Vela Design Group releases VelaClock 2.0 and VelaClock Deluxe 2.0
Berkeley, California – May 1, 2007 – Vela Design Group announces
VelaClock 2.0 and VelaClock Deluxe 2.0, Dashboard widgets. For
current VelaClock customers, VelaClock 2.0 is a free update and
VelaClock Deluxe 2.0 is a $6 upgrade. VelaClock Deluxe is a new
product.
VelaClock is a world clock widget with a highly configurable user
interface. Users can quickly display the time of sunrise, sunset, or
twilight, duration of daylight, moonrise, moonset, phase of moon,
time zone information and more.
VelaClock Deluxe 2.0 introduces two significant and highly requested features:
1. Add user-defined places: defining and adding places allows cities
that are not already built into VelaClock to be included. Any
latitude and longitude will work; a GPS can be used to enter your
current location. This feature provides accurate times for sunrise,
sunset, twilight, moonrise and moonset for any location one enters.
2. Change the current date: changing the current date provides the
ability to view information for any day in the past or future (from
1932 to 2020). Daylight Saving Time rules are up-to-date and
historically accurate. This feature allows one to determine sunrise,
sunset and twilight times for days in the past or future.
Additionally, one can determine moonrise and moonset times as well as
phase for any day. This is great for photography and outdoor
activities.
Description for VelaClock 2.0 and VelaClock Deluxe 2.0:
The interface of VelaClock can easily be configured to use a minimum
amount of screen space or if the user wishes, more detailed
information about the currently selected city can be displayed. The
top pane of VelaClock displays a list of cities and corresponding
local times. Multiple lower panes can be opened to display more
information and take up more screen space (each pane has a full and a
minimized version):
1. A light level bar that gives the user a picture of the 24 hours
of natural light (bright daylight, three kinds of twilight and night)
for the current day. A thin white bar indicates when the moon is
visible. Daylight duration and the change in minutes of daylight from
the previous day are also displayed.
2. Specific times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset.
Begin/end times for civil twilight, nautical twilight, and
astronomical twilight can also be displayed.
3. An image of the moon as seen in the sky above the currently
selected city. This image accurately depicts the angle of the moon’s
crescent. Because this angle can change dramatically within the span
of an hour, it is updated once a minute, as is the moon’s phase. This
view also contains the name of the current phase, as well as local
times for the next and previous phase events (new, quarter, full).
4. An analog clock and detailed time zone information, including
full time zone name and the number of hours the selected city is
ahead or behind the user’s current time zone (as set in System
Preferences). The current season name (winter, etc.) is also
displayed.
5. Deluxe version only: A Change Date pane that provides the ability
to view information (sunrise time, etc.) for any day in the past or
future (from 1932 to 2020).
VelaClock 2.0 is currently ranked 17 on Apple’s Top 50 widgets list
and is an Apple Staff Favorite on the Apple Dashboard widgets page.
VelaClock has been an Apple Staff Favorite three times in the past,
and frequently appears in Apple’s Top 50 widgets list. In the
February 2006 issue of Macworld, VelaClock 1.4 was reviewed in Dan
Frakes’ Mac Gems column and received a four-mice rating. In issue 123
of DG magazine, VelaClock 1.4 received a favorable review in John
Feld’s Graphics Report column. VelaClock 1.0 was released on the same
day that Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” was released, April 29, 2005. Since
that day, VelaClock has progressively improved with more than ten
updates.
No Internet connection is required. VelaClock is a unique widget in
that it is completely self-contained. Many widgets are lightweight
front-ends to web services; such widgets require an Internet
connection. By contrast, VelaClock is designed to function without an
Internet connection, and so is particularly useful for laptop users
away from their home or office. Astronomical calculations are
performed by an internal code module.
VelaClock was designed specifically for Tiger users and was built
using the Apple Xcode toolset. VelaClock requires Mac OS X “Tiger”
version 10.4 or newer.
VelaClock Deluxe is priced at $15.95. VelaClock Deluxe Household, for
up to 5 computers within a single household, is priced at $23.95.
VelaClock (standard version) is priced at $9.95. Existing VelaClock
users may upgrade to the Deluxe version for $6.00. These versions are
available now directly from the Vela Design Group website, at
http://www.veladg.com.