Gadgetory

it's time to explore some new apps while we're trapped inside for days I'm Bridget Carey this is your cnet update folks as many of you in the US have probably heard by now there's a massive winter storm coming to the east coast with record snowfall projected in some areas The Washington Post named it snows yellow here in New York you're seated update crew is stocking up on the storm essentials bread canned food and pointless apps drain our batteries as we dull the pain of being trapped inside all weekend but storm or no storm if you're looking to spice up your mobile life here are some new apps to try out if you have trouble waking up in the morning microsoft created something a bit bizarre to get you moving android users can download the mimic her alarm it makes you play a short game to prove you are really awake using microsoft's facial recognition and machine learning powers the app will ask you to make a certain type of facial expression before it deems that you are awake other challenges include taking a photo of something in the house of a certain color or verbally repeating a tongue twister musicians out there may like to try out Apple's new music memos app for iPhones and iPads it's a voice memo recorder that can capture details of your chords it divides the piece into bars and adds a time signature and chord labels so when creativity strikes you have something more than just an audio recording my colleague dan ackerman tried it out with acoustic guitar and he said he found it work best with strum easy simple open chords in four-four time you know that typical coffee shop sound but if you get more complex you may need to manually enter in the chords it also is designed to work with piano but you could try it with other instruments or even your voice when you edit it down to what you like you can also add drums and bass and share the clip or export it to another program like garageband or logic pro the GarageBand app also got a notable upgrade with new tools for making loops and also a smart drummer if you're keeping occupied with the big football championship games Facebook just launched a new sports news hub called Facebook sports stadium it's inside the main iPhone facebook app but it's also rolling out to other platforms in the next few weeks you can follow live scores and play-by-play of games while talking to your friends that are also watching the game Facebook is trying to tackle Twitter's real time magic and if you want something different than facebook there's the brand new peach app only about two weeks are so old it's gotten a lot of buzz since it was created by the guy who made vine it's another place to post the same stuff that you would share anywhere but now you can feel like you're special because you're one of the first and we all like feeling special that's it for this tech news update being catch up on more at cnet com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey