News Clocks Lite is a really wonderful free world clock for iPhone and iPod Touch.

This app is the little brother of the popular app News Clocks. Unlike a lot of “lite” apps, News Clocks Lite is fully functional and does a great job all on its own.

What you get for free is awfully compelling:

• Alarms that you can set to ring in the time zone of your choice (no calculating time differences!)
• A database of 64,000 world cities
• Sunlight map of planet Earth
• Built-in Atlas Mode
• Planet view
• Moon phases

Upgrading to the regular version of News Clocks will give you the ability to create more clocks, more clock and map designs, and of course it removes the ad at the top of the screen.

So if you need a great iPhone or iPod world clock, download News Clocks Lite. It’s free, highly functional, and you can’t beat it if you’re on a budget. But the regular version of News Clocks offers a whole lot more, and it’s only 99 cents.

This article is part of a long term vision improvement experiment. To get the full value of what I am learning, be sure to check out the introductory article which also has links to all of my updates.

Over two years after I started writing about it, my articles on natural vision improvement are by far the most popular things on this site. At the time I was trying to write informative articles on just about any topic, which included some personal blogging. Since then this site has evolved into a platform for my apps business, but I’ve kept many of the original articles available. The vision improvement articles are too popular to take down. Of course, I don’t make a dime from this. It’s just information.

Why is this topic so popular with people? I mean, there’s not that much to say about it. At first I was hoping to have an update every week or so but I gave up that idea pretty quickly.

Part of it is that people hate to wear glasses. They hate the feeling. They hate the burden. But I think it goes deeper.

People feel cheated. People feel misled by the guardians of health. I certainly feel misled. When I was a teenager, I fought against optometrists for years. I didn’t believe in wearing glasses. When my high school checked everybody’s vision, I made sure I was home that day (I was “sick” — sick of school!). When my mom’s optometrist sent a card asking for an appointment for me and my brother, I threw the card away.

A few years later, though, I decided to stop fighting it. I thought that maybe it was best to just accept the reality that I needed glasses. I was really into accepting reality back then. I thought it was positive, to accept what is. And you can see what happened. Years of worsening vision and floaters.

All progress depends on the unreasonable man, and I’ve returned to being unreasonable like I used to be. I understand that reality is what it is, but I believe it can be changed in many cases, and I should do what ever I can to change it.

There is a difference between accepting reality and acknowledging it. We need to acknowledge reality. We need to make peace with the facts of existence. Acceptance, however, implies that we stop there and embrace the way things are, and let them be.

I have no doubt that optometrists want me to be healthy and have a good life. The problem is, their definition of health is not necessarily my definition. This is why I must refuse to accept their view of reality.

There was a time when it was considered sophisticated or elite to wear glasses. There are people who see glamor instead of dependence. There are people who value a life of reading books and doing accounting over being alive, being outside, and playing. These people, with the best of intentions, wanted to fix everyone else, and used their own values as the measuring stick.

You have to be careful about the values that a medical treatment implicitly forces on you. I once had some pain in my feet. I saw a podiatrist who said that my feet were too flexible. It would cost $16,000 to have pins inserted in them, and this might or might not solve the problem (20% chance it would). And I would have to wear special orthotics for the rest of my life anyway.

I ignored his advice and started walking barefoot. The pain disappeared within days and has never returned.

How could the podiatrist recommend such a radical intervention? Was he just out to get my money? I don’t think so. I think that in his value system, everybody needs to be a certain way, and everybody needs to wear shoes. He was trying to do his best to offer me his vision of health, which includes, by implication, a life where wearing shoes is normal, because society says so.

I cured my own problem because I have different values. I believe that shoes are unnatural and probably the cause of many foot problems. I don’t believe that I need to adapt my feet so they are comfortable in shoes, so I can fit in and make society happy. My feet are much happier without shoes. I saved $16,000, irreversible surgery on my feet, and tremendous pain. More importantly, I identified and fulfilled my own vision of myself.

I think optometrists operate in the same way. They just see wearing glasses as a normal part of life. They don’t see dependence, they see utility. “Here, wear these. Solves your problem, doesn’t it? Glad I could help. Now go home and never take them off.” That reality is acceptable to many people, but not to me.

