The "Tyrant" concept by designer Alice Wang is the latest in a growing line of alarm clocks designed to torture their owners into facing the day. Instead of loud alarms, helicopter attachments and early-morning feats of hand-eye coordination, the Tyrant doles out punishment by hijacking your cellphone contact list and making random calls every three minutes until you get up to turn it off.


Again, this device is just a concept, but I think that Alice is on to something here. The only thing that it needs to be truly effective is message playback. Something like automated drunk dialing-only more devastating. For example, record: "Hey sexy, it's me. Listen, I had to call because I had another dream about you last night. I can't get you out of my mind." The horrifying thought of that message being delivered to your father at 6:00 in the morning is enough to get anyone out of bed. [Alice Wang via Josh Spear]