Today you'll find an endless variety of ways to improve your reentry into the conscious world. The Philips HF3470, for instance, wakes you not with a blaring klaxon but with light that slowly brightens, mimicking the natural rise of the sun (only not so early). Numerous other alarms also slowly raise the volume of whatever music you'd like--MP3 tunes, or even Internet radio--to more gently rouse you from sleep, and bedside devices like the (sadly en route to going out of business) can offer up the news, weather, and Facebook updates as soon as you open your eyes. The most recent upgrade to the waking experience comes in the form of sleep-tracking systems like the , which monitor your REM cycles and wake you up when you're out of deep sleep.

Who would've thought that the simple act of seeing behind you while you're driving would be ground zero for some of the automotive world's biggest convenience upgrades? The first big advance: Autodimming mirrors measure the brightness of the high beams blazing behind you, and use an electrochromic system to tint the glass instantly, dimming the reflection and cutting out the glare. That can save your eyes, but another major advance, the backup camera, can save your bumper. Nothing fancy here--a small video camera next to your license plate shows you exactly what's behind you, making tight parking jobs almost trivially easy and eliminating from your vocabulary the phrase "How much room do I have?"

Pity the American, faced with cold, silent plastic every morning upon entering the bathroom--a brutal way to begin the day, no matter how pleasant the alarm clock (see above) might be.