Modern medicine doesn’t have all the answers, and what they consider to be a healthy way of life — wearing glasses and special orthotics, taking pills every day — is not necessarily what you personally would consider a healthy way of life.

I’m thankful for all the people who come here and post their own stories. I’m glad to know the topic is so popular, and that people are taking charge of their own health. I want to encourage that as much as possible. Hopefully, I’ll continue to have progress to write about.

I remember reading a long time ago about how Steve Jobs ended up designing the calculator on the original Macintosh. Every time Steve saw the calculator, he would complain about the color of a button or the thickness of a line and demand changes. But the changes never satisfied Jobs, to absolutely no one’s surprise.

So a smart programmer named Chris Espinosa created a “Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set” that allowed our favorite perfectionist to have it his way. It took Jobs about ten minutes to come up with a design he liked, and the resulting calculator remained the standard on the Mac all the way up through OS 9.

I miss the old Macintosh calculator, so I recreated this bit of computing history for iOS. You can now enjoy the pixellated glory of Steve Jobs’ own design, which was used by millions, unchanged, for more than 18 years.

You can get 1984 Calculator on the App Store. As usual, I also made an RPN version. It’s a universal app that works on both iPad and iPhone. You can choose from the three different calculator window styles that were used throughout the various versions of Macintosh System Software / Mac OS.

On the iPad side, you also get to choose the desktop pattern, from a mix of classic Macintosh desktop patterns.

Ah, RPN, that weird calculator with no equals key. The one that seems to work backwards. Well, there is a reason it’s called Reverse Polish Notation, right? It’s actually very intelligent, and far better than the calculator we’re all used to, the kind they give you in school — the algebraic calculator.

In this article I’ll give you nine compelling reasons why you should ditch your standard algebraic calculator and switch to RPN.

1. You need fewer keystrokes

Using fewer keystrokes is probably the most often cited reason for switching to RPN, and except for very basic calculations like 1 + 1, it’s true.

Here’s a simple example of how RPN saves you keystrokes. Suppose you need an answer to this: (5 * 7) / (3 * 9). This is how your keystrokes would look with algebraic entry:

Press 5 × 7 =. Let’s say you put the answer, 35, in memory with M+. You continue: 3 × 9 =. The result is 27, which you have to remember because the calculator’s (usually) sole memory register is already in use. Recall the first result with MR, then press ÷ 2 7 = to get the answer, 1.296296.

Now let’s see how it’s done with RPN: 5 ENTER 7 × 3 ENTER 9 × ÷.

As you can see, the very same operation took 14 keystrokes with algebraic entry, but only 9 keystrokes with RPN.

Saving keystrokes is nice, but there are many more compelling reasons to use RPN. Read on…

2. RPN has something called a stack

The example above is a good demonstration of the RPN stack, a major feature that algebraic entry simply can’t match.

Did you notice the last to keys in the RPN example above? They’re × and ÷. Now how often do you press one operator right after another? On an algebraic calculator, this would simply change from multiplication mode to division mode, as if you had made a mistake. On RPN, these keys, in this order, are essential.

Let me show you how the stack works. Every time you press ENTER you push a number onto the stack. Imagine we have a stack of four registers, all set to zero. It would look like this:

0
0
0
0

If you type in 1 5 and press ENTER, the stack now looks like this:

0
0
0
15

Now type in 3 3 and press ENTER.

0
0
15
33

See how using ENTER pushes numbers up onto the stack? This is like automatic, temporary memory. It’s the reason why you don’t need an M+ key on an RPN calculator (although many RPN calculators do have memory registers for storing numbers, you can get by without them because the stack is so powerful).

When you press an operator like +, it combines the number in the display with the number in the next register up. If we press 4 +, the stack now looks like this:

0
0
15
37

Press + again and you get:

0
0
0
52

This is very powerful.

You may wonder how you can remember what’s stored in the stack. Well, since in RPN nothing is hidden, you can cycle through the stack (usually using a key like R↓). But it’s actually easier to remember that the result you need is stored one or two places above you in the stack, than actually remembering or writing down the number, as you have to with algebraic calculators. If you switch to RPN you’ll find it easy to keep track of what’s in the stack.

