If the current explosion of sleep tracking gadgets is anything to go by, Zeo may simply have arrived a decade too early to cash in: The era of apps is where the money's at. Yet it couldn't persuade enough of us perpetually sleep-deprived humans to strap one on - Zeo went out of business in 2013. Zeo's tracker was a sophisticated piece of lab-grade tech that broke your sleep down into four stages (awake, REM, light, and deep), and gave you a single consumer-friendly "ZQ" score every morning. It had two components: a headband I couldn't forget I was wearing, and a bedside clock/charger that was so damn bright it broke another cardinal rule of good sleep (make sure you're bedding down in as dark an environment as possible). Hard for a night owl like me to hear, but it was the most useful data I gained that day: Science tells us that sticking to the same sleep schedule every night is one of the best things we can do for our bodies. "You should always sleep on east coast time," was his reply.
I was based on the west coast, and asked Zeo's sleep expert, who coached NBA players on optimal sleep, how to deal with my frequent jet lag. The event was in New York, where my then-employer flew me once a month. Not many people remember the Zeo sleep tracker these days - but I still recall how tired I was at its launch event in 2009.