Interesting isn’t it? The picture above represents some of the most frequently used words by CHOICE on Twitter. We’ve been using Twitter for almost a year now and it can be a fabulous way of keeping up to date with what people are thinking and what the organisation is doing – latest tests, reports, campaigns and so on.  You only have 140 characters in which to write an update or reply, so you have to keep things short and sweet – just the way we like it!

And, like Twitter, this picture it does a great job of condensing ‘tweets’ – so you can see at a glance some of the issues that the organisation deals with on a day-to-day basis. The image was created using Wordle, which generates ‘word clouds’ from text. The clouds give prominence to words that appear more often in the text. It’s not only interesting but great fun – click on the image above to go to the site.

Pssst! Want to drop several dress sizes in less than an hour? Forget about dieting or exercise and simply go shopping for clothes. To test out just how much difference there can be between clothing sizes, I headed to Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall for a shopping expedition. My mission? To buy a straight black skirt. Sounds easy, especially in this winter’s range. Less easy was working out what size I was.

First stop was chain store Portmans, and in their range I fit perfectly into a size 14 skirt.

Deciding I must be a 14, I head a few doors down to Sussan and grab a 14 in their range. However, when I try it on it almost falls off, so I try a 12, which is also too loose, before finally zipping up a perfect-fitting 10.

Feeling good, I set off for Country Road, where their pencil skirts are labelled “small”, “medium” and “large”. The small doesn’t quite do up but the medium fits nicely. Later, the size 12 skirt at Witchery proves too small and the 14 too big, so I assume that makes me a 13 – but they don’t make half-sizes.

In the department stores, the body bamboozling continues. According to Sportscraft, I’m a 10 but Alannah Hill thinks I’m a 14. SABA and Lisa Ho split the difference, putting me in a 12. It’s a self-esteem rollercoaster as I teeter between feeling petite and plus size depending on who’s dressing me.

I then sample a few higher-end Australian designers.

Leona Edmiston pegs me as a “3” in her dress range, which according to the sales assistant is a “large 12” or ”small 14”, whatever that means. Australian designers Sass & Bide don’t even bother with Australian sizing on some of their labels, with one of their jackets informing me it’s a European size 40 and US 6.

Finally, a sample of Wayne Cooper leaves my self-esteem in the gutter. After trying on a size 2 dress, then 3 and finally 4 (which is still too small) I realise in his eyes I’m far too big to wear any of his designs.

Feeling despondent, I head for the door but decide to make a stop at Target on the way home and try on one more skirt, the best fit being a 10. The confusion continues…

Read the full report, Clothing Size Irregularities, at www.choice.com.au.

So CHOICE took a look at the nutritional composition of a range of popular takeaway meals:

• Chinese
• Thai
• Italian

The same meal cooked by different restaurants can vary widely in nutrient content, so we used average values from Australian food composition tables to find out which meals are the healthier options and which are packed with salt, fat and excess kilojoules. The report is available on the CHOICE website www.choice.com.au.

We’ve also listed some quick, easy cook-at-home recipes that are healthy, delicious and fast.

Got any tips for healthy food choices? We’d love to hear them!

The CHOICE report, Unfair gym contracts, offers some advice on your consumer rights when you embark on your gym journey, including a cancellation form letter that should make breaking up with your gym a little bit easier.

What to watch out for:

• Don’t succumb to high-pressure sales tactics.
  Take time to shop around and carefully consider the memberships on offer at each gym.
• Rights and responsibilities.
  Read your contract carefully and be fully aware of your rights and responsibilities. Don’t be afraid to question anything in the contract that you don’t like and/or understand.
• Check the cancellation terms of the contract.
  Can you get out of it if you move house, get sick, lose your job or simply decide to give up? Don’t assume the contract finishes at the end of 12 months. Check your contract to see how to cancel your membership (and direct debit) if you no longer want to attend.
• Don’t assume your direct debit will be cancelled when you cancel your gym membership.
  If you have any doubts, contact your bank directly and request an immediate cancellation of the direct debit. Although, if you have any outstanding debt you will need to arrange to pay this by cash or cheque.

If you have a gym membership story to tell, we’re keen to hear it. You can leave a comment here or in the Your Say section of the report.

Children are exposed to around 10 television food ads every day and almost two thirds of these are for unhealthy foods.

Go to www.burgercorp.com.au and send an email to Nicola Roxon urging an introduction of a ban on junk food advertising to children (tell her your own story too). And feel free to send the link on to your friends and family.

So CHOICE has prepared a survival guide for the global financial crisis. We regularly put financial services and providers under the microscope, looking at everything from health and car insurance to the best (and worst) credit cards and home loans. 

Steps to reducing your debt:

• Make a budget  – Use our worksheet. Consider options to reduce your living expenses, such as selling the second car, as well as ways to increase your income, such as asking any adult children who still live with you to contribute to household expenses.
• Research ways to cut back on expenses; talk to family and friends and for useful websites, see Debt Relief Contacts.
• Get ahead  – Once you’ve freed up some cash, make extra repayments, which can slash thousands of dollars in interest off your mortgage and credit card(s).

Already have a great money saving tip? Share it with us and read other consumer tips. And we also have the following money reports to get people ’Back in Black’
(with apologies to rockers AC/DC):

• Debt relief
• Ten easy ways to beat the global financial crisis
• Compare credit cards
• Refinance your home loan
• Mortgage stress
• Switch financial service providers and save
• Your super and the global financial crisis
• Early release super schemes

Now, when you wish to submit a comment, you will also fill out a sequence of letters. It’s a simple task for humans that can’t easily be replicated by a computer so it helps prevent automated ‘bots’ from clogging up the blogosphere.

For more information on CAPTCHAs, check out the article on CHOICE Online.

So what topped this year’s list? One of Australia’s leading banks, a popular spread aimed at children and a major appliance manufacturer. CHOICE gave out nine awards in all:

• Teleconfusion: Mobile phone industry
• Spoiling the fun: Play For Fun Flying Ring
• Nasty shonkeyness: Woofaz retractable dog leash PA0087B
• Warm wine and high energy: Dome 900192 and Rank Arena RAWC28
• Unfair fees: Westpac
• Low General Integrity (GI): Ferrero Nutella
• Greenwash: LG combined steam washer/dryer WD-1248RD
• Supershonkyness: Superjuices
• Ain’t Shrek Beautiful: Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB)

The Shonkys are supposed to be a bit of fun, but they also give an insight into some of the misleading claims, product safety issues, self-serving behaviour and the environmentally bankrupt spin out there in Australia.

Head on over to CHOICE to vote for your favourite Shonky, or nominate one of your own. Or watch the YouTube video.

www.flickr.com More photos in CI World Congress 2007

The photos are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia License.