Many alarm clocks have come out in the past few years, trying to get you from hitting the snooze button by requiring you to perform some act of groggy, post-oneiric dexterity (like hitting a target with a laser beam) or a teeth-grating act of pseudo-robotic annoyance (like an alarm clock that rolls off the table and goes rushing around the room, squealing).

Still, why accomplish with circuitry what you can accomplish with ear drum bursting sound? The $49.95 Sternreiter Twin-Bell alarm clock ring at a volume of over 86db. There is no snooze. You either wake up, turn it off, then vomit out your heart, or your friends find you a week later, lying in a pillow puddle of your own gelatinized brains.

Sternreiter Twin-bell Mechanical Alarm Clocks [Alarm Clocks Online via Retro Thing]

I love novelty velocipedes, and so I've already developed a fondness for this Treadmill Bike for sale from Bike Forest. It's stupidly impractical and inefficient, but it makes up for that with goofy charm: the video on the official site touts "you can bring it on the bus" as a major feature, yet cuts away just as the handle bars smack into the door frame. Another bullet points out that you are unlikely to be transformed into a gelatinous smear by an SUV while riding the Treadmill Bike, since "the Treadmill Bike's elevated running platform means you'll be seen over the hood of even the most heinously overbuilt motor vehicle." Goofy charm only goes so far, though: I'm not sure that it's worth $2,500 Canadian to be the biggest doofus on the bike path.

Treadmill Bike [Bike Forest via Gizmowatch]

Momentum rules.

via DVICE and Music Thing

I'm an apologetic fan of wrist watches that double as cell phones. largely because of a boyhood fascination with Dick Tracy that had my grade school teachers puzzled by the flabby boy with the wild mop of hair and crazed eyes in the back of their classroom, loudly calling APBs into his "radio watch"... which was, in actuality, a He-Man swatch. Leave aside that it makes more sense to use your cell phone as a time piece than it does to use a watch as a cell phone: there's something about shouting, "Hello! John Brownlee here!" at my wrist that appeals to me, even if it is functionally both inconvenient and absurd.

The EP2502 cell phone watch seems a cut above its competitors, though. It's still every lick as ridiculous as you'd expect, but it's actually fairly attractive, featuring an OLED touch screen, a 2 megapixel camera, tri-band support, Bluetooth and even waterproofing. It's being released in just a few days for $250, which seems respectable.

Of course, where these cell phone watches really fall apart is privacy: it's not practical taking your watch off every time you need to answer your phone, which means you'll need to hold your wrist up to your ear like for swathes of time or loudly shout at your wrist in the street while passers-by shoot you alarmed looks. I suspect no one's really going to get into these until they simply function as wearable video conferencing devices. Then we'll all feel like Dick Tracy.

EP2502 OLED WaterProof TriBand Watch Phone [Surprising Gift via Gizmodo]

The nixie tube is one of the oldest and retro-futuristic of digital display technologies: a glass tube (similar in appearance to a vacuum tube) containing a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes that, when powered, become glowing orange numbers. Artist Peter Jensen buys up old, space-race Soviet era Nixie-tubes and turns them into fantastically retro-futuristic digital clocks. A four digit Nixie Tube clock kit will cost you $135, or only $99 if you don't mind tearing apart crazy ol' grampa's non-functioning time machine for the stray parts, but you can go up to a six-digit aluminum model for $495. Gorgeous. These look like they were just removed from the dash panel of Flash Gordon's 1950s-era rocket ship. I want one.

TubeClock [Official Site via Retro-Thing]

Bomi Kim's DIY clock-making concept, The Meaning of Time, has a certain Korokova Milk Bar minimalism to it. Essentially, it's just a plastic screw, with minute and hour shafts horologically rotating according to the usual standards of time-keeping. You simply smash it into a planar surface, stuff two objects through the holes, and voila: your own clock. I think, though, that the real possibilities of such a device will only become apparent when someone on Modblog hammers one into his pineal gland, tattoos his face with digits and inserts his fingers through the holes whenever someone asks him for the time.

Making Your Own Clock [Yanko Design via Wired]

This watch, though fashionologically hideous, has one killer feature. It picks up and alerts you to the presence of WiFi signals as you perambulate by.

