clocks

The Sleep Doctor Michael Breus is back in the studio to solve all our snooze-related questions, and he also brings us a new toy! He's showing off the Renew SleepClock by Gear4, a sleep management tool that knows when you're sleeping and takes careful measurements to record your sleep patterns.

It also works as a tailored alarm clock that wakes you up at the lightest moment in your sleep cycle, so you'll arise super refreshed. Dr. Breus also gave us one to give away on a future show, so be sure to tune in to find out how to win.

As usual, the Doctor also answers questions from our listeners. Today he'll respond to inquiries about the correlation between memory and sleep, and whether or not we can learn things like languages and facts just by sleeping.… Read more

Oh good, I can get one second more sleep the night of June 30. In an effort to keep our extremely accurate atomic clocks in line with the more arbitrary nature of the way the world wobbles, we're getting a leap second this weekend.

Sure, it's not as dramatic as what happens during a leap year, but it's still exciting for clock aficionados, science geeks, and time lords. The leap second will be added to Coordinated Universal Time at the end of the day on June 30.… Read more

Gone are the days of keeping track of bills, birthdays, and appointments with pencil and a datebook -- or at least, gone are the days when that was your only option. Multi Reminders is one of many options for maintaining your schedule on your computer. It's not the most sophisticated program we've ever seen, but it does have some interesting features that make it appealing.

Multi Reminders has a straightforward interface for creating new events. You enter the event's name, date, frequency, and number of days in advance they want to be reminded of it. We liked … Read more

Free Alarm Clock Portable is exactly what the name suggests: a portable alarm clock application that can be run from your desktop or a portable device like a USB drive. It's nothing fancy, but that's what we like about it: it has a full complement of useful features in an accessible interface, without a lot of bells and whistles of questionable value. We think it's a great choice if you need an alarm clock that you can take on the go.

The program's interface is straightforward and easy to figure out. There are buttons for adding, … Read more

We like puppies, and we were prepared to release our inner 12-year-old girl upon downloading Cute Puppy Clock. Unfortunately, though, our plans to squeal and giggle fell flat. Although the program is in fact a clock that involves cute puppies, it has drawbacks that make it hard to recommend, even for puppy-lovers.

There's really not much to Cute Puppy Clock, which is part of the problem. It's a couple of inches tall and features a puppy standing on what looks like a wooden crate. The time is displayed on the crate, 24-hour style, in a goofy font that'… Read more

You could hire a dream specialist to sit beside your bed and whisper dream-altering commands at you all night long, or you could pick up the Sigmund app for iOS for 99 cents.

I had a dream a few weeks ago where I was having a hard time breathing, like the atmosphere was incredibly thick. I woke up to find a cat weighing down my chest. External stimuli can impact the content of your dreams.

That's the thinking behind Sigmund. The app uses an algorithm to determine when you go into REM sleep and then whispers sweet nothings into your ear. Actually, it quietly speaks up to five words of your choosing from the app's list.… Read more

Need an extra reminder for tasks or events? Desktop Alarm Clock from UT Bay is a free Windows utility that instructs your PC to sound an alert at a user-specified time, just like, well, an alarm clock.

The lightweight app needs no installation. Just run it after download and you're ready to go. Setting the alarm couldn't be easier. Pick the alarm sound from any audio file already in your computer or leave a note to yourself regarding the alarm. The small interface can be located anywhere you want it on your screen. You may even opt to … Read more

Physicists have engineered a significantly more stable laser, an advance which could lead to better atomic clocks for equipment, such as GPS satellites, and physics experiments.

Researchers at the JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, have built a prototype of a superradiant laser using 1 million rubidium atoms. Their work was described in a paper published in Nature yesterday.

Using a different structure than traditional lasers, the researchers believe they can build a laser which is 100 to 1,000 times more stable. These lasers could be used in … Read more

Although the clock in the Windows system tray displays the time, it doesn't do much else, and there are a variety of programs that seek to provide useful clock features that Windows doesn't. Talking Desktop Clock is an attractive addition to the default Windows clock, and we recommend it to anyone who could use an audio reminder or alarm.

Talking Desktop Clock appears as an icon in the system tray and also displays an attractive translucent analog clock face, which disappears when you mouse over it. Opening the Options menu revealed a wide variety of settings, including numerous … Read more