Beyond Home Hub

The alarm clock — one of the most necessary and most hated of electronics. Apart from playing music and waking you up, alarm clocks don’t do much — at least, until now. The Beyond Home Hub ($700) serves as an information hub for an entire cast of smart appliances throughout your house. It can give you financial quotes, Accuweather forecasts, news reports and family calendar reminders. Perhaps most importantly, it can wait to wake you up until the coffee in your Beyond Coffee
Maker is finished brewing, so it kind of
works like the old Folger’s commercials,
only you are awakened by technology,
not “rich aromas.”