APP OF THE DAY: A!arm (iPhone)

Waking up is never fun. I’ve been in the middle of life-defining dreams in which I’m about to save whole galaxies, become a millionaire and ready to run away to a secret love nest with Scarlett Johanssen quadruplets when I’m rudely rocked by my noisy phone alarm. I wept little morning tears.

Designed with the aim of making the whole process a little more bearable is the A!arm app for iPhone and iPod Touch, a voice controlled alarm that means you won’t have to reach out of bed to “kill the shrill”.

“We know waking up will never be fun, but we try really hard to get there!” said Martijn Verpaalen, co-creator. “We all know the excuse of ‘my alarm clock didn’t ring this morning’. What happens most of the time is that the alarm does ring, but the user just stops it and goes on sleeping. We made this impossible with the wake-up test” said Martijn.

If it sounds cruel, it is – to test whether or not you’re truly awake you can set the app to throw up a simple maths test each morning, switching the alarm off only if you pass. There’s also a sheep counting game for those that can’t drift off at night.

Grab the app here for 0.99p from the App Store, and scroll down for some snaps of the app in action.