This is the alarm clock that faithfully reproduces the subtle wit employed by P. G. Wodehouse's most famous character—the valet Reginald Jeeves—as he politely affirms the beginning of the day. The clock plays 126 different wake-up messages in the reserved voice of Stephen Fry, the original actor from the English comedy Jeeves and Wooster. When the alarm sounds, Jeeves speaks softly as he assuages your displeasure that the morning has indeed come: "Excuse me sir, I'm so sorry to disturb you, but it appears to be morning... Very inconvenient, I agree... I believe it is the rotation of the Earth that is to blame, sir," or asks "Shall I inform the news agencies that you are about to rise, sir? If you are not roused sufficiently, a series of beeps will ensue; a press of the clock's rosette cancels the beeps, prompting Jeeves to interject "Sir has a firm touch, but fair," as one of ten possible snooze replies."

The clock will run you $70—but it might actually be worth it. That is unless you would prefer something cheap and tawdry. [ThinkGeek via Slashgear via BBG]

Issues to consider:

1) AT&T users experienced widespread outages in the upper Midwest a few days ago
2) AT&T does not offer the BlackBerry Storm
3) The article itself clearly blames an actual storm—you know, weather—for the service interruption.
4) The rest of the article is about iPhones

A conspiracy against BlackBerrys? No. A silly mistake by either the Google News aggregator or Information Week? Probably. A dramatic infiltration of either by David Pogue or Stephen Fry? Hopefully. [Thanks, Enzo]

The background of the story appears to be as follows: as a gadget reviewer for the Guardian, he decided that he needed to add a Vista machine to his large stable of Mac and Linux machines. He purchased a high-end Vaio, and upon trying to connect to his home wireless network encountered a problem (which, it bears noting, was probably indicative of an AP configuration or driver problem rather than an issue with Windows). As for what happens next, well, you can read for yourself. [Twitter—Thanks, Manu]

Been playing with the BB Storm. Shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful. Such a disappointment. Rushed out unfinished. What a pity.

Yes, I blame n'works more than RIM. Problems are terrible lag: inaccurate t'screen, awful, slow and fiddly text input. I SO wanted to like it.

Plus the GPS maps won't work - issue with BIS connections. I see from forums postings this is widespread in the UK. iPhone killer? Ha!

Apparently, his views are so respected among gadget lovers in the Perfidious Albion that BBC's dot.life Rory Cellan-Jones thinks he may crush Vodafone's Storm marketing efforts on his own. Stephen has a different view, but agrees he may have an influence and reiterates his "throw it out the window" review of the Storm.

Crumbs Rory! Do I have the power to kill a gadget? Of course, like all pusillanimous people I enjoy the idea that I could make a gadget - but break one?

If I really thought my influence was that great it might make me a little wary of being quite so definite and it would probably force me to be more specific about all the features/pricing/services, as a responsible tech journalist should be. As it is, I hope people know I am no more than an enthusiastic, passionate amateur (I'm including the French sense of the word amateur - lover). It gives me no pleasure to be negative about the BB Storm and I know that many people have been looking forward to receipt of theirs and were very disheartened to hear my loud disappointment. But, honestly: play with the Storm for two days as I have and you will admire my patience at not throwing it out of the window... I do like the Bold though. Could live with that. But to return to your point. The net should make us all equal in our influence. Okay - more equal.

Having only played with a Storm for a few seconds at the office, I don't have a solid verdict like him, Matt or Pogue (who also hates it). But my gut feeling is that if I had to use that clickety-clack touchscreen for two days, I would have not thrown it out the window. I would have crushed it with a hammer, then dip the remains in a sulphuric acid bucket, set it on fire. And then throw it out the window into the Hudson river. [BBD dot.life]

I guess we are coming to the end of the early iPhone era. But Coupland, the author of Microserfs and Generation X, moves onto another, more disturbing theory: that gadgets make morons of us all.

I remember in the 80s when cellphones first started to pop. I remember how, if you saw someone using a cellphone on a street, you immediately thought they were an asshole: gee, my phone call is so important I have to make it right here and right now! Twenty years later, we're all assholes. We're assholes at the supermarket's meat counter at 5:30pm, phoning home to ask if we need prosciutto; we're assholes driving in traffic; and we're assholes wandering down the streets. And with cellphones and handhelds, we collapse time and space and our perception of distance and intimacy.

He says:

I want a treadmill that presents on screen a reality game that interacts with your exercise: an adventure in which you chase villains, rescue damsels or solve puzzles - this is where technology should be headed so far as humdrum chores are concerned. Come on, you eccentric British software geniuses and game designers. Help me to a brilliant white smile and slim fitness the fun way.

YES! Someone make a Running Hero game for Xbox 360 right now, complete with $300 treadmill attachment. We'd totally buy that if we could simulate running on screen, as opposed to the treadmill workout we do now where we just stare into the nearby lake and wished we were drowning instead. [Stephen Fry]

Besides just having as deep a knowledge of smartphones as most gadget bloggers we've seen, he also offers many, many, many insights only a comedian of his caliber can. These choice quotes were picked by Wired and BB Gadgets:

We know what an insult to the human spirit were some of the monstrosities constructed in past decades. An office with strip lighting, drab carpets, vile partitions and dull furniture and fittings is unacceptable these days, as much perhaps because of the poor productivity it engenders as the assault on dignity it represents.

Well, computers and SmartPhones are no less environments: to say "well my WinMob device does all that your iPhone can do" is like saying my Barratt home has got the same number of bedrooms as your Georgian watermill, it's got a kitchen too, and a bathroom."

Sony Ericsson M600i: "Just how dumb are the software engineers, designers and marketeers at Sony E? [It's] the clumsiest, most asinine method of internet connection ever devised.

We spend our lives inside the virtual environment of digital platforms - why should a faceless, graceless, styleless nerd or a greedy hog of a corporate twat deny us simplicity, beauty, grace, fun, sexiness, delight, imagination and creative energy in our digital lives?

And one of our favorites, about Windows Mobile:

Let's look at the WinMob now. The HTC Touch is called (by idiots) an iPhone killer because it comes without a keyboard and makes a brief and rather feeble nod towards the idea of a strokeably operated touch-screen offering a silly cube transformation effect with big buttons. Oh, and the Touch is WinMob 6 rather than 5 (you won't notice the difference - a quite cool coloured line fribble in the agenda which shows you which days of the week are busy is the best addition, otherwise it's virtually indistinguishable from WM5).

If you're reading this Stephen—and based on how much you keep up with gadgets, we bet you are—we hope to see many more posts from you like this in the future.

[Stephen Fry via Wired via Boing Boing Gadgets]