Did you know that OnlineClock.net has a relatively new Morse Code Alarm Clock ?

Before understanding how time and Morse Code can be related, it is best to grasp a thorough understanding of Morse Code, its history and uses. Most people remember briefly learning about it in school, but only enough to know that the code is a series of tapping sounds or flashes intended to communicate a message; put into a modern perspective, Morse Code is a form of prehistoric texting.

Morse Code has a fascinating history; it has helped shaped communication technology into what it is today.

A Portrait of Samuel F.B. Morse as a young inventor.

In 1835, Samuel F.B. Morse, a Design and Arts professor at New York University, conceived the idea for a code to be transmitted by wire, creating a signal representing a message. This was the birth of the code that would be widely used for over a century. Morse Code, in its true definition, is a textual exchange system used to transmit messages by means of on and off patterns of tones, taps, clicks or lights. Samuel Morse’s original design was a device that used pulses to move an electromagnet; the electromagnet was connected to a writing utensil that would in turn place dots on a piece of paper. One year later, Morse improved the design to actually emboss the paper, using both dashes and dots for clarification. He introduced his revolutionary idea in 1838 publicly, but the system would not be tested until 1843. When it was finally tested, an 40-mile experimental electric line was run from Washington to Boston. Although the first successful telegraph message was sent on this line to confirm the news of Henry Clay being appointed for a national convention in 1844, the first famous message was the one that marked the official opening of the line. Morse selected Annie Ellsworth, the daughter of a friend, to pen the message to be sent. She chose the Biblical verse from Numbers “What hath God wrought?” to be sent – and the message was successful.

A Diagram Explaining Morse Code

When Morse Code was introduced in 1847 in Germany, the code itself had been modified from Morse’s original code. Using a dot-dash system, the new code was modified so that transmissions were longer, but the messages were more simple for the telegrapher to detect. Many other areas in Germany and Austria also adopted the telegraphy and Morse Code transmission system after this. Later in 1852, Germany and Austria combined their individual codes to create a uniform code. In the United States, Morse Code was becoming the main form of long-distance communication by this time. Now an international company, Western Union opened in the United States in 1851, specializing in telegrams – electronic messages sent via Morse Code on the telegraph. This was a promising mass job opportunity, but employees had to adhere to very strict rules. Rule #50 in Cleveland, Ohio’s 1866 Western Union Telegraph Employee Handbook said about received messages “The operator who receives it, must copy it plainly, and then repeat it back over the same circuit before doing any other business.”

Over the next few decades, Morse Code would play a vital role in the development of the Western territories in the United States. Messages delivered by Morse Code over a telegraph were highly welcomed, replacing most of the Pony Express’ business. Until the arrival of Morse Code messages, the Pony Express was not very reliable, as riders were ambushed frequently and mail was then lost. Truly a perilous profession, ads for the Pony Express requested “preferably orphans, young wiry lads, willing to risk death daily.” Needless to say, the telegraph was much more reliable than ground delivery of mail. Families in eastern states were able to know their relatives arrived safely and receive updates; Morse Code was even more useful among those who relied upon it for important business communications, news from the west or east and information related to the planning and building of railroads. With yellow fever, smallpox and many other diseases running rampant among traveling pioneers, Morse Code messages were also used to warn others back home and those planning to travel about the outbreaks. Those who couldn’t afford the prices of a telegram had to make due with letters; in 1851, while only a few cents were required to mail a letter, telegrams averaged between 35 cents and a dollar for a 10-word message.

Morse Code is most famous because of its usefulness during major wars in history. Although the true Morse Code was not used during the Civil War, a form of telegraphy signal code created by Albert Vail was used, referred to as “American Morse Code“.  The dawning of World War I was a pivotal part of Morse Code’s history. In nearly every city and village, one or more job positions opened for military telegraphy. Telegraphers would sit in an office, receiving messages over the wire about news of the war and lists of dead soldiers who were native to the area. Communications between military offices and bases were also heavily reliant upon Morse Code through telegraphy; codes were often transmitted in yet another form of code, usually quirky-sounding phrases. From 1890 until 1919, radio stations would broadcast messages in Morse Code, often working with the Navy.

The Navy uses signaling lights; they have used them for many years, the most common models being the Aldis lamps. Aldis lamps were originally made in the late 19th century and used by Britain’s Royal Navy, but they were also soon adopted by the U.S Navy. Navy ships today still have these lamps, which are used during times when radio silence is ordered, providing an alternative form of communication. Signaling lights are very powerful and are used to create a blinking message in Morse Code from one ship to another or to a base by way of a large lamp mounted on the ship. Both the NATO and Commonwealth Navies use Morse Code today when radio communication may be intercepted. The last 4 stations that communicated with ships through electric telegraphy came to an end in 1999. Replaced by wireless telegraphy using Morse Code, the closing of these stations was the end of electric telegraphy

A child's toy version of a Navy Signal Light...

This once-revolutionary method of communication known as Morse Code has today been replaced by telephones, email and cell phones.

Purposes for Morse Code are enacted when these electronic devices may not be used, which mostly limits it to nautical uses. While the Navy is the main user of Morse Code, the code is often used by other vessels in communication. Most ship and boat captains are familiar with at least the emergency messages of Morse Code. Although learning Morse Code may be difficult to do in a short amount of time, everyone should at least be familiar with this code: “… _ _ _ …”, meaning S.O.S. (Save Our Ship). This signal is performed by three quick flashes, then three longer blinks, followed by three additional quick flashes. People stranded at sea have even been able to use a shiny object to reflect the sunlight toward a far-off ship in this pattern, saving their lives. Another use today for Morse Code is by those with oral or auditory disabilities; one former shipboard operator was able to successfully communicate with his doctor by blinking in Morse Code.

