Covid-19: Google helps 'saathis' share credible health info in rural India

We are helping female internet "saathis" (or trainers) share authoritative health advice with their networks in rural villages in India, says the company.

As Covid-19 pandemic affects all sections of the society, Google said that its focus in the on-going crisis in Asia Pacific has been on prioritising three things: contributing to the immediate health response, helping people learn and work from home and supporting the small businesses most affected.

The company said in a statement late Tuesday that in India, it is helping female internet "saathis" (or trainers) share authoritative health advice with their networks in rural villages.

"Our team in India has helped local governments share the location of night and food shelters on Google Maps," said Scott Beaumont President, Asia Pacific.

Google started showing the locations of Covid-19 test centres on Google Maps, Search and Assistant in Indonesia, before extending the feature to other countries around the world, including India, Korea and the Philippines.

In Korea, the Google News Initiative is offering weekly sessions training journalists on how to identify misinformation.

The Covid-19 pandemic began spreading across Asia Pacific in January, affecting millions of people directly.

Apple releases mobility data trends for authorities to curb Covid-19 spread

Apple 'Mobility Data Trends' is more like the Google's initiative that is now offering user location data via its Maps to help health officials spot movement across high-level categories of places.

Technology giant Apple on Tuesday released mobility data trends tool to help authorities mitigate the impact on Covid-19 globally. The mobility data tool is based on Apple Maps platform. Its reports are published daily and reflect requests for directions in Apple Maps.

The Apple 'Mobility Data Trends' website is more like the Google’s initiative that is now offering user location data via its Maps to help public health officials spot increase or decrease of movement across high-level categories of places, to help them flatten the curve of coronavirus pandemic.

"Maps does not associate mobility data with a user's Apple ID, and Apple does not keep a history of where a user has been," the company said in a statement late Tuesday.

Using aggregated data collected from Apple Maps, the new website indicates mobility trends for major cities and 63 countries or regions.

The information is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions.

The data sets are then compared to reflect a change in volume of people driving, walking or taking public transit around the world.

"Data availability in a particular city, country, or region is subject to a number of factors, including minimum thresholds for direction requests made per day," said Apple.

How to review and download all data related to your Google account

Google has a provision that allows you to review Google product settings and gives you the option to download all the data related to a Google account as one single file. Here are the steps.

Considering that most of us use at least one Google service in our daily routine, we end up creating some data that get saved on Google’s servers.

 This data could be related to your Android device configuration, search history, videos watched on YouTube, bookmarks, calendar entries, files and folders saved on GDrive, etc. Thankfully, Google has a provision that allows you to review your settings for Google products and also gives you the option to download all the data related to a Google account as one single file.

Here are the steps to do so:

Step 1: Connect your notebook or desktop to internet

Step 2: Go to any modern browser, preferably Google Chrome

Step 3: Go to https://myaccount.google.com/ and sign in using your Google account

Step 4: Look for ‘Data & Personalisation’ in left side menu and click on it

Step 5: Inside the ‘Data & Personalisation’ settings, scroll down and look for ‘Download, delete, or make a plan for your data’

option

Step 6: Of the three available options under ‘Download, delete, or make a plan for your data’, click on ‘download your data’

Step 7: Choose the Google products to include in your archive and configure the settings for each product. These settings may include options to save text file as photos or pdfs, etc.

Step 8: Once the relevant products are selected, click on the next button available on the bottom right side to move to create archive

Step 9: Review your selection and click submit button

Before submitting the archive request, you can also set archive partition size from 2GB to up to 50GB. Archive of file size above 25GB is created in zip64 format, which is not supported by old-generation computers. However, there are third-party software that manage to extract data, even in old-generation computers.

Business Standard

Google Maps not only about navigating: Here's how it's innovating for India

The two-wheeler mode in Google maps comes to India first as 70% of all the vehicles registered in the country are two-wheelers.

Google is bringing in India-specific features on Google Maps to address unique challenges and opportunities, a senior company official said.

"Google Maps is not just about navigating from point A to B. We have been building for India, addressing the unique challenges and opportunities, with the sole aim of making Google maps more comprehensive, accurate and reliable," Google Maps for India, Program Manager, Anal Ghosh said.

Ghosh talked about innovating features for India specifically.

The two-wheeler mode in Google maps comes to India first as 70 per cent of all the vehicles registered in the country are two wheelers, he added.

"Two-wheeler mode in maps shows trip routes that use shortcuts not accessible to cars, buses and trucks. It also provides customized traffic and arrival time estimations," he said.

Google Maps' transit feature provides details on trains, bus and metro routes. It shows schedules for roughly 12,000 Indian railways trains, apart from updated public transport information for bus and metro routes.

"We are working closely with the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. We have been working with them to add public toilets (on google maps) across different cities in the country," Ghosh said.

The company has added public toilets on google maps in partnership with the government, the company said in a statement.

"We have launched real time buses in two cities--Kolkata and Surat. We are working to see how we can extend it to other cities as well," he added.

Article Source BS