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Microsoft's new alarm app wakes you with physical challenges
Microsoft introduced a new alarm clock app to the Play Store on Thursday that aims to rouse even the VanWinklest of sleepers. The Mimicker Alarm, as it's called, presents the user with three "games" that must be won before the alarm will turn off. These challenges -- designed to show off Microsoft's Project Oxford machine learning API -- include having the user emote facial expressions, find items of specific colors or speak tongue-twisting passphrases.
Microsoft wants you to teach computers how to learn
As clever as learning computers may be, they only have as much potential as their software. What if you don't have the know-how to program one of these smart systems yourself? That's where Microsoft Research thinks it can help: it's developing a machine teaching tool that will let most anyone show computers how to learn. So long as you're knowledgeable about your field, you'd just have to plug in the right parameters. A chef could tell a computer how to create tasty recipes, for example, while a doctor could get software to sift through medical records and find data relevant to a new patient.
