electron zoo

Waking up is (arguably) the most important thing we do all day, and almost everyone uses some kind of gadget to do this. My alarm clock here at home wakes me up to progressively louder church bells. (Sure, it sounds nice, but it drives me nuts.) The worst alarm clock I've ever been exposed to belonged to an ex-boyfriend. It's a little dog that plays Revelry on the trumpet while singing, It's time to wake up, it's time to wake up, it's time to wake up right now! Anyway, here are five gadgets that will hopefully wake you up without giving you nightmares.

NeverLate 7-day Alarm Clock
Mondays you wake up at 8:00 AM. Tuesdays you wake up at 6:00 AM. Wednesdays you wake up at 7:00 AM. Thursdays you wake up at 11:00AM. Are you insane? Then this clock radio is for you. You can program it to wake you up at seven different times each day of the week. You can also program nap timers -- a clever addition, because with a schedule like this, power naps are essential.

iPod Clock Radio
You love your iPod. You want to marry it and have its babies. You want sleep with it every night and wake up next to it every morning. Well, sometimes you get what you wish for. This device isn't just a clock radio that docks your iPod, it's a whole home stereo system for your iPod which is fully-featured and cleverly designed. On the downside, it's still illegal to marry your iPod and biologically impossible to have its babies.

SleepTracker Wearable Sleeping Aid
Ahh. Don't you love those mornings when you just wake up naturally without an alarm clock at all? The SleepTracker promises the next best thing. Yes, it's still an alarm clock. But instead of waking you up an a concrete wake up time, it works around a twenty-minute wake up window, then wakes you up when you're sleeping your lightest, so you can feel as refreshed as possible when you start your day. As a bonus, aspiring mad scientists can also use the device to track the nightlong sleeping patterns of themselves and others ... to try to take over the world.

Progressive Wake Up Clock
Your bedroom slightly brightens. The smell of coffee wafts into your face. Songbirds are melodiously entering your dreams and softly awaken you. It's like awakening in your mountain lodge to have breakfast in bed. Oh crap, it's just your alarm clock. Oh well. This fancy alarm clock gradually wakes you with aromatherapy, light, and natural sounds over a period of thirty minutes. But I think a late night of drinking would make this pretty easy to ignore in the morning. (Perhaps you could set an ultra-loud, flashing Sensory Assault alarm clock to go off about an hour after this one.)

Clocky, the Alarm Clock the Runs Away and Hides
This robotic alarm clock has wheels. It acts like a regular alarm clock by hanging out in one place and buzzing in the morning. But once you hit snooze, you might think you're still dreaming. It rolls off your nightstand all by itself and finds a hiding place -- a different one each day -- then buzzes again. Theoretically, you're forced to get up and find it. But I think man is smarter than machine. Just remove the batteries when it buzzes you the first time and sleep as long as you want.

Note to readers (ignore at will): This week, I'm introducing number 1 in a new series called "5 Gadgets". I have a few other plans to enliven this space, which will hopefully actually happen. Soon.

FlipFlop Solar Powered Moving Plant
It's solar powered. It's plastic. It moves ... but just a little, tiny bit. It's an artificial solar powered houseplant. It's so intentionally useless, it's almost a good idea.

iDog Portable Speaker
If storm troopers had pet dogs designed by Japanese hipsters, this is what they would look like. This charismatic little speaker can connect to your iPod and enjoy your music with you, enabling you to further ostracize your loved ones while listening to your "own personal soundtrack".

Scrolling LED Badge
Nothing says, "Hello, my name is ... wait! Come back!" better than a scrolling LED badge. I mean come on, all the cool kids are wearing LED belt buckles.

Griffin iBeam Laser Pointer and Flashlight for iPod or iPod Mini
What do you get when you mix a life-saving tool (flashlight), an ostentatious gadget (iPod mini), and a glorified cat toy (laser pointer)? Or were you going to use your hot pink iPod mini to underscore the highlights of the PowerPoint you're presenting in the corner office?

Retro Phone Handset
Just attach it to your mobile phone, and it will give you a big chucky receiver to hang onto. This would come in handy if you had a loved one who just awoke from a coma, and you had to conduct an elaborate rouse to convince them it was still 1980 (Goodbye Lenin style). Or if you wanted everyone at a party to believe they could call your crotch directly. Well geez, maybe it's not useless after all.

Imagine using Google to find out where you stuck your phone bill, or when you last used your checkbook, or to tell you that your keys are underneath the folded newspaper to the left of your keyboard. This has long been the dream of disorganized internet junkies.

And thanks to the work of researchers whose desks contain some of the best analyzed clutter in the world, this dream will likely become a reality … in a couple of years.

These researchers use a webcam mounted above a desk to record where the items on the desk are moving, which then syncs with a computer to interpret which papers are which, how they’ve been moved, and where they might be found.

The system could also be used to interpret how a document has been organized — for example, you could use it to organize your vacation photos. If you went through your vacation photos, putting all those that are “safe for co-workers” to the right and all your wild and crazy party photos to the left, you could automatically organize the digital versions of the same photos at the same time. (Then again, who has the cash to have their photos printed these days, anyway?)

As exciting as this sounds, I’m not so sure these researchers are fully aware of all the challenges they face out here in the Real World. Take my desk, for instance — they can give me a call when they’re ready for this: