6 ms·

Show HN: iOS app. Snooze this alarm clock and it will humiliate you on Facebook

64 points by ap0rnnstar 14y ago

kumarharsh 14y ago
These apps, albeit being really "cool", make me uneasy. I agree that it uses negative reinforcement to help you get your sleeping habits in shape, but I do not like the idea of an app punishing your laziness by making a mockery of you in front of your friends and the world. Is sleeping not supposed to be a private affair? Do we really want to notify the world of our sleeping habits? Moreover, would you really like to see YOUR wall flooded with "Your friend, "XYZ" is a lazy-ass!" feeds as soon as you wake up?
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  I see you point, and with the advents of social media there is very little left for privacy. I suppose though in the end its a matter of personal choice. No one is forcing you to use these app. I built this app because I wanted the extra motivation in the mornings. So far it's been working. I wake up with a smile on my face knowing that I won't be bothering my friends, and that now I have no choice but to get up.
ap0rnnstar 14y ago
I'm a long time reader of HN and I would highly appreciate the support.
Sidewaysat11 14y ago
Nice
wwdevries 14y ago
What does the humiliation on Facebook look like?
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  To be exact: I am weak willed. I set an Alarm for [ 03:06 PM ] but instead I have decided to snooze ( this is an automated message from BetterMe: www.bettermeapp.co )
  - SquareWheel 14y ago
    Sticking an advertisement in there is enough to turn me off the service.
fosap 14y ago
Nice idea, But definitively nothing for me. That's just not how i use the snooze.
neya 14y ago
To be honest, this facebook sharing idea would actually encourage you to snooze the clock rather than wake up, so you would be curious to see what kind of reactions it would provoke within your friends' circles. If you want this app to become popular, then you're doing it right. If you really don't want someone to snooze the alarm, then this isn't the way it should be, maybe ;)
ehamberg 14y ago
Looks cool! I'm really curious, though: What is the “Standard Clock” checkbox? (What is a standard clock?)
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  Standard Clock = Using 12 hours with am / pm. You can have it display military time if you like.
  - ehamberg 14y ago
    I see. That will be confusing to non-americans to whom a 12-hour clock is far from standard. It's also seems a bit weird to have two checkboxes (= 4 bits of information) to choose between a 12-hour and 24-hour clock (2 bits). I guess only one can be checked at a time? That said, however, what you probably should be doing is to respect the setting in iOS: http://i.imgur.com/kMQgw3m.png http://i.imgur.com/kMQgw3m.png
    - ap0rnnstar 14y ago
      Definitely more efficient. You are right, I will change it.
    - novalis 14y ago
      Sorry for the OC. I may have missed something here. I don't see how two checkboxes equal 4 bits of information by default. In this case you can have two checkboxes depending on 1 bit that can represent and/or count 2 values regardless the two checkboxes being complementary or contrary. Four bits can represent up to 16... Are you referencing "bit" for "piece" and also for "binary digit" ? Other ?
      - ehamberg 14y ago
        Err... my brain was just malfunctioning. I meant to say 1 bit and 2 bits, not 2¹ and 2² bits. :-)
danso 14y ago
Maybe with some quick retooling, this could be both a useful and a popular app. Before sending off the FB message, record both the desired wake up time and the actual wake up time (which would be the time that the alarm was formally turned off as opposed to snooze). Store both values (and the date) in a spreadsheet. And then give the user a quick visualization/dashboard of how well he/she has been doing. Maybe after 7 days straight of successful wake ups, the user sends a FB message that is congratulatory. After a month, the F message contains a summary of how well he/she did. So, in other words, provide both thhe useful analytics and the ability to over share :)
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  I really like this. In the end I definitely want BetterMe to focus on positive reinforcement rather than negative ones.
- HCIdivision17 14y ago
  Sleep Cycle for the iPhone tracks and graphs quite a bit of useful information and may provide many of the features you're looking for. (Note it uses the phone's accelerometer for sleep tracking, so be wary your partner/bed may skew data - i haven't studied the effects). You can get some raw data, and it plots some commonly asked datasets. At the very least, it can provide a quick way to collect data and correlate what may cause a lousy night's sleep (beer and D&D for example). It doesn't embarrass you publicly on Facebook, but I'd personally write that off as a feature.
