Citizen Eco-Drive Skyhawk A-T Watch - Ideal for Travelers, Aviators and Trotters

The Citizen Skyhawk A-T introduced by the brand in 2007 is a powerfully designed men's watch aimed at gadget lovers and aviation fans. Based on the 15-year history of the Skyhawk line, the timepiece has smartly combined Citizen's Eco-Drive movement with atomic timekeeping (A-T) technology and a new design.

The Citizen Skyhawk A-T watch strikes by its utmost functionality, having been packed with a great variety of useful features, such as atomic timekeeping, LCD backlight, perpetual calendar, and world time pre-programming for 43 cities and time-zones. Moreover, the watch boasts 200-meter water-resistance.

The Citizen Eco-Drive movement combines the solar technology with, a lithium-ion battery, and power saving functionality, so there is no need for battery changes. The Citizen watch with a full battery, subjected to no light, maintains its accuracy for about six months, or, if the power save mode is switched on, for about two years and a half.

The Citizen watch represents a multi-band atomic watch, implying it will receive time radio signals in the United States, Europe (England and Germany), and Japan. Every morning at 2, 3, and 4 AM, the watch automatically synchronizes with the atomic time radio signal, thus continuously providing supreme accuracy. The timepiece also allows the time synchronization on demand.

The new dial design of the Citizen Skyhawk watch is worth special attention. The black dial, featuring white and orange accents, is completed with the hands and hour indices covered in luminescent material. It provides readability at a glance. Besides displaying two different time zones (one analog, one on the LCD), the watch shows the GMT time in the top sub-dial.

The simple mode dial allows easy control of the watch through the navigation of the functions with help of the crown. By using the two pushers positioned above and below the crown, or the crown itself, the watch's owner can modify the selected mode. The face of the watch is protected by non-reflective mineral crystal.

For better understanding of how the different features work, it is advisable to look through the included instructions or watch the presentation on the watch's functionality recorded on an interactive CD-ROM.

The Citizen Skyhawk A-T watch is available either in all-stainless-steel, all-titanium or a stainless-steel-case-on-a-black-rubber-strap version. The solid case construction, 46 mm in diameter, is remarkably well-balanced and the contoured design 'conceals' the considerable size of the watch.

The well-manufactured slide rule bezel of the watch, moving smoothly and quickly in either direction, is to be used for simple flight calculations, such as fuel consumption, distance traveled, ground speed, and range.

The bracelet of the Citizen watch is fitted with a double hidden push button clasp, with the two release buttons inset into the clasp. The smooth clasp is easy to use, and one can operate the buttons with almost no effort.

The Citizen Skyhawk A-T packed with some very advanced technology features is a real bargain. Its price ranges from about 430 to 600 dollars depending on the materials used and discounts available.

The Citizen Skyhawk A-T watch is created as a great timekeeping companion for everyday use or for frequent traveling. The timepiece may also be successfully used as a true aviation tool.



Look through the list of other useful functions of the Citizen Skyhawk A-T, not specified in the review:

two alarms;

24-hour chronograph with a resolution of 1100th of a second;

99 minute countdown timer;

power reserve indicator.

Nike+ Plus Watchband

In January, we told you about the Nike Amp+ iPod watch which doubles as a remote control for your iPod Nano. Recently, Nike introduced the Nike+ SportBand which seems to be a variation on the theme with a slightly different focus.



The SportBand answers the question "What if I don't want to run with music?" This isn't as theoretical as you might think since many races ban music players. With the Nike+ SportBand, you can see all the same information that the Nike Amp+ iPod displayed on the screen of your Nano (pace, distance, calories burned, etc.), but on an LCD integrated into the SportBand itself rather than on the screen of your iPod.
Like the Nike Amp+, you can still upload your running data when you get home, so it's just as well integrated into the whole Nike/Apple ecosystem. All you do is pop the Nike+ Link out of the SportBand, and plug it directly into your computer's USB port.

Nike has also introduced a web-based coaching system called Nike+ Coach with professionally crafted programs for a range of fitness goals. Everything from "Walk to run" to "Marathon" is laid out with motivational tools, progress tracking, peer challenges, and more. This might sound trivial, but I'm here to tell you that workout buddies — even virtual ones — are a major factor in keeping up an exercise program. Of course, you probably have to have the hardware to make much use of the virtual coach, but the cost of entry is really pretty minimal. The Nike+ SportBand sells for a very reasonable $59.

Adium 1.3 goes final

The ever-popular multi-protocol IM client for the Mac, Adium, has reached version 1.3, a milestone that took seven months to meet. Among the major changes are a revamped Get Info Window (now called the Contact Inspector), the inclusion of Facebook chat, and improved support for MSN. LibPurple has been updated to version 2.4.1, too, and there are general performance improvements. In all, there were 261 fixes changes, which can all be viewed here in all their detailed glory (why can't Apple be this transparent?).

For those not in the know, Adium is a multi-protocol IM application based on libpurple, the same framework that the popular Linux and Windows Pidgin (formerly GAIM) messaging application is built on. The list of supported protocols is fantastically obscene (18 in total); you can chat on anything from Google Talk to Novell GroupWise and LiveJournal. The application was originally started by a young Adam Iser many years ago, but has been passed on several times since then.

Of all the new fixes, one of our favorites is one that isn't even discussed in Adium's blog post. When you click into your buddy list and begin typing the name of a contact, no longer are you jumped around to that buddy (or whoever is online that is closest to that name). Instead, a little search box opens at the top of the window—assuming you're not using a borderless window, that is—and the list sorts to show you contacts that match what you have typed in.  

Adium 1.3 is a 22.1MB download available on the site or through the app's built-in software updater.

RapidWeaver 4.1 update in the wild

Realmac Software has updated RapidWeaver, its powerful web design application, to version 4.1 with a handful of significant new features and the usual accompaniment of bug fixes.

At the top of RapidWeaver 4.1's list is a feature that was on 4.0's menu, but was pulled for various issues until now: Quick Look support. Now, users should be able to press the space bar when any RapidWeaver 4.x file is highlighted in the Finder to see a live preview of it. This should save quite a bit of time for anyone using RapidWeaver to manage multiple sites, or especially in a commercial environment.

Quick Look is working properly now, but you have to toggle a new preference for RapidWeaver to begin saving Quick Look previews in site files, which will slow down the saving process. Simply opening a project, then re-saving without making any changes generated Quick Look previews for us, and the additional time during the saving process for a couple of site files with 5-10 pages of content was negligible.

For RapidWeaver users who include pictures in blog posts or across a site, a new preference for automatically resizing photos to a specific pixel width should also save time.

Another major enhancement for MobileMe users is "significantly improved and simplified" MobileMe publishing. RapidWeaver 4.1 can now publish to web.me.com directories in addition to the old 'n' busted homepage.mac.com area, which means that RapidWeaver sites can finally power MobileMe sites with the Personal Domain option enabled, with neither fuss nor muss.

Plenty of other enhancements arrived in RW 4.1, including a progress bar when loading projects, better memory usage when exporting large blogs, HTML previews in list view in the snippet window, Realmac's iMedia Browser running on PowerPC Macs, blog summaries instead of a brief portion of the main entry in RSS feeds, and much more.

RapidWeaver 4.1 is a free upgrade for owners of 4.0 and 3.6, and should be available via 4.0's built-in update mechanism.

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