This wristwatch wants to change your life (and how you sleep)

Sleep-monitoring and wake-up wristwatch SleepTracker Elite, known for its alarm system that triggers a vibrating and/or beeping alarm only when you're nearly awake anyway, has another trick up its sleeve: a free analytics tool that tracks a user's sleep data over time.

The idea is that SleepTracker Analytics, which the company unveiled today for Mac and PC, will encourage users to cut out sleep destroyers--caffeine, alcohol, a generally gloomy outlook on life--by visually charting the effect these bad habits have on a good night's sleep.

Once downloaded, you connect your watch to upload sleep data to your personal Analytics account and check out details such as when you went to bed, when you woke up, how many minutes throughout the night your sleep was interrupted, and your resulting sleep score on a scale of 1 to 100.

A company rep says that previously SleepTracker users only had access to software that evaluated one night's sleep, with users being able to manually input notes such as whether they drank caffeine late at night. Being able to track sleep patterns over time seems like an obvious tool for those trying to make actual lifestyle changes.

Maybe I'm just grumpy from an admittedly poor night's sleep, but I think this kind of basic analytics tool should be easier to access and ultimately even live on the watch itself. (The similar Zeo Sleep Manager, by comparison, sends data wirelessly from the device to the user's smartphone.)

SleepTracker CEO and creator Lee Loree says the new software, which is not yet available as an app, is based on feedback from the company's passionate users, so we'll stay tuned to see how they work to improve future iterations of the tool.

The watch itself, first introduced in an earlier incarnation in 2007 to generally rave reviews, is currently available in "pearl white" or "onyx black" for $149, including shipping.