Waking up early is harder to do when it's pitch dark in your room, as your body still feels like it's the middle of the night. Philips has developed an alarm clock that replicates a sunrise to wake you up naturally, making you more refreshed when it's time to get up. It starts a half hour before you want to get up, and it slowly gets brighter over 30 minutes. This lets your body know that the sun is coming up and reduces your body's production of melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone. If you're seriously not a morning person you could conceivably combine this clock with a Sleeptracker to guarantee you'll wake up easily. For some reason, the clock is only coming out in France this year, with availability in the rest of Europe to follow next year and presumably America after that. Those blasted French, always getting the hottest technology before everyone else! — Adam Frucci

Philips, via Gizmag