Awaken update tweaks alarm creation features
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Feb 28, 2007 at 2:16am
Embraceware has updated Awaken, a digital alarm clock for Mac OS X that wakes you by playing music or podcasts from your iTunes library, to version 3.1, which adds the ability to create alarms using over a dozen built-in alarm sounds. Previous versions were limited to playing only iTunes playlists.
The alarm playback user interface has been completely redesigned and also includes the ability to rate the songs playing at alarm time. In Awaken 3.1, the sleep timer has been updated to include hour and minute options to allow better precision and extended the limits from previous versions. It can also now function as a sleep timer for your Mac instead of requiring the playback of iTunes music; this opens up the possibilities to use the sleep timer with other applications. Any type of file can be attached to an alarm and will be launched at alarm time. The file could be anything from an application, URL, script, etc.
In Awaken, alarms can be created to alert you on a daily or weekly basis. You can also set a one-time alarm for any specific date and timee. Awaken also offers the ability to have the volume of the music—as well as the brightness of the screen—gradually fade in at the set alarm time.
The sleep timer can be set to slowly fade out the volume during the last few minutes of the timer, as well as to fade the screen brightness to black. Awaken can also put your Mac to sleep at the end of the timer and it will automatically wake at alarm time. You can control your music during the alarm or sleep timer from across the room with the support for the Apple Remote.
Awaken is available as a 14-day demo version; registration is US$8.95, though version 3.1 is a free update for registered users of version 3.x. It’s a Universal Binary product so runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. Awaken requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher and iTunes 6.0 or higher.
Check out the offerings at Mac OS Ken and The Video Sandbox, Macsimum New’s media partners. And don’t forget: the “Macsimum Valentine’s Day Coupon Book” is now available. It’s a 2.2MB, PDF, downloadable coupon book with discounts, special offers and promotions in conjunction with Valentine’s Day. Double click it to open.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
