One of the more frequent uses of a smartphone is as a clock – both to tell the time and to remind us that we need to be somewhere, do something or remind somebody else to do something! It’s no surprise that almost every ‘phone made in the last decade, and certainly every smartphone, contains at least one alarm clock application. We also have calendars that are to provide us with reminders and let’s not mention smartwatches and their subtle vibration on our wrists.
Alarm clocks come in many different shapes and sizes with more or less functionality. Some are more subtle than others; some welcome you to the day with the gentle tweeting of birds in the garden or chirping of crickets. Others increase the volume of your particular alarm until you reach across to silence it. And other applications do not allow the alarm to be silenced until the user has performed some mental arithmetic. But what we have here is something a little different; it’s a new application called “Snap Me Up” and it works by insisting that the user takes a selfie in order to disable the alarm. Now, pointing a ‘phone at your face in order to take a selfie is almost certainly not on the list of things to do immediately after waking up… which is why Snap Me Up is such a genius alarm. You see, it doesn’t so much require concentration as it requires a moment of thought to look at the camera so that the device can recognize your face.
There’s another beautiful feature – or perhaps “beautiful” is not the word for it – and that is the application keeps each photograph that you take into an album, which you can use to amuse, entertain or perhaps simply scare friends, family and loved ones. Over a period of time, your smartphone will build up a collection of special morning moments as, bleary eyed, you stare at your smartphone – the album called “My sleepy snaps.” Application developer, Dehun, have yet to state if they are to combine the application with perhaps smart lightbulbs so that if it’s dark, you can be seen by the front facing camera. One feature that the application has is a timer, so you can use Snap Me Up for reminding you when to take the cheesecake out of the oven or to wake you up after a nap. And finally, Snap Me Up has the ability to wake you up with a different image every day taken from your gallery. This sounds like the perfect way to surprise a loved one in a long distance relationship.
