Category "notizie dai blog"

In a natural disaster or emergency, every second counts. For example, when it comes to earthquakes, studies show that more than 50% of injuries can be prevented if users receive an early warning, and have the critical seconds needed to get to safety. That’s why last year, we launched the Android Earthquake Alerts System, which uses sensors in Android smartphones to detect earthquakes around the world. The free system provides near-instant information to Google Search about local seismic events when you search “Earthquake near me.”

Today we’re announcing an expansion of the Android Earthquake Alerts System that uses both the detection and alerts capabilities, bringing these alerts to Android users in countries that don’t have early warning alert systems. We’re introducing the Android Earthquake Alerts System in Greece and New Zealand, where Android users will receive automatic early warning alerts when there is an earthquake in their area. Users who do not wish to receive these alerts can turn this off in device settings.

We launched alerting in August 2020, in partnership with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and powered by ShakeAlert®, which made alerts available for Android users in California. This feature recently expanded to users in Oregon and will be rolling out in Washington this May. 

Early warning alerts in New Zealand and Greece work by using the accelerometers built into most Android smartphones to detect seismic waves that indicate an earthquake might be happening. If the phone detects shaking that it thinks may be an earthquake, it sends a signal to our earthquake detection server, along with a coarse location of where the shaking occurred. The server then takes this information from many phones to figure out if an earthquake is happening, where it is and what its magnitude is.

New Zealand and Greece will be the first countries to take advantage of both the detection and alert capabilities of the Android Earthquake Alerts System. Through this system, we hope to provide people with the advance notice they need to stay safe.

Globally, skin conditions affect about 2 billion people. Diagnosing and treating these skin conditions is a complex process that involves specialized training. Due to a shortage of dermatologists and long wait times to see one, most patients first seek care from non-specialists.

Typically, a clinician examines the affected areas and the patient’s medical history before arriving at a list of potential diagnoses, sometimes known as a “differential diagnosis”. They then use this information to decide on the next step such as a test, observation or treatment. 

To see if artificial intelligence (AI) could improve the process, we conducted a randomized retrospective study that was published today in JAMA Network Open. The study examined if a research tool we developed could help non-specialists clinicians — such as primary care physicians and nurse practitioners — more accurately interpret skin conditions. The tool uses Google’s deep learning system (that you can learn more about in Nature Medicine) to interpret de-identified images and medical history and provide a list of matching skin conditions.

In the study, 40 non-specialist clinicians interpreted de-identified images of patients’ skin conditions from a telemedicine dermatology service, identified the condition, and made recommendations such as biopsy or referral to a dermatologist. Each clinician examined over 1,000 cases — clinicians used the AI-powered tool for half of the cases and didn’t have access to the assistive AI tool in the other half.

When my wife and I were flying home from a trip to France a few years ago, our seatmate had just spent a few months exploring the French countryside and staying in small inns. When he learned that I worked on Google Translate, he got excited. He told me Translate’s conversation mode helped him chat with his hosts about family, politics, culture and more. Thanks to Translate, he said, he connected more deeply with people around him while in France.

The passenger I met isn’t alone. Google Translate on Android hit one billion installs from the Google Play Store this March, and each one represents a story of people being able to better connect with one another. By understanding 109 languages (and counting!), Translate enables conversation and communication between millions of people which otherwise would have been impossible. And Translate itself has gone through countless changes on the path to one billion installs. Here’s how it has evolved so far.

November 2015: 300+ million

As it approached 300 million installs, Translate improved in two major ways. First, revamping Translate’s conversation mode enabled two people to converse with each other despite speaking different languages, helping people in their everyday lives, as featured in the video From Syria to Canada.

In my previous life as a startup entrepreneur, I found that life was more manageable when I was able to stay organized — a task that’s easier said than done. At Google Registry, we’ve been keeping an eye out for productivity and organization tools, and we’re sharing a few of our favorites with you today, just in time for spring cleaning.

.new shortcuts to save you time

Since launching .new shortcuts last year, we’ve seen a range of companies use .new domains to help their users get things done faster on their websites. 

• If your digital workspace looks anything like mine, you’ll love these shortcuts: action.new creates a new Workona workspace to organize your Chrome tabs, and task.new helps keep track of your to-dos and projects in Asana.

• Bringing together notes and ideas can make it easier to get work done: coda.new creates a new Coda document to collect all your team’s thoughts, and jam.new starts a new collaborative Google Jamboard session. 

