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"I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but Chicago officially became a smoke-free city yesterday, Jan. 1, 2008.  Whether or not this will help motivate smokers to quit, I also wouldn't know, but a site launched in Pennsylvania could be helpful for those that would like to stop smoking.  DeterminedToQuit is a new social network designed to motivate you through your quitting journey.  Designed for the 2 million smokers in Pennsylvania, anyone can join.\nWhat's somewhat unique about this particular network is its use of automated tools, specifically charts to track your progress and messages sent to you via email and SMS to keep you in line.  You can even schedule text messages to be sent to your mobile phone at 5 pm every Friday to help remind you not to smoke during happy hour after work.  Helpful?  You tell me\u2014I'm not a smoker.\n\nBut I imagine some generic text messages wouldn't do the trick for me.  DeterminedToQuit tries to curb this by getting your friends and family involved.  They can sign up for a \"supporter\" account to frequently send you messages (via SMS and email) to give some genuine support to your quitting goal.  This is similar to Goalmigo, which is another support community filled with users that will help you get to where you want to be, regardless of your actual goal.\nThere are some video blogs that are featured on the site, but this doesn't appear to be an easy feature community-wide tool for the promotion of self-broadcasting tools for this purpose.  I think this would actually be a good idea\u2014it's the equivalent of holding a pseudo, virtual support group online.  Things like this seem to be additional ways in which DeterminedToQuit could further engage the users for the purpose of creating more of a community feel, thus leading to more support amongst users.  I expect similar goal-oriented sites to push more initiatives in the coming weeks as the new year has arrived, and new support sites are likely to be increasingly niche, like 12StepSpace, as well.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[via 901am]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/01/02/determinedtoquit/>