Hey, Clock Fans – The Alarm Clock Speaks!

That’s right…we decided it was time to let our Online Alarm Clock speak for itself for a change, so we decided to conduct an interview.

But not just any interview…because this is the first ever interview with–you guessed it–the world’s most popular Online Alarm Clock, OnlineClock.net !

(No, we haven’t gone completely insane. We’re just trying to have some fun here. If you don’t like it, please return to your television set.)

So, without further ado, let’s begin with our Alarm Clock Interview.

The following is a transcript of the actual interview which you can watch in the video above.

And we hope you’ll watch it, because we sure had a lot of fun creating it for all of you.

Hi, My name’s Tom and I’m here today to conduct an interview…with an alarm clock! And not just any alarm clock. I’m talking about the alarm clock that you can find online at OnlineClock.net.

And, OnlineClock.net is America’s original Online Alarm Clock and today we’re going to interview him…

Hellllo, Mr. Online Alarm Clock. How are you doing today?

Oh, hello. How are you doing?

Well, thank you for taking the time for our interview. We have a few questions we’d like to ask you.

OK. Go ahead, you know, I’m just hanging around here anyway. Always hanging around here….ah, always online you know…

OK, well ah, well thanks anyway for taking the time to answer our questions!

The first question we have for you is:  what is it like being America’s most popular Internet Alarm Clock?

Well, it’s good, you know? People know me. They use me. They come to visit me and they find me…very helpful. So…I feel like I’m doing good, you know?

I like it.

Well, that sounds like a very positive attitude.

But, despite all that, is it always easy being an Alarm Clock?

Do you feel that people always really appreciate everything that you do?

Well, umm…when I wake people up from a good night’s sleep…they’re not always so happy at first, uhh…because everybody likes a good night’s sleep.

And sleeping long.

And sleeping late.

Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

But – I’m just doing my job when I wake ‘em up, you know?

Ahhh, sometimes you might think it’s a dirty job…but somebody’s gotta do it…

That’s the way I look at it, you know?

Well, ahh, that’s a nice point of view.

But tell us, what about the working hours with your job being an online alarm clock?  As we understand it, you’re online and available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. What’s that like? Don’t you ever get exhausted?!

Well, there aren’t any Trade Unions for Alarm Clocks…at least none that I know of.

So, uhhh, I’ll just keep plugging in there, doin’ my job and the way I see it is:

If people keep using me, uhhh, I’m happy, you know?

I like waking people up!

I like reminding people about stuff so…yeah…come, visit me and set an alarm and I’ll keep doing my job, no problem!

Well, Mr. Online Alarm Clock, we’re very happy that you took this time to talk to us.

And if anyone wishes to visit Mr. Online Alarm Clock, you can do so at any time, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

He can be found at OnlineClock.net.

So there you have it, ladies and germs: the website that brought you the world’s first Online Alarm Clock has now also brought you the world’s first…interview with an Online Alarm Clock!

And the world may never be the same.

Please, drive safely.

And return to your homes.

Tags: alarm, alarm clock, alarm clock blog, alarm clock interview, alarm clock speaks, alarm interview, clock, clock interview, interview with an alarm clock, online alarm clock interview, trade unions for alarm clocks

• Talking Animal Clocks
• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Rolling Robotic Alarm Clock
• Halloween Clock Radio
• Spidey Alarm

Many people have asked me, “Hey how did you end up becoming the Clock Man?”

And now is my chance to answer all of you at one time…so the next time someone asks me why I’m the Clock Man, I’ll point him towards this blog post.

The Clock Man Story is the story of an American guy who moved to Berlin, Germany. I had worked for some time in the U.S.A. as an advertising copywriter but I’d gotten burned out and disillusioned. If you happen to work as a copywriter, you probably understand how this happened There are just too many compromises you have to make as a copywriter: you have to please your Art Director, you have to please your Creative Directory, you have to please your Account Manager…and you even have to please the Client (that’s the worst). By the time a cool piece of advertising makes its way into production, the chances are pretty good that it’s a watered-down piece of drivel, if it’s managed to survive at all.

Besides, I got fired. But that’s a long story, right Gary?

