I’ve never been an early riser. In fact, I’ve been more of a night owl than anything else. I like to stay up late and sleep in. Well, some of the activities and lifestyle changes I’ve made just don’t allow for that anymore. Training for Triathlons, bike races and other physically demanding activities necessitate a “cleaner”, more organized lifestyle. Organized is something I am certainly _not_. In an effort to change this, I got a Treo 600. Recently. when it was time to replace that I got a Treo 650. The thing that I thought was sorely lacking on both devices was a decent alarm clock app. Sure, I could clutter up my already messy calendar and hope simple alerts I could set would wake me up (which I KNOW they would not). I saw somewhere that someone recommended Treoalarm as a good all around alarm. OK, I decided to try it on my trip to Seattle, WA for Supercomputing 05. I’ve had problems with hotel wake up calls and the in-room alarm clocks before. My trusty Treo would hopefully not let me down. I installed the demo. Honestly, I didn’t realize it was a demo when I installed it, I don’t believe any functionality is limited. Off to Seattle. I set up a few alarms, one to wake me up, one to make sure I got up.
A really nice feature of TreoAlarm is the ability it has to update weather. I find this feature extremely valuable for people that travel. I never know what it’s going to be like when I’m on the road and getting a quick and easy weather forecast is nice. I don’t have to wait for it to come on the TV, it’s ready and waiting when my alarm goes off if need be. They’ve just added a new layout and are always working to make improvements. A really cool (and unexpected) feature is the ability to set an alarm to turn the phone on and off. Say you’ve got a meeting every Tuesday from 1pm till 3pm and it can’t be disturbed. Set TreoAlarm to turn the phone off at 1 and back on at 3 every Tuesday, simple, easy and taken care of. No need to worry about your phone beeping or ringing during that important meeting. It’s clean interface is easy to navigate one handed or with the stylus and best of all it’s takes up only 172k on my treo. For the pricetag of $18.50 you get one year of free upgrades, an alarm clock with multiple alarms, the ability to get weather anytime or automatically and the feature of automatically turning on and off the phone in a tiny footprint on everyone’s favorite smartphone.