海角大神

Google is famous for its 鈥�20 percent time鈥� policy, which encourages employees to spend time working on long-shot passion projects.

Since 2014, Microsoft Garage has tackled a similar idea: employees are given hardware and office space to work on whatever software projects they want in their off-duty time. This week, Microsoft Garage released its latest iOS app, a curated news reader called .

News Pro works similarly to Flipboard and the Apple News app that鈥檚 already built in to all iPhones and iPads. Users choose topics they鈥檙e interested in, such as finance or architecture, and News Pro displays articles on those topics in a colorful format. It also takes users鈥� job titles (gleaned from LinkedIn or Facebook) into account in trying to predict what stories they might find most interesting. News Pro also includes a 鈥淪peedy鈥� view that shows the text of an article without ads or additional website formatting.聽

Is News Pro objectively better than Flipboard or Apple News? Probably not, but that doesn鈥檛 mean it won鈥檛 appeal to some people who prefer its layout and personalization options.

I found News Pro visually appealing, but was a little confused by its initial assumptions about me. From my Facebook profile, the app learned that I was a graduate student, but it used that single data point to show me stories about distance education, physics, health science, and public speaking 鈥� none of which I鈥檓 particularly interested in. It was easy to change the topics manually, but News Pro didn鈥檛 make a great first impression on me.

Microsoft Garage is a place for the company to test apps, such as News Pro, that may or may not catch on with users. If an app catches on, it may become an official Microsoft product down the road. The previous Garage release was Mimicker, a devious alarm clock that can only be shut off by performing one of several unusual tasks, such as saying a tongue twister aloud or mimicking a particular facial expression. It鈥檚 a clever way to help make sure that a person is truly awake, not just dismissing their alarm in a haze. Mimicker is powered by Microsoft鈥檚 library of machine learning services, which allow the app to understand speech and facial expression with a high degree of accuracy.

Microsoft has rolled other apps out of the Garage as well, include an Android contact manager called and a scheduling app called , which synchronizes calendars across services so it鈥檚 easy to find meeting times that work for everyone in a group. The Verge鈥檚 Nick Statt that Garage apps 鈥渁re often one-off projects put out in the wild and forgotten鈥� and are seldom updated for additional platforms. But News Pro, Mimicker, and other Garage apps 鈥� or features of them 鈥� could become official Microsoft products if users really like them.