Time for alarm apps
AFEW weeks ago when my wife set the morning alarm on my iphone and I heard the Timba alert for what may have been the thousandth time, my teeth clenched.
I was sick of that sound, as I was with the other 24 alerts in Apple’s standard stable of tunes. Androids can be even worse. My Droid Razr has dozens of sounds, but my Samsung Galaxy Plus Tablet has just nine alarm options.
That shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Android’s owner, Google, and Apple both have a financial stake in the sale of third-party apps that help users customise their device’s alarm clocks — and there are thousands of such apps.
There are alarm clocks for skiers and surfers, fans of insults, singing bowls, Eminem, Beyonce, and public radio, just for starters. If you have a passion, chances are the App Store or Android Market has a matching alarm clock.
These apps are relatively easy for programmers to build, and they can be churned out by developers who have subpar standards for performance and design.
So feel free to shop around for your chronographic soul mate, but as a backup, consider downloading a great all-purpose alarm clock like Nightstand Central (US$3 or RM9 for IOS, with a limited free version) or Living Earth HD (US$1 or RM3 for IOS).
On Android, Alarm Clock Xtreme (US$2 or RM6, with a free ad-supported version) or Alarm Clock Plus No Ads (US$1 or RM3, with a free ad-supported version) are good choices.
I’d been aware of Living Earth HD and Nightstand Central for a while, but I was reluctant to rely on them because of a potentially fatal flaw — namely, you must leave the app running in the foreground if you want the alarm to sound.
The apps include backup alarms, in case you close them before you go to sleep, and while they worked on my iphone, the backups failed to chime on my ipad.
This backup feature requires you to tweak the settings. So if you check Facebook one last time before shutting down for the night, and you forget to reload the alarm app, you could be in trouble.
The iphone’s built-in alarm clock works no matter what app is running, though, so if you’re the forgetful type, it’s a much safer option.
Pretty pictures
But what a beautiful incentive you have to make the leap. Living
Earth is visually striking, and versatile enough that you may want to keep it on whenever you’re not running another app. (The same is true for Nightstand Central, but more on that one in a moment.)
Living Earth’s display is a live satellite image of the planet, so you can see the cloud cover in your region or any storms heading your way.
That’s useful for planning your day or weekend, maybe, but it’s also just cool to watch Earth as it appears from space. (The app adds a slow spin for dramatic effect.)
You can scroll the virtual globe to check in on Paris or Sydney, as you would do in Google Earth, but you can’t zoom in closely as you would with that program.
The image is accompanied by a digital clock and a graphic with the day’s important weather details.
In the app’s settings section, you can disable the device’s autolock feature, so Living Earth becomes your wallpaper throughout the day.
The app’s alarm offers only seven sounds, but you can quickly bolster that selection by adding any song in your itunes music collection.
Meanwhile, if a spinning globe doesn’t entice you, Nightstand Central gives you a wide range of excellent photos for the display.
Screen images are accompanied by the time and weather, and you can add your own photos and let the device rotate through those images, as a kind of digital picture frame.
The app has 19 alarm sounds, and it, too, can add tunes from your personal song library.
The alarm feature is more refined than that of Living Earth, with a fade-in option for alerts, for instance.
As a bonus, you can shake the device and turn on a flashlight for midnight bathroom trips or illuminated sleepwalking. On Android, my two favourite apps were slightly more utilitarian in terms of graphics, but no less effective.
Alarm Clock Plus features dozens of built-in alarms, and you can easily add songs and select ring tones that will sound even if your device’s ringer is set to “mute.”
Like Nightstand Central, Alarm Clock Plus lets you fade in your alarm for a gentler entry to the day.
If you habitually hit the “snooze” button, only to wake an hour past your planned rising time, the alarm rings until you complete a math problem of a specified difficulty. (Quick: What is 1,192 – 214 x 2?) You can disable that devilish feature.
Android alternative
Alarm Clock Xtreme includes those same core functions, but it boasts important bonuses.
If morning math is a little too masochistic, for instance, you can shut off the alarm by entering a Captcha phrase. I’m not sure which is harder — complex math, or entering “xyw7axa9” accurately on a touchscreen — but either way, it’s a fair bet you won’t fall back to sleep.
The app lacks a screensaver. Since Android alarm apps always wake you even if the programs run in the background, you don’t need such cues to remind you not to touch the device if you want to get to work on time in the morning.
That way, you can escape the device’s embedded alarm sounds and still rest easy, knowing the apps will wake you at the proper time. — NYT