I could have use for a watch like this, if only for the fact that it's so ugly that it would make my dates want to punch themselves in the baby maker. Sure, it doesn't do anything my laptop doesn't do, but I think walking by a nice looking cafe or bar and just quickly glancing at your watch to check if you can do some work there is a lot easier.

I'm not going to buy an ugly watch for that functionality, though. I tend to assume that all digital watches and cell phones will do something like this eventually, but that's probably naive: we're probably only a few years away from most wireless internet being cellular, after all. Base stations will just seem so quaint.

Still, if you're inclined, the asking price for the WiFI Watch is only £19.99. That's cheap enough you could just take off the band and carry it in your pocket. Actually, come to think of it, I may do just that.

WiFi Detecting Watch [Thumbs Up UK via Gadget Lab]

This utterly gorgeous pocket watch, complete with automatonous figures and a skeletonized back that reveals the clockwork within is up on eBay. From the listing:

Quarter hour repeating, automaton pocket watch in the large 17 size! The early 19th century watch, which has a wonderfully skeletonized back and partially skeletonized (open escapement) dial is in a hallmarked, silver case. We have been unable to identify its tiny hallmark. The dial ring is of white porcelain. When activated this amazingly detailed automaton movement strikes 3 different mock bells by three different automated figures on its gorgeously crafted and finely detailed dial. Our many photos tell the full story of the fully regaled man, formally attired woman and cherubic child who strike the watches bells!"

It's like having Prague's Astronomical Clock in your pocket. Better be ready to pay through the nose for it, though: current bid is around $2,300.

Lg Fine & Early 17S AUTOMATON REPEATER Pocket Watch NR [eBay via The Automata Blog]

The writing's been on the wall, but Microsoft have just announced that they are putting down their SPOT service for Smart Watches like the lame dog it was.

SPOT ("Smart Personal Objects Technology" — Smart Watches that could send and download information via FM Radio) was an interesting idea, briefly capturing my fascination as I dreamed of an affordable SWATCH with all the Dick Tracy technological trimmings. But the watches themselves — drab-looking LCDs, the lot of them — were far too ugly to seriously consider wearing, and the features didn't seem worth the premium of the subscription to MSN Direct. They were either mundane (weather updates, lottery numbers) or absurd (you could receive but not send IMs on your watch). There was just no compelling reason to own one.

Well, SPOT's dead now. If you've got a SPOT watch, its services will continue working, but no more SPOT Watches will be released. Microsoft seems to be channeling the MSN DIrect service into more powerful devices, like GPS units. That's probably for the best. Personally, I think SPOT Watches highlighted a big dilemma with modern watch design: the more technologically modern a watch becomes, the less pleasing it is to wear.

Smart Watch Update [Spotstop via Crunch Gear]

I have a hard time finding cool watches that I not only like, but could actually see myself wearing. This is the reason why I have had the same cheap Casio Illuminator strapped to my wrist for the last five years: its features — miraculous feats of digital programming and horological ingenuity, all of them — include beeping and letting me see what time it is in the dark. But jeebus. This Opus 8 Mechanical Digital from Harry Winston Rare Timepieces just has me swooning.

It's based upon the maverick design of Frédéric Garinaud, a French engineer with no experience in watchmaking who, in 2007, arrived in Basel to showcase a way in which LED-style digits could "raise" out of the surface of a purely mechanical clock. The Opus 8 takes this concept and runs with it: pull a lever on the side and the hour erects itself from the watch face as numerous dials rapidly spin to land on the correct hour and minute.

But what I really love about this watch is how it channels the form of an old mahogany transistor radio. It's got something of a Dick Tracy Radio Watch vibe to it, without the actual radio. I would buy one of these in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it's a limited edition of fifty, and they're already sold out to fat cat millionaires and the loathsome, stinking like.

Opus 8 Mechanical Digital [Watchismo Times]

Although at first blush the limited-edition Di Grisogono Meccanica DG watch looks just like a garish, glow-in-the-dark LED favored by some spaced-out raver, the whizzygig's horological guts reveal it to be something far more elegant: a mechanical watch that looks and acts like a digital one, thanks to the stupendous complexity of the 651 interlocking gears tightly compacted within.

