For those interested in more frequent updates that occur between blog posts - we are now on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jerrybrace

We’re back with another step down the road to Awaken 4.0.

In the video below you’ll notice a few things. The new alarm entry sheet is displayed and you see the playlist reloading in action and the overall improvement in ease of use over the current version of Awaken.

On the bottom of the Awaken window you will see the date and time for the next upcoming alarm. You can also click on this to toggle it to a countdown of hours, minutes, seconds. This is a great way to be sure that you have your alarm for the next day set correctly. The date display is smart enough to display “Today, Tomorrow” when appropriate.

We’ve added some animation at alarm time which slides the alarm listing off to the side. Similar to the flow of an iPod or iPhone. You’ll see more examples of this in other areas of Awaken 4.

Stay tuned for more! As always - your comments are welcomed!

Tonight we have the new alarm view ready for preview. We’ve applied some polish - let us know what you think. Awaken also offers a fullscreen view for alarms. We will be featuring that view in an upcoming post.

See Part 4 - In Motion

UPDATE: The screenshot has been updated since the original posting - see below.

First I’d like to thank everyone for the awesome feedback on the previous post via comments and e-mail. I had planned to have a follow up post sooner than this. I’ve spent the past 2 weeks doing a lot of across-the-board coding on Awaken which didn’t have anything visual to show in a blog post - but instead will reveal itself when you use Awaken 4 and witness the improved performance.

Today we have a screenshot of the main Awaken 4 window where you can see the updated UI and cleaned up alarm list.

In the alarm list you can see 3 of the alarm types coming with Awaken 4: iTunes, Sound, and Task.

We made the time stand out more to prevent it from being easily overlooked.

The time for the next scheduled alarm is now displayed beneath the alarm listing.

All references to dates and times are now displayed in the proper language and format to match your settings in the Mac OS X System Preferences (no more need to enable/disable 24-hour mode for example - Awaken uses your system settings).

Comments and questions are welcomed!

See Part 3 - Alarm View

We’ve been busy with Awaken 4 for quite some time and as we get closer to releasing the Awaken 4.0 Beta we’ll be covering the updates here.

First I’d like to say that Awaken 4.0 is a total re-write coded on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - but still compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. We won’t be supporting 10.3 Panther since it is so old (over 4 years old) and due to that fact - it prevents us from making Awaken better by taking advantage of the latest technologies.

Awaken 4 will be a FREE update to anyone who purchased Awaken 3 - free updates include both minor and major versions.

So to get back on the road to Awaken 4.0 - I’d like to show you the new alarm editor sheet.

Besides removing the clutter, we have included some new features in this sheet. There is a new alarm type named “Task” which allows Awaken to serve as a reliable file launcher for scheduled tasks.

The iTunes playlist menu has been improved with 3 new features - iTunes folder support, “Current iTunes Selection“, and “Reload Playlists“. With playlist folder support so you can now see your playlists organized in Awaken just as they are in iTunes. “Current iTunes Selection” allows you to have your currently selected or playing track in iTunes to play at alarm time. The “Reload Playlists” option will quickly refresh the playlist listing to display any additional playlists which may have been added to iTunes since Awaken was launched.

Comments and questions are welcomed!

See Part 2 - Updated Face