I'm a procrastinator. If something needs to be done by 2:00 PM, I'll often finish it at 1:59. My procrastinating tendencies sometimes make me late though. Like many people I've tried the old "set your clock ahead 15 minutes" trick, but it doesn't work -- I just find myself mentally calculating every time I look at one of my clocks.

This week Component X released an interesting little Mac utility for people that like me have a procrastination problem, inspired by Guy Kawasaki's Alltop. It's a menu bar clock replacement called Alltock that runs anywhere from right on time to fifteen minutes fast, but the trick is that you never know whether it's running fast or not. This forces you to assume that the time is accurate, and ends up more often than not making you a little bit early.

While I love the concept, the execution leaves a bit to be desired. While it's easy enough to hide your Mac's built-in menu bar clock, you can't move the Alltock clock over to the right on the menu bar. This is apparently due to the fact that Alltock was created as an application rather than as a system preferences pane, which was apparently necessary because the system's internal clock is not actually being changed. However, I find it hard to believe that it couldn't have been done as a system preferences pane -- on my system I've replaced the system clock with one from iStatMenu, which is a preference pane.

My other gripe with Alltock is the fact that there is no ability to hide the dock icon. If a user really wanted to replace their system clock, I see no reason to leave the new clock's dock icon sitting there taking up valuable screen real estate.

Complaints aside, the concept of Alltock is a winner, and hopefully a subsequent version will make it a truly viable system clock replacement.

Between the sundial, the dawn of digital watches and now cell phones taking a big dent out of the watch business, I'm not sure why you would need a clock in a browser, let alone one requiring an internet connection. Perhaps you sleep with your netbook by your bedside, complete with relaxing pzizz or other ambient noises. Or maybe you have an Ozymandias-style lair complete with dozens of monitors. Either way, here's a little round-up of clocks for your browser (and beyond). Weird to me, maybe useful to you.*

Oh, and here's something about clocks being the devil (pdf link). Much weirder.

Online Clock - the daddy of them all (if clocks are male). Comes in 4 sizes and 5 colors. But here you will find a list of all the other online clocks from Online Clock, including a stopwatch, space clock, military time, etc. If they set out to corner the market in online clocks, these guys are close. There's even a radio alarm clock. Google better get in the act soon or risk losing the Online Clock Wars.

Aptly-named Timeanddate.com provides a boss World Clock, complete with current time in dozens of cities around the world.

Kuku Klok boasts being "Swiss made" but also uses Flash for everything... here's hoping it doesn't crash as it is supposed to be an alarm clock.

Make your own darn clock using Flash and this tutorial. If you're looking for a real challenge, however, try building a meatspace clock. Yeah, coding is much simpler.

But of course there's a javascript clock, silly. Perfect for that fashion blog you were going to start.

Pixelbreaker created a cross-platform clock screensaver called PolarClock for Mac and Windows, plus an OS X Dashboard version and an iPhone app. There's actually a lot of tweaking for such a simple thing, and 28 languages are supported. Of all the screensaver clocks out there, this is my favorite.

Clockspot allows you to track employees online. It's a web-based punchclock. Now excuse me while I punch myself for bringing it up.

For only $3.99 a month (starting price) you can use Snoozester to send you wake up calls and reminder through the day. That'll get you 35 fresh starts a month.

And if you think the internet should turn into reality, help the Ambient Clock make the jump from Google Gadget to real, live plastic clock.


*Come to think of it, numerous science lab accident movie premises are based on the nerd falling asleep in the lab, so maybe these aren't as useless as I thought.

FaaRClock 1.0 is a program for Windows that displays a simple and very readable analog clock as your computer's screensaver. We're almost positive that this is the screensaver Flavor Flav has installed on his computer.

The download and install is simple. Upon existing the installation, you'll be prompted to make FaaRClock your default screensaver.

Additional settings are available in the screensaver tab found in your Windows Display Properties. Those settings allow you to:

• Choose a background color
• Set an input method to wake up the computer (mouse click, mouse movement, customized hot key, etc...)

FaaRClock is a nice idea for our increasingly virtual homes, where the only clocks in the house are on our computers and cell phones. With FaaRClock up and running, you can see the time without having to lug yourself across the room.

The only requirement is Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Flash Player 8 or higher. FaaRClock 1.0 is free.

This year Daylight Saving Time went screwy. Or to put it another way, Daylight Saving Time goes into effect this weekend. If this were 2006, it would have happened last weekend. You can thank Congress for the change.

All of this might seem like mere trivia if it weren't for the fact that older PDAs, cellphones, VCRs, and pretty much any other device that's programmed to automatically adjust for Daylight Saving Time is now wrong. Microsoft issued an update for Windows Mobile devices earlier this year, but we're figuring there's a good chance you just forgot about it and reset your clock when you noticed it was off by an hour this week.

But if you want to make sure your mobile device adjusts properly this weekend and again next Spring, it might be time to download that update.

Ask has a helpful little feature in all searches that have to do with local information. A clock is now embedded on the right hand side of the screen, with the time clicking by in seconds. The date is also present, with current weather conditions underneath.

Thanks Ask. This is an extremely handy feature when researching new locations for travel or business, and a first of its kind for search engines. After all, who wants to call to enquire on local services at 6am!

[via searchengineland]

FuzzyClock is a human-readable clock that you can use to replace the default clock in your menubar on a Mac. Of course all clocks are "human-readable", but FuzzyClock takes it one step further, by describing the time in the terms that you might use to describe it to someone else. For example, instead of seeing 4:15 in your menubar, you'd see "quarter past four".

