pzizz technology limited

It's close to Father's Day here in the US. Hopefully you've got the perfect gift planned. Perhaps you splurged on the ideal man cave, or you went less extreme and bought an iPhone, iPad or new Mac for the awesome father in your life. If, however, you're still scrambling for gift ideas, here are a few of our suggestions. There are several apps and accessories geared toward outdoor sports. The GPS Kit iPhone App (US$19.99) was just featured in Time Magazine and has a number of excellent outdoor uses, especially if Dad's into hiking, biking or geocaching. Bikers can pair it with an iPhone bike mount, such as this one from Bracketron ($39.95). For the golfer, pair a golf bag mount with Golfscape GPS Rangefinder (currently on sale for $9.99). Golfscape just won an Apple Design Award and allows you to view distances on more than 37,000 golf courses around the world. You can see the distance to the front, center and back of the green and up to 40 mapped targets per hole. The golf bag mount ($29.95) is coming soon, so you'll have to give Dad an I.O.U. for that part of the gift. If you've got a new father on your list (or know a busy parent), pzizz sleep is now a very affordable $5.99. Our own Dave Caolo swears by it. "Software like pzizz can let you take a restful nap that you know you'll wake from in a timely manner," he said. "That's important (re: bus pickups). Short naps can be effective stress relievers and re-energizers. pzizz is a tool that helps you achieve that." There is also pzizz energizer to provide said energy boost. My father-in-law, like my husband, prefers to stay at home as much as he can. And while the women in their lives can coax them out shopping, both would probably prefer one of the many catalog apps that have sprung up for the iPad. We reviewed Catalog Spree and Catalogue for iPad recently, and both are worth adding to see which one your father prefers. In the retro gaming world, ThinkGeek has both the $99.99 iCade arcade cabinet or the just-released iPad Arcade Stick ($24.99 for one, $39.99 for two). You can't go wrong with a good digital photo frame, and we like The Kodak Pulse frame, which allows you to add photos to the frame wirelessly. The 7-inch model is Read More

A few nights ago, I found myself tossing and turning in bed for hours, unable to still my mind and settle down for the night. I debated reading a book, watching TV or flipping open my laptop to find a some soothing tunes to help usher in the sweet relief of slumber. Instead, I reached for my iPhone. After a quick search through the App Store, I found a bevy of applications that promised to help lull me to sleep. The first one I picked was the free version of White Noise. It offers a wide catalog of pacifying sounds, including crashing beach waves, drumming rain, the dull hum of a ceiling fan, chirping crickets and even the clanking of a moving train. The app comes with a handy timer and an alarm so users can preset when their nighttime sounds should fade away and when they should be woken the following morning. That worked for a few nights; then I was back to square one. Over nonstop yawns at dinner, my friend Kelly suggested I try a group of applications by Pzizz, a software company that has been making audio tracks for insomniacs for years. That night, I nestled under my covers, downloaded the full version of Pzizz Sleep for $4.99 and turned it on. Immediately, a disembodied voice snaked across the room, gently urging me to relax and clear my mind. In the background, ambient sounds like gentle chords chimed and windlike sounds whistled through the phone. Like White Noise, Pzizz Sleep lets you control how long to let the audio play and set an alarm for the next day. In addition, the application allows you to raise and lower the volume of both the atmospheric music and the voice tracks, depending on what is most calming. I was out before 20 minutes had passed and haven’t looked back since. My smartphone has already supplanted my alarm clock, GPS unit and digital camera. I’d thought that was the extent of it, but it seems as though it’s taking on yet another role: sleep machine. Readers, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Is your smartphone the Swiss Army knife of the digital age? Is it slowly replacing your standalone appliances and devices? If so, which ones? Are you still finding new uses for your cellphone? If so, what are they? Read More

