Inventor hopes alarm clock becomes a runaway hit

"Clocky" is finally up and running. It's running away from drowsy owners reaching over to shut it off and go back to sleep.

Richard N. Kimball , a partner at Boston law firm Nutter, McClennen & Fish, which received one of the first shipments of the long-awaited runaway alarm clocks last week, purchased four of them for members of his family. Kimball tested Clocky in his office.

"It was appropriately aggravating," he said, reporting that it jumped off his desk after a one-minute snooze alarm he'd set expired. "It started running around beeping and making an annoying racket that would get you out of bed," Kimball said. "It bumps off walls, goes here and there. It seemed like it was trying to hide behind my water cooler."

Clocky's inventor, Gauri Nanda , a 27-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from MIT last year, said she hoped that her small launch last week -- only "a couple of thousand" were shipped -- marked the start of a big business.

"We're trying to use new technology to make products fun," said Nanda, founder of Nanda LLC. "It's about the design of everyday objects, things that need to be updated but haven't for a while."

The company, which is in the process of being moved to Boston from Nanda's home state of Michigan, plans to sell Clocky and other products, like a Lapsac, a women's handbag that's big enough to hold a laptop computer, through nandahome.com.

When she came up with the idea for a runaway clock two years ago, during an MIT industrial design course, Nanda admits she didn't expect it to have much appeal beyond the demographic of college students who stay up too late and have trouble waking up in the morning. The clock has a built-in microprocessor that randomly programs its runaway speed and routes.

But after an MIT website published photos of an early Clocky incarnation -- looking like a homely, shaggy-faced granola bar on wheels -- it became an overnight Internet sensation and Nanda was swamped with requests for a product she was still prototyping in the MIT Media Lab.

She compiled a waiting list and, while writing her thesis on electronics-embedded clothing, demonstrated an early version of Clocky on ABC's "Good Morning America" program in April 2005. After earning her master's degree from MIT that fall, she launched the company and, with the help of business advisers in Boston and Hong Kong, forged an agreement to have Clocky manufactured at a plant in southern China.

Most of those receiving the first Clockys last week, in time to put them under the Christmas tree, had been on the waiting list for the past year and a half. Nutter, McClennen & Fish, which provided Nanda with free legal counsel under its TechnOvation awards program, ordered 80 of the clocks for its employees and members of an outside panel of investors that helps the firm assist emerging businesses.

Clocky had a makeover since Nanda's initial conception. Today's model is rounder, and made of plastic; its dial and buttons are arranged to resemble a face, and it comes in colors like cream and aqua. It sells for $49.99, plus shipping and handling. (For those who prefer the original design, Nanda is selling shag coverings as accessories.)

"We're trying to go after an anthropomorphic feel, giving objects a human quality," Nanda said. "That being said, we're still getting a lot of requests for the furry version."

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.