And last but far from least, Morse Code is still today used in our Morse Code Alarm Clock, a quaint reminder of the incredible usefulness of this simple form of communication.

We invite you to examine our Morse Code Chart and see if you can figure out how to read the current time using our Morse Code Alarm Clock. As with all of our other online alarm clocks, this one also has a fully functional alarm system that you can use to set handy online reminders or even wake yourself up with in the morning. Give it a try.

Although not particularly popular in this modern day of high-tech, Morse Code is still beneficial and useful…and geekily good, which is the reason why OnlineClock.net says, “For those of you about to Morse Code, we salute you!”.

Tags: alarm clock, aldis lamps, american morse code, Morse Code, morse code alarm, morse code alarm clock, morse code chart, morse code clock, navy signal lights, pony express, samuel morse, signaling lights, telegram, western union, what hath god wrought

• Your New Job as Human Alarm Clock
• Why I Am The Clock Man
• What Do AM & PM Mean?
• Waking Up Strategies
• Top 10 Wake Up Gags

Argh Mateys! – we thought it’d be important to post an entirely different kind of blog post today in order to inform everyone about our Online Alarm Clock’s brand new navigation menu.

That’s right: your favorite Online Alarm Clock website now has an actual navigation menu with links to the dozen or so different kinds of online alarm clocks, countdowns, online stopwatches, timers and various other time tools and games we have online.

Unfortunately, up to now, these different clocks have been a bit difficult to discover on our alarm clock website. And of course, that’s entirely our fault, but we thought it’d be a good idea to explain to you why this has been the case, up to now.

With OnlineClock.net we’re trying to create a successful combination of art and commerce.

We’ve discussed our design philosophy several times in depth already, so we’re not going to delve too deeply in the subject now, but…

We do keep advertising on our website down to a minimum, (but of course, like everyone else, we still need to pay our bills.)  And this philosophy doesn’t stop there…it also extends to Online Clock’s entire design philosophy.

We’re in contact each week with several fans and users of our Online Alarm Clock site, and some of you ask for additional features.

Additional features are nice, but to us working behind the scenes here at OnlineClock.net, what’s perhaps even more important is keeping the overall design of the website as simple as possible. There are many different reasons why you might want to keep the design of a website simple, and these include:

• it makes the website easier to use
• there is less that could go wrong (fewer bugs)
• it makes the site compatible with a higher number of different web devices and web browsers
• usually you’ll have a faster-loading website if it’s less complicated
• “simple” is just aesthetically pleasing: people just like simple. (look at Apple products as a great example)

We knew that all of our various clocks had been somewhat difficult to find for a long time. Up to now, the best way to access them have been via our sitemap page.

It’s because we wanted to keep everything as simple as possible, including the entire design of the website, we resisted adding a navigation menu for the first four years of our existence.

But now we believe we’ve figured out a way to add a navigation menu without having a negative impact on the design of the site.

What solution did Online Clock come up with?

Well, if you’ll take a look at the upper left hand corner of our main Online Alarm Clock, you’ll see a small clock icon:

And this is what the clock icon actually looks like on our alarm clock website when you have the background color set to green:

Move your mouse over the clock icon to see an expanding menu showing links to almost all of our various online clocks.

We’re especially proud of the fact that the navigation menu is there for those of you who want to use it, but can also be completely ignored by everyone else. In fact, we’re not even sure most of you have noticed it up to now, and that’s one of the main reasons for the blog post you’re reading right now.

Screenshot of our navigation menu when fully extended...

The Online Clock Team has tested our new navigation menu on many different web browsers and many different computer operating systems. But if you happen to find a combination of browser and operating system where the navigation menu doesn’t look right, where it doesn’t behave properly, or where it simply displays some bugs, then please let us know by sending an email to OnlineClock.net’s contact email address found on the bottom of our sitemap page.

Once the nav menu has been online for several weeks and any and all possible ‘bugs’ have been eliminated, we’ll surely go ahead and add it to most of the other pages on our website.

Until then, when you use the navigation menu to take you to a different clock, simply click on the ‘back’ button on your web browser to return to our main page, where you can then use the navigation menu again if you’d like.

A final image of our new navigation menu against an orange-colored Online Alarm Clock

We’d very much welcome any and all comments about the addition of Online Clock’s new navigation menu:

• Do you like it?
• Do you not like it (and, if so, why)?
• Are you discovering all of the various other different online clocks on our website for the first time via this navigation menu, or did you in fact already know they existed?

At any rate, we hope that this is a valuable addition to the internet’s most popular web-based alarm clock website, and one that doesn’t pose a threat to our site’s minimal design and our dedication to keeping our site’s focus more on art than on commerce.

If you were expecting a blog post of an entirely different kind here, don’t worry – we’ll return to our usual informative format later in the week.

Until then, Online Clock wishes all of you “happy navigating“…but now:

Hoist the mizzenmast and keel-haul all the landlubbers!

Tags: art and commerce, design, minimal design, navigation menu, online alarm clock, online alarm clocks, online clocks, onlineclock, simplicity in design

• Alarmingly Simple
• What Makes A Classic Clock?
• Meet The Online Clock Family
• Why I Am The Clock Man
• Video Clock Demonstration

This blog post is a bit different from our usual fare, because basically it’s a transcript of a recent interview with the creator of OnlineClock.net. The interview presents a good interview of the history of the world’s most popular Online Alarm Clock website, as well as touching upon subjects such as recent changes and additions to the website, and also gives true fans a valuable peek “behind the scenes”.