Just 177 of these amazing timepieces are going to be made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Geneva-based horloger. Billed as the most complicated digital-analog timepiece in the world, the digital display is actually mechanical, with rolling tubes forming the digital segments.

Needless to say, a limited edition of this sort of craftsmanship is going to cost more than your average airport Swatch. I love it, though. Oxidized, made of copper and attached to a band made out of elephant leather, it would make the perfect steampunk watch: a time piece that simulates a device of the 21st century with the technology of the 19th. Someone needs to show Jake von Slatt how to make an LCD monitor like this.

First Watch with All-Mechanical "Digital" Display (Verdict: Absolutely Amazing) [Gizmodo]

Both of these retro-modern alarm clocks from Oregon Scientific feature a projector that shines the current time on the ceiling of your austere sleeping chamber. The $30 RRA320 is just a regular clock/radio alarm, while for $20 more the RRM320PA brings in atomic-clock synchronization and a temperature display with a wireless thermometer that works from up to 300 feet away. It's a good thing the RRM320PA is out of stock at the moment as I'd probably buy it just because it looks nifty, despite the fact that I wake up every morning just fine with my phone's built-in alarm. (I think bring the phone into bed while I hit snooze two or three times.)

RRA320P Product Page [OregonScientific.com]
RRM320PA Product Page [OregonScientific.com]

[via Technabob]

Richard "Lord British" Garriott, creator of Ultima and Tabula Rasa, is a bit of a space nut. (He owns an original Sputnik.) In October, Garriott will be taking a trip to the International Space Station—by rocket—and instead of strapping on one of the watches that already are designed to work in space, Seiko has created the "Spring Drive Spacewalk" watch, available only to Garriott and 99 other memento-seeking space or watch nerds willing to pony up the as-yet-announced price.

What does a watch designed for space do that terrestrial watches could not? It's lightweight, for one, milled from titanium. (Every ounce counts when you're pushing payloads up with a crude chemical shot put.) It glows, perhaps signifying the cosmic radiation that would roast an unshielded orbiting meat man. It has oversized buttons, in case Garriott needs to make an adjustment to his fucking watch while arcing at tens of thousands of miles an hour over the Earth. And it's powered by a spring, just like everything else on ISS.

Oh, it's huge, too. Fifty-three millimeter face, which is just over two inches across.

No clue when the 99 companion watches will be available for purchase, but I'd suspect before the October (literal) launch date.

Product Page [SeikoSpringDrive.com via Watch Report]

This wonderful piece from Mr. Jones Watches is called "The Accurate," as each its hour and minute hands spell out a memento mori over its mirrored face. It's only $150. I think I'll buy it—life is short.

Product Page [Watchismo.com]

The Orbita Tourbillon is a watch winding machine, for those too busy to keep a watch wound on their own. I thought it was a joke but it is apparently a very real thousand-dollar product—three grand if you get the triple-barreled version.

Watch Report has one:

In addition to keeping your watches wound, the Orbita Tourbillon will also to rotate them in such a way as to offset the negative effects of gravity. Just as the tourbillon complication is designed to rotate a watch's escapement in order to counteract the forces of gravity and keep the movement functioning more regularly, with every turn, the Orbita Tourbillon positions your watches at a 30° offset from the previous turn. In other words, rather than rotating 360°, the barrel is rotated 390° which means that every 12 turns, the watch has had the opportunity to rest at a slightly different angle, averaging out the tiny variations in accuracy caused by gravitational forces over time.

I keep putting my plastic Casio watch on there and I can really tell a difference in the way the LCD display hangs in the albedo offset. I think it has realigned the matrix of the liquid crystal lattice.

Review of the Orbita Tourbillon Watch Winder [WatchReport.com]

Nothing special about these clocks except clean lines, a easily parsed chunky electroluminescent LCD display, and a slightly baffling "Year" read-out that seems to indicate we're in the Age of Sleep. Which is fine with me. I'm not lazy—I'm observant!

The LEXON "Jet" clocks, designed by Theo Williams, are available in wall clock models as seen here, as well as a small clock/radio table-top version. Europe-only for the moment, it seems, available from French boutique Singulier for €45. C'est la gear.

