I don’t know how many times I’ve been awaken out of a deep sleep when my washer or dryer goes off with that super-sonic blasting beep. It was even worse in the days where my mother and sister would do their laundry, with me, unsuspecting of the beeping, would be shocked out of my slumber.

Sure, it might be a real pain in the ass, but appliances never had a problem getting my ass out of bed, which is why I kinda see the point behind the Appliance Alarm Clocks. When the alarm goes off, the clocks will act like your everyday appliance, producing animated suds, shaking on its stubs, and making loud swishy noises. Possibly a nominee for the most extreme clocks you’ll never own? Get yours from between $17 and $20. (more…)

Clocks are one of those gadgets that we don’t realize how important they are to our lives until we are left without one. Luckily, most cellphones these days come with a clock and alarm built right in, but for some people, this just isn’t enough. Some of us need that little (or sometimes, huge) extra boost of motivation to pull those covers away from our bodies. The 12 clocks which follow are not for the light-hearted or those with high-blood pressure. These take the word clock, and bring it to the extreme.

So, without further adieu, we present to you the 12 Coolest Extreme Clocks That You’ll Never Own. Read on, brotha’. (more…)

The Japan Acoustic Laboratory is famous for their soft science research, those guys have recently started selling ringtones online that they claimed can calm crying babies. Nikkei has decided to spend a few bucks and try that out on 2 babies. First they downloaded the tone on to their mobile, then they sent it to the alarm clock by muPass. You can have an idea of how the tone actually sounds like here (.avi). No matter how stupid it sounds, Nikkei still reported that it actually worked on two difficult babies, and they both stopped crying within seconds; but over here, we might want to try this on non-Japanese babies first. –Sam Chan

Link

Don’t you just hate it when you wake up before the alarm clock rings, feeling refreshed, see the clock and decide that you should sleep a few minutes more, and by the time the alarm rings again, you are so deeply asleep that it feels so terrible being woken up that you wish you didn’t sleep that extra 5 minutes? That’s because traditional alarm clocks do not synchronize with your brain’s sleep cycle.

By sleep cycle, we’re talking about the different phases of sleep with characteristic brain wave patterns. Throughout the night, we fluctuate between different levels of sleeping, deep sleeping, shallow sleeping and the famous Rapid Eye Movement phase (REM). What this alarm watch does is that it detects your shallow sleep within a preset time frame, say if you want to wake up at 7am, you set the time frame to be 6:40 to 7:20, then the alarm watch would wake you up when it detects that you’re in the shallow sleeping phase, but not the deep sleeping phase. As much as this sounds cool in theory, how does it work in reality? Well, the NikkeiBP dude managed to wake up refreshed enough to take a picture, not bad eh. The watch is priced at $170 in Japan. — Sam Chan

SleepTracker Review [NikkeiBP]

We know it’s hard to keep awake in painstakingly boring meetings, but wouldn’t it be great to have somebody next to you to wake you up when you fall asleep? The Japanese came out with various solutions for that, and one of them is the Nap Alarm. The Nap Alarm looks pretty much like just another headset for your mobile phone that hangs on your ear. The motion/balance sensor would be activated should your head rock forward, presumably losing consciousness, then a loud buzz will be set off directly into your ears and your ears only, so next time when your Japanese colleague suddenly jumps up in the middle of a meeting you’d know why.

If your ears are already pretty deaf from listening to iPod day and night, you can try the vibrating alarm instead, your ears should be sensitive enough. Wink wink. These Nap Alarms are only selling for $12 in Japan now, and since its release a few weeks ago, they have already been featured on a lot of Japanese TV shows. –Sam Chan

Official site [Takanoha]

The scary thing about earthquakes is not so much about falling ceilings anymore, at least in Japan. More injuries are incurred due to the fact that the power is off and people can’t see (along with gas explosions, fire and falling shelf objects). Most commercial office buildings are equipped with emergency lighting, but what if you want them at home? A Japanese company, Anzen-net (safety-net), has developed this automatically lighting system that can light up automatically when it detects an earthquake greater than Richter Scale 5 or smoke in times of fire. A 70dB siren is also built in should you want to be woken up. Since it runs on lithium battery, it will not be affected by the powercut. Thanks to its relatively small size, you can put as many as you want in your room, but that will cost you a fortune; these lights are selling for $147 each. — Sam Chan