So, without further ado, we now present to you the transcribed version of a Radio Interview with Online Clock.

If you’ve ever Googled “alarm clock“, then you’ve probably seen the website that we’re going to talk about today. In fact, I’ve used it myself. Our guest is Tom Churm, and he’s the owner of the website OnlineClock.net that’s fast becoming one of the top websites feature a free internet alarm clock that displays your computer time.

Tom, welcome to the program.

Hi Kevin, thanks for having me on!

And you’re joining us from Germany?

That’s right, I’m an American guy who moved to Germany about twelve years ago.

So, let’s jump right into this…tell us about the history of OnlineClock.net.

Yes, I created OnlineClock.net back in March, 2006. I was working as a web programmer and webmaster and…tried to create my own websites, just for my own enjoyment…but really wanted to come up with an idea for something that people would find really useful. And this idea stymied me for a long time until one night, I couldn’t sleep…and the idea for a website that would work as an alarm clock right in your web browser struck me like a thunderbolt in bed…and I knew that I had hit upon something here! So I got up, out of bed and I wrote the idea down on a piece of paper so that I wouldn’t forget about it…and the next day I actually started creating the first version of the website.

And this is also the first alarm clock website, is that right?

Yeah. OnlineClock.net is actually the first website that has as its purpose being an alarm clock that you use in your web browser. By this I mean it’s an online service that’s free to use; it is intentionally as simple as possible…and, basically, you just go to OnlineClock.net, choose your alarm time and leave your web browser open to our website and the website will remind you with an alarm when your alarm time has come around.

Yes, and I’ve used it myself…a couple points there: the interface is so incredibly simple…and as far as the alarm going off, it happened right on time, exactly when I needed it. I used it for this interview, actually.

Right, right…I actually used it myself to remind myself of our interview time. We are trying to be the Twitter of alarm clocks. Twitter is a great example for a website that people love to use because of its simplicity. Since we went live as the first website designed to be an alarm clock back in March, 2006, there have sprung up literally dozens of imitators and competitors…and it’s amazing, because we sit back and watch all of these other website go online, copying our idea, basically…and the thing is, they never seem to meet our popularity because they keep adding more and more functions to their websites. And instead, OnlineClock.net has striven the whole time to really be so simple that even your grandmother can use it.

[laughs] I love that. Well, you bring up a good point….again, keeping the simplicity. Tell us…over these four years, obviously you’ve grown a tremendous amount. I just looked at some of the web traffic that you have. What have you been doing to handle the increased traffic?

Well, we’ve had to switch web hosters from the course of the website’s being online…I’ve even lost count…we’ve probably switched web hosters about ten different times…because of the huge surge in popularity that we have. We presently have close to two million unique visitors each month, and because we’re an alarm clock and we want to be sure that there is 100% uptime for our website, so that people can wake up when they’re supposed to, we have switched, within the last six months, to a so-called “cloud hosting company”. And, without getting too technical here, this is a kind of distributed hosting service that ensures that the website will always be reachable, and will have as close to 100% uptime as possible….because it doesn’t matter how many visitors are accessing our website at the same time, or how much traffic we get, how much bandwidth we use…the web server can always give us as much server resources to use as we need. And we feel that, since we’ve switched to this cloud hoster, Online Clock is ideally suited to take the next step in becoming the world’s most frequently used alarm clock.

Now what about the people who don’t like the traditional, annoying beep, beep, beep for an alarm clock. Are you guys working on a radio version that would come on instead?

Yes, we introduced, in 2008, two years after the original online alarm clock went live, an online clock radio. This can currently be accessed at onlineclock.net/radio and we were then not only the first website to go live being an online alarm clock, we also invented, with the introduction of our clock radio application, the first clock radio that you use in your web browser. And on our clock radio application we have literally hundreds of different free radio stations that anyone can listen to for free via our website. The only requirement is that you do have to have the free version of the RealPlayer plugin installed in your browser to hear the streaming radio stations.

Uh-huh, boy technology is great, isn’t it?

Yes!

We’ve been speaking with Tom Churm. The website is OnlineClock.net. Why don’t you go over and check it out…give it a try! Fantastic site. Tom, thanks for joining our program.

Thank you, Kevin, thanks a lot for interviewing me.

So there you have it, folks – a brief look at the history of the world’s most popular alarm clock website, together with a look behind the scenes at the technologies being used to wake up a whole lot of folks for free via the internet.

We hope you’ve found this somewhat unusual blog post interesting. If so, please feel free to give us some feedback via our comments form below.

Until next time, we hope that all of you continue to wake up punctually and stay productive!

Tags: alarm clock, clock radio, clock radio application, cloud hoster, online alarm clock, online clock, online clock idea, onlineclock.net, radio interview

• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Why I Am The Clock Man
• Tip from Alarm Clock User Placed Online
• OnlineClock.net Debuts World’s First Online Clock Radio
• Online Alarm Clock Reminders

It all comes down to the graffiti I saw scrawled on one of the rafters of Nancy’s Warehouse.