The stack is the defining feature of RPN, well worth a switch from algebraic. But it gets better.

3. RPN makes more sense

Sometimes people complain that RPN doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s theoretically better, sure, but why not stick to what you’re used to? Algebraic calculators are by far the most popular in the world for a reason. They mimic the way you do math on paper, because that just makes more sense.

Actually, RPN makes more sense than standard calculators.

RPN is very consistent. + always means plus, and × always means multiply. But not on standard calculators. + can mean almost anything.

Suppose you’ve already pressed these keys on a standard calculator: 9 – 5. What happens when the next key you press is +? The result in the window is 4. Your + key just performed subtraction, not addition. It’s the same story with the other operators.

And sometimes, + doesn’t do any math at all. The plus operator in 1 + 2 just sets up a pending addition. You won’t see the results of the addition until you press either = or one of the operator keys. To make matters worse, the rules that apply to + and – are usually different for ×, ÷, and other operators. And don’t get me started on parentheses.

When you press + on an RPN calculator, it performs addition. Always. And that’s true of all the other keys.

So, which calculator is less complicated? Which one makes more sense? The answer is obvious: RPN.

4. If you make a mistake, you don’t have to start over

RPN requires you to break up your calculations into chunks that it automatically stores for you. You can see these results at any time, even in the middle of a complex calculation. And if you mess something up — press the wrong key, get a number wrong — you only have to redo that chunk.

If you like restarting everything from the beginning, stick with algebraic.

5. You don’t need parentheses

You won’t see parentheses on an RPN calculator. Good riddance. When you work from the inside out, storing intermediate results in the stack, you have more control, more knowledge, and more power.

If you prefer to copy equations without thinking about them, algebraic will be good enough. If you need more flexibility, or if your calculations aren’t the polished kind that have parentheses in the right places, but are sort of half-formed in your mind as you work them out, RPN is a godsend.

6. Nothing is hidden

RPN doesn’t have any hidden states, which means that you can’t put the calculator into a state where you don’t know what it will do next. What you see is what you get, and what you press is what you get.

Algebraic calculators are awash in hidden states. Press 1 + 2 and you’ve got a hidden state. The calculator will soon perform an addition between 1 and 2, but you don’t know that. Hand it to a friend. Ask him what will happen when he presses =. It could be anything.

Press 3 +. You can press ×, ÷, +, and – all day and nothing will happen. You’re just changing one of the calculator’s hidden states, the one that remembers which operation to perform next. Sometimes, when going back and forth between an algebraic calculator and my work, I would end up pressing the same operator key a second or third time just to make absolutely sure that the calculator was really in that mode. Because I had no way of knowing.

Maybe you could solve this problem by displaying the next operation on the display. A little + or × could show up in the corner of the screen. But that’s so inelegant.

The beauty of RPN is that every key press creates a result. It’s predictable and logical. Nothing is hidden.

7. RPN matches the way you think

What we usually hear is that algebraic calculators are preferred because they match the way math is written on paper. You can enter an equation just by reading it from left to right and pushing the correct keys. See a 5? Press 5. See an open parenthesis? Press (.

I will admit that algebraic entry is suited to reading problems off a page and inputting them into a calculator. It’s so easy a monkey could do it. Which is probably why this method is taught in schools.

Algebraic entry may work the way math is written on paper, but RPN works the way you think. When you’re working on a problem, you probably don’t have it written down and polished like a canned equation in a textbook, waiting to be copied robotically by a student. You may have pieces of data written down here and there, but you’re combining it all in your head. Algebraic mode is more difficult to work with if you aren’t slavishly copying something out of a book. You have to write down or remember intermediate results of calculations, retype them later, use the memory register… RPN gives you a stack that lets you skip all that.

Yes, RPN requires a little more thought, at least until you get used to it. Hopefully thinking interests you.

8. RPN is more elegant

Everything I’ve written so far explains why RPN is a more elegant way of using a calculator. I like elegance. I want it in my life, not just for the quantitative benefits like fewer keystrokes, but for the qualitative ones as well. The moment I learned about RPN and I understood how much more elegant and smart it was compared to algebraic entry, I couldn’t go back for that reason alone.

9. RPN users are a cool, intelligent minority

Why not finish the article with a healthy dose of elitism? Actually, it’s fun to hand someone your RPN calculator and get it back in 30 seconds because “it’s broken.”

I don’t subscribe to being different for the sake of being different… that’s just as thoughtless as slavishly following the crowd. But I won’t deny that it can be fun when you’re different and the rest of the world doesn’t get you, but you know that your way is better.

The fact is, you have to consciously choose to be an RPN user. Hardly anyone is brought up on this. You should have some pride in it, to be able to say “I chose to calculate this way because it’s better. I didn’t shy away from it because it requires some effort to switch. I appreciate intelligent things and elegance and doing things in the best way possible.”

I love RPN and I hope you’ll give it a try. I have several RPN calculators available, each one with unique features. Once you get used to it, you’ll never go back.

If you’re a user of either Full Screen Calculator or Always on Top Calculator on the Mac, or Hyper Calc on iOS, there’s an important bug fix coming your way.

A thoughtful customer emailed me to let me know that my standard algebraic calculators don’t allow you to chain operations. You have to press the equals key after every operation. In other words, you should be able to press 2 + 3 + 10 + 50 + … as long as you want. The way the calculators work now, you would have to use the equals key at every step, like this: 2 + 3 = + 10 = + 50 =.

The important thing is that I fixed it, and as soon as Apple approves the updates I submitted, you’ll have it in your hands.

How did this bug get there in the first place? It’s a simple case of ignorance. I didn’t know that a calculator should work that way!

I’ve been an RPN user for a long time, since I was in high school at least (here’s why). In fact, the standard calculators that I sell on the App Store started out as RPN calculators. RPN always comes first . While I was happy with my work on RPN, I knew that regular calculators are far more popular, and besides, I figured it would only take a few simple modifications to basically reduce the functionality of an RPN calculator and create a regular one. But in the process, I missed one of the finer points of standard calculator logic.

Thanks to that customer for letting me know about the problem. I appreciate when you guys tell me things like that. Your bug report will not only fix an app for you, but for thousands of other users as well.

One of the frustrations of using a very large display or a dual display setup is that it can take a long time to move the mouse pointer across all that screen real estate. My new app, Wormhole, solves this in a fun and elegant way.

Wormhole is a simple app that puts two small wormholes on your screen. When you move the mouse pointer over one hole, it instantly warps to the other. To reposition the wormholes, just hold down the Command key to prevent the cursor from being sucked in, and drag the hole to a far off corner of your second monitor.

Mouse warping, in some form, has long been a part of window managers on other platforms. I thought is was time to bring this feature to Mac OS X, but with a little bit of style.

If you use one of Apple’s huge Cinema Displays or you have dual monitors, being able to teleport the cursor from one corner of your desktop to another can really come in handy. Wormhole is available from the Mac App Store. Check out the video below to see it in action.

I’ve gotten some emails from people complaining about the bugs in Apple’s implementation of RPN in Lion (and previous versions of OS X). The stack doesn’t function the way you’d expect. Let me explain.

Launch Calculator.app and clear all the registers. Enter this simple sequence of keystrokes:

9 ENTER 3 X<>Y

So you started with 9, pushed it on the stack, typed in 3, and swapped x and y. The display now reads 9, with 3 above it.

Now start typing a new number. It replaces 9.

In other words, to make the X<>Y key work correctly, you need to hit ENTER after each use. This shouldn’t be. You can check it on your HP if you want.

I don’t know whether it’s intentional behavior or a mistake. I just made my own RPN calculators rather than wait for Apple to fix theirs (which hasn’t happened since RPN was added to the standard calculator several OS releases ago).

You can get both Full Screen RPN Calculator and Always on Top RPN Calculator from the Mac App Store. They’re only 99 cents. Full Screen RPN works on 10.6, while Always on Top Calculator requires 10.7. Both calculators implement HP RPN faithfully, and have useful features not found in the standard Mac calculator (like full screen mode or always-on-top mode).

