Covid-19 Maps

29

September

2020

5/5 (1)

You are planning to drive to The Hague for a job interview, so you start Google Maps for the estimated time of arrival and traffic data. More than one billion people use google maps on a daily base. Many companies are affected by Covid-19 and are forced to change their way of working or entire business models. One company, Covid-19 has affected, is Google. Google has been forced to not only change how it predicts traffic in Google Maps but also add features to google Maps.

For the past 13 years, Google Maps predicted the traffic based on a combination of live traffic data and historical traffic patterns. They used years of information about the weather, potential accidents and roads along your route to predict the estimated time of arrival. But now with 50% global traffic drop after different lockdowns around the world, that method isn’t accurate anymore. Google now changed its models to prioritize more recent data from the last 2 to 4 weeks instead of  the older traffic data accumulated over the past 13 years and is partnering with Deepmind to make the ETA’s more accurate. Deepmind is an AI research based company.

Not only was Google forced to change its model to predict traffic and the estimated time of arrival, but it has added new features to Google Maps as well. Google maps has added different features to highlight Covid-19 case counts and outbreaks. The new feature will show the user a seven-day average for Covid-19 cases for the map area that the user is searching for. It will also show whether it is trending downward or upward. The density of each area’s outbreak will be color-coded
for every country in Google Maps. And all the data shown will be based on information from for example Johns Hopkins University, the New York Times and Wikipedia. These sources get their data from public health organizations and state and local health agencies or hospitals.

With this new feature Google wants to inform the users about the Covid-19 cases and outbreaks so that their customers can make more informed decisions about where to go and if they still want to go. Google hopes this feature will help to prevent people from going to places with high cases of Covid-19 and to prevent the further increase of cases.

References:

  1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/09/23/google-maps-will-now-display-coronavirus-outbreaks-and-cases/#712e586e7ad4
  2. https://blog.google/products/maps/navigate-safely-new-covid-data-google-maps/
  3. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/03/covid-19-forced-google-maps-to-change-how-it-predicts-traffic.html
  4. https://deepmind.com

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Just wave to pay?

29

September

2020

5/5 (1)

Covid-19 is taking back control over our society with increasing daily infections. We thought the hard part was over but we are now in the second Covid-19 wave. New measures have been taken and companies are having difficulties adopting to these measures and the social distancing. In the era of Covid-19, different companies are trying to use technology to find solutions to navigate this pandemic.

Amazon, known for its unusual inventions like Alexa and the Amazon Go stores, introduced a new biometric technology called Amazon One. Amazon One allows shoppers to pay at stores when they walk in the or when they check out by only placing their palm of their hand over a scanning device. To use this payment option for the first time, the customer has to scan their palm and connect it to their payment card at a terminal. After that, the customers can use their palm to pay. As easy as said. To make the system as accurate as possible, the camera in the scanner takes multiple images of the fine lines and ridges of the palm of the customers hand and captures some not visible details, such as veins. This feature will first be only available at two Amazon Go stores in Seattle. But Amazon plans to add it to more Amazon Go stores and eventually sell it to other retailers, offices and stadiums in the future.Photo-2-630x473

This is a perfect timing for Amazon as we are living in times where social distancing and contact free payment technology is extremely convenient. Customers may find this contact-free payment technology appealing and easy. But are customers willing to hand over biometric data? Dilip Kumar, Amazon’s vice president of physical retail and technology, said the company is not storing any information and all palm images are encrypted and stored online. Another Amazon spokesperson said the company will not use the transaction information for Amazon advertising of other purposes. But will this really protect the customers privacy?  It’s true that a contact free payment method is more attractive now, during the pandemic. But new payment methods often face adoption challenges. And now especially with the biometric tracking posing a lot of privacy concerns.

Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint tech and its Face ID face tech was also a crazy idea and had a lot of critics, but most customers use it now at a daily base. Would you use this new payment technology? Or do you just prefer to pay the old fashioned way?

References:

  1. https://digitalstrategy.rsm.nl//2020/09/26/how-covid-19-is-speeding-up-disruption-in-the-film-industry/
  2. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/29/tech/amazon-one-palm-payment/index.html
  3. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/29/21492351/amazon-one-hand-scan-payments-palm-checkout-whole-foods

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