MacMost Now 461: Alarm Clock Pro

Alarm Clock Pro is a good alternative to filling your calendar with alarms and events. You can easily set alarms for specific times or intervals. These alarms can trigger scripts, sounds, alerts and actions for a variety of purposes.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode, let's take a look at Alarm Clock Pro. So while alarm clock software might not seem that exciting, Alarm Clock Pro's ability to have recurring events trigger things at specific times can be very powerful. Let's take a look. 
So here we are in Alarm Clock Pro. And its main view is a list of alarms. You can add a new alarm by clicking "New" there, and you get the assistant to set it up. Now you can name your alarm and set it to go off when you want to. For instance, you can set it to go off at a specific date and time. You can also set it to go off weekly, or hourly, or on a specific timer. So for instance you can set it to go off at an interval, like every five minutes for instance. Then under "Actions", you can set what happens when the alarm goes off. You can also set some exclusions--so have a task that performs regularly, but have it not perform on a certain date. In addition to that you can set it to be a private alarm so it can show up on your list, allow it to ring multiple times or just do it once, and "Power Manager Integration", which basically says if you set an alarm, but your Mac goes to sleep it'll wake it up so that it can sound the alarm. It can even start the Mac up as well. 
So one of the issues here is if your Mac is asleep or it shut down, the Power Management option will allow it to wake up or start up so the alarm can sound. But there are some situations where it won't work, for instance, if you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro and you actually close it then you can't start it up and start the program running. So you have to be careful when using it in those situations. So here's some ideas of what you could do here. Adjust system volume: you could set that so your Mac's system goes down at night and goes back up in the morning, that way you might not hear incoming mail messages, things like that, while you're trying to sleep. You can have it show alert or display an alarm notice, maybe to tell you to take a break from work every once in a while. You could have it compose an email. If there's an email that you want to send in the future, you could have it open up mail and have it pre-populate with recipient, subject and message, so that you could send that message. Perhaps there's a Web site that you rely on for information, or for some sort of productivity regimen that you've got, and you can have it that you are at a certain time or at a regular interval. You could have it log you out in the evening automatically. You can have it play a multimedia file or something on iTunes, to use it as a regular alarm, have it wake you up in the morning if your Mac is in the same room where you sleep. You could also have it shut down the computer on a regular basis, for instance, shutting it down at night or restarting it once a day as well. And in addition to that Alarm Clock Pro has a lot of special features, for instance a full calendar that shows you future alarms. You can bring up, quick, Stopwatch, which could be a productivity tool, you can have it look up time zones for you. You could have it display clocks on the screen that float above everything else--come in handy. It has a task list manager here, where you can create tasks and prioritize them. 
I like that you can set little alarms that go off later in the day or the next day, without having to clutter your calendar with events so it makes it easier to remind yourself to do certain things. I also like that you can have recurring events, say have something happen every hour or every other hour, just to remind you to take a break, or to perform a certain task that you need to be doing all day. So give it a try; there's a free fifteen-day trial period, and it's twenty bucks after that to continue using it.
So until next time, this is Gary with MacMost Now.

You can check out Alarm Clock Pro at http://www.koingosw.com/products/alarmclockpro.php.

Comments: 2 Responses to “MacMost Now 461: Alarm Clock Pro”

Left Elm

14 years ago

It would be useful if you posted links to applications you discuss (http://www.koingosw.com/products/alarmclockpro.php, in this case). Maybe useful to you, also, in marketing MacMost? Or is it somewhere on the page and I'm just not seeing it?

Gary Rosenzweig

I make sure the link is in the video since a lot of people watch at YouTube or through iTunes and won't see it here. Then I do try to remember to go back and add the link here in the post. Not sure how that helps me market, tho.

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MacMost Now 461: Alarm Clock Pro

Comments: 2 Responses to “MacMost Now 461: Alarm Clock Pro”

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