  - xorgar831 14y ago
    I've been using Sleep Cycle for a couple of weeks, and it works well and it's interesting to see graphs of your sleep quality. Makes me feel like Stephen Wolfram, who I would just assume has been doing the same: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytic...
recoiledsnake 14y ago
Small gray text on a white background, really, Apple? http://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/
- tferris 14y ago
  this is such a great site
- bennyg 14y ago
  The kerning on the bold typefaces throughout that site is annoying at best.
  - svantana 14y ago
    You mean the star wars type font? It's pretty bad, I assume it's only there as a play on the whole "rebel" spin.
huskyr 14y ago
Nice idea, but i guess that maybe the message might be a little too generic. Why not have a random message appearing every day to make it a little more fun for all your friends? E.g. * "Your friend John has probably been reading Hacker News all night and didn't get up on time this morning" * "Once again, your friend Suzanne could not get herself to hit the snooze button this morning. Please post stupid comments on this post." * "Bob is in dreamland right now instead of on his work. Please call his boss and tell him." ;)
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  I like this a lot. Thanks for the feedback.
tingletech 14y ago
I hate links to pages that cause an application to launch on my computer. I wish apple would not do that. I feel like I'm getting rickrolled every time I click on a link about an app.
msluyter 14y ago
And by "humiliate you of Facebook" they mean "spam your friends with messages that'll quickly cause all posts from the app to be hidden." (I invariably hide all posts from apps anyway.) And, honestly, I don't find "Mike was too weak willed to wake up this morning" to be at all humiliating, and certainly not something I think my friends would even care about. Perhaps if you could queue up any text you like, with something truly embarrassing, like revealing your deep dark love for Justin Bieber or something, that might be more useful and interesting.
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  LOL, definitely. I can see this in a future version for sure.
- tallanvor 14y ago
  Same here. Why should I care if my friends hit the snooze button? I hit the snooze button myself regularly, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. --I love that 10 minutes of relaxation where I know I'm allowing myself to be comfortable before I actually have to get up and get ready for the day.
CrazedGeek 14y ago
Here's an Android equivalent (despite the name, NFC isn't needed): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wroclawstudio.puzzlealarmclock&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wroclawstu...
graue 14y ago
Related article for those trying to rise early: http://zenhabits.net/how-i-became-early-riser/ http://zenhabits.net/how-i-became-early-riser/ I found the two most helpful things are to go outside within 10 minutes of waking up (even if it's really cold!) and to focus on going to bed 8-9 hours before I want to wake up, whether sleepy or not.
- jrockway 14y ago
  I don't think any of that is particularly good advice. The best way to adjust is to stay up an hour later every day until you reach your goal. (So if you go to bed at 6am, take two weeks to adjust that to 8pm.) This avoids any sleepiness during the process, except maybe for that last hour. I did this successfully late last year, but ruined it by volunteering to help out at an overnight hackathon somewhere in the middle. Oh well.
  - graue 14y ago
    Seriously? So to start waking up at 6 instead of 9, you should take a 3 week vacation and turn your schedule entirely upside down? Sounds a lot more disruptive than just sleeping/waking 15 minutes earlier each day for a while.
damon_c 14y ago
Maybe it would be a good idea to appeal on facebook to the user's friends to text/call/Dm them to wake them up. The people i know who need something like this would sleep through public, humiliation, fire... But if the phone was ringing repeatedly... and it was their actual friends that they might not have heard from in awhile, they would wake up for that. Maybe you could even make it easy (click here) to call them with one of those phone call APIs or something. Probably best to encourage them to only use this when they really need to wake up. Or maybe it happens after the 3rd of so snooze... I actually like this idea. Let me know if you want help.
