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AlarmClock posts

Filed under: Accessories, Hardware, Odds and ends, Internet, Macbook Pro

Five useful Apple accessories for students heading off to college

Whether you're on your way back to college, or you're the parent or friend of a college-bound Apple fan, there are a lot of great items on the market this summer that are both functional and fashionable.

Back in the prehistoric 1970's when I was a civil engineering student at the University of Colorado Boulder campus, I made the mistake of rooming one year with two high school buddies. One of them, Chuck, was a real stoner and was impossible to wake up (even a stereo with the volume turned up to 11 didn't work). His 2009 counterpart would hopefully wake up on time every morning with an iHome iP9SR iPhone alarm clock (US$99 MSRP).
It's an iPhone charger with shielding to prevent that annoying buzz from GSM transmissions. It's an alarm clock that can play tunes from your iTunes library, AM/FM radio, or just blast out an annoying noise to wake you up. It also has some pretty nice speakers for listening to your music while charging your iPhone prior to your next class.

Continue readingFive useful Apple accessories for students heading off to college

Filed under: Multimedia, Reviews, iPhone, App Review

Playlist Alarm Clock, drift off and wake up to custom soundtracks

Be sure to check the end of this post for details on your chance to win a free copy of Playlist Alarm Clock!

We covered Chilli X last year, with their release of the successful iPhone to-do application, "Done" (iTunes link), and again with myCal, their app for creating custom calendar wallpapers for your iPhone lock screen (be sure to check out the free, user-generated wallpapers they're making available). They've been pretty quiet for a while, updating and tweaking Done (now at version 1.7), handling an App Store rejection of their own, and working on a newly-released app: Playlist Alarm Clock.

Playlist Alarm Clock is not necessarily a new or novel idea, but it's well-implemented. It's an iPhone app which allows you to create playlists, one for falling asleep and one for waking up. You can configure the length of time the sleep playlist will play, and how long it will take to fade out, as well as a fade-in time for the wake-up playlist. Setting times and fades comes down to a couple of taps, and adding songs to the playlists is done with a familiar iPod interface with full access to your library and playlists. If you're generally drowsy in the morning, you're covered as well: the snooze time can be configured to five, ten, fifteen or thirty minutes and is just a groggy tap away.

As is often the case, there are a few things I'd love to see enhanced. First, a night mode, ala the excellent Night Stand (iTunes link), which would let Playlist Alarm Clock function more appropriately as an always-on clock. Currently, the time display is large and easy to see, but the brightness of the interface is not ideal for bedside use. Second -- and this is really my only other complaint -- removing songs from the playlist doesn't seem to be an intuitive process. Accidentally tapping the wrong song during playlist creation seems to be a pretty permanent blunder, requiring a do-over of the playlist creation sequence. Beyond that, this app does exactly what the wrapper says, and I'm looking forward to falling asleep tonight to some favorites of mine, and hopefully not jarring my wife into a bad mood when my personal idea of "wakeup" music fades in.

Playlist Alarm Clock is $1.99US in the App Store. However, Chilli X is offering TUAW readers a chance at one of 10 free copies. All you have to do is submit (in the comments) your ideal playlists, one for falling asleep, and one for waking up. Be creative, be funny, be brilliant ... Chilli X will choose their favorites winners will be randomly selected next Thursday and promo codes will be sent to the winners.

Here are the rules and a link to the legal statement:

  • Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
  • To enter leave a comment listing your choices for sleep and wake playlists.
  • The comment must be left before Wednesday, July 22, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time.
  • You may enter only once.
  • Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing.
  • Prize: Promo code for one copy of Playlist Alarm Clock (US$1.99 value)
  • Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Good luck!

Filed under: Software, Features, TUAW Faceoff

TUAW Sleep-off: Ambiance vs. aSleep vs. your Mac

Everybody needs to sleep, and more than just a few hours each night. It's not just a matter of being in a foul mood all day; there are some pretty serious physiological effects of sleep deprivation. Since you tend to learn the most when you do things incorrectly, I know plenty about lost sleep. Anything that helps my insomnia is worth checking into, so I've spent some time looking at ways my Mac and my iPhone might help me lay down, and stay down. I took a look at the iPhone first; there are more than a few apps available which make me drowsy, but only two that I could find which do it intentionally: aSleep and Ambiance. Fluff your pillow and read on to see how they stack up against each other and a few desktop applications.

Continue readingTUAW Sleep-off: Ambiance vs. aSleep vs. your Mac

Filed under: Software

iRooster 2.2



Using your Mac to wake you up isn't a new idea, but I think it is a good idea. iRooster 2.2 (release notes) is another alarm clock app that turns your Mac into the most expensive alarm clock you have ever used. It allows you to pick playlists, or random songs, from your iTunes library to jar you awake from slumberland. It will also download album art if the track it is playing has no artwork associated with it.

New in version 2.2 is an iTunes like style for the clock (not pictured above) and some bug fixes for those of us on Intel Macs. iRooster requires iTunes 6.0 or above and OS X 10.3 or above and will set you back $9.95.

Filed under: Accessories, Audio, iPod Family, Hacks, Mods

DIY iPod boom box

The new iPod Hi-Fi looks really cool, but who has $350US sitting around doing nothing? Why now whip up your own solution from the parts you probably have sitting around your house right now?

That's what Phillip over at Make:Blog did. Buy hacking an iPod speaker unit together with an old pair of Apple Pro speakers, a modified iPod dock and a nano, he's made himself a working, though slightly unattractive, iPod speaker system. Nicely done. Here is a Flickr set for your viewing pleasure.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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