people you have a camera or not, and whether guests have a right to ask that it be turned off, if it’s not a security issue. "Post wants to make clear that she’s not talking about legal rights, but rather personal preference.

When it comes to security cameras, Post says it’s a host’s responsibility to make sure guests feel comfortable within their home. If the host casually acknowledges that there is a camera in the room by telling a story about it, that may be enough to provide an opening for a guest to say if they are uncomfortable.

However, if a contractor(合约工)is working in your home, you don’t need to tell them that there are cameras watching. Then again, the camera can also work in contractors’ favor. "If anything does go wrong while they’re in the house, they don’t want to be blamed for it," she says. "In fact, the camera could be the thing that proves that they didn’t steal the $20, or knock the vase off the table.