You can buy commercial set ups that do this, but they don't have daylight bulbs, which is how I got the idea to do it to my tank.
I used all off the shelf products. The first step was an electric wall socket timer. You can pick these up at any hardware store.
I had one going off at 6:30am for the fish tank lights (one daylight/UV & one standard neon), second one at 7am for a desk lamp to complete the full bright light effect.
On the fish tank I lights I had a second device I'm pretty sure I brought off a marine tank supplier. All it did was slowly ramp up power flow. I just put it between the lights and the wall timer and it just slowly lifted the current flow to the lights.
Last bit was a dual alarm clock, first alarm at 7am played music, second at 7:15 set the alarm.
Oh and the curtains, the main bit to hide the actual outside light pollution which could undermine the whole trick.
I bought a sunrise alarm clock [1] to do something similar to this. It's not nearly as fancy as rjd's setup, but it works really well for me. I put blackout curtains on the windows in my room. I usually wake up at 7, so I'll set the clock to reach full brightness at 6:50, and then the alarm on my cell phone goes off at 7. It works really well, especially in winter.
