After reading the previous thread, I got interested in this and dug up the free ElectricSleep app for Android (http://code.google.com/p/electricsleep/). It seems to be pretty much equivalent to iPhone's Sleep Cycle app, it uses the phone's accelerometer with the phone placed on the bed. Only had time to test it one night so far, but it managed to wake me up easily from a duration of sleep that would usually have left me in zombie mode.
Problem with these things is that getting psyched about a fancy wake-up technology is likely to create a placebo effect for a while, so I'll need to stick with the thing to see how well it works in the long haul. Might look into WakeMate if the accelerometer alarm thing is still working good after a month or so.
An interesting thing to try with these things is doing the Everyman sleep schedule with a 4-5 hour nightly sleep and several 20 minute naps every day, and attacking the most common point of failure where you oversleep on the nightly core sleep with the smart alarm.