Use the Caffeine Zone app to know exactly when to drink that next cup of coffee.
Caffeine is a wonderful thing for many people, as it helps them stay awake. It it can also be a burden if it causes them to stay up at night. There’s an app for that available for the iPhone, called Caffeine Zone.
Caffeine is a wonderful thing. However, there are some drawbacks like mildly shaking and losing sleep as a result of having too much. The high-volume user can also be majorly grumpy until that first dose or still be loopy without enough. However, science has determined there is a “caffeine sweet spot,” according to the Huffington Post, though figuring out how much coffee or tea to drink at what time is a real pain. It would normally involve a lot of chemistry and math, but for those who want to avoid straining their already caffeine-deprived brain, there is an app for that.
[Caffeine Zone is a very useful example of iPhone development]
The app, Caffeine Zone, was designed by Frank Ritter, a cognitive scientist at Penn State University. It works by calculating when a person should take the next drink of caffeinated beverage to stay within the “caffeine sweet spot,” which, according to the Huffington Post, is between 200 and 400 milligrams, the amount of caffeine that gets most people into the desired state of mental awareness.
The app, currently only for iPhone, will chart out the day for the user and alert them as to the proper time to take a drink of coffee, tea or energy drink, based upon their average daily intake. The app will also tell the user when to stop, to keep them from having difficulty getting to sleep, which is more difficult with 100 milligrams or more of caffeine in one’s bloodstream. The app is “freemium.” There is a free version, Caffeine Zone 2 Lite, and an expanded-access and ad-free version called Caffeine Zone 2 for 99 cents.
There aren’t many competing apps. There is an app for both iPhone and Android called Caffeine Tracker, and according to its download page on CNET, it makes similar calculations based on the height, weight, gender and age of the user to maintain the proper levels of caffeine. According to the Android Market, it costs 99 cents. There is another app download page on CNET for a caffeine monitor, but it uses a much simpler rubric to determine if a person is having too much. That app, called Caffeine Meter, is used by activating the app and holding one’s phone in one’s hand. If the user is shaking too much, the “caffeine meter” rises.
CNET: http://download.cnet.com/Caffeine-Meter/3000-2094_4-75011001.html?tag=mncol;2
iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/caffeine-zone-2-lite/id483217205?mt=8
Android Market: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.cafapppro&hl=en
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