Actually, now that I look at it, that pillows tag is pretty well-populated. I can feel a niche site coming on…

Since being a lousy parent seems to be all the rage these days, here’s another weapon for your doing-the-bare-minimum arsenal. It’s a baby pillow—see how it contours to your child’s neck—that has a built-in MP3 player and speaker. Presumably you’d put your baby on the pillow (well, it’s merely a render, so you won’t be doing any of this, as a matter of fact) while you sleep, watch TV, gamble or whatever it is that parents today do when their baby is asleep for a few minutes. Anyway, you lie the baby on the pillow, and out comes either A) a pre-recorded voice that whimpers “please stay asleep for 30 minutes so mommy and daddy can rest” or B) soothing music that you’ve downloaded from The Pirate Bay. (Best not to use that I-Doser stuff!)

Again, it’s just a render, so don’t get too excited. In fact, all you’d need to replicate the functionality of the pillow is one of those dime-a-dozen iPod speaker docks that you can put next to the baby’s crib, and a standard pillow. Bam, you can now accomplish the same thing this gadget accomplishes, but it real life!

I don’t know, it looks neat, right? And who doesn’t love babies, and pirated MP3s?

If you’ve been holding out for the weird one-armed “Hug Me Pillow” to drop from a lofty $44.95 down to a more manageable $29.99 then you, my friend, are in luck.

Specs:

• It’s a pillow made to look like one half of a man’s torso – creepy!
• The shirt material looks like a prison uniform – creepy!
• The hand looks double-jointed and weird – creepy!
• The lady in the below photo looks like she’s trying to escape – creepy!
• Shirt is microfiber, pillow is woven from 100% polyester – nice!
• Pillow is dry clean only – awkward!

Don’t take my word for it, though. Here are some actual customer reviews!

“I bought this pillow to keep my company on nights when my husband, a correspondent for the Trans-Alaskan News Network, was out of town. The pillow exceeded even my wildest expectations. I’m told the pillow was modeled after Brad Pitt, and I believe it! When I first nestled against the soft, but firm chest of my new “husband” I slept better than I ever had before. Now I don’t mind when my husband goes out of town!”

“This was a gift for my 16yr old Grand Daughter. She loved the pillow and many of her girlfriends want to know where they can purchase their own “FRIEND”. When she opened her gift the 1st question was -”What is it?” Then everyone had to ‘hold’ the handsom new friend too. I took the pillow to a local monogram shops and had the personal monogram of her favorite movie star put on the pocket!..Her New Friend hangs out on the back of her desk chair, the back seat of her SUV and even went for a sleepover last weekend. Thanks again and please give me more ideas for my Grand Children.”

“I LOVE the hug-me pillow. I sleep with 5 of them, it makes me feel like i’m in bed with a whole family.I’ve always felt there was something missing in my life, a void. I can’t explain it but I now feel like one complete person. thank you hug me pillow!”

Hug Me Pillow [Overstock.com via dealnews]

I’m on a new kick: silent wake-ups. The vibration setting on the SleepTracker watch I reviewed has turned out to be a far less agitating way to start the day than waking up to a blaring alarm clock.

Even our own Greg Kumparak has developed a method called iPhone-in-the-pants wherein he sets his iPhone alarm to vibrate and sleeps with it in his jammie pockets. Dangerous? Maybe. Weird that he still wears jammie pants? Definitely.

Perhaps splitting the difference between alarm clocks and vibrating pants is the vibrating alarm clock pillow, available in Japan. Designed to prevent waking up your partner, the Vessel Bururu runs about $50 and gently rattles your head until you wake up. There’s a built-in clock/panel on the side of the pillow, allowing you to set everything and the whole shebang’s powered by six AA batteries. Hopefully the pillow itself is comfortable.

[via SlashGear]

As you can see, they’ve also got chat shorthand and RSS icons coming as well. I want an “OMG” pretty badly. Lots more info here. $29 each is rather a lot for a pillow, but that’s really the going rate for hand-made stuff like that. Should be priceless, really.

Good morning CrunchGear readers. Can I get you some coffee? Maybe some gadget news from around the Internet? Take your time getting up — let’s just ease into our Friday here, hmm-kay? How’d you sleep last night?

I like the idea of the glo Pillow and I think I sleep lightly enough that this would be able to wake me up on its own without needing to rely on an alarm clock as well. It “uses an LED fabric substrate below the surface to wake the user using light,” which starts glowing 40 minutes before your designated wake-up time.

It’s currently a prototype but it still managed to wrangle a spot on Time’s Best Inventions of 2007 list. Hopefully the pillow itself is actually comfortable.

glo Pillow [embryo.ie] via OhGizmo!