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alarm-clock posts

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, iTunes, Leopard

Tabulator: Alarm clock showdown

Mac users must be extremely heavy sleepers, because there is no shortage of alarm clock software for your Mac. If you need to wake up, your Mac will get you up. But which one rules the rooster?

Aurora, a popular choice, recently updated to version 4, and went from donationware to a licensing setup (a single copy will now run you EU$15.00. And Awaken was recently included in the Macheist bundle, but could it be that a donationware app like Alarm Clock 2 will do what you want, or is Koingo Software's Alarm Clock Pro the way to go?

We decided to wrap them all up into one big table-- app vs. app vs. app vs. app for a wakeup showdown. After the jump, find our first Tabulator battle (thanks to sister site Joystiq for the slick formatting) and discover which clock and timer program deserves to press play on your wakeup playlist.

Continue readingTabulator: Alarm clock showdown

Filed under: Multimedia, Features, How-tos, iTunes, Podcasts

How to: Create a smart podcast playlist in iTunes

I picked up Awaken with the recent Macheist deal, and with it I planned to do something I've been thinking about doing for a long time with iTunes: try and figure out a way to wake myself up with a short roundup of the daily podcasts I never seem to find a time to listen to during the day itself.

Getting your Mac to play a playlist on demand at a certain time isn't hard at all (Awaken will do it easily, or Alarm Clock 2 will do it as donationware), but the tough part is getting your podcasts rounded up into a playlist so you can hear all the new shows all in one go. What I wanted to do was create a playlist that contained one of each of the daily podcast shows that iTunes had downloaded for me most recently, and to have that playlist update as the podcasts did, so that every day I had a playlist full of new show episodes set to play one after another.

Easier said than done (and it's not even that easy to say). But I got it done, just by manipulating a few iTunes smart playlists. Here's my short tutorial how.

Continue readingHow to: Create a smart podcast playlist in iTunes

Filed under: Software

Embraceware releases Awaken 4

When it comes to alarm-clock applications for the Mac, we've got two very fine choices -- Alarm Clock Pro from Koingo Software, and Awaken from Embraceware. For most people, using your Mac as an alarm clock may seem a little unusual, but at the time I happened to be at University I lived in fear of my regular alarm clock's tone. So, with my Mac on the desk a few feet away, I set about finding a suitable Mac alarm clock application. I eventually settled with Awaken, and since then it's interrupted plentiful hours of slumber with music of my choosing.

You can imagine my joy then, to discover that Awaken was updated on Sunday to a whole new version: version 4. A significant re-write under-the-hood and a new UI cap a feature list that now includes: the ability to run scripts with alarms; the ability to select specific podcasts (not just music as with prior versions); better Apple Remote support and an improved full-screen mode.

Best of all, the update from version 3.x to 4 is free for registered users (though, you will need to re-enter your registration information and alarms after updating), and costs just $12.95.

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