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Lark's silent alarm clock hitting Apple Stores on June 14, promises not to wake your bedmate
Remember the Lark Up, that alarm clock that's likely to scare the bejesus out of you by sending vibrations through your unsuspecting wrist? The company's already taking pre-orders, but come June 14, you'll finally be able to waltz into an Apple store and handle one in person. For $129, it promises its silent vibrations won't wake your bedfellow, but if you've got a New Agey streak you can spend an extra $60 for one that analyzes your seven-day sleep history, including how long it took to fall asleep and how many times you woke during the night. For now, it's only available for iOS (hence, the Apple Store launch) but an Android version's predictably on the way, too. So is all this worth a good night's sleep? We'll leave that to you and your bed partner (or partners, if it's been that kind of week).
Switched On: Devices designed to disrupt
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. Industry conferences that include competitions among scores of startups generally don't look too kindly upon companies producing hardware. Nonetheless, there were quite a few physical products shown off this week at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. These were either the main offering of companies or complements to their service offering, and judging by their demo platform of choice, the iPhone appears to be a leading agent of disruption -- the companies introducing hardware used Apple's handset to do everything from avoiding stress to measuring its biological impact. Switched On will introduce four such products after the break.
