sleep

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach provides bedside brain-wave analysis

Analysis of your sleeping habits (or perhaps, lack of) usually involves an overnight stay at a hospital where you are covered in wires and surrounded by machines. However, in 2003 three sleep-deprived students at Brown University in Providence, R.I., thought that consumers should be able to monitor their own health.

Enter the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, a device that lets uses measure, track, and analyze their sleeping patterns at home.

It's a gadget that, according to Zeo, functions like a professional sleep monitor, but with only two parts: a headband and a wireless receiver designed as an alarm … Read more

Batteryless MacBook sleep trick

Karl the Machinist wrote in to the Real Deal podcast recently saying he had a cool trick where he put his Mac to sleep and took out the battery. When he put the battery back in and turned on the Mac, all of his programs were right where he left them. Granted, Apple no longer sells any laptops with a user-replaceable battery. But if you have an older Mac like mine, it's a really cool trick.

Put the computer to sleep by tapping the power button so the sleep menu comes up, and then click sleep. Alternatively, you can … Read more

WakeMate: Bluetooth sleep analysis for phones

Please forgive me if I take the easy humor route and inject a few "Twilight: New Moon" jokes into my posts over the next few days. I haven't been sleeping well and when that happens I get groggy and tend to go for the easy laugh. The problem is that some nights I just don't get enough sleep (no, not a vampire). I go to bed at different times and always try to wake up at 8.

That being said, I'd like to try the WakeMate sometime to see how it can help me be … Read more

Computer not going to sleep immediately

When you put your Mac to sleep, the system should do so in a matter of seconds, regardless of whether it's done manually or if you have it timed for sleep in the Energy Saver settings. In some instances, though, the system may either take a long time to go into sleep, or may not sleep at all when it is on the timer.… Read more

Snow Leopard slow to sleep

Sometimes users experience an issue where Snow Leopard acts slow when commanded to Sleep Mode. This can happen because of background processes timing out or your system getting backed up while RAM is attempting to write to the hard disk during the sleep process (the more RAM you have, the slower the process could be).… Read more

Tired of snoring? All you need is heat

If we're honest, most of us are either snorers or sleeping next to one.

On a recent camping trip, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking we had a bear grunting just outside our tent; heart racing, I turned on my head lamp to investigate. Turns out my husband, who rarely snores, sounds like a bear when he does. I tossed and turned for an hour until finally shaking him awake to shut him up.

For couples dealing with this kind of sleep disruption on a regular basis, it's probably not a stretch to say … Read more

Computers not waking from sleep with OS X 10.6.1

A few people on the Apple discussion boards have reported a problem where upon updating to OS X 10.6.1 their systems will not wake from sleep mode. It is unclear whether the system fully powers off or just does not wake up, but regardless, it requires people to press and hold the power button to get the computer running again.… Read more

Customizing hard disk spin-down times

Mac OS X has an option to keep hard drives spinning for quick file access, or to save power and reduce noise by spinning them down when they're not in use. This can be convenient, but is rather limiting for users who would like to customize when their disks should spin down.… Read more

Exploring the world of relaxation gadgets

Too much technology seems designed to actively stress us out, from checking your BlackBerry to dealing with computer security. Fortunately, there's a handful of devices deigned to promote relaxation, and I showed off a few of them earlier today on New York's WPIX-TV.

Of course, your mileage may vary with any of these, so don't come complaining to me if trying to set up your heating vibrating massage face mask isn't totally relaxing. Check out the clip below and let the chilling-out commence.

The 404 Extended Vacation Throwback: Episode 212, 10/23/08

Unfortunately, 2/3 hosts of The 404 aren't feeling well this morning, but you'll be psyched to hear this throwback episode, where we make Dan (the mantern) smell-lel-lel-lel what the 404 issss cookin. But don't stress out too much, we'll be back tomorrow for another live feed. Enjoy!

Are Justin and Wilson offended by the title of the new Guns 'N' Roses album? What kind of music does Wilson like? (HINT: It starts with "mmmm" and ends with "usical theater.") Can Chinese people really nap anywhere? How many poo-poo jokes can we … Read more