Pioma product page [Anzen-net]

Everyone knows how annoying it is to be woken up by that stupid repetitive beeping you alarm clock makes at 5:30 in the morning. All this does is start off your day wrong; a sure sign that your day is going to go down hill fast. Now if you woke up to some of your favorite tunes, then you’d probably wake up a lot happier, making your day a lot better. The Seiko MuPass alarm clock seems like a normal clock from the outside, but look deeper and you will find your dream come true: this alarm clock can download polyphonic ringtones for your morning listening pleasure. All you have to do is bring your cellphone and transfer the songs to the MuPass via the infrared port. If you know that you’ll get sick of one song after about one day, then go big and fill up the memory of the clock: 4000 tunes. That’s over 12 years of glorious tunes for you; that should be enough to make you happy. The only problem is that this is only for sale in Japan at a price of $75, so for now just wake up to the radio, at least its music. — Nick Rice

Seiko muPass [via New launches]

There are 2 situations you never want to be in with a parking meter: first, when you get to one only to realize you have no quarters, and second, when you come back to your car, arms loaded with bags, only to find you got a parking ticket for being 5 minutes late. What’s great about the Parking Meter Alarm is that it solves both of those problems, or rather offers solutions for those who aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Restoration Hardware saved city slickers potentially hundreds of dollars with this neat little device. All you have to do with the alarm is set how long your meter lasts, and the alarm will go off a few minutes before the meter expires, a life-saver for those who go shopping crazy and don’t even have time to look at their watches. If you leave if it on your key ring then you solve the other problem (no quarters) because there is a spring-loaded coin holder inside the alarm with enough room for 10 quarters, which equates to plenty of time for lounging in massage chairs in the Sharper Image. If you live in the city, this $12 wonder is almost a must considering 12 bucks is way better than just 1 parking ticket. — Nick Rice

Parking Meter Alarm [via Shiny Shiny]

This new pedometer from Maplin Electronics is coming out at the perfect time of year for all of you who “vow� to start exercising this year. The pedometer not only acts as a pedometer, but also as a panic alarm and an FM radio. First off, the FM radio is a nice little add-on to the pedometer, so you don’t have to carry another device when you’re running. Now the panic alarm, on the other hand, is a little strange; they say you can use it when you feel threatened while you’re running; if it’s so scary out there in the big world, why don’t you just run home? Just a thought.

Anyways, the part that you care about most, the pedometer part (go figure), has many features to keep you running (no pun intended) with your New Year’s Resolution. These features include a step counter, distance traveled display, a calories-burnt indicator, a stopwatch, and a lap counter. At $20, this might be the perfect after-Christmas gift to remind you of your New Year’s resolution in a week when you get it; oh yeah, and once you start using too of course. Too bad it doesn’t have an annoying voice that yells “you need to run!â€? when you haven’t run for a few days. — Nick Rice

Maplin Electronics Pedometer [via TechDigest]

Ever since you were a little kid you’ve wanted to be like superman, running around in tights and having your own symbol for everyone to know you by; don’t deny it. Well now you can fulfill your dream (at least part of it) of being like Superman with the Superman Projection AM/FM Clock Radio; no, this does not give you permission as a grown man to run around in tights. This clock radio projects the time and the Superman sign on the wall for you to gloat at, and in the morning wakes you up to the Superman theme, as composed by John Williams. If you feel as if you aren’t ready to take on the world when the music starts playing, just smack the giant Superman symbol on the clock that acts a the snooze button. Also, for those of you who don’t feel worthy to hear Superman music (or you’re just sick of it), you can have a traditional, regular person alarm sound. With such a cheap price of $19.99, maybe you should get this just as a self-esteem booster; you can wake up imagining that someone wants to see you in tights. — Nick Rice

Superman Projection AM/FM Clock Radio [via Gearlog]