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback damon_c. A friend of mine had similar ideas. I'd love to add features like this. I can use all the help I can get. Can you shoot me an email abrahamagopian@gmail.com, or I can contact you.
astine 14y ago
This is clever, but the problem that I at least usually deal with is not waking on time, but getting to bed at a reasonable hour, especially if I'm using social media before bed. A Facebook plugin which told the user to go to sleep and maybe told his friends that he/she should be in bed so they should stop talking with him would actually be pretty cool.
wahnfrieden 14y ago
Do alternative alarm apps still require you to leave the phone on all night?
dreeves 14y ago
Ooh, one of our competitors generalizes the idea of Facebook humiliation as a commitment device: http://aherk.com http://aherk.com Other startups offering commitment devices as a service: http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors
paul9290 14y ago
Nice job! Also nice for us to see. Five years ago we (sleep.fm) asked for feedback here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75323 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75323) about our alarm clock that is social. Since then we have witnessed many similar apps, some using same theme , some going a different route in making the alarm clock social. All makes us smile and compels us to continue on. Good luck to you!
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  Thank you for the kind words! I hope your app reaches the success you hope for it.
hnriot 14y ago
Do your friends really need this kind of spam?
- Gilipe 14y ago
  How is this spam? 95% of my news feed is worthless, but I still wouldn't classify it as "spam". Now, if the app sent private messages or wrote to the wall of a friend, that could be classified as "spam".
  - DanBC 14y ago
    EDIT: I am wrong. See Blowski's message below. It's unsolicited, bulk, messaging and so it meets definition for spam. I wonder if it meets Facebook's rules for acceptable wall posts or not. I can see some people hating it.
    - blowski 14y ago
      It's writing on the users own wall, which they are asking it to do. Therefore it's not unsolicited. It doesn't write on other users' walls, so it's not bulk.
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  More motivation not to snooze =) All kidding aside I would hope that it wouldn't be interpreted as spam. It's a novel way to help someone get up in the mornings, and I would like to assume friends would find it humorous.
zxcvvcxz 14y ago
I don't know - just telling my facebook friends that I couldn't get out of bed in the morning? Sounds too mundane and even relate-able. "Oh Jim didn't get out of bed again," big fucking deal right? Let's up the stakes here. You know what alarm I would never fuck with? The one that's about to "like" a certain fetish video on redtube or youporn.
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  LOL, that's insanity wolf territory. I'm not sure if I can handle that.
- sharkweek 14y ago
  if you really want to up the stakes -- the money-shredding alarm would have me out of bed in a jiffy -- http://mashable.com/2011/05/29/money-shredding-alarm/ http://mashable.com/2011/05/29/money-shredding-alarm/
pixelmask 14y ago
I had this roommate in uni with the loudest alarm clock. One day, he hit snooze in the neighborhood of the lower double digits while I was trying to sleep. Hacker fix: turn off the circuit breaker to the room. Sleep ensues.
trumbitta2 14y ago
I don't snooze. I set multiple alarms, and turn them off one at a time. Your app can't beat me :D
- ap0rnnstar 14y ago
  Hehe, yeah tell me about it. I love how we can always find a way around the kinds of traps =)
dropdownmenu 14y ago
My problem with this idea is that I don't care if people on facebook know I hit the snooze button and I figure that they would block such notices as spam anyways. Why not just have a more annoying alarm clock? Or one that is harder to snooze?
terhechte 14y ago
You need a better icon. Icons are really important on iOS.
malandrew 14y ago
I think a more interesting problem to solve is how to get someone out of bed more pleasantly and with less sleep inertia. Something like the philips natural light alarms are a step in the right direction. TBH, I would kill to have the entire ceiling of my bedroom covered in a planar array of natural light bulbs that gradually light up at the time I need to get up and I want them to reach the full intensity of the midday sun in the Sahara.

