While we happen to be partial to waking up with Snoozester, we recognize that there still people who take comfort in having a more traditional alarm clock at their bedside. With this in mind, we present a list of not-so-traditional, traditional alarm clocks:
- Puzzle Alarm Clock – An alarm clock that shoots puzzle pieces in to the air as the alarm goes off; in order to silence the alarm, you have to reassemble the puzzle on top of the alarm clock.
- Clocky – Developed by MIT Grad Student Gauri Nanda, this alarm clock takes the old principle of “move the alarm clock to another part of the room so you have to get up to turn it off” to a whole new level. As the alarm goes off, Clocky rolls away to a new [random] location, so not only do you have to get up to turn off the alarm – you also have to find it!
- Blowfly – Taking the “you need to catch me first before you can silence me” concept one
stepdimension further, Blowfly doesn’t roll away when the alarm goes off. Nope, Blowfly, as the name implies, flies away from its base when the alarm goes off. Silencing the alarm, as you may have guessed, requires catching the Blowfly and returning it to its base. - Nintendo Controller Alarm Clock – This alarm clock is designed to resemble an original Nintendo controller. The alarm has a Super Mario Brothers tone, but if you score high enough in the alarm clock’s built-in game, you can unlock a ‘secret’ alarm tone.
- JBL On Time – While the last thing we want is YAiD (Yet Another iPod Dock), this product from JBL is also an alarm clock. Hopefully you’ve already guessed that the alarm wakes you up with music from your iPod. No big surprises here…
- Pull-Handle Alarm – This one is still only a concept, but it is a pretty cool concept. To set the alarm, you pull the handle until you reach the desired alarm time, the handle then slowly retracts back to the base of the clock. Once the handle reaches the clock, the alarm goes off…
Also, if you ever wondered just how a traditional alarm clock works, Howstuffworks has a pretty informative article.
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We have a free fader for your PC that allows you to play any music then have it fade out over several hours. It also has a soft wake up that will fade up the music again when its time to wake up.
Another weird but useful online alarm clock you might find useful is WTFalarmclock. It’s quite loud and simple to use. You can check it out over at http://www.wtfalarmclock.com !