Catalog Page [Singulier.com via Technabob]

Audiocubes is selling this "DangerBomb Clock" from Banpresto which flashes one of three differently colored lights that correspond to three wires. When your alarm goes off in the morning, you have to disconnect the correct wire, selected at random, or face the harsh fate of more alarm. It's just enough problem solving to kick your brain into something resembling actual wakefulness, I'd imagine.

It's whimsical is just the right way and I'd think about picking one up, despite its wildly inflated price of $60, but I actually have a personal phobia of shrill alarm clocks. I think there's something unhealthy about starting each day with a shrieking terror klaxon. Can't be good for the heart.

Product Page [Audiocubes via Ubergizmo via Oh Gizmo]

The "Life Clock," by Bertrand Planes, slows down the typical clock mechanism so that what is normally a minute hash now represent years. I'd put a battery in it, because I'd be terrified when if the power went out.

I'm unsure if this is a real art project—or rather, I'm unsure if the clock actually is slowed down 61320 times or if it has just been repainted.

Artist's Page [OnOffArt.fr via Szymon Blaszczyk via vvork via Technobob]

Congratulations to Garmin: Their new Forerunner 405 GPS watch, designed for runners, is the first one small and unobtrusive enough to be worn all day, unlike previous models. (The new 405 is on the right, while earlier models are left and center, for not-to-scale contrast.)

I look forward to the day when GPS is just another tiny chip on the board. (What's holding that back? Antennas?)

The Forerunner 405 should cost around $300. That's a lot of scratch for an ugly watch, but the Forerunner line has always gotten solid reviews from runners, who like the ability to track their routes, speed, mileage, heart rate, and more.

Even cooler, the 405's bezel responds to touch, which should make it much easier to switch to different displays or change settings without slowing down.

Forerunner 405 [Navigadget]

What I find most interesting about the Memory Bank watch series is how forward thinking they were back at their introduction, but how little Seiko did over the years to improve the design. Casio (which I realize is not the same company) is still making "Data Bank" watches today that have changed little from the original design.

[via Watchiso (with a "rotary LED" watch ad, too) via CrunchGear]

While I think the overall design is embarrassingly goofy (no surprise, considering the manufacturer), the Oakley Minute Machine watch certainly has an interesting band, made from interlocking titanium segments with self-lubricating carbon rings. It's almost cool, but the watch face itself looks like a mindlessly designed enemy spaceship from a cut-rate sci-fi shooter.

Prices vary quite a bit online, but appears to be in the sub-$1,000 range.

OAKLEY MINUTE MACHINE REVIEW- 12.13.07 [Notcot.com]

In 2001, before we all realized that the animated Final Fantasy movie was going to be garbage, Seiko announced two watch designs based on the one worn by the movie's heroine, Dr. Aki. Rather, they announced one watch, but showed a picture with a second view that looked quite a bit like a second design.

The face of the watch looks relatively pedestrian for a "futurey" watch these days, but at the time it was shockingly fresh, especially when imagined to be part of a hefty metal cuff with thick buttons. The watch that Seiko ended up releasing, including a limited run here in the U.S., looked basically the same as the design on the left.

If you look at the released watch, you can see that it has a pretty standard plastic band along the back. (Someone is selling one on eBay for $750, a $550 premium over its original cost here in the States. Their auction has lots of pictures, including one that shows the back.)

Anyone know if the second cuff was actually released in Japan? Or was it simply a mock-up which Seiko decided was too much trouble or too expensive to produce? I've asked Seiko about it, but I doubt answering questions about a seven-year-old limited-edition watch is going to be a top priority for them.

These HT2 watches from Timberland, festooned with dials and knobs, are the stylistic equivalent of a pachinko machine, bouncing the attention of the eye from post to bauble and back again, rewarding each glance with bankrupt distraction. Sometimes "overwrought" can be its own reward. Not this time.

If wearing the flattened, leathery carcass of a clockwork insect is your idea of a good time, prices start around $300.

timberland ht2 watch: everything but the kitchen sink [Technabob via Acquire]

Cool Hunting has collaborated with Furni to produce these attractive retro LCD watches, made most notable for their trendy white band and bastardized Duran Duran quote engraved on the back. They're $24 each, plus shipping.

