REViEW: Wake Smarter (iPad & iPhone)

Posted on 27. Jan, 2012 by admin in Featured, Review

Wake Smarter by Crop Duster Media

The first voice-controlled alarm clock for the iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad

Use your voice to set alarms, ask for the news or weather, play music, listen to your Twitter & Facebook feeds and more. It’s like your personal “bedside butler” that understands your every need.

This is the first app that lets you customize your alarm with the information that you want to hear, when you want to hear it.

The Numbers

Overall

THE DETAILS

AppVaders quotable quote

This feels like the future we were promised as kids

Developer :

Crop Duster Media

Price : $2.99

Lite : -

The words

Where to begin on this app? It’s full of features and functions (without being over cluttered or confusing) and the best thing of all, it makes me feel a little bit like I’m living with the Jetsons.

With so many features I’m not going to cover them all (as we keep things here short and sweet), but you’ll see the long list on the app download page which you can get to be clicking the icon at the bottom of this post.

Basically Wake Smarter is an alarm clock you can control with your voice… hence the Jetsons reference. You set a ‘Magic Word’ from a preset list (I picked ‘Hey Computer’) and tell it what you need i.e. “Set alarm for 6:46 am”. The ‘Computer’ confirms and you’re good to go.

As to how you want to be awoken is up to you, as there are various choices. You can get woken up by hearing the latest 50 tweets off your twitter, the latest news from your Facebook page, set a radio station, set a playlist, the latest weather (and thanks dev for putting a Celsius option… which most of the world uses but is oft missing from weather apps!), a per-recordered message, news feeds covering all range of topics… or if you so choose, a normal alarm sound… yawn!

A feature I was impressed with, and it may sound like a small thing, is the ability to line up a series of alarm actions to run after one the other (for example, weather, followed by 10 tweets, followed by my calender, followed by a playlist, followed by radio from a choice of genres… and if I don’t like the station or genre of music, all I need to do is ‘Hey Computer…’) …. awesome!

There are a lot of other really cool features which are highlighted in the video, but all I can say is this has become my one and only alarm. I have it plugged into my portable sound system next to my bed… and I know, if there is ever a need, all I need to say is ‘Hey Computer… play disco’, and I’ll get some of that 70s disco vibe rocking my world in the morning.

Ooops… almost forgot to mention as the tech had me blown away… the design on this app is friendly and stylish… it has the beauty and the looks.