So, after chucking a promising career as an advertising copywriter out the window,  the question was, what do I do with my B.A. in English (and Phi Beta Kappa, to boot)? I knew I didn’t want to become a teacher or have a career in academia…the academic world kind of bored me, and seemed far away from reality. I tried to write. I submitted short stories and poems (none of which were about clocks) to tiny punk rock literary publications…and even got published in about a dozen magazines of this kind. But of course this didn’t earn me any money. And I was tired of creating Latte Macchiatos with my high grade point average.

One thing I tried next was writing business correspondence for a mutual funds company. Man, was that boring. Not too much more to say about it.

Soon afterwards, I chucked that job too and ended up jobbing around yet again. I then met someone from Berlin, Germany and moved there. (This is where I still live today. Berlin rocks, dude!)

1. My first job was hauling around heavy steel beams or girders at a construction site for a new bank building. It almost killed me. (I was kind of a pencil-necked geek type, really.)
2. My next job was sorting recyclable garbage on a conveyor belt – on the overnight shift. One word: diapers.
3. Then I ended up working on an apartment building renovation site. That one wasn’t too bad.
4. I then taught English in Berlin for a very short time, before I realized how poorly it paid and how much competition there is in this field.
5. I worked at a wood mill, sorting pieces of metal and debris from all the wood on the conveyor belt.
6. Then I found a training program sponsored by the unemployment office in Berlin. It was a training program for learning web programming. Despite having at best a poor command of the language, I was accepted into this program…and the rest is history, as they say!

If any of you are considering a career as a web developer, I heartily recommend it. It’s a lot of fun, actually. And, if you happen to live in a foreign country like me, you’ll be very pleased to discover that most programming languages are in a weird kind of English!

Code To Live, Live To Code.

So, getting into this web development class was one of the best things I ever did in my life. I quickly discovered that, probably because I was an English native speaker, I seemed to have a big advantage over the German people in my class. And I liked the work. And because I enjoyed programming websites, I was also better at it, I think.

Once this training program was finished, I got one job after another as a web developer.

If you’re a web developer in the U.S.A. and are thinking about moving to Berlin – do it.

There are some big advantages to being a native English speaker and being a programmer. German employers love it. At work, I can even send all of my emails in English. English truly is the universal language for Information Technology. (Thank god!)

And now, finally, we’re coming to the subject of Online Clock: Why I am the Clock Man.

While working as a web developer/programmer, I continued to make websites for myself, just as a hobby. It was fun…so why not?

And I kept trying to think of an idea for a website that everyone could use…because, if everyone found it useful, it’d have a good chance of becoming successful.

One night the idea of creating the world’s first Online Alarm Clock hit me like a thunderbolt, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep:

How about if I made a website that was…just…one…big…alarm clock?!

I immediately got up, out of bed and wrote my idea down on paper.

The next day, I got to working on the first concept for what later became…Online Clock.

So, Clock Fans, that’s how I became the Clock Man.

And, you know what? I’m pretty damn happy as the Clock Man.

What’s your story?

Tags: alarm clock, alarm clock website, clock fans, clock man, clock man story, clockman, online alarm clock, online clock, onlineclock, onlineclock.net

• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Rolling Robotic Alarm Clock
• Halloween Clock Radio
• Top 10 Wake Up Gags
• Alarm Clock Interview

The Official Logo of the Clockux Linux Distribution Project

Yes, Fans, we at OnlineClock have a massively important piece of news for you all! This is something we’ve been keeping a secret for a long time, just waiting for the appropriate time to make our official announcement.

Most of you have surely already heard Google’s groundbreaking announcement that it will be releasing its own Chrome Operating System.

Not wanting to be outdone by a small company like Google, Online Clock has long been in stealth planning for the release of its own Operating System!

The Online Clock Operating System is to be tentatively called Clockux, and it will be based on the wildly popular Ubuntu Linux Distribution.

It’s planned that Online Clock’s new O.S., or Clockux, as it will be called, will ultimately be hosted and made available for download at the new domain www.clockux.com.

Although development of Clockux has been officially referred to by the makers of OnlineClock.net as in the “pre pre pre pre pre pre pre Alpha” stage, a few details have been leaked to us by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame regarding the features already planned for this innovative and new computer operating system!

Planned Details of Clockux, the Online Alarm Clock O.S.:

1. The new Operating System will prominently feature: a Clock
2. An alarm function will be fully integrated
3. Users will be able to use a native alarm clock application directly within the GUI!
4. The pre-installed Firefox browser will be set to OnlineClock.net as its start page
5. A small clock application will be featured on the desktop
6. Links to an Online Alarm Clock will be made easily accessible throughout the entire O.S.
7. For simplicity’s sake, there will be no choice of alarm sound
8. The new Operating System will prominently feature: a Clock (or did we mention that already?)

