I know a lot of people who like to wake up and immediately turn on the television, whether it is the morning news, The Today Show, ESPN, or some lighter fare such as a talk show or, if you live in my house, Disney and Nickelodeon cartoons.  The problem arises because most televisions do not have an alarm clock function.  This means, you have to set an alarm clock, wake up to music or some other sounds designed to annoy you out of bed, hit snooze five or ten times, while suffering through the same music or buzzing every 8.5 minutes, and finally get out of bed, plod across the room, turn on the television, and then set it to the appropriate channel.  All, of course, with your eyes closed.  Now, the people who brought you NoviiRemote have a better alternative: The Wake and Watch Alarm, or WAWA.  Using WAWA, your Pocket PC can be programmed to turn on the television at any appointed time and automatically flip to the appropriate channel.  Now, you can wake up every morning to the sounds of mothers pulling out their daughter’s hair on Jerry Springer as they battle over the same trashy man.  What more can you ask for?

Installation and Registration: Installation is easy.  Simply download the desktop installer from Novii’s website and load the program on your device via ActiveSync.  Once loaded, you can test it for 10 days before you must register the program.  When you register, you will be sent a file which unlocks the full program.  Simply cut this file and paste it into your "My Documents" folder on your device to register.  This registration procedure was a bit cumbersome, but then sometimes entering a random string of letters and digits can have its own difficulties.

Overview: The name of Novii’s latest program, the Wake and Watch Alarm, pretty much explains all you need to know.  This program will turn your mobile device into a fully functional alarm clock, ready to jar you awake at any time.  Not just any alarm clock, however, this is a truly unique alarm clock that will allow you to wake up to the melodic sounds of your television, stereo, or home theater system.    

Graphics: One trend I have been enjoying lately is software that uses graphics without abusing them.  WAWA is just such a program.  It utilizes a cartoonish interface with a clever Wake and Watch alarm clock mascot to draw you into the program.  Don’t be fooled by this pleasant facade, however.  Underneath the cartoonish graphics, this program is all business.

Creating an Alarm: One of the great things about this program is how easy it is to use.  To create a new alarm, simply tap "Add Alarm" from the main screen.  (If you have already created an alarm, you can Edit or Delete it from this main screen as well).  From there, you are just three simple steps from being woken up by Matt Lauer and Katie Cour…I mean Meredith Viera every morning:

1. Give your alarm a name.  Any name will do.  As long as it is descriptive enough for you to recall.  Personally, I chose, "morning alarm".
2. Choose the time and days for the alarm to sound.  You can set the alarm to go off any day of the week, or any combination of days.  This is great for students who might have a different schedule on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays; but then have to get up in time for an 8:00 am Constitutional Law class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
3. Decide whether the alarm will sound an internal noise or send an infrared beam to another device, television or stereo.

There, that is all there is to it.  Just tap "OK" and your new alarm is set.  WAWA makes it just as easy to wake up to the television as it does to your favorite radio station on your clock/radio/alarm/telephone combination.

Learning Infrared Signals: The main purpose of WAWA is to use it as a remote control to turn on your television, stereo, or home theater at a predetermined time.  In this way, it utilizes essentially the same technology as Novii’s other program, NoviiRemote. 

To program a command, simply tap "IR" from the "Beam Infrared Signals" Settings.  This will take you to the infrared setup screen.  Now, add a name for your command in the Comments box, tap "Learn" and (here comes the tricky part) — push the appropriate button on your remote control while aiming it at your device.  You can even program a sequence of actions by programming multiple signals into the same alarm.  For example, you might program the alarm to send the following signals:

• television on
• amplifier on
• channel 2
• channel 0
• channel 6

Obviously, this would turn on the television and amplifier, and set it to channel 206 (ESPN in my house).  If you need to, you can even enter a pause between commands.  This is useful for those times when a particular command might take a few seconds.  For example, on my television, it takes a little extra time after it turns on, before you can input a channel.

That is all there is to it.  Play around with it and set up a few practice alarms and you will see how easy it would be for you to wake up every morning to televisions shows such as "Paid Advertising", "Local Access", or even the ever popular "QVC".

One thing I did find, however, was the the IR port on my Dell Axim did not work terribly well for this purpose.  Unless my Axim was setting almost directly in front of the television, the IR signal simply would not work.  I do not believe, however, that this is a failing of WAWA.  Instead, it appears to be a problem with the design of the IR port on my Axim.  According to Novii’s User Manual, other devices have reported up to a 30 foot range.  This is significantly better than the under ten foot range I found with my Axim.

Creating a Sound Alarm: Sometimes you do not want to wake up to the television or other device.  Maybe you are using WAWA while traveling, or maybe you are just tired of M*A*S*H reruns in the morning.  Whatever the reason, it is just as easy to set WAWA to wake you to any recorded sound file on your device.

Just select the Play Sound option when setting up your new alarm.  Click settings and you can adjust the volume, determine how many times the sound should play, and even browse through all of your .wav files until you find the perfect alarm.  I was a little disappointed by the selection of formats that you could choose from, however, it sounds like additional audio formats may be supported in future releases.  I am hoping that a future release will support  mp3 and wma formats so that I can set my alarm to the music filed I have stored on my device.  To make sure it is working properly, just tap the Test Sound Button.

One feature I would love to see added here would be a random sound generator.  In this way, you could select multiple sound files and the alarm would play one of them at random each time it was triggered.

Snooze: If you are like me, you almost never get out of bed the first time your alarm sounds, and WAWA knows this.  Therefore, when the alarm sounds, you will be given the option of snoozing the alarm.  After the snooze, the alarm can be set to make a sound or resend the IR signal (be careful as this could turn your television off instead of on).  In the Alarm Options screen, you can determine the length of the snooze interval (from 1 minute to 30 minutes).  If you are ready to wake up, just tap Dismiss to turn off the alarm.  One other nice feature of this screen is the nice, bug buttons, so you can easily smack that snooze button without opening your eyes more than halfway or trying to fumble with a stylus.

Conclusion: This is a fantastic program.  Oftentimes when I travel, I use my Axim as an alarm clock, however, I have always found this to be extremely complicated with the existing software.  WAWA makes creating and setting an alarm no more difficult that setting the alarm on your clock.  It is easy and extremely robust.  Not only can it play sounds, it can also operate your television..while you sleep.  Now, if I could just teach it to work the coffee maker and fetch the newspaper in the morning…

Vital Statistics:

Name: Wake and Watch

Version: 1.0

Platform: WM 2003 SE

Also Available: WM5, Windows CE 3.0

Developer: Novii 

Available From: Novii

Price: $14.99

Technorati Tags: Wake – Watch – Alarm – Novii – Just – Another – Mobile – Monday

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