64 points by ap0rnnstar 14y ago

These apps, albeit being really "cool", make me uneasy. I agree that it uses negative reinforcement to help you get your sleeping habits in shape, but I do not like the idea of an app punishing your laziness by making a mockery of you in front of your friends and the world. Is sleeping not supposed to be a private affair? Do we really want to notify the world of our sleeping habits? Moreover, would you really like to see YOUR wall flooded with "Your friend, "XYZ" is a lazy-ass!" feeds as soon as you wake up?

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
I see you point, and with the advents of social media there is very little left for privacy. I suppose though in the end its a matter of personal choice. No one is forcing you to use these app. I built this app because I wanted the extra motivation in the mornings. So far it's been working. I wake up with a smile on my face knowing that I won't be bothering my friends, and that now I have no choice but to get up.

ap0rnnstar 14y ago

I'm a long time reader of HN and I would highly appreciate the support.

Sidewaysat11 14y ago

Nice

wwdevries 14y ago

What does the humiliation on Facebook look like?

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
To be exact: I am weak willed. I set an Alarm for [ 03:06 PM ] but instead I have decided to snooze ( this is an automated message from BetterMe: www.bettermeapp.co )
- SquareWheel 14y ago
  Sticking an advertisement in there is enough to turn me off the service.

fosap 14y ago

Nice idea, But definitively nothing for me. That's just not how i use the snooze.

neya 14y ago

To be honest, this facebook sharing idea would actually encourage you to snooze the clock rather than wake up, so you would be curious to see what kind of reactions it would provoke within your friends' circles. If you want this app to become popular, then you're doing it right. If you really don't want someone to snooze the alarm, then this isn't the way it should be, maybe ;)

ehamberg 14y ago

Looks cool! I'm really curious, though: What is the “Standard Clock” checkbox? (What is a standard clock?)

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
Standard Clock = Using 12 hours with am / pm. You can have it display military time if you like.
- ehamberg 14y ago
  I see. That will be confusing to non-americans to whom a 12-hour clock is far from standard. It's also seems a bit weird to have two checkboxes (= 4 bits of information) to choose between a 12-hour and 24-hour clock (2 bits). I guess only one can be checked at a time? That said, however, what you probably should be doing is to respect the setting in iOS: http://i.imgur.com/kMQgw3m.png http://i.imgur.com/kMQgw3m.png
  - ap0rnnstar 14y ago
    Definitely more efficient. You are right, I will change it.
  - novalis 14y ago
    Sorry for the OC. I may have missed something here. I don't see how two checkboxes equal 4 bits of information by default. In this case you can have two checkboxes depending on 1 bit that can represent and/or count 2 values regardless the two checkboxes being complementary or contrary. Four bits can represent up to 16... Are you referencing "bit" for "piece" and also for "binary digit" ? Other ?
    - ehamberg 14y ago
      Err... my brain was just malfunctioning. I meant to say 1 bit and 2 bits, not 2¹ and 2² bits. :-)

danso 14y ago

Maybe with some quick retooling, this could be both a useful and a popular app. Before sending off the FB message, record both the desired wake up time and the actual wake up time (which would be the time that the alarm was formally turned off as opposed to snooze). Store both values (and the date) in a spreadsheet. And then give the user a quick visualization/dashboard of how well he/she has been doing. Maybe after 7 days straight of successful wake ups, the user sends a FB message that is congratulatory. After a month, the F message contains a summary of how well he/she did. So, in other words, provide both thhe useful analytics and the ability to over share :)