Nancy’s Warehouse was a big warehouse in some kind of ugly industrial part of downtown Denver in the mid 1980s.  It was rented out by some woman named Nancy, and they had punk rock shows there. There were usually a couple of bigger headliners from outside of Colorado, and then you had some of the great local talent opening up for them. Some of the local bands included the Frantix and Bum Kon and the Lepers and tons of other bands that have faded with memory, as have the brain cells that were abused at that time.

The mighty Frantix had the Online Clock philosophy.

But on this night the main headlining band was the True Sounds of Liberty from Los Angeles, and they were one of my favorite bands (still are, actually). As was typical with Nancy’s Warehouse, the band members tended to mingle in front with the audience before and after the show. (I’ll never remember the time I saw Hüsker Dü, all unshaven, unwashed and wearing thrift store trench coats and just thought they were some winos who’d wandered in from the street, up until they actually got up on the stage and started to play!)

The amazing Bum Kon perhaps didn't know it, but they also had the Online Clock philosophy.

So on this night one of the band members of T.S.O.L. somehow got lifted up the rafters and he had some kind of big permanent magic marker in his hand, the kind of marker that’s so big it kind of works the same as spray paint, and he spray painted this on one of the rafters:

Do what you want.

And the you part was underlined.

So what does this have to do with punk rock…or with the Online Clock philosophy? Well, everything, really.

See, if life there are two ways of doing anything creative. Let’s say you have a band or you write books or you make websites or anything else, just as an example. If you want a big audience and lots of acclaim, would you sit down and try to anticipate what they’d like? Or would you instead just make whatever you wanted to make, and try to make yourself happy?

With all my life’s years of experience I’m convinced that only bad art results from trying to anticipate what anyone else might like, and then pandering to that.

Can you imagine what kind of lousy music would be created by a young band that sits down in the recording studio and consciously tries to make a top 40 radio hit? Ugghhhh.

This music reference is actually more fitting than you might think at first.

Back in the 1980s, these hardcore punk bands had a lot of different motivations but probably none of these bands did what they did because they wanted to make a lot of quick cash. Instead, the kind of music they were playing was in such a niche market that they probably all realized that they were never going to see any money from what they were doing. They did what they did as a hobby. A labor of love. They just did it because they liked it.

And somehow, that made it special. There was a quality there, because it wasn’t so commercial, that made it different…better.

And here, at the time that I’m writing this, it’s been four years since Online Clock went online originally and there’s probably no way I can make an actual fulltime living from this site, as many loyal users and visitors as it has…but that’s OK. I’ve come to terms with that and have realized that I keep going with this site just because I like doing it.

And you know what? That’s enough of a reward, right there. As long as the site pays for itself and I’m able to reach a large audience with this website, that’s a very cool thing.

How many of those punk rock musicians back in the day had the chance to get their music heard by millions of unique visitors each month? (I rest my case.)

This philosophy was brought back home when I later worked as an advertising copywriter. Copywriters refer to bad copywriters as “hacks”. A hack is someone who panders to his audience, someone who writes body copy the way he thinks advertising body copy is supposed to read. This makes for trash, and is the reason why 99% of all the advertising you see is boring and unimaginative.

The Online Clock philosophy is about doing whatever the heck I want and then just living with the results.

So far,  I’ve been pretty lucky – people like the site even though it’s very unconventional compared to most websites:  it’s hard to find the navigation (hint: scroll down on the page!), you may not be 100% sure, when you first visit the website, exactly what it is, and there is no explanation for what it is. It’s just there.

But hey, that’s the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh.

It’s simple and uncluttered. Do you know how few websites are simple and uncluttered these days? I can think of Twitter, possibly. But, after that, I’m sorry, but no real good examples spring to mind.

And there is nothing safe and secure in this world anyway…so if I die tomorrow and if my website explodes, never to be seen again (god I hope that would never happen), then at least I did it my way, baby.

But what about you: are you doing what you want?

I know it’s not always easy. There’s food to be put on the table, and some of us have kids.

But life is cruel and the clock is ticking.

Tags: art, bum kon, denver, frantix, hack, hardcore punk, hüsker dü, labor of love, nancy's warehouse, online clock, online clock philosophy, onlineclock, philosophy, true sounds of liberty

• Why I Am The Clock Man
• The First Version of Our Clock
• OnlineClock.net Debuts World’s First Online Clock Radio
• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Microwave Your Clock

One of the researchers for our blog spent some time in an antique store the other day. She was looking for older clocks with interesting stories. She failed to do that and punishments will commence shortly, but she was a bit off kilter when she came back to the office. Antique stores can do strange things to people. Visiting them is almost like peeking into a neighbor’s house. You’re not doing anything wrong, but you feel like you’re doing something wrong. Once someone remembers that the original owners and maybe the second or third owners of the items are probably dead, a person can get a little discomfited. I gave her a cup of coffee and asked her to talk about her experience. She said, “All of the price tags were handwritten. I stood there in this huge place and all of a sudden it hit me that there were no barcodes in the whole place. It was weird.”

I took her coffee from her. She didn’t need any more stimulants. As silly as that may seem, it brought up a good point. Barcodes are like the sound of a ticking clock: we only notice them when they’re gone. They’re everywhere. Every product bought or sold in the USA has a barcode attached to it sans antiques.

The very first thing that we would visually identify as a barcode is substantially older than we’d expect. It dates back to first century Ireland. The language Ogham looks very much like a barcode. Those with a quick eye will note that Ogham is also very reminiscent of Morse Code. Those with a quicker eye will notice that UPCs, ISBNs, ISSNs, and EANs hark back to Morse Code also. That is not a coincidence.

