Grant Gibson of Glasgow, the UK, converted a $5 alarm clock into a gmail notifier.

Every time I get a new email the clock moves from side to side and does the classic Space Invaders sound, then lights one of the LEDs to give me an idea of how many unread messages there are. There’s loads more that could be done with it, but I was happy just turning it into something more useful without destroying it in the process.

Grant has schematics and code on his website.