Our sincerest thank you to readers who filled in our poll (if you haven’t already, please scroll down and tell us who you are and what you’d like to read more about on our blog). We’ve received about 20 responses so far, and as we suspected, our readers cover almost the full spectrum of categories we provided.

However, we received more responses from consumers and VC/investors, and more votes for online health and behind the scenes at HealthPricer. We aim to please, so we’ll be introducing some more regular columns that we’ll unveil this week.

Tuesdays will be “Tool Tuesday” where we provide links to some of our favourite health tools, features and communities.

Thursdays we’ll run a regular “behind the scenes at HealthPricer” column.

And on Fridays, we’ll be providing responses to reader questions that we receive at HealthPricer.

In addition, we’ll continue to run our industry articles and commentary.

Today is Tuesday and we’ve surfed the net for Body Mass Index (BMI) Calculators. The internet is littered with BMI calculators, so which one do you choose? Here are our top picks.

1. WebMD

WebMD has integrated its BMI calculator into an overall diet plan. As part of this counter, you enter your height, weight and target weight.

Web MD BMI calculator

Here's the result page:

WebMD BMI Calculator results page

I found filling in the short questionnaire well worth the time.

Section of WebMD Healthy Eating Assessment

Now, if you want the plan for helping you loose the weight, it will cost you $19.99/week – this cost will give you a weight loss plan, online menus, weight loss tracking tools. I decided not to sign up…

2. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute

The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute has a simple to use BMI calculator for measuring your body mass in both metric and standard. It’s also available in Spanish.

NHLBI BMI Calculator

I also like the pages linking to controlling your weight and recipes. These are further links to free pages the Institute endorses for learning about weight control and some recipes that are good for your heart.

3. HealthCentral.com

HealthCentral calculates BMI by a different standard and says its method is more accurate: “For years, people looked up their weight on tables drawn from insurance company statistics. While those are still around, this is a newer, more accurate way to calculate what is truly a healthy weight range for you.”

They ask you to wrap your thumb and fingers around the smallest part of your wrist, as well as enter your height and weight:

HealthCentral BMI Calculator

And here’s the result. I really like this calculator as it’s the first one to tell me I’m underweight.

HealthCentral BMI Calculator Results

4. MSN Health and Fitness

Similar to HealthCentral, MSN Health and Fitness asks for a measurement – this time around your waist. Perhaps there is something to measuring your frame as well as giving your weight and height?

MSN BMI Calculator

Although this measurement is not far off those that don’t ask for measurements – 20.8 vs 21 in those that ask for no measurements.

MSN BMI Calculator Result

Do you know of even better BMI calculators? Please share.

The web is buzzing over Microsoft’s latest venture into grabbing more of the search pie: Live Search Cashback. But how does it measure up against comparison shopping engines? Looking at this from our experience of creating a niche vertical comparison shopping engines, HealthPricer, I have some questions about the consumer experience that you may already have looked into? Let me jump right in.

For those of you that haven’t checked out the experience as yet, Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land tried it out. Barry has a good point. Will the average consumer trust they will get the money back from the products they buy?

I personally am not so sure. Especially as you start to consider some of the added parameters involved in consumer shopping behaviour online. Looking at the back-end technology needed to track consumer behaviour, I’m wondering if any of you have tested the following:

- We have found that many consumers go to a merchant site with the intent of buying one product, say contact lenses, but often end up buying a bunch of other things, say contact lens cleaning solutions and new contact lens cases. Say the original purchase was $20 and the total purchase $100. Does the consumer get cashback on the $20 or the $100 through Live Search Cashback?

- What if you find a product through Live Search Cashback, but decide not to buy it that day. Perhaps you bookmark the merchant site and decide to buy the product a week later? Will you still get the cashback?

If you’ve tried either of the above searches, or have observations, I’d love to hear from you.

Some further observations I thought worth a notice:

One of my favourite sites, Techcrunch, sets the scene:

Quoting Michael Arrington in The Empire Strikes Back: Our Analysis of Microsoft Live Search Cashback: “about a third of searches are commerce related, but those searches generate 80% of search revenue. Get the commerce searches and you’ve got the revenue. And here’s another interesting statistic - 68% of online purchases begin at a search engine or shopping comparison site. Only about 30% are from direct navigation to the ecommerce site itself.”

Discount shopping for consumers and a Cost Per Acquisition Model for merchants, engaged in by Live Search Cashback, has worked well as a business model for many comparison shopping engines, including HealthPricer. What are people saying about the Microsoft Live Search Cashback experience? Here are some comments I found of interest:

Comment left of CNet

Comment left of SeattlePI.com

Danny Sullivan commentary posted on Ad Age:

We’ve been plugging away at our blog for nearly a year now. Gerd and I have been writing about topics that we think are of interest and we receive the occasional comment from readers. Our readership has been growing by 20% month on month. Last month we had just over 900 visitors to HealthPricer Post.

Now we’re curious about who our readers are? Perhaps you can do us the favour of filling in our short poll below?

We hope to hear from you.