If you’re like us, you’re probably licking your lips with anticipation right now after reading the planned Feature Set of Clockux above – Boy, what an Operating System!

And now, as this blog post’s Pieste de Résistance, we’ve even managed to bribe the cleaning service that cleans the offices at OnlineClock.net into selling us this special first sneak screenshot of “pre pre pre pre pre pre pre Alpha” Clockux in action:

However, we’re sorry to inform you, Clock Fans, that you’ll probably have to wait a bit before getting your hands on your own copy of the Clockux Distribution for testing.

After numerous attempts to contact members of the highly secret development team of the Clockux Distro, we finally got one of the anonymous programmers on the phone and asked him when we can expect to test the first Beta Version of Clockux.

The Clockux Programmer revealed to us the following, in between taking bites of his morning breakfast of cold, leftover Pizza:

…Operating System? Uh, like, Clockux is actually just a silly inside joke for all of us who work at OnlineClock.net.  There is no Online Clock Operating System. Online Clock is just, like,…a clock, dude.

We were devastated.

We threw our phone down in disgust and went to the corner to get a Latte.

[ Disclaimer for the intellectually challenged: this particular blog post is a parody. Online Clock is currently not really planning on releasing its own Linux Distribution. We have attempted to be humorous here. Have a nice day.]

Tags: clockux, clockux distro, clockux linux, online clock, online clock linux, online clock linux distro, online clock o.s., online clock operating system, pre pre pre pre pre pre pre Alpha

• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Halloween Clock Radio
• Online Alarm Clock Reminders
• Why I Am The Clock Man
• Stopwatch Game Video

OnlineClock.net Celebrates Three Alarmingly Successful Years

Born in March, 2006, OnlineClock.net is currently celebrating its third anniversary!

OnlineClock.net was created from an idea which came to the creator late in bed one night while he couldn’t sleep. He was working as a web developer and webmaster and had for years tinkered in his free time building websites for himself as a hobby.

Still, the ultimate success of creating a website which everyone would find useful eluded him. What this developer needed was an idea – a really good idea.

That’s why, when the idea of an Online Alarm Clock hit him like a lightning bolt that night, OnlineClock’s creator knew he had to immediately spring up, out of bed and find a paper and pen to write down his idea so that it wouldn’t be forgotten the next day when he got up to go to work.

The first version of the Online Alarm Clock was made using Flash animation, but this wasn’t optimal because the site had to finance itself via advertising, in order to at least pay for its own hosting costs and domain registrations. A website made out of Flash animation does not need to be reloaded, and this is very bad for advertising delivery. So the Flash was removed from OnlineClock.net and was replaced with the version we’re familiar with today: a javascript application with red LED images for numbers.

How many people know that the first version of the Online Alarm Clock actually presented a choice of music or buzzer for an alarm? (Hint: it might still be possible to view copies of this earlier version on Archive.org.) This version of the internet alarm clock was quickly scrapped, however, because it was soon discovered that the strength and success of the world’s most popular web alarm clock lays in its simplicity and minimal design.

Back in March, 2006, when OnlineClock.net first went live, it truly was the world’s first website devoted to being an Online Alarm Clock. This was, at the time, a revolutionary idea.

It didn’t take long, however, for the first imitators to spring up, and now there are dozens of such sites online.

The enduring popularity and success of OnlineClock.net, however, is testament to the fact that it is still the best and most beloved of such sites, probably due to its devotion to being extremely simple and easy to use.

Since its creation, OnlineClock.net has retained its original Online Alarm Clock and left it relatively unchanged. Why? Simply because it’s been so successful.

Happy Birthday, Online Clock

New clocks have, however, been added to the Online Clock roster.

These new clocks have usually been placed on subdomains. Such new, additional clocks include an Online Stopwatch , a Countdown Timer , an Analog Alarm Clock, a Binary Alarm Clock, a Mobile Alarm Clock, a version of the original Online Alarm Clock in the Military Time format, and even a novel Space Clock.

No discussion of the evolution of OnlineClock.net would be complete, however, without mentioning its masterpiece: the online Clock Radio for your web browser.