I’m pleased and honored to tell you that Always on Top Calculator is featured today on One Day, One App. Thanks!

Today I’m pleased to announce a new version of Goal Meter for iOS.

Goal Meter 2 is a new app and not an update. I wanted to continue updating the original app for free, but because of a technical problem with the app’s bundle ID in the iTunes database, this is no longer possible. However, the new app is still only 99 cents, so it won’t cost much to fix.

New features

• You can now have up to sixteen goals.
• You can show either the current amount or the remaining amount on each goal.
• The meter reverses direction and color for negative goals. This makes much more sense. Check out the video below to see why.
• The retina display is fully supported.
• You change pages by swiping your finger, like normal iPhone apps. There are no more arrow buttons.

I know that a lot of you use and rely on Goal Meter, and I can promise you that it will get even better in the future.

A lot of people set New Year’s resolutions, but few keep them for very long. Here’s how to increase your chance of success with your resolutions. All you need is an iPhone.

1. Get a copy of Goal Meter. It’s a simple goal tracking app I designed. Simple is very good for goal tracking. You really don’t want to deal with scheduling goals and notifications and historical charts and calendars. All that stuff is a distraction. You’ll see why later.
2. Choose resolutions that can be easily quantified, such as: Lose 10 pounds, Sell 100 More Units, Save 5,000 Dollars, Pay Off 10,000 Dollars of Credit Card Debt, Spend 200 Hours Practicing (Guitar, Piano, Hockey, whatever…), Write 50,000 Words in my Novel.
3. Enter your resolutions into Goal Meter and choose an Increment. This is the number by which the meter will increase or decrease whenever you hit one of the buttons. You might want to track financial goals in increments of $100, writing goals in increments of 500 words, while a few hours of exercise each week could easily be tracked in increments of 1 hour or less (maybe each half hour). Choose whatever works for you.
4. When you make progress toward your goal, hit the plus or minus button as appropriate, and watch the goal meter fill up and change color from red, to orange, through yellow, and finally to green.

Research shows that what can be measured can be managed. It’s not just an empty business aphorism — it really works. But you don’t want to waste time tracking too much data — only track what is essential.

Simple is Sophisticated

Why is Goal Meter so simple? Why doesn’t it have historical charts, or alarms, or whatever? The answer is, the simpler the app, the more likely you are to actually use it.

We’ve all been in situations where someone — maybe ourselves — has an enormous task to do, and plans and plans and gets organized and designs the perfect system… but the project never gets done. It’s focusing on the wrong thing. Like all the clients I had as a graphic designer, who wanted a logo and business cards and brochures and a web site… but didn’t have a business plan. They didn’t even know what their business was going to be and they wanted to buy business cards! Talk about putting the cart before the horse!

Trust me on this. I have years of experience in personal development, watching myself and others grow. What ultimately matters is your taking action on your New Year’s resolutions, however you accomplish that. Tracking your progress toward your resolution in a simple, visual way, is very helpful. Tracking a dozen other metrics is not.

How it Feels

The beginning of your goal is the hardest part. The bar is so thin and so red. Maybe it’s a big goal, and when you hit the plus button the bar barely moves.

Then one day, you notice that it’s no longer red. It’s red-orange. And it’s tall enough that it’s hitting the bottom of the buttons.

You get used to the sight of progress. You can actually see the subtle color changes. It’s slow — it’s always slow — but that’s reality.

One day you feel frustrated. You’ve worked so hard but your goal seems just as far away as ever. Then you take a look at your goal meter. You remember that have been making progress. All the work you’ve done is adding up to something after all. You don’t feel so frustrated any more.

Then one day the bar is green and the last few steps are a fait accompli, like riding down the Champs Élysées on the last day of the Tour de France. The last slice of black is filled up and you hear the applause (literally).

Resolve to Start Now

New Year’s resolutions fail because of inaction, but also because of a lack of support and encouragement. Every time you use Goal Meter, you’re not just tracking a metric, you’re encouraging your future success.

This year, resolve to achieve your goals. Define them, measure them with Goal Meter (the cost is a whole 99 cents), and manage your way to success.