In 1948, Bernard Silver did something we all do, but no one wants to admit. He eavesdropped on a conversation perhaps unintentionally. He overheard a grocer talking to a dean at the Drexel Institute of Technology asking for a way to easily identify products at the checkout register. Silver contacted his friend Joe Woodland and together they created the first barcode for commercial use. The story is Woodland went to a beach to relax and silently brainstorm. The creative inventor wrote out a number in Morse Code and extended the dots and dashes into vertical lines. Silver and Woodland created a round “bull’s-eye” shaped barcode so that the product could be scanned from any direction. The US Patent Office granted their patent in 1952.

Barcodes were created by flattening Morse Code into lines.

The barcode has undergone several transformations. We no longer use round barcodes. They’re linear now, but they can still be scanned from nearly any direction and the ties to Morse Code have been warped. The biggest changes are not in what the barcodes look like, but the scanners used to read them. The first reader was a huge monstrosity of a machine that more closely resembled ENIAC than the devices we see today. To pick up the subtle differences in the width of the bars, the scanner required a 500 watt incandescent bulb and a black cloth to block out all additional light. Knowing that would take up too much valuable “candy space” in grocery store checkout lanes, they needed lasers to make the scanners viable. They didn’t have lasers. No one had lasers. Albert “has a role in this too” Einstein created the theoretical framework for lasers in the late 1910s, but no one implemented one until 1960. It seemed that grocery stores would have to wait for their barcodes.

Eventually the barcode scanners shrunk to a practical size. Eventually lasers became affordable. In 1970, the UPC (Universal Product Code) came into existence. Four years later, grocers finally got their wish and the first product bought by a consumer with a barcode was scanned in. The product was Juicy Fruit gum! (There’s a trivia question you can amaze your friends and families with.)

Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Gum was the first package with Barcodes on it!

Barcodes are everywhere now. We have them on our mail, bulk shipping boxes, and products. Some items have several barcodes on them. Companies apply for the UPCs and are given the first six digits by the GS1-US. The other digits are assigned by the company. Every product is given a unique code. Books are given ISBNs (International Standard Book Number) and monthly periodicals are given ISSNs (International Standard Serial Number). International products are given EANs (European Article Number) and products in Japan are given JANs (Japanese Article Number). If you’re a person you can get a trendy barcode tattoo. At their core, they’re all the same: thin lines and thick lines that are used to track stuff.

The “tracking stuff” part of the equation is what has some people concerned.

One type of barcode is called RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification). This is a barcode that sends out a radio signal to help track lost inventory and a whole host of other things. It was first used by the railroads to help them keep track of railcars. The concern is that if a product is tracked then essentially the person carrying the product is tracked.

Some people are concerned about the uniformity that comes along with barcodes on everything while other people are concerned about the invasion of privacy that can come along with RFID. Some people are willingly implanting RFID chips in their bodies as a protection against identity theft and as a convenient way to electronically pay for things. One can only wonder if Silver and Woodland imagined the controversy and the wide range of uses of barcodes when they literally drew lines in the sand.

Which all brings us to…the introduction of our brand new Barcode Alarm Clock !

That’s right, folks. It’s an online alarm clock made out of barcodes. It constantly updates itself, in order to display the current time. And it’s got that same, really annoying and whiny OnlineClock.net alarm sound that’s extremely effectively but that everyone still loves to hate.

Please help us celebrate uniformity, conformity, and the commercialization of the planet by using the Barcode Alarm Clock.

You know you want to.

Tags: barcode, barcode alarm, barcode alarm clock, barcode clock, barcode scanners, barcode tattoo, barcodes, Bernard Silver, clock, clocks, Drexel Institute of Technology, Morse Code, Ogham, RFID, scanners

• Your Wristwatch Is Calling
• Your New Job as Human Alarm Clock
• The Water Powered Clock Myth
• The Amazing Wind Up Alarm Clock
• That Second Leapt Out Right in Front of Me

Hey, Clock Fans, we’re very happy to be writing this blog post, because it’s generally just a couple times of year that we release a new alarm clock.

And, yes, we’re here to announce the creation of a new clock – the Online Video Alarm Clock !

We’re living in a time and age when online videos are becoming more and more of an important, integral part of our daily lives on the internet. Did you know, for example, that about 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute? Or that YouTube now qualifies as the world’s most-watched television “channel”.

And it’s for good reason: online videos are fun, entertaining and they can even be educational, and YouTube is easily the best video portal online.

These are some of the reasons for the creation of our new Video Alarm Clock.

We love online videos. We watch them every day. We share them with our friends. So why not use them as alarms on our Online Alarm Clock?

This was a concept that we’d had in the back of our minds for a long time…we just needed enough time to flesh it out. And the results can now be seen (and used) online.

There are no special requirements for using our Online Video Alarm Clock. All you need is a normal web browser capable of displaying web pages using Flash, cookies and JavaScript…and you obviously need an internet connection.

We’ve posted more detailed information regarding about our Video Clock on our Video Alarm Clock FAQs Page, so be sure and take a look there in case you have a few questions that haven’t been answered in this blog post.

But basically, Video Alarms are incredibly easy to use. Just visit our Video Clock and enter into our search box the URL for any page on YouTube.com with a video that you like (for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnBqf5QFVys).

Alternately, you can simply find the ID for a particular video on YouTube (such as: bnBqf5QFVys, using the sample URL above) and enter that into our Video Clock’s search field .

Also, you can simply pass the URL for a YouTube Video page to our Video Clock by accessing it directly in your browser's address field as shown above.

