Los Angeles high-rise fire leaves 8 injured, prompts rare rooftop helicopter rescue
What the Tech: Alarm clock apps
by: Jamey Tucker
The snooze button may be your best friend in the morning, but how many times are you reaching for another nine minutes, only to oversleep? If you absolutely positively have to wake up on time, these apps will make sure you do.
Rocket Alarm Clock says it's the ultimate wake-up call, which means, you cannot oversleep. First, the volume of the alarm is loud enough to wake up even the soundest sleeper and to turn off the sound, you've got to complete a task.
One such task was shaking the phone hard enough and long enough to fuel an animated rocket on the screen. Another required me to blow into the microphone hard enough to chase away a UFO. Let me tell you, it was not easy. The tasks get the blood pumping and I don't see any way someone could doze back off to sleep.
Math Alarm requires some brainpower. When the alarm goes off, you have to solve a math equation to turn it off. You can choose from easy to difficult and choose whether you need to complete one or three math problems to turn it off. You've got to wake up enough to think and deduce.
If you're not very good at math, it might take a while.
Sleep Cycle is different because it won't jar you awake, rather place the phone on your nightstand. Set the time you'd like to wake up and the app uses the microphone to determine when you're sleeping most soundly. It listens for your breathing rhythms and when it determines you're in light sleep, it'll gradually start ringing or playing music and then raising the volume. Sleep Cycle won't go off exactly when you set it though but within 15 minutes of when you set it. Sleep Cycle also records how you're sleeping and whether you spent enough time in the REM state. It saves that information within Apple's Health App.
Alarmy, like the first two, requires you to complete a task before turning off the alarm. Some of the tasks are difficult. A memory game requires you to match a set of puzzles and it won't stop ringing until you've completed the task.
Another task was to choose a photo or take a picture when you set the alarm. When it went off, I had to take another photo to match the one I chose. I did not read the directions before using the app and chose a photo from my phone's camera roll. It was an old photo I posted to Facebook last week of my daughter's first day of 1st grade. When the alarm went off I was instructed to take another photo that matches the one I chose.
Since I had chosen one I had on my phone, I had to scramble through old photo albums looking for the original. Thankfully I found it, but only after walking around the house looking in photo albums.
These apps work extremely well for anyone who absolutely cannot oversleep but don't forget that you set one or you may find yourself up too early on a Saturday trying to turn it off.
LOS ANGELES (NBC) — Firefighters put out a high-rise apartment blaze on Wednesday after a helicopter sped some of the eight injured residents to the hospital, authorities said.
The fire, at the Barrington Plaza apartment in West L.A., just two miles away from UCLA, broke out just after 8:30 a.m. and officials say it was under control in two hours.
The novel about a Mexican mother and her young son fleeing to the U.S. border had been praised widely before its Jan. 21 release and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. But Mexican American writers have been among those strongly criticizing "American Dirt" for stereotypical depictions of Mexicans. Cummins is of Irish and Puerto Rican background.
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — A Wichita Falls woman joins her husband in jail briefly on a charge of child endangerment.
Heather Dawn Langford is charged with child endangerment in connection to her 10-month-old son. She has posted $25,000 bail.
Naked woman arrested after assaulting boyfriend