This blog post is a bit different from our usual fare, because basically it’s a transcript of a recent interview with the creator of OnlineClock.net. The interview presents a good interview of the history of the world’s most popular Online Alarm Clock website, as well as touching upon subjects such as recent changes and additions to the website, and also gives true fans a valuable peek “behind the scenes”.
So, without further ado, we now present to you the transcribed version of a Radio Interview with Online Clock.
If you’ve ever Googled “alarm clock“, then you’ve probably seen the website that we’re going to talk about today. In fact, I’ve used it myself. Our guest is Tom Churm, and he’s the owner of the website OnlineClock.net that’s fast becoming one of the top websites feature a free internet alarm clock that displays your computer time.
Tom, welcome to the program.
Hi Kevin, thanks for having me on!
And you’re joining us from Germany?
That’s right, I’m an American guy who moved to Germany about twelve years ago.
So, let’s jump right into this…tell us about the history of OnlineClock.net.
Yes, I created OnlineClock.net back in March, 2006. I was working as a web programmer and webmaster and…tried to create my own websites, just for my own enjoyment…but really wanted to come up with an idea for something that people would find really useful. And this idea stymied me for a long time until one night, I couldn’t sleep…and the idea for a website that would work as an alarm clock right in your web browser struck me like a thunderbolt in bed…and I knew that I had hit upon something here! So I got up, out of bed and I wrote the idea down on a piece of paper so that I wouldn’t forget about it…and the next day I actually started creating the first version of the website.
And this is also the first alarm clock website, is that right?
Yeah. OnlineClock.net is actually the first website that has as its purpose being an alarm clock that you use in your web browser. By this I mean it’s an online service that’s free to use; it is intentionally as simple as possible…and, basically, you just go to OnlineClock.net, choose your alarm time and leave your web browser open to our website and the website will remind you with an alarm when your alarm time has come around.
Yes, and I’ve used it myself…a couple points there: the interface is so incredibly simple…and as far as the alarm going off, it happened right on time, exactly when I needed it. I used it for this interview, actually.
Right, right…I actually used it myself to remind myself of our interview time. We are trying to be the Twitter of alarm clocks. Twitter is a great example for a website that people love to use because of its simplicity. Since we went live as the first website designed to be an alarm clock back in March, 2006, there have sprung up literally dozens of imitators and competitors…and it’s amazing, because we sit back and watch all of these other website go online, copying our idea, basically…and the thing is, they never seem to meet our popularity because they keep adding more and more functions to their websites. And instead, OnlineClock.net has striven the whole time to really be so simple that even your grandmother can use it.
[laughs] I love that. Well, you bring up a good point….again, keeping the simplicity. Tell us…over these four years, obviously you’ve grown a tremendous amount. I just looked at some of the web traffic that you have. What have you been doing to handle the increased traffic?
Well, we’ve had to switch web hosters from the course of the website’s being online…I’ve even lost count…we’ve probably switched web hosters about ten different times…because of the huge surge in popularity that we have. We presently have close to two million unique visitors each month, and because we’re an alarm clock and we want to be sure that there is 100% uptime for our website, so that people can wake up when they’re supposed to, we have switched, within the last six months, to a so-called “cloud hosting company”. And, without getting too technical here, this is a kind of distributed hosting service that ensures that the website will always be reachable, and will have as close to 100% uptime as possible….because it doesn’t matter how many visitors are accessing our website at the same time, or how much traffic we get, how much bandwidth we use…the web server can always give us as much server resources to use as we need. And we feel that, since we’ve switched to this cloud hoster, Online Clock is ideally suited to take the next step in becoming the world’s most frequently used alarm clock.
Now what about the people who don’t like the traditional, annoying beep, beep, beep for an alarm clock. Are you guys working on a radio version that would come on instead?
Yes, we introduced, in 2008, two years after the original online alarm clock went live, an online clock radio. This can currently be accessed at onlineclock.net/radio and we were then not only the first website to go live being an online alarm clock, we also invented, with the introduction of our clock radio application, the first clock radio that you use in your web browser. And on our clock radio application we have literally hundreds of different free radio stations that anyone can listen to for free via our website. The only requirement is that you do have to have the free version of the RealPlayer plugin installed in your browser to hear the streaming radio stations.
Uh-huh, boy technology is great, isn’t it?
Yes!
We’ve been speaking with Tom Churm. The website is OnlineClock.net. Why don’t you go over and check it out…give it a try! Fantastic site. Tom, thanks for joining our program.
Thank you, Kevin, thanks a lot for interviewing me.
So there you have it, folks – a brief look at the history of the world’s most popular alarm clock website, together with a look behind the scenes at the technologies being used to wake up a whole lot of folks for free via the internet.
We hope you’ve found this somewhat unusual blog post interesting. If so, please feel free to give us some feedback via our comments form below.
Until next time, we hope that all of you continue to wake up punctually and stay productive!
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