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MacBreakZ - Your Personal Ergonomic Assistant

Designer, gentleman, and Vice-President of my Personal Board of Directors™, Doug Bowman, recently told me about this cool OSX app for reminding yourself to take frequent breaks.

MacBreakZ is a personal ergonomic assistant that monitors our keyboard and mouse use and helps us structure our computer use in a healthy and constructive manner, thus preventing computer-related injuries from developing.

I’ve long suspected that I will eventually have a hunch and a couple glass eyes from my execrable ergonomic habits, and this seems like a smart solution for reminding myself what my brain often neglects: sometimes it’s nice to stand up and walk around.

Apparently, you can even set it to lock up your box until you’ve successfully completed your break. Might be a bit much for most folks, but I’ll bet it’s a sure way to save your eyes and wrists from some hard mileage.

Alderete's picture

I've used something like this...

I've used something like this on my computer systems for the last 8 years, since I got tendinitus in my forearms. In all I've tried nearly a dozen apps, on Mac OS, OS X, and Windows. For Mac OS X, I prefer an application called AntiRSI, http://ozy.student.utwente.nl/projects/antirsi/.

It has a beautiful Aqua interface, and does the nice status fade in/out for its break notifications, etc. Very Mac OS X, unlike any of the others I tried, and it is just fascist enough to force me to take my breaks like a good boy...

 
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