But if you really just want to find a video quickly, you can also enter a search keyword into our Video Clock’s search box, and our video clock will return the top search results from YouTube related to that keyword. You can then preview one of these videos, and select it as your video alarm.

Finally, we’ve gone even a step further to ensure that using our Video Alarm Clock is easy to use: we’ve constructed a very handy Bookmarklet that you can add to your web browser.

A Bookmarklet is a button that you add to your web browser’s favorites toolbar. Such a button performs some kind of useful task when you click on it. In the case of our Video Alarm Bookmarklet, all you have to do is visit any page on YouTube.com containing a video that you like. Click on our Bookmarklet, and you’ll be taken to a preview page on our Video Alarm Clock that’ll show you what it looks and sounds like as an alarm, giving you the option of selecting it as your alarm video.

Here's a screenshot of our Video Alarm Bookmarklet being dragged and added to the Bookmark Toolbar in Firefox.

Once you’ve selected an alarm video, you can save it as a bookmark or recommend it to your friends and family by clicking on our link marked “Bookmark & Share“. [And yes, the more devious of you may discover that this is a good method to RickRoll someone!]

Wake up to your favorite YouTube videos using our Video Alarm!

You can only have one active alarm at a time. However, by bookmarking your favorite alarm videos, you can easily find them again and switch back and forth among numerous cool videos.

Please note that, if you want to use a video as an alarm, you’ll have to visit the Video Alarm Clock and not our original Online Alarm Clock.

Our original Online Alarm Clock is so popular and successful, that we’d have to be tortured severely before we would make any significant changes to it. (We know, through feedback from our loyal users, that most of them want it to remain unchanged, like the classic that it is!)

So – hopefully this blog post will suffice as an introduction to the newest member of the Online Alarm Clock family, our Video Alarm Clock!

We hope that this new clock is a lot of fun for all of you to use, both as a tool for online reminders, as well as a full-fledged alarm clock to wake you up in the mornings.

As ever, feel free to send us any comments, questions or suggestions you might have about our alarm clocks at any times, either via the comments form below, or via the email address found on our “about” page, or via Facebook or Twitter.

We wish you pleasant dreams and lots of fun using our clocks!

Tags: New on Online Clock, online alarm clock, online clock, online video alarm clock, online video clock, video alarm, video alarm clock, video alarm clock bookmarklet, video clock

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Hey Clock Fans, now that the Alarm Clock Blog here has been up and running for about a year and a half, we’ve been thinking that it’s high time that we go ahead and describe to all of you what our original idea for this blog really was – because the original idea is definitely a bit different than how it turned out to be.

As you all know by now, we run the world’s original Online Alarm Clock website.

It’s customary for software companies and web applications to create a blog, which will then be used as a vehicle for communicating everything that’s new and improved with their software or web service.

In our case, we’re confident that we’ve pretty much hit upon perfection with the design of our Alarm Clock. We’re sorry if this sounds arrogant or like we’re bragging, but this is really the truth.

It was our goal to create the world’s first Alarm Clock you can use right in your web browser, without downloading or installing anything, and of course we’ve done just this…we went live with our Alarm Clock Website back on March 24th in 2006.

If you ever discover some other Online Alarm Clock website, go to whois.domaintools.com and check the age of their domain. Then go to archive.org and try to see just how long they’ve been online…

Our point with all of this is simply to state the fact that people are copycats. And sure, it’s not a huge problem – “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, as they say. But we do like to remind you occasionally that OnlineClock.net is in fact the original site of this kind.

Not only were we the first website designed to be an Alarm Clock, but we’re also the best…even to this day, several years later.

Why?

It’s because our Clocks are minimally designed with simplicity in mind.

We all know about the meteoric rise of Twitter.com, and Twitter has become a star with very good reason: it’s a great, simply-designed website that’s astonishingly easy to use. Just last week we were looking at the computer books in a local bookstore and saw books that claimed to show you “How to Use Twitter”. The reason why this is so hilarious is: Twitter is so easy, no one really needs a book about how to use it!

Similarly, we also believe it’d be ridiculous to have a “How To” guide on how to use our Alarm Clock.

If you look at our start page, you won’t find any explanatory text there – our clock is so self-explanatory, that even your grandmother will figure it out instantly.

We like this. And we’re devoted to keeping our site this way.

Which takes us back to the theme of this blog post:  what we’d originally conceived our Alarm Clock Blog to be like.

You see, while all these other software and web 2.0 companies’ blogs write about the “killer new features” they keep adding to their sites…we just wanted to post this same message once a day:

Today we refrained from making any changes to our alarm clock.

And the next day the blog post would be this:

Today we refrained from making any changes to our alarm clock.

And then the day after that:

Today we refrained from making any changes to our alarm clock.

Well, we think you get the idea…

So, when it comes to changes to our Alarm Clock, we’re very happy to confirm this:

There aren’t any.

Tags: alarm clock, alarm clock blog, alarm clock changes, changes to online clock, clock, New on Online Clock, online alarm clock, online clock changes, software, web2.0

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So please, go ahead and participate in the magic trick below which we like to call “The Magician’s Clock“.

We’re quite sure it’ll amaze you, your family and your friends!

The Magician’s Clock – Step One

Pick a number from the Clock Face that you see above – any number at all, but it must be one of the numbers that you actually see on the Clock Face.

(This means it must be a number between one and twelve, obviously, and it must be an integer.)

Then, make sure you concentrate very hard on this number – it’s your official Magic Clock Number!

