Clock Shock

For those of you who can’t get out of bed in the morning, the alarm clock that outwits you is finally here. I mentioned Clocky in a WSJ column more than a year ago in talking about the problems of ignored alarms:

Efforts to overcome this problem have been inventive, but rarely successful, says Gauri Nanda, a 26-year-old graduate student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. “Just last week a man told me he currently uses three alarm clocks and then asks his friends to hide them,” she says. Ms. Nanda’s solution: an alarm clock called Clocky equipped with outsize wheels and shockproof covering (early prototypes are wrapped in brown shag), that goes off and then, when its snooze button is pressed, skedaddles across the room and hides, requiring owners to get out of bed and find it. By the time they have, the thinking goes, Clocky has done its job because they’re out of bed and wide awake, if a little frustrated.

Gauri tells me the clock is now out and about, although it’s dropped the shaggy pile in favor of robust rubber and plastic, leaping off your nightstand and running erratically around the room making an annoying, R2D2–like noise. (see a video here.)

 I think it’s a great idea, although it’s not the only annoying alarm clock on the market. Uberreview lists some others, including:

• a hanging clock that retracts towards the ceiling the more you hit its snooze button
• one that fires four jigsaw pieces into the air and requires you put them back in the alarm clock before it switches off
• a clock whose neck you have to wring to switch off
• a rubber ball with prongs on that shakes its way across the room
• a clock that lays eggs and won’t stop chirping until you’ve put all the eggs back and
• a flying alarm clock you have to catch. (That’s enough alarm clocks – Ed)