Up until a few weeks ago, it seemed like there hadn’t been a new non-game program released from a big-time developer in ages. Shoot, there hadn’t even been a major upgrade in months. I was vegging in the Reviewers Lounge at JAMM Headquarters, bumming around YouTube and checking out how far my JAMM salary will go towards a Virgin Islands beach house. Early retirement loomed.

Suddenly, alarms went off. Lots of them, repeating and non-repeating, at different volumes and using different tones, some traditional and some countdown-style, all perfectly organized and with snooze support. Either Thomas put foil in the microwave again, or there was a new alarm program on the block.

Fizz Alarms is the latest release from the people behind the excellent Fizz Traveller, and it promises to be a comprehensive everyday time manager. It handles fully customizable alarms, counters, and stopwatches, and Fizz has clearly made an effort to include every feature they could think of. When just about every scheduling program has integrated alarm support, why should you bother looking at Fizz Alarms?

Well, for one thing, most of those integrated alarm capabilities stuck in bigger programs are tough to access and awkward to set. Customization? Forget it. Even if a lot of the alternatives weren’t so difficult to deal with, Fizz Alarms sports very useful stopwatch and countdown capabilities in addition to making noise at designated times. Finally, check out the graphics on Fizz Alarms. Fizz has learned the "Lesson of Apple": it’s not enough to have a solid product, it must also look pretty and be fun to use.

alarm options in the Windows Mobile Settings applet

Getting Started

A trial download is available here. The fully functional free trial lasts for three days, after which the program won’t open without a registration code. For a simple program like this three days is enough time to get a feel for how the program works, but it’s shorter than ideal to see how Fizz Alarms fits into daily life.

Both ActiveSync .exe and .cab files are available for installation, and the program runs happily from either device or card storage as long as it has just under 2 MB of space to occupy. Running Fizz Alarms hit my Axim x51v (WM 6.1) for about 3 MB RAM.

Home Screen

Fizz Alarms opens to an efficient but attractive home screen. At the top are the day, date, and time. By default the clock is digital military time, but a menu option can switch that to an analog dial.

Tapping on the clock brings it full screen. (Another tap takes it back.) I wouldn’t mind an option to set the Fizz Alarms clock as a screensaver to keep a charging device from broadcasting its Today Screen to the world.

Beneath the clock are the three sub-programs that make up Fizz Alarms. The elegantly styled buttons are also big and finger-friendly, a trend that’s apparent all through the software. Since Fizz Alarms is a lean, mean, 3-in-1 time management machine, we’ll go through the sub-programs one at a time beginning with the star of the show: Alarms.

Alarms

If only my bedside alarm clock were this smart. Alarms has a full but intuitive set of customization options that are as sleekly presented as they are easy to use. A finger tap on the blue "+" starts a new alarm.

Here I’ve created an alarm to get me up on weekdays. There are settings for name, time, and repeat pattern. Not only do I specify the sound, but also how often and how loud it is played.

There’s also a snooze option at the bottom of the list. Now you’re probably thinking, "I thought this program was supposed to be finger-friendly! Whose finger is that ridiculously skinny scrollbar friendly to, Tinkerbell?" Take a deep breath and flick the screen. Vertical finger-brushes scroll through the lists everywhere in Fizz Alarms. It’s effective even when there’s not far to go, but it gets downright entertaining with long lists like the sound file choices.

This implementation of finger operation explains one of the program’s quirks: a single tap just highlights an option, and a second is needed to select it. This prevents random items from opening every two seconds while touching them to scroll through a list. It also makes button operation easier for touchscreen Luddites.

Most of Fizz Alarms’ customization options are intuitive, but selecting the time deserves special mention. At first glance, it looks like setting an alarm for half-past would be a real pain. Although the left and right arrows step through one number at a time, sliding a finger across the minutes bar quickly changes the number with the length of the slide. This method is effective and much more fun than fiddling with individual digits, but if I hadn’t stumbled onto it accidentally I wouldn’t have known it was there. Some sort of scrolling indicator would be helpful to keep this neat feature from being overlooked.

Part of the fun of customizing alarms is picking the sound. Fizz Alarms supports .wav, .mp3, and .wma sound files although not .midi, so many of the tones preloaded on smartphones are not compatible. Fizz Alarms seems to only detect audio files in the "Sounds" folder in its installation, which is a strong argument for installing to a storage card for people who like to get creative with personalized alarm tones. There’s also a vibrate option, but no way to vibrate and make noise at once.

Once alarms are set, they can be viewed and managed from the main Alarms screen. Those with very busy schedules can select small mode to view more alarms on a page. A quick tap deactivates future alarms. One missing feature (also absent in Counters) is the ability to reorder the list of alarms. Adding move up/move down options to the Menu would fix this.

When alarms go off, Fizz Alarms puts up an alert screen that’s slightly transparent for a lovely visual effect.

Stopwatch

This part of the program counts up from zero like a champ, marking time to the one-hundredth of a second. There are no options here, just a clean and intuitive interface with play, stop, mark lap, and reset buttons. My favorite feature here is the TimeBar, a terrific visual way to quickly compare lap times. It makes so much sense that I can’t believe I haven’t run across this concept in other programs. Lap times can also be exported as .csv files for Excel.

Counters

Having a countdown timer is handy in everything from boiling pasta to regulating a power nap. Setting up a counter is almost identical to setting an alarm. Fizz Alarms improves on my oven timer not only by making nicer noises but also by being able to count down on the spaghetti and rolls at the same time. Since Counters has so many uses the list could get very long, and the ability to reorder counters for organization ought to be added in a future update.

Conclusion

Fizz Alarms combines solid function with stylish looks. The generous but not overwhelming array of functions and options strikes a good balance, but what really sticks out about Fizz Alarms is its design. The interface on this one is sharp. With this release, Fizz has solidified its position as a leader in the finger-friendly app movement.

It’s interesting that a software developer best known for an incredibly full-featured travel application would launch a simple watch program whose interface probably required a lot more programming muscle than its functions. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of those interface elements show up in future updates of the Fizz flagships. And when they do, I won’t be complaining.

What’s Good: sleek graphics and presentation, terrific finger-friendly elements, reasonable and intuitive range of options

Where There’s Room To Improve: limited organization abilities within lists of alarms and counters, horizontal finger-slide selectors like time set could be better indicated, with device installation sound files take up a lot of valuable space

How To Buy

Fizz Alarms for Windows Mobile touchscreen or smartphone is $14.95 from Fizz or the JAMM store.

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