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
I really like this. In the end I definitely want BetterMe to focus on positive reinforcement rather than negative ones.
HCIdivision17 14y ago
Sleep Cycle for the iPhone tracks and graphs quite a bit of useful information and may provide many of the features you're looking for. (Note it uses the phone's accelerometer for sleep tracking, so be wary your partner/bed may skew data - i haven't studied the effects). You can get some raw data, and it plots some commonly asked datasets. At the very least, it can provide a quick way to collect data and correlate what may cause a lousy night's sleep (beer and D&D for example). It doesn't embarrass you publicly on Facebook, but I'd personally write that off as a feature.
- xorgar831 14y ago
  I've been using Sleep Cycle for a couple of weeks, and it works well and it's interesting to see graphs of your sleep quality. Makes me feel like Stephen Wolfram, who I would just assume has been doing the same: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytic...

recoiledsnake 14y ago

Small gray text on a white background, really, Apple? http://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/

tferris 14y ago
this is such a great site
bennyg 14y ago
The kerning on the bold typefaces throughout that site is annoying at best.
- svantana 14y ago
  You mean the star wars type font? It's pretty bad, I assume it's only there as a play on the whole "rebel" spin.

huskyr 14y ago

Nice idea, but i guess that maybe the message might be a little too generic. Why not have a random message appearing every day to make it a little more fun for all your friends? E.g. * "Your friend John has probably been reading Hacker News all night and didn't get up on time this morning" * "Once again, your friend Suzanne could not get herself to hit the snooze button this morning. Please post stupid comments on this post." * "Bob is in dreamland right now instead of on his work. Please call his boss and tell him." ;)

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
I like this a lot. Thanks for the feedback.

tingletech 14y ago

I hate links to pages that cause an application to launch on my computer. I wish apple would not do that. I feel like I'm getting rickrolled every time I click on a link about an app.

msluyter 14y ago

And by "humiliate you of Facebook" they mean "spam your friends with messages that'll quickly cause all posts from the app to be hidden." (I invariably hide all posts from apps anyway.) And, honestly, I don't find "Mike was too weak willed to wake up this morning" to be at all humiliating, and certainly not something I think my friends would even care about. Perhaps if you could queue up any text you like, with something truly embarrassing, like revealing your deep dark love for Justin Bieber or something, that might be more useful and interesting.

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
LOL, definitely. I can see this in a future version for sure.
tallanvor 14y ago
Same here. Why should I care if my friends hit the snooze button? I hit the snooze button myself regularly, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. --I love that 10 minutes of relaxation where I know I'm allowing myself to be comfortable before I actually have to get up and get ready for the day.

CrazedGeek 14y ago

Here's an Android equivalent (despite the name, NFC isn't needed): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wroclawstudio.puzzlealarmclock&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wroclawstu...

graue 14y ago

Related article for those trying to rise early: http://zenhabits.net/how-i-became-early-riser/ http://zenhabits.net/how-i-became-early-riser/ I found the two most helpful things are to go outside within 10 minutes of waking up (even if it's really cold!) and to focus on going to bed 8-9 hours before I want to wake up, whether sleepy or not.

jrockway 14y ago
I don't think any of that is particularly good advice. The best way to adjust is to stay up an hour later every day until you reach your goal. (So if you go to bed at 6am, take two weeks to adjust that to 8pm.) This avoids any sleepiness during the process, except maybe for that last hour. I did this successfully late last year, but ruined it by volunteering to help out at an overnight hackathon somewhere in the middle. Oh well.
- graue 14y ago
  Seriously? So to start waking up at 6 instead of 9, you should take a 3 week vacation and turn your schedule entirely upside down? Sounds a lot more disruptive than just sleeping/waking 15 minutes earlier each day for a while.

damon_c 14y ago

Maybe it would be a good idea to appeal on facebook to the user's friends to text/call/Dm them to wake them up. The people i know who need something like this would sleep through public, humiliation, fire... But if the phone was ringing repeatedly... and it was their actual friends that they might not have heard from in awhile, they would wake up for that. Maybe you could even make it easy (click here) to call them with one of those phone call APIs or something. Probably best to encourage them to only use this when they really need to wake up. Or maybe it happens after the 3rd of so snooze... I actually like this idea. Let me know if you want help.

