Wakeful – A new alarm app for BlackBerry now in beta

March 15, 2011 - By Mike Hepples

Getting up in the mornings can be difficult, unless you’re one of those perky morning people put on this Earth to torment the rest of us. I personally have two alarms set on my alarm clock, and a final “no-foolin” alarm set on my beloved BlackBerry. The issue I’ve had is trying to find a decent sound to use. The stock ringers are okay, but I quickly started to use various MP3’s to try and achieve the optimum balance in my morning wake-up. I tried classical, hip-hop, even heavy metal, but they were either too soothing, or just down-right obnoxious.

Cruising around through some forums the other day I came across a new app, freshly into beta, that happens to be looking for testers. Brought to us by Ninja Otter, the company that helped bring us Tether, it already has a substantial pedigree that got me interested, so I signed up immediately.

The app is simple and straightforward, which is an instant plus in my book. Install and launch, and you will be prompted to set up an account with Wakeful. During the setup process, you’ll be asked for your name, email, and current location, and while these are all pretty standard, they serve a larger purpose. I set the app to go off at 6:00am this morning. When it did go off, I was greeted with “Good Morning Mike, the time is 6:00 am,…..” Pure geek points just for having the app greet me by name in the morning. The “alarm” continues with a rundown of the current weather, news headlines, and stock indexes, giving you a pretty decent snapshot of what you’ll be opening your eyes to.

Naturally, there are a few kinks, which are to be expected from an app that was just released to testers yesterday. However, support is extremely responsive, personally responding to my feedback within a few hours. I am told that an option will be coming to customize the announced information, which makes me quite happy, as I really don’t need to know the current DOW Jones every morning when I wake up.

It may not be the kind of thing that will make a lot of people rush to sign up, but I personally think the app shows a lot of potential, while being a very cool idea at the same time. If you are interested in signing up for the beta, head over to Wakeful.com and input your email addy.