• Spring cleaning wouldn’t be complete without a tidy cupboard: With sell.new you can create an eBay listing in minutes and free up some closet space. And if you own or manage a business, stay on top of your orders and keep services flowing by giving the shortcut — invoice.new — a try. 

Visit whats.new to browse all the .new shortcuts, including our Spring Spotlights section.

Six startups helping you increase productivity

We recently sat down with six startups to learn how they’re helping their clients be more productive. From interviewing and hiring, to managing teamwork, calendars and meetings, check out these videos to learn how you can make the most of your time:

Arc.dev connects developers with companies hiring remotely, helping them find their next opportunity. 

The founders of byteboard.dev, who came through Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for experimental projects, thought that technical interviews were inefficient. So they redesigned them from the ground up to be more fair and relevant to real-world jobs. 

To run more efficient meetings, try fellow.app. Streamlining agendas, note taking, action items and decision recording can help your team build great meeting habits.

Friday.app helps you organize your day so you can stay focused while sharing and collaborating with remote teammates. 

Manage your time productively using inmotion.app, a browser extension that puts your time on auto-pilot.

No time to take your pet to the groomers? Find a groomer who will come to you and treat your pet to an in-home grooming session with pawsh.app.

Whether you’re a pet parent, a busy professional or just looking to sell your clutter online, we hope these tools help you organize and save time this season. 

To get things done with the Google Assistant, it needs to understand you – it has to both recognize the words you’re saying, and also know what you mean. It should adapt to your way of talking, not require you to say exactly the right words in the right order.

Understanding spoken language is difficult because it’s so contextual, and varies so much from person to person. And names can bring up other language hiccups — for instance, some names that are spelled the same are pronounced differently. It’s this kind of complexity that makes perfectly understanding the way we speak so difficult. This is something we’re working on with Assistant, and we have a few new improvements to share.

Teach Google to recognize unique names 

Names matter, and it’s frustrating when you’re trying to send a text or make a call and Google Assistant mispronounces or simply doesn’t recognize a contact. We want Assistant to accurately recognize and pronounce people’s names as often as possible, especially those that are less common.

Starting over the next few days, you can teach Google Assistant to enunciate and recognize names of your contacts the way you pronounce them. Assistant will listen to your pronunciation and remember it, without keeping a recording of your voice. This means Assistant will be able to better understand you when you say those names, and also be able to pronounce them correctly. The feature will be available in English and we hope to expand to more languages soon.

A good conversation is all about context

Assistant’s timers are a popular tool, and plenty of us set more than one of them at the same time. Maybe you’ve got a 10-minute timer for dinner going at the same time as another to remind the kids to start their homework in 20 minutes. You might fumble and stop mid sentence to correct how long the timer should be set for, or maybe you don’t use the exact same phrase to cancel it as you did to create it. Like in any conversation, context matters and Assistant needs to be flexible enough to understand what you’re referring to when you ask for help.

To help with these kinds of conversational complexities, we fully rebuilt Assistant’s NLU models so it can now more accurately understand context while also improving its “reference resolution” — meaning it knows exactly what you’re trying to do with a command.  This upgrade uses machine learning technology powered by state-of-the-art BERT, a technology we invented in 2018 and first brought to Search that makes it possible to process words in relation to all the other words in a sentence, rather than one-by-one in order. Because of these improvements, Assistant can now respond nearly 100 percent accurately to alarms and timer tasks. And over time, we’ll bring this capability to other use cases, so Assistant can learn to better understand you.

As vaccines become more available, many people are eager to start planning vacations again. We’re seeing more searches for travel-related destination information — like travel restrictions by country and where to travel, which both recently hit all-time highs. If you’re ready to plan a trip, here are a few updates to keep you informed on the latest travel guidance and explore potential destinations.

Stay up to date on travel guidance

When you look for travel information like flights, hotels or things to do, Search will let you know if there are COVID-19 related travel advisories or restrictions for your destination. Now, we’re adding more travel restriction details, like whether you’ll need to quarantine upon arrival or provide proof of test results or immunization records. 

You can now also track travel advisories or restrictions for your destination and get email updates. If you are signed into your Google account, you can toggle “Receive an email if this guidance changes.” You’ll be notified when restrictions are added, lifted or reduced. These updates are country-specific, with state-specific information available in the United States.