Forget alarm clocks, Wakie wakes you with phone calls from strangers

There’s alarm clock apps that force you to spin around, and ones that require you to move closer to your router. Then there’s Wakie, an app that encourages random strangers around the world to wake you up with a phone call.

Wakie has actually existed before, as it’s the international version of the Russian-language wake up app called Budist. The Wakie brand has also been alive in the US since 2011, but aimed squarely at Russian speakers there. However, fresh from a $1 million funding round, it’s all systems go for Wakie in other markets.

For now, Wakie is open to those in the US, Canada, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong – if you’re the one wishing to be woken. But if you’re happy playing the exclusive role of ‘waker’, you can sign up anywhere.

Wakie is available for Android and Windows Phone, though the iPhone version is currently awaiting approval from Apple, so it should be live very soon.

How it works

To use Wakie, you have to be prepared to sign in using your phone number. Wakie promises that your number will remain ‘safe and anonymous’.

Wakie’s community consists of Wakies (callers) and Sleepyheads (yup). If you want an alarm call, you just set an alarm time through the app, and when the wake-up time arrives, you’ll be connected to a Wakie of a similar age and theopposite gender. With that condition enforced, Wakie suddenly meanders on a slightly different trajectory, but we digress.

Calls last for one minute, with phone numbers never shared.

If you’re a Wakie, you can see how many Sleepyheads are scheduled to waken and offer to help by hitting the ‘Wake Someone Up’ button. When the call ends, Sleepyheads are invited to rate the Wakie.

But wait – if a Wakie isn’t available, doesn’t this mean you’ll sleep in and be late for work? Not quite, this scenario is catered for, as an automated call kicks in.

Similar initiatives have been available in the past, for example Talkoclock was available a while back, but has since ceased to exist. It’s a quirky idea for sure, but with 30 million wake up calls placed from 1.5 million users in Russia, there’s no reason why it can’t take off around the world too.

Wakie is available to download now for free.

Apple Has an iPhone Headache, but It Won’t Last Long

Apple Has an iPhone Headache, but It Won’t Last Long

Apple's stock is down even though it just sold 10 million iPhones in a weekend

It’s been a weird week for Apple. The company sold a record 10 million of its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models over the weekend, setting them up to be its most successful phones ever. But no company can escape the headaches that come with almost every new launch, and Apple has three problems marring an otherwise spectacular introduction
.First, iOS 8, Apple’s new mobile operating system, inexplicably launched late last week without promised apps that used a health and fitness feature calledHealthKit. Then, early this week, reports flew around social media and tech blogs showing the iPhone 6 Plus, the big 5.5-in. granddaddy of the two iPhone 6 models, was easy to bend — some people claimed the phone bent when sitting in their pockets for extended periods, others bent the phones on purpose to prove it was possible, and everybody loved calling the whole thing “bendgazi.” Finally, Apple rolled out an iOS 8 update Wednesday intended to fix that HealthKit problem and other minor issues, only to quickly pull it after users complained the update had caused their iPhones to lose the ability to make phone calls.