Posts tagged Alarm at Switched

Posts with tag alarm

The Police's Stewart Copeland Composes BlackBerry Ringtones

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Aug 6th 2008 at 9:17AM

You know how Stewart Copeland plays that insanely slick triplet hi-hat part in "Message in a Bottle," and every time you hear it you wonder how it's possible for him to stay so perfectly in time? And you know how his drums fit so perfectly in the pocket with Sting and Andy Summers on pretty much anything The Police ever touched despite the fact they all hated each other?

Well, Copeland's "soundtrack" for the BlackBerry Bold -- commissioned by RIM -- should rid you of all of those amazing memories real fast. The drummer provided six ringtones, an alarm sound, and a Bold "theme" for the company's new device, yet not one of them is remotely pleasant to listen to.

In a word or two? They stink. [From: apc via CrackBerry; Photo courtesy of spisharam]

Cell Phones Increasingly Replacing Alarm Clocks

by Tim Stevens, posted May 21st 2008 at 5:41PM

When it's time to drag your groggy head out of sleepy land in the morning, what do you rely on: a classic beeping or blaring alarm clock, or your mobile phone's built-in alarm instead? More and more people are depending on the alarm functions on their phones, over a third of the respondents in a recent British poll, in fact. A more impressive-sized 71-percent of the respondents indicated that they found alarm clocks to be completely obsolete. Still, considering the findings earlier this year that cell phones can actually mess up your sleeping patterns, it might be a little premature to throw out that alarm clock just yet. [Source: textually]

USB Alarm Clock Blends Balls and Plays Game Show Themes

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 30th 2007 at 11:15AM

In case you were wondering how to make sure we cover your product, here's the secret recipe: USB + sharp blades. Oh, and it doesn't hurt if it plays music. That's why you get to read about the USB Blender Alarm Clock. This little toy from Brando is powered via your USB port or by batteries (though the product page doesn't say how many or what kind). When it's time for the alarm to sound, the blades spin up tossing the carafe full of tiny balls flying while it plays '70s game show themes.

You know what, on second thought, this thing sounds terribly irritating, something that belongs in the junkyard of the world's dumbest USB gadgets. We never liked 'The Price Is Right,' so why would we want to wake up to it? And the sound of balls being whacked around a blender carafe might look good on paper, but we think it might traumatize us after a couple of mornings. If you find yourself feeling that masochistic, you can head on over Usb.Brando.com.hk and get yourself one for $25.

From Engadget

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Armani Phone Combats Rape and Theft

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 28th 2007 at 10:03AM

This week, during his runway show at Milan Fashion Week, Giorgio Armani unveiled a designer phone that packs some pretty high-tech, advanced features. The handset, which is manufactured by Samsung, boasts a massive 2.6-inch touchscreen, 50 Megabytes of built-in storage, Wi-Fi, GPS and a 3.0 Megapixel camera. The touchscreen is rumored to employ haptic feedback technology, which vibrates the phone under your fingers ever so slightly as you tap on the touchscreen. Unlike the iPhone's touchscreen, this gives off the tactile sensation of actually touching buttons.

However, the most innovative feature is the phone's so-called rape alarm. The handset can be configured to send a text message to five preprogrammed numbers of friends or family in the event of an attack. They can either call the phone to gauge the situation, call the police or activate the phone's GPS feature to track the owner's whereabouts and movements. The distress signal is activated by pressing the phone's side-mounted volume control four times -- which hopefully has a keylock.

The £375 Armani phone also has its own kind of Lojack in the event it is lost or stolen. If the SIM card is removed and replaced with a new one, a text message containing the phone number associated with the new SIM card is secretly sent out to three preprogrammed numbers.

Unlike the $25,000 Ferrari phone we reported yesterday, it's nice to see a designer phone that actually has some features worth the higher price, and isn't simply a case of slapping on a fancy label.

From Textually.org

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Alarm Wakes According to Body's Sleep Clock

by Tom Conlon, posted Sep 11th 2007 at 2:31PM

Alarm Wakes According to Your Body's Sleep Clock

Having trouble waking up in the morning? Your daily battle against the Zs might not be a function of being a bad or heavy sleeper, but could simply be that you're trying to wake up during a particularly deep moment of rest.

The $149 SleepTracker wristwatch monitors your nightly sleep cycles and wakes you up in the morning during an optimal moment of light sleep, which, according to the watchmaker, is the easiest time to unglue your eyelids and hop out of the sack. The SleepTracker is based on the principle that the average adult snoozes through four to five sleep cycles every night, each lasting between 90 and 110 minutes and each made up of five stages. The SleepTracker's internal sensors measure your body's physical signals during sleep to determine when you've entered the lighter stages of sleep in any given cycle. Instead of an exact time, you set the watch with a window of time in which you'd like to get up. When you've reached the lightest stage of sleep inside of that time frame, the watch wakes you up. Since you're not being shocked awake during a coma-like stage of deep sleep, you're more alert and as ready as ever to seize the day (or at least seize a tall stack of flapjacks).

From Gizmag

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Why Do Alarms Snooze For Nine Minutes?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 9th 2007 at 5:23PM

There are many mysteries in this world, like 'What the heck happened to Britney Spears?' for example. Or, 'Why does it seem like every alarm clock I've ever owned snoozes for nine minutes?' Thankfully Mental Floss, the brain teaser and trivia magazine, has an explanation for the latter (we may never get an answer about Britney).

When the first alarm clocks were built, the snooze gear needed to fit around the cogs already in the time piece. Because of the space constraints, there were basically two options: slightly over nine minutes or slightly over 10. It was believed that 10 minutes was too long and would allow a person to slip into a deeper sleep, so nine minutes became the standard. While most digital alarms today can be programmed to have a snooze of any length, nine minutes is still the standard and default on most of them.

From Mental Floss

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Alarm Clock for the Stubborn

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Apr 18th 2007 at 7:30AM

Waking up is hard. That alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button at least once... probably more. You're just not a morning person and that's okay. Not everyone can be. So what can you do to force yourself out of bed?

How about getting an alarm clock that runs away from you. Clocky, a product from MIT alumnus Gauri Nanda, rolls off your night stand and finds a place to hide after you've hit the snooze button, forcing you to get up and look for it when the alarm goes off a second time.

Clocky started its life as a class project, but when Gauri graduated she decided to have her unpredictable rise-and-shine box manufactured for the masses.

You can pick one up from Nandahome.com for $49.99

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