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback damon_c. A friend of mine had similar ideas. I'd love to add features like this. I can use all the help I can get. Can you shoot me an email abrahamagopian@gmail.com, or I can contact you.

astine 14y ago

This is clever, but the problem that I at least usually deal with is not waking on time, but getting to bed at a reasonable hour, especially if I'm using social media before bed. A Facebook plugin which told the user to go to sleep and maybe told his friends that he/she should be in bed so they should stop talking with him would actually be pretty cool.

wahnfrieden 14y ago

Do alternative alarm apps still require you to leave the phone on all night?

dreeves 14y ago

Ooh, one of our competitors generalizes the idea of Facebook humiliation as a commitment device: http://aherk.com http://aherk.com Other startups offering commitment devices as a service: http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors http://blog.beeminder.com/competitors

paul9290 14y ago

Nice job! Also nice for us to see. Five years ago we (sleep.fm) asked for feedback here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75323 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75323) about our alarm clock that is social. Since then we have witnessed many similar apps, some using same theme , some going a different route in making the alarm clock social. All makes us smile and compels us to continue on. Good luck to you!

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
Thank you for the kind words! I hope your app reaches the success you hope for it.

hnriot 14y ago

Do your friends really need this kind of spam?

Gilipe 14y ago
How is this spam? 95% of my news feed is worthless, but I still wouldn't classify it as "spam". Now, if the app sent private messages or wrote to the wall of a friend, that could be classified as "spam".
- DanBC 14y ago
  EDIT: I am wrong. See Blowski's message below. It's unsolicited, bulk, messaging and so it meets definition for spam. I wonder if it meets Facebook's rules for acceptable wall posts or not. I can see some people hating it.
  - blowski 14y ago
    It's writing on the users own wall, which they are asking it to do. Therefore it's not unsolicited. It doesn't write on other users' walls, so it's not bulk.
ap0rnnstar 14y ago
More motivation not to snooze =) All kidding aside I would hope that it wouldn't be interpreted as spam. It's a novel way to help someone get up in the mornings, and I would like to assume friends would find it humorous.

zxcvvcxz 14y ago

I don't know - just telling my facebook friends that I couldn't get out of bed in the morning? Sounds too mundane and even relate-able. "Oh Jim didn't get out of bed again," big fucking deal right? Let's up the stakes here. You know what alarm I would never fuck with? The one that's about to "like" a certain fetish video on redtube or youporn.

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
LOL, that's insanity wolf territory. I'm not sure if I can handle that.
sharkweek 14y ago
if you really want to up the stakes -- the money-shredding alarm would have me out of bed in a jiffy -- http://mashable.com/2011/05/29/money-shredding-alarm/ http://mashable.com/2011/05/29/money-shredding-alarm/

pixelmask 14y ago

I had this roommate in uni with the loudest alarm clock. One day, he hit snooze in the neighborhood of the lower double digits while I was trying to sleep. Hacker fix: turn off the circuit breaker to the room. Sleep ensues.

trumbitta2 14y ago

I don't snooze. I set multiple alarms, and turn them off one at a time. Your app can't beat me :D

ap0rnnstar 14y ago
Hehe, yeah tell me about it. I love how we can always find a way around the kinds of traps =)

dropdownmenu 14y ago

My problem with this idea is that I don't care if people on facebook know I hit the snooze button and I figure that they would block such notices as spam anyways. Why not just have a more annoying alarm clock? Or one that is harder to snooze?

terhechte 14y ago

You need a better icon. Icons are really important on iOS.

malandrew 14y ago

I think a more interesting problem to solve is how to get someone out of bed more pleasantly and with less sleep inertia. Something like the philips natural light alarms are a step in the right direction. TBH, I would kill to have the entire ceiling of my bedroom covered in a planar array of natural light bulbs that gradually light up at the time I need to get up and I want them to reach the full intensity of the midday sun in the Sahara.