The iHome iA5 alarm clock is an interesting little number. It’s an iPod / iPhone dock, but it’s also a stand-alone alarm clock. And it also has its very own iPhone app. You can fall asleep and wake up to music from your playlist, you can program multiple alarms and even change the length of a snooze from the world standard of nine minutes. You can track sleeping patterns, and with the help of the app wake up to a full display of all the Facebook activity you missed while sleeping.
The iA5 looks like your standard iPhone dock. Except that it has a standalone clock built into it, which is nice if you or your spouse goes on a trip, taking their iPhone with them: you still have a useful alarm clock sitting on your nightstand, instead of a useless chunk of plastic that won’t do anything until the iPhone comes home. The clock on the iA5 can be set directly from your iPhone, so you don’t need to do the “crap, I pressed the hour button one time too many and now I need to press it eleven more times!” dance to set the time on your clock. I bet that’s handy for Daylight Savings time, too. And it has a programmable snooze, so if you want your snooze to be ten minutes instead of nine, by gum you can do that! You can snooze up to 29 minutes, if that’s your thing.
The iHome app is a fancy programmable alarm clock for your iPhone. It uses a “cards” metaphor, which allows you to define a number of alarm situations: for example every weekday at 6 AM, with a snooze of 5 minutes; or 10 AM on weekends with no snooze. You slide the “card” into a virtual slot to activate it, which doesn’t seem entirely intuitive, but I suppose that’s easily overcome. You can connect the app to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, so that you can broadcast to the world when you go to sleep or wake up; and the app will helpfully collect all the Twitter and Facebook traffic you missed through the night so that you can review it as soon as you wake up!
The iA5 normally sells for one hundred US dollars, but we’ve got one to give to a lucky reader. All you need to do to win is leave a comment with your worst snooze button experience. Whether you missed a job interview, or overslept for an important exam, or whatever, share you embarrassment with the world, and get a chance at redemption with the iA5!
The winner must have a US or Canadian mailing address. Sorry about that. We’ll pick a winner on Monday morning based on our totally subjective opinion of what we consider to be the most interesting story shared. I can’t stop you from embellishing, or even outright fabricating a story, but you’ll have to live with the guilt of knowing you’re a fraud if your phony story wins. Keep that in mind.