A Better Alarm Clock

A device called Chumby promises to bring Internet widgets to the spot that once belonged to your bedside alarm clock.

Behind its 3 x 5 touch screen is a Linux-running, Wi-Fi enabled device, capable of bringing at least 50 web services to your bedstand, like Flickr Photos, MTV News, and a cam trained 24/7 on an elephant at the San Diego Zoo.

Oh, and it'll also wake you up in the morning.

I love the idea of Internet ubiquity.  I've dreamed of it ever since I read Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and Vurt.  The idea that we could have infinite knowledge available anywhere -- say, by posing a question to the ether, much like the way characters in Star Trek access their omnipresent computer -- will forever change things like, well, just about everything.   

I'm sure that even in our lifetimes, we'll look back and chuckle at the days when we were tethered to big glowing boxes on our desks and laps.  Even hand-held devices will seem archaic: the Internet, and all of the computing power thereupon accessed, will be woven into the very fabric of our lives, sometimes noticeably, but more often than not seamlessly and invisibly. 

This sort of ambient control is the Big Kahuna of this evolution; the challenge is in finding ways to give us information we need, when we need it, in ways that are simple and simply integrated into the moment of our experience.  Internet ubiquity will make those moments of our lives better.

Interestingly, the Internet doesn't make Chumby a better alarm clock.

It does lots of other things -- things like making your Facebook page available to you without lifting your head from your pillow -- but the alarm clock functionality is no different than competing, non-Internet enabled alarm clocks.  You might as well embed Internet access in your coffee maker.  Or on the insides of your shoes. 

Worse, Chumby is going to make money for its founders by selling ad space on its little screen, bringing the irritation of marketing to replace the irritation of a loud buzzer.  Well, not replace, but add to the irritation.  Chumby believes that there are companies willing to pay to be associated with those feelings you feel the moment you awake on dark, chilly weekdays.

Good times.

I do think that this new little gizmo is an interesting step along the way to true Net ubiquity, and its branding is brilliantly executed, replete with the cuddly graphics and layout, hip copy, and the requisite social media elements.  And, since it does make designing widgets to work on it an open-source-sort-of proposition, maybe it’s asking some enterprising hacker to come up with a real reason for somebody to purchase the contraption.

I have a few ideas:

• How about designing software that adjusts your scheduled wake-up time based on up-to-the-minute weather and traffic conditions?  Snow on the roads could push back the ringer by 10 minutes.  Ditto for a snarled traffic report on your favorite road
• You could add an app that made the thing smarter over time in this regard, so it got ever-better at predicting when you needed to awake (maybe based on some feedback info on how commutes actually played out?)
• Why not somehow filter your online calendar functionality so you awoke to changes in your meeting or class schedule?
• Maybe there's an app that reports the weather...not just straight-out, but somehow expressing the delta from the forecast the night before, so you could make decisions about what to wear as you pulled yourself out of bed

These aren't branding ideas, but functionality benefits that could be branded in any number of catchy, memorable, motivating ways.  Chumby might have spent a little less time on its hipster look-and-feel, and a little more on what its little gizmo does.

I'm still waiting for somebody to come up with a better alarm clock.