Wake up to your widgets

Enough already with the combo clock-weather stations. They've become as commonplace as the $6.99 digital alarm clocks behind the counter at Walgreens, next to the batteries and razor blades.

(Credit: Akihabara News)

This uber-clock, by contrast, gives you the stuff you really want to know when you wake up: stock news, traffic bulletins, the Monday Night Football score and the latest on Britney's divorce and sex tape scandal. And you can set your MP3 tunes or Internet radio for the alarm. As its name implies, the award-winning "WidgetStation" displays your custom widget feeds on one of its two screens, according to Akihabara News; the other shows the standard time, date, temperature and tomorrow's forecast.

But we could do without that last part. Given the track record of most meteorologists we know, we'll take a chance on our own.

[ronsherman]

Relying on the internet to wake me up?

At least most radio alarm clocks have battery backup. Relying on a wireless or ethernet connection to a DSL or Cable router seems very flaky. My DSL/router fails about once a week overnight so I would never rely on it to wake me up.