In the 21st century so far the buzz is all about ubiquitous computing. Everybody is talking, and the talk says tomorrow.
If that is true, than why are today's bloody alarm clocks so goddamn stupid and incompetent?!
It is utterly incredible that in 2005 AD a manually configured device can't be trusted to do the right thing at the right time?
Even worse: The alarm clock has already been surpassed by the GSM. Today's cell phones try to be a lot of devices, ranging from adress book to digital camera, from game console to portable media player. But for all these nice added functions the fact remains that they're little more than gimmicks. When you're serious about it you'd better shell out some extra cash for a good digicam, MP3-speler, PDA or PSP.
But not the alarm clock. I have yet to encounter a standard-issue alarm clock which can handle, for example, settings by dayname.
So, honourable industrial designers, these are things I expect an alarm clock to be perfectly capable of.
To start off, one of course has to fix the connectivity issue. WiFi (WPA2-encrypted of course, we wouldn't want someone to hack your alarm clock, now would you?) seems best suited for this, complemented with standard ethernet.
Provide it with a small embedded webserver and you're done. Connectivity taken care off. Optionally one could, a bit like the Qube and stuff, include a small 4-button navigation menu on the device itself.
After that
Just some ideas. Anybody else?