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General health practitioners recommend that adults get at least seven hours of sleep each night for optimal functioning of mind, body and spirit. Countless studies have proven the direct links between sleep quality and its effects on healthy immune functions, memory, learning, metabolism and much more. A good night’s sleep starts with a bedtime routine that prepares your body for a restful night ahead. Some drift off peacefully with the help of simple melodies, while others prefer a calming voice to guide them The following apps provide options for people of all sleep styles. Forget counting those sheep and upgrade to sleep 2.0 with these 10 app picks. This app is a guided meditation with self-help expert Andrew Johnson (who just happens to sound a wee bit like Sean Connery). The aim is to gently ease you into a more relaxed state, eventually falling into a deep sleep. With soothing instructions for breathing and relaxation techniques, this app works like a charm and can become a valued part of anyone’s nighttime routine. aSleep 3 provides a medley of sleep-related services like an alarm clock, timer, nature sounds, chromotherapy, weather and even a snore detector. Although there are some oddities in the sound options (didgeridoo, anyone?), this app provides a mix of features that can complement a good night’s sleep. Cost:  $0.99 Claiming to be your “personal sleep assistant,” pzizz is an app that aims to cure insomnia and keep users in a deep state of sleep throughout the night. The steep price can be partly attributed to the range of scientific techniques built-in, such as binaural beats and neurolinguistic programming, that creates more than one billion soundtrack combinations. With so many available, your mind won’t get bored by the monotony of a repetitive track every night. Modes of play include Energizer, Meditation and Sleep, and they are fully customizable to desired length. If you are wary of the high price, there is a lite version currently on sale for $0.99. Cost: $9.99 Long Deep Breathing is a simple, no frills app that promotes the practice of deep breathing for better health. Using what’s essentially a breath gauge, you simply follow the visual cues for inhaling and exhaling. You can adjust the length of each breath and eventually increase the duration. According to the app, the average person breathes about 12-16 times each minute. By practicing and working that number down, you Read More

Pzizz just released the second module of their excellent Sleep/Napping solution to the App Store and they are now truly aiming at bringing the iPhone all the way to the confines of your bed. For those of you who don’t know about it Pzizz sleep is a sleep helping app that will guide you as you’re falling asleep and help you relax to increase the quality of your rest. They are tons of apps of this kind but Pzizz has actually been doing that for years now with their patented engine and they are really good at it. It generates a new sequence every time you launch it so you don’t get bored and it actually lets you tailor your sleeping session with different volumes or lengths. I’ve been using their desktop app for years and their nap app for a while now so I can only recommend it. It’s $2.99 just like the nap app for now but the developers are actually planning to increase the price up to $9.99 on December the 14th so don’t wait! Read More

I had the opportunity to talk with Edward Laing, the CEO of pzizz technology limited. Pzizz technology is the company behind the excellent iPhone app, Pzizz relax, a nap application that helps you to release stress or to get the most of your Powernaps . (App Store link) We’re talking a lot about app prices lately and I know you’ve made some surveys about pricing, could you tell me more about it ? Yes, we did conduct a survey from existing desktop application customers – and the response was that 75% said that they would be happy to pay $19.95 per module (or more). However, Matthew (the inventor of pzizz) and I discussed this at great length – and we decided that we really wanted to try and make the benefits of pzizz available to everyone.  That’s basically why we ended up offering ‘pzizz relax’ for just $2.99 – we didn’t want price to be an issue for anyone.  (We may decide to increase the price a little in future, but no immediate plans to do so.) The application entirely duplicates the desktop version which costs more than ten times more, isn’t the price too low ? Is it “too cheap”?  I don’t know!  I personally prefer to think of it as being one of the best deals on the iTunes Store, but perhaps I’m a little biased?  ;-) We are also working on a free version now that Apple has brought in the ability for “In App Purchases” for free applications. Anyway, we’ve been working on pzizz for 10 years now, and we are extremely grateful to still be going strong after such a long time.  So many other small companies have disappeared during this time. We will be translating this into something special for the desktop version very soon, as we really do want to ensure that pzizz is available to as many people as need and want it. These are very difficult times for millions of people, resulting in record levels of stress and insomnia. We believe that pzizz is, if not the actual solution to the root of people’s problems, certainly an incredibly powerful tool that they can use to help them to carry on and get the most out of life.  However, at $59.95, price is obviously an issue for exactly these sorts of people, so we will be doing a special offer to redress this. What’s your take on the App Store ? Do I Read More