Now, please think about your number.

Focus on your number.

Try to send OnlineClock.net brainwaves referring to your Magic Clock Number.

Also, please remember this number for the next step of our Magic Clock Trick.

Have you done all this?

Good.

Then you’re ready to proceed to Step Two…

The Magician’s Clock – Step Two

Okay, now in the second phase of our Clock Magic Trick, we’d like you to start from the Magic Clock Number you’d chosen in step one and then follow the line going from it to the number which appears across from it on the clock face above.

What this means is that, if you chose number Two as your Magic Clock Number in the first step, for example, you would then follow the line from the number Two across the clock’s face to get to number Eight.

Or, to use another example, if you’d instead chosen number Ten in the first step of our magic trick, you would then follow the line from number Ten to arrive at number Four.

Got it?

Done?

Okay, now you should have two numbers.

Go ahead and subtract the smaller of your two numbers from the larger number.

When you’re finished–and only when you’re finished!–you may proceed to the next step in our Clock Magic Trick – the grand finale below.

The Magician’s Clock – The Grand Finale

That’s it, folks!

We think we’ve successfully predicted what your final number will be, and that is…The Magic Number Six

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little clock-themed magic trick which we’ve named The Magician’s Clock.

And now that you’ve experienced the awe and wonder of our magic trick, please go out and tell everyone that you know that OnlineClock.net is a magical website!

Thank you for taking part in our magic trick and we hope that you’ll continue to stop by to read more posts  on our Alarm Clock Blog in the future.

Our blog writes about anything and everything related to alarms, clocks and the subject of time, but we like to have a lot of fun along the way.

Please take the time to subscribe to our blog’s Alarm Clock Newsfeed by clicking on our newsfeed’s link and subscribing to it in Firefox or whatever other RSS Newsreader you prefer using.

Until next time – happy clocking, fellow magicians!

Tags: alarm clock blog, clock, clock magic, clock magic trick, magic trick, magic trick with clock, magician's clock, online clock, online clock magic, online clock magic trick

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Put on your Geek glasses and pocket protector and prepare to Geek-out with us, as we delve into the depths of some...Online Alarm Clock Trivia!

Hey Clock Fans, in March of next year we’ll be celebrating four years of being online as the original Online Alarm Clock, and we’ve been thinking that some of you still might know as much about our clock website as you would like to.

For this reason we’ve created this blog post by compiling some of the top Online Alarm Clock Trivia Tips with details and information about OnlineClock.net that’s intended really just for our true fans.

But, by looking at our traffic numbers each month, we know that there are actually a whole lot of you out there!

So sit back, relax, tune in to some groovy music channel on our Clock Radio application to use as background music, and enjoy our list of factoids about everyone’s favorite web-based internet alarm clock.

Here’s our list of Online Alarm Clock Trivia, presented in no particular order of importance:

1. Online Clock was the world’s first website designed to be an internet alarm clock. Since then, we’ve spawned literally dozens of imitators.
2. OnlineClock.net went online back on March 24th, 2006.
3. We made it to the front page of Digg.com the same year, with this story (posted by someone else). This gave our site a huge jump-start (thank you, Digg!!!).
4. We currently have not just one, but over ten different kinds of Online Alarm Clocks which you can find on our Site Map page.
5. OnlineClock.net was created by an American web developer named Tom, a guy who moved from San Francisco to Berlin, Germany about ten years ago. In addition to Online Clock, Tom is a big fan of comics and punk rock.
6. In fact, Online Clock continues to be developed, maintained and marketed by a single individual (we sometimes write using ‘we’ or refer to the ‘OnlineClock.net Team’ just because it sounds kind of lame writing about the site using “I” all the time. Being run by one person has its drawbacks, including the fact that I have to write blog posts like this one sometimes even when I’m on vacation (!). But heck, it’s all worth it…
7. At the time this article was written, OnlineClock was receiving about 1.5 million unique visitors per month.
8. OnlineClock runs on a dedicated Linux server (because they’re the best servers in the world – go Linux!!!)
9. Our Alarm Clock Blog that you’re reading now runs using the popular WordPress open source blogging system (it’s simply the best blogging software on the planet).
10. Although OnlineClock.net has been profitable for some time now, we probably don’t get that much back from it if you take into consideration all of the hours of work we put into it. But hey, that’s OK because the site truly is a labor of love. We really, really care about OnlineClock.net, and we hope that you notice this in various ways, such as the fact that we refuse to over-commercialize the site and we keep our use of advertising tasteful and non-intrusive!

So there you have it, Clock Fans: that was a list of various Online Alarm Clock Trivia which was especially selected for those of you who consider yourself true OnlineClock freaks.

And, judging from the reactions we receive via email, via our Facebook and Twitter account, we know that there are a lot of rapid OnlineClock.net followers out there.

We’re delighted to have all of you as fans – thank you for helping to make Online Clock what it is today!

Tags: alarm, alarm clock, clock, clock radio, internet alarm clock, online alarm clock, online clock, onlineclock, onlineclock.net

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Actually, the title of this post could also be: “What Makes A Classic Clock Website?”.

But what we’re talking about here applies to any kind of product…not just a clock, or a website.

Because this is going to be another Online Alarm Clock rant telling about our aims, goals and philosophy, together with an analysis for why our alarm clock site has become so popular.

If you look at the history of online alarm clocks on the internet, and examine the various players in this space, you will indeed find that Online Clock was the first website to go online with the goal of being simply…an alarm clock.