Having to read the time differently can make you think a bit harder about the time and how you are using it. While that can be nice, at the same time if you find yourself up against a deadline, the inefficiency of having to parse text can be a bit frustrating. Some people will absolutely love this, and others won't have any time for it.

[Via Lifehacker]

Microsoft has issued yet another Daylight Saving Time update for Windows Mobile devices. This patch should fix a problem with the patch released last week.

So let's review. First, Microsoft posted instructions for manufacturers to develop their own DST fixes. Then some enterprising power users decided to make their own updates rather than wait for their PDA manufacturers to do so. Next, Microsoft finally puts out an official update, but it appears to have a major bug in it that could wreak havoc on your appointments for a few weeks.

And now there's a real, honest to goodness, official update that you can (probably) trust, less than a week before Daylight Saving Time begins. Whew.

Anyway, if you haven't updated your Windows Mobile device yet, now's probably as good a time as any. Remember to follow Microsoft's instructions on this one. There's a few bits that aren't intuitive. For example, you have to change your time zone and then switch back to your current time zone before the update takes effect.

[Thanks Gregger!]

Okay, seriously, I promise this is (one of) the last time(s) we'll be talking about the upcoming Daylight Saving Time change.

A quick refresher, Congress passed a law moving up Daylight Saving Time starting this year, so it begins on March 11th, meaning you have to change your clocks much earlier this year than you're used to. While your computer will probably automatically adjust itself, if you've got a Windows Mobile or Palm PDA you need to install a update to make sure you're not late for that all-important meeting on the 12th.

Microsoft issued an official update last week, and now it's Palm's turn. The patch is good for all Palm smartphones and handhelds, and it's a free download. Now go forth and update.

Back in December, Microsoft issued instructions for updating Windows Mobile clocks to support a change in daylight saving time which comes several weeks earlier this year than in the past. But those instructions were really meant for hardware makers, and we expected PDA manufacturers to issue updates on their own. That never really happened.

Last month, an enterprising individual put together an unofficial installer file for consumer use. But I was holding out hope that Dell would issue an official update for my Axim X50v.

Looks like that ain't going to happen, because Microsoft finally went and released an official update. There's a PC-based installer file, as well as a cab file for users who don't sync their PDA to a PC. Of course, most PDA users will probably miss this critical update and spend the next year or two lamenting that they have to adjust their Windows Mobile clocks a few times a year as if they were old fashioned VCRs until they eventually upgrade their PDA. Hopefully this sort of confusion will be solved with Windows Mobile 6.0, which will include a Windows Update program that will automatically check for critical operating system updates.

Ever wish your Smartphone or Pocket PC kept better time? SmartTimeSync is a simple little utility that will connect to the NTP server and sync your PDA clock with the atomic clock.

Of course, you could do the same thing by keeping your Windows Mobile clock synchronized with your PC clock and setting your PC to synchronize with the atomic clock, but where's the fun in that? You're not a real PDA junkie until you've figured out how to do pretty much everything on your mobile device that you can do on your PC. I'm still trying to figure out how to turn my PDA into a personal video recorder.
SmartTimeSync requires Windows Mobile 5.0 and Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0.

[via SolSie]

Daylight Saving Time starts on March 11th this year. That's several weeks earlier than usual, and as we pointed out in December, if you have a Windows Mobile device, it will not automatically adjust the time until April, when it thinks Daylight Saving Time begins.

Microsoft went and put up a web page explaining how to adjust your device's registry to fix the problem. But the instructions are really meant for developers, not users. Still, I'm not aware of any PDA or smartphone makers that have issued an update yet, so it was awfully kind of the folks at edgeblog to go and wrap the registry changes into a .cab file that you can install on your Windows Mobile device.

The file is called DST2007WM5.cab, which makes me a bit reluctant to install it on my Windows Mobile 2003SE device. That, and the article repeatedly mentions installing it on a Smartphone, but says nothing about Pocket PC devices. Not to mention the fact that this is an unofficial program that is meant to change your registry settings.

In other words, install at your own risk, but if you do, please back up your device first, and let us know the results!

Here's a neat little utility with questionable usefulness and a less-than-intuitive UI - but, yes, it's neat. AmbientClock pulls appointments from your Google Calendar and maps them along a circular analog clock. You can also add a secondary calendar (such as that of a co-worker or spouse) for a visual representation of schedule conflicts.

So far, I can't really see what AmbientClock accomplishes that plain ol' Google Calendar doesn't, aside from the "oh crap look how little free time I have today, when am I going to eat?" factor. You can add it to your Google homepage, which I suppose is useful in the at-a-glance sense. However, browsing to future dates didn't work for me in Firefox 2.0. But since it's in beta, I'll cut it some slack.

Apparently, if all goes well, AmbientClock will soon be more than just a Google gadget - it'll be a standalone device. As in, an actual, three-dimensional product you can place on your desk!

Ever wonder what time it is on Mars? If you are an astronomy buff at all, you may have. Mars Clock is a small Java based application available from NASA's Goddard Institute website. This nifty app will display the surface of Mars and rotate in real time, Mars time that is. You can also toggle the display of the rover landing zones on Mars, as well as current locations of each. Did you know that scientists working on Mars projects actually put themselves on Mars time, so they can be "in-sync" with Mars daytime? And I thought I didn't get much sleep. Man, those guys are hardcore. Mars Clock is out of this world. No, I suppose it wasn't so funny, oh well. I am going to find out what time it is on Mars right now.