The Moshi IVR (Interactive Voice Responsive) Alarm Clock is a chatty one. Instead of those perfectly reasonable physical buttons which have been providing us with additional five minute segments of sleep since time immemorial, the Moshi IVR wants to talk you through your morning. To activate a command, just say "Hello Moshi." Moshi will most likely mutter something threatening under its virtual breath, and then ask you "Command Please," to which you can instruct the clock to tell you the time, set the alarm, inform you of the temperature and a bunch of other things. Sounds great, and we doubt Moshi will be able to murder you in your sleep without any life support systems or pod bay doors under its dominion, but we still fear the prospect of attempting to reason with a too-smart-for-its-own-good
alarm clock during one of those dreaded "before noon" hours of the day. Moshi IVR is available now for $50.
posted Nov 14th 2008 10:21AM
I, for one, do not welcome our robot overlords disguised as speaking alarm clocks ready to unleash havoc upon our bedrooms.
Don't worry... I think it's defective.... I've been looking at this clock for over 40 minutes and it hasn't changed from 9:45
Stop it you fools you're all making him sterile!
hmm moshi sounds a lot like pussy in german
Sorry for double post, but I forgot to say:
If they put an Apple logo on it, at least iEye will buy one ;)
looks like iEye is the new clak...
I'm sure you've heard the stories of emotionally unstable teens killing themselves because of something someone said on an internet message board, making us, the internet message boarders, look bad. Well, this is how it begins. I hate super-fanboyism as much as the next guy, but I have another solution -- let's just ignore his super-fanboy comments, and contribute to his thoughtful, insightful tech themed comments when they appear. He already suffers from fanboyism, this is just adding insult to injury. Give the guy a break!
When I first read the headline, I thought it said "Prime Directive"... I miss Star Trek. (TNG, not TOS)
Flame on! :)
Me too... how sad is that lol.
COMPUTER, Coffee, Black.
"hello moshi... snooooze"
Cool idea though
Wow, it that had the ability for 2 alarms (wife and myself), and a snooze, I would sooooo buy one.
if it had*
For a second there I thought you were saying you had two wives, but then I re-read. Glad I straightened that out!
"FUUUUUUCK YOOOOOU!!!!"
"Sorry, command not recognized, please repeat."
@Paul Miller
What would you say if he actually did have two wives???
HUH?
I'd say he got what he deserves.
It looks cool, but I don't know if I would be able to put together any kind of coherent sentence that early in the morning to tell it to shut it off. Which would undoubtedly lead me to knocking it off my night stand to turn it off like I do now.
When the alarm goes off can you yell "Shut the hell up!" or "Wake me in 30 minutes" ?
somehow this eeries me the same way the customer service call does..
whatever you do, do NOT tell Moshi to end program or disengage safety protocols!
What happens if you talk in your sleep and accidentally reset the time by a few hours?
That's actually happened with my friend's GPS (you know, those with voice commands support). We were talking and dropped the phrase "go home". GPS woke up and said "OK. Routing to Home..."
Scary.
MOSHI, You need to speak to Shlomi, and get up for the Synagogue, you dont want to be late for y our bar mitzvah! Oy Vey!
Why would they name it MOSHI!!!!!
-Ric (fellow Jew)
Michael Marshall Smith anyone?
Great post, Paul Miller! :)
Did you ever think of writing books?
where the hell is the snooze command? it doesn't list it on the product page.
Damn! At first I thouht that this was a badass clock. I like the idea of yelling at my clock to shut it off, so I clicked on through to the website for further investigation. After looking at the site and reading up on the clock I have one impression left of it:
FAIL!!!!!
Before I get flamed for this, let me start by stating that I am in love with the SNOOZE function on all of the alarm clocks that I have ever owned. Moshi, alas, does not have a snooze mode. It accepts twelve commands, none of wich will let you sleep "just a little longer." By the way I noticed at the bottom of their page there was a symbol labled "World Blind Uninon," and it links to the respective site. This begs the question: If this is a clock for blind people, why does it have a "night light" mode? Are you just trying to rub it in or what? You would think that they would have taken out the night light command and put in the snooze command. Do that and I would by one.
Inspired by thinking about nightlights and blindness: Wouldn't it suck to be both blind AND scared of the dark?
AHA!!!! Mihir found the snooze command! Not quite as good as yelling at it, but it no longer ranks a FAIL. I'll give it a PASS. Can we make it accept alternate voice commands? Hmmm, maybe I'll get two. Make one sound like Darth Vader... No, Hal2000 (I'm sorry Dave, it's time to get up.) Nononono, I got it Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem and I can yell SHUT UP BITCH!!!! HMMMMMmmmmm.... This may take some consideration... *wanders off to secret underground science facilities for nefarious purposes
Just make mine sound like a stereotypical euromegacrook.
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!
Wrong, it has a snooze feature. But it still sucks, and here's why:
I had it for 3 days, which was long enough to discover all of the drawbacks. 1) You can't see it in the dark without using the night light feature. When the nightlight feature is on, the clock cycles thru 6 colors, half of which are too bright. Strike one. 2) To enable the alarm, you have to reset the alarm time EVERY time, and for some reason, the makers put in a long prompt to explain how to set the alarm time. Fine. After the first explanation I think I had it down... but no, you have to listen to it EVERY time. Strike two. 3) The voice prompt is too loud, and you can't adjust it. Strike three.
Sent it back.
nevermind. touch the screen to snooze. not a bad gift.
"...which have been providing us with additional five minute segments of sleep since time immemorial."
I don't know what alternate universe you're writing this from, or what goofy alarm clocks you've been using, but in my lifetime I have YET to see any alarm clock give you a paltry 5 minute interval. Most in my experience have provided a full 9 minutes of extra sleep per snooze.
I'm practically blind before I put my glasses on in the morning, so this could actually be useful for me. Though I agree it would be better if it had a second alarm.
No radio?
Pass.....
Does anybody know how to get this outside the US or Canada?
50.00 for the clock, but these crooks want 35.00 more for shipping... Unbelievable gouging.
"Hello Moshi, please fetch the stain remover."
It looked so cool I ordered one. That was November 14. It's now November 24, and they haven't so much as provided a tracking number. Their phone isn't answered, but it has a cheap sounding, preloaded voice on it. So far, I'm not impressed with the company.
Ok I just bought one and listed Engadget as the referrer. Hopefully these guys will throw some advertising bucks back at Engadget for the referral :)