Catalog Page [Furni.MyShopify.com via Cool Hunting]

We've seen several folk linking this "Tetris and Pong Forever" concept watch by Lysandre Follet, which showed up on Yanko over a week ago. Despite being branded a Nixon watch, it's not real—it's just a student concept.

Boing Boing contacted the company who said they have nothing to do with the desig, nor are they putting it into production. A bummer, perhaps, but now you know.

While the inspire of this "Multibook" might be a mess of gadget chargers and wires, there is an irrational appeal to its book-like shape, which not only hides a three-port power strip, but a digital clock and an array of 74 LEDs which shine through the "pages" as a nightlight. I'd buy one in an instant, even at its $220 price, but it's only available in Europe in a 220-volt model for the moment.

Rotaliane Multibook [AcquireMag.com via Technabob]

The nut: It does what it claims, but the new software features aren't very useful. The new vibration function, however, is. For people good at sleep, but awful at waking.

The Sleeptracker Pro watch uses a built-in accelerometer to guess when your are most close to waking while asleep, then gently nudges you with its vibration or beeps to wake you. By catching you at the right point of your sleep cycle, rather than at an arbitrary time you set before you went to sleep, the Sleeptracker aims to help you wake refreshed.

I haven't been using the Sleeptracker Pro for very long—about a week, and not every night—but I've already been surprised at how well it works at waking me up at a point where it doesn't feel like I'm about to have a heart attack. So that's an improvement right there. I have the privilege of being able to set a fairly large window for it to wake me within. I gave it a full hour window, although it will go as large as an hour-and-a-half, and as narrow as twenty minutes.

Because you have to set that initial window, I wasn't able to just slap it on my wrist and crash out the first time I used it. In fact, because I needed to thumb through a manual to figure out what to do, I put it aside for a few nights before I was ready to futz with it. Because it's a watch and not something with a larger screen, this is more difficult than it might have to be. The stilted, overly technicaly language in the manual doesn't help.

(The whole setup process could be humanized simply by asking three questions: "Roughly when do you want to wake up?"; "Okay, so somewhere between 6 and 7 AM?"; "Let me know when you're going to sleep!" Hard to do on a watch, unfortunately.)

Once configured, though, using the Sleeptracker was as easy as holding down the "Down" button to indicate I was going to bed. In the morning it would wake me—at least when I wouldn't wake myself a few minutes before it did. Something about anticipating being woken by a new clock made my body's internal clock more sensitive.

The Sleeptracker Pro is ugly. You could wear it all day if you wanted to—it works just fine as a regular watch—but you won't because it's orange and because its small LCD window on a moderately large face makes it look cheap. On the other hand, the orange highlights make it easier to pick out on a cluttered desk in the twilight.

The "Pro" in Sleeptracker Pro indicates a few upgraded features from the previous (and still available) model, most notably bundled software that allows you to download and compare your sleep history to track how restless you may have been in the night. But because the Sleeptracker Pro only has enough storage inside for one night's data, if you miss a night you're out of luck. I also didn't find the provided data to be all that interesting or useful and the included software was unattractive visually and experientially.

That doesn't matter much, though, because the Sleeptracker Pro is only $30 more than the $150 Sleeptracker Standard, and it's worth $30 alone to get the vibration feature, which the cheaper model does not have.

One morning the Sleeptracker went off on my desk. I'd forgotten to wear it. Apparently Sleeptracker does not do any baseline movement monitoring to tell if it's on your arm or if you are dead.

The way the USB connects to the watch is kind of neat. Rather than having a standard mini USB port on the side that would compromise water resistance—and you definitely want a watch that wakes you from sleep to resist morning showers—there are three small discs on the bottom of the watch. The included cable has a USB port on one end for your computer and a three-tooth clip on the other. Syncing doesn't happen automatically, though. You'll have to switch the watch to data mode, attach the clip, open the software on your Windows PC, and press a sync button. It's a hassle.

Would I buy one? For the average person, $180 is too much for an alarm clock, no matter how personalized and feather-like its touch. But if you are the sort of person who always seems to wake up in a blur, it might be worth a shot. Waking up well is important. Frames your whole day. You could also try going to bed earlier, not setting an alarm at all, and telling yourself roughly when you're like to wake up. You might be amazed at how accurate your brain alone can be.

Product Page [Sleeptracker.com]