Indeed, in 2008, after having been online for two years already, OnlineClock.net produced another ground-breaking innovation: the introduction of the world’s first clock radio you can use directly in your web browser.

As with all of OnlineClock.net’s fine products, the Clock Radio is advertising-supported and therefore free for everyone to use.

What does the future hold for OnlineClock.net?

Well, we’re sure of one thing.

Whatever it is, it’ll be alarmingly successful.

[Do you use our Online Alarm Clock? If so, please send us some birthday well wishes via the comment form below!]

Tags: alarm, alarm clock, alarm clocks, clock, clock birthday, online alarm, online alarm clock, online alarm clock birthday, online clock birthday, online clock press release, onlineclock, onlineclock press, onlineclock.net

• Talking Animal Clocks
• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Rolling Robotic Alarm Clock
• Simpsons Alarm Clocks
• Top 10 Wake Up Gags

OnlineClock.net, the world’s most popular Online Alarm Clock, releases a Beta Version of the world’s first Online Clock Radio.

BERLIN, Germany, September 19, 2008

Have you never been mellow? Or are you a little hardcore? Now you can be both, because OnlineClock.net recently released the world’s very first Internet Clock Radio that you can use in your web browser, and there are literally hundreds of internet radio stations available to listen to, for every musical taste, from mellow to hardcore and everywhere in between. A few years ago, when OnlineClock.net went online, it was the first website on the internet devoted to being nothing more than a simple alarm clock. This in itself was something new, as there is quite a leap from using a standard alarm clock to using an online version. The folks at OnlineClock.net were amazed at how quickly the concept of the online alarm clock caught on. OnlineClock.net even made it to the front page of Digg.com (thank you, Digg!). Success was then not far off, as OnlineClock.net claimed a large loyal user base of returning users as well as a continuous stream of new visitors to the OnlineClock website.

If you plan to wake up in style, OnlineClock.net now has yet another wonderful surprise for you–the first ever online clock radio. If you want to switch over from the traditional tring-tring or cock-a-doodle-do of a normal alarm clock and wish to bring a little variety into your life, this Beta version of the first ever internet-based Clock Radio is the perfect addition to your life. Notably, if you’re a music lover and if music means a lot to you, then the online clock radio will bring a big smile to your face as you discover many internet radio stations and songs that you’d previously never knew existed. All you have to do is download the Basic (free) version of RealPlayer (if you don’t already have it installed), select your choice of radio station and then set your desired alarm time. Use the internet clock radio to wake yourself up or to set useful reminders during the day.

So, say hello to no more “Oops I’m late again” and say goodbye to those dirty looks from your boss for missing that early meeting. Step into a new “you” and get punctual starting now with OnlineClock.net. This Digital Clock Radio can be used at any time, every single day, for free. The Online Clock Radio offers you such a wide variety of music, talk and comedy that you will never be bored. Yes, in addition to the usual music stations for every conceivable genre of music, there are also many stations for spoken word programs, talk programs, comedy stations and even film and tv soundtracks available. The developers at OnlineClock.net are continually in the process of developing new and improved versions of all of the online clocks on their website, and they are passionate about what they do. So look out for many new features to be added in the near future.

What’s more, if you happen to spend a night on the road for a business trip, you can set up the Alarm Clock Radio on the laptop in your hotel room. Not only will you no longer be bored with the accompaniment of your desired radio station in the background, but you can also set the alarm to wake yourself up well in time for tomorrow’s big meeting. In this way the Online Radio Clock is a device you can always take with you, wherever you have an internet connection and a web browser. OnlineClock.net truly wants to be your alarm clock and radio on the web.

We’re very sorry to report, however, that the streaming radio feature does not currently function in the Safari or Opera web browsers. Online Clock hopes that future updates to the RealPlayer software will solve this browser compatibility problem.

About OnlineClock

Online since March 24th, 2006, Online Clock, the Online Alarm Clock was the first complete website to go online and devote itself to being the world’s online alarm clock. Online Clock strives to be the number one network for the simplest, most useful and best Online Clocks, Timers and Time Tools. For more information on the various online alarm clocks offered for free by OnlineClock, please visit http://onlineclock.net/about/

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

• Online Alarm Clock Trivia
• Rolling Robotic Alarm Clock
• Halloween Clock Radio
• Top 10 Wake Up Gags
• Alarm Clock Interview