So - we’ve been calling this Awaken 2.7 for a while now - but as of today it is Awaken 3.0 and for a few good reasons. It was almost a complete re-write from the previous version, we added some nice new features, and we got a new professionally designed icon.

Thanks in part to daylight savings time giving me an extra hour tonight, I was able to put in an additional feature - which has been requested by quite a few people. The ability to select a particular podcast for an alarm or the sleep timer. Up until now you have only had the option to choose “Podcasts”. Here is a screenshot to illustrate:

And as the title says - Awaken 3.0 Beta 1 is ready.

If you would like to download the beta we ask that you report any bugs to support@embraceware.com, with Awaken 3 in the subject line. If a crash occurs - a copy of the crash report would be ideal. At this point I have fixed all of the bugs I have found in my testing before posting this beta.

To download Awaken 3.0 Beta 1 - Click here.

Subscribe to the blog feed or keep checking back for updates on the beta. I will be addressing bugs as they come in and will be posted an update whenever a fix is completed.

Thanks for your support!

The Awaken 2.7 Beta is getting very close to release time. In this video post you will see the updated icons for the egg timer, sleep timer and the menubar - but the main focus is on the warning notifications.

Awaken will now notify you if there is an issue with your alarm setup. You will see a pulsing caution icon if you do not have “wake from sleep” enabled or if you have a screen saver password set. Clicking on the caution icon will let you know what the problem is and provide an option to correct it. If you like, you can also disable these warnings via the preferences. I think they will be very helpful in giving you peace of mind that everything is set correctly.

Another nice visual confirmation of “all systems go” is relayed by the menubar option. When you “enable alarms when Awaken is not running”, an alarm clock will appear in the menubar. When you click on the icon - it will display the date and time that the next alarm is scheduled. For example - “Tomorrow at 7am”.

PS> We are going to be switching to (mt)Media Temple’s grid-server for the hosting of this website in the next day or so. If you see the site down for an hour or so - that is the reason. We’ll be back faster than ever

Here we take a look at some of the additional UI changes coming in Awaken 2.7. As seen earlier on the blog, Awaken 2.7 sports the UI style of iTunes 7.

You can now drag entries in the alarm listing to have them display in any order that you like. Up until now alarms were only displayed in the order they were created.

A new button has been added to the bottom of the application which allows you toggle the display of the alarm listing - offering a more compact view.

The clock background was updated with some more transparency than last weeks post as well as some tweaks with the color.

Notice anything else different in the shadows?

Awaken 2.7 adds a reliable safety net feature in the case that iTunes happens to act up at alarm time. You may never need this feature - but it is good to know that it is there in the case of a problem. In the Awaken preferences you can select from a list of standard alarm sound presets to act as your emergency alarm and adjust the volume as you wish. The video below demonstrates a situation where iTunes does not respond and the backup alarm kicks in.