Microsoft’s latest garage project, called Mimicker Alarm is a novel twist on the traditional alarm clock, making you perform a series of tasks before completely turning off the alarm.
Just like a normal alarm clock app, you have all your various alarms, and when the alarm goes off a sound goes off waking you up. Where Mimicker Alarm goes off the norm is the mechanism used to turn the alarm off. According to Microsoft:
To dismiss your alarm, you must mimic the action given. We might ask you to snap a selfie, speak a phrase, or even get out of bed! The Mimics require you to be alert, smart, and use you and your surroundings so be ready to move.
If you don’t complete your tasks, the app assumes that you’ve gone back to sleep and the alarm will sound again. Nice.
Microsoft has made the app open source, with the code available on GitHub. Microsoft will be sending anonymised data captured by the app back to improve the service, but they take pains to advise that they use none of the data to ‘identify or contact you’.
If this sounds like a great way to wake up in the morning, then head across to Google Play and install it now.
