Second Hand

Like many people, I am the proud owner of a very bad back. I stretch every single %()@ day for a minimum of 30 minutes.

As anyone who knows about stretching will tell you, it is important to hold each stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds. It's interesting that after at least 10 years of stretching, I still almost always want to stop at 20 seconds unless I have a clock to keep me honest.

But the problem is: I don't have any clocks with second hands. I do have a couple of small watches, but they are not large enough when I am stretched out on the floor.

Then I had the bright idea of finding a clock or timer for either my iPod or the DROID.

Once I started looking into this, I realized I really wanted an "analog" clock with a round dial and a sweeping second hand. This was a reminder of how differently our brain processes information.

Looking at a digital clock with a timer or a seconds counter, I realized that those required too much interaction or at the very least a basic "thinking" function for math. Not that it is hard - you either add or subtract 30. But looking at a second hand requires no real computation and yet is understood very passively.

(Years ago when I was managing an imaging group in SunSoft, one of the engineers explained to me that the finest instrument for detecting changes from one image to another was the human eye and that imaging science aspired to that standard.)

I have yet to find a FREE (critical) clock for the DROID that provides a second hand. Very disappointing. On the other hand, I have found a very, very simple clock for the iPod /iPhone which also - btw - came with a nice little clear plastic propping unit along with the Red (my favorite color) protective shell.

This is called RYClock. Very nice.

Next: More applications I miss on both platforms.