Since we went live back on March 24th, 2006 a lot of copycats have sprung up on the internet, copying our original idea of creating a website that should be used as an online alarm clock.

Still, all of these competitors have failed up to now in gaining the kind of user base and popularity that we’ve achieved with Online Clock.

Why is this?

Well, it’s because almost all of our competitors fall prey to Feature Glut.

Here’s a quote from Aidan Henry, from his blog post “Too Many Features” in which he spells out the advantages of paring down a product to just the essential features list:

How often do you read a features set that is over a page long and you’re left wondering… “WTF does this thing actually do for me?” It’s a daunting reality. Now, isn’t it refreshing when you browse a feature set that is minimal (only in terms of size). You can paint a clear picture in your head as to what the system/site/software can accomplish for you.

And, to follow up, Chris Dame discusses the big disadvantages of overly feature-laden products, from his blog post “Feature Explosion“:

The mentality that you are missing out by not cramming every possible feature into something you pay for is self-defeating. People forget that for every feature you add, there needs to be a way to access it. Quickly you have gadgets with screen after screen of options, and suddenly you can’t get past the kitchen timer and movie player just to place a call.

Definitely, when it comes to Tech, or websites, simplicity is no joke. It makes the difference between a normal website and a website that reaches classic status.

If you look at the mega success stories of Google and Twitter, what do they have in common?

They’ve made their products simpler to use than their competitors.

But the importance of simplicity and minimal design doesn’t just apply to websites. It’s certainly not just a coincidence, for example, that the creators of Online Clock are huge fans of the following cultural icons:

Charles Bukowski - An Example of Simplicity in Literature

Charles Bukowsi: his stripped-down prose shows that simpler is better, even in literature. Read his novel Post Office and try not to consider it timeless literature. The carefully selected and simple words drill like short, sharp shocks to your brain, leaving you wondering how in the heck you could’ve read all those other long-winded writers.

The Ramones - An Example of Simplicity in Music

The Ramones: forget about long, self-indulgent guitar solos and instead make your point, make it quickly, then stop. That’s what the Ramones do. Is it punk? Or is it just really intelligent, simple pop? It doesn’t matter, because it’s just damn good, blowing away all that progressive hippie-arena-rock-crap music that was being made at the time they were around.

Mondrian - An Example of Simplicity in Painting

Mondrian: it’s not just about the colors and shapes. It’s about the empty space and the silence that you can find between and around these elements. A lot of people that I know and love still maintain that this isn’t real art. But that’s okay – they just don’t get it.

Mies van der Rohe - An Example of Simplicity in Architecture & Design

Mies van der Rohe: his “skin and bones” architecture and furniture design reduced everything down to its elements, creating classic designs that will never be forgotten. During his time many people found his work just “industrial” and ugly. But over the years it’s been acclaimed as some of the most elegant design work ever created.

And, yes, let’s add this to the list above:

Online Clock - An Example of Simplicity in Websites

The Online Alarm Clock: its name says what it does. Period. It works. People like it. We don’t mess with a winning formula. Even people who don’t read TechCrunch on a regular basis know how to use our alarm clock instantly. There is no need for a description or explanation for how the site is supposed to work.

Perhaps, at this point, a few of you are thinking that we’ve gone insane, mentioning our alarm clock website in the same breath with these great design pioneers and geniuses?

Megalomania?

We don’t think so.

And the reason why is: the entire time that OnlineClock.net has been online, it’s been preoccupied with design and minimalism and, yes, even art. We like to think that our website is a great example of the successful integration of art and commerce.

Sure, you’ll find advertising on our site, and by definition that makes us a commercial website. But the advertising has remained tasteful and restrained, and even complements the design of the entire website, adding useful information.

How many other websites can say the same?

And how many other websites are there that have perhaps created a pleasant design and a loyal user base, but have forgotten, along the way, to find a way to monetize their site…thus leaving them playing a frantic game of “catch up”, struggling to find ways to earn money from a website which costs them a small fortune in hosting and bandwidth costs, just to keep it online and accessible, 24 hours a day?

Not too many, sadly. The air is thin up here.

The world keeps changing, becoming more complex, and human beings feel increasingly overwhelmed by these changes.

As a case in point, we went out to purchase a new mobile phone recently. We were bombarded with offers for mobile phones that could surf the internet, play music, play videos, send text messages, send messages with images, play games , take photos and videos and then send them around the world or upload them to websites.

All we wanted was a mobile phone that could–guess what?–make telephone calls.

Such a device is hard to find, but, once we found a mobile phone with fewer features, it instantly became more attractive to us, and we bought it. We are not alone.

The time has come for an advanced sense of aesthetics, in which enlightened product designers can truly make the world a more attractive, enjoyable and useful place simply by designing simpler objects.

When you purchase a new automobile these days, you’re probably going to find complex systems of electronics that do everything for you except prepare and cook your evening meal. But what are the side effects of such complexity? You’re going to be requiring the assistance of your neighborhood mechanic more and more often, since increased complexity means something’s more likely to break.

Stop. Using. Complex. Objects.

Instead, demand that the objects we become dependent upon are intelligently designed, with simplicity in mind.

Reward products that do follow the laws of simplicity by purchasing them, sponsoring them and by becoming their fans.

In time, complex designs will become less profitable…and less dominant.

Helping this process along is one way that OnlineClock can make the world a better place.

Tags: alarmingly simple, feature glut, minimal design, minimal web design, minimalism, online alarm clock, onlineclock.net, onlineclock.net history, simple design, simplicity in design

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