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August 1, 2022

How Apple is empowering people with their health information

July 20, 2022

UPDATE

How Apple is empowering people with their health information

A new report shares the ways Apple products are helping users, developers, and health organizations advance personal health, research, and care

Today Apple shared a new report that offers a snapshot of the ways Apple products are empowering people to be at the center of their health, and acting as an intelligent guardian for their health and safety. Users, developers, medical institutions, and health organizations around the world are using Apple devices, features, and APIs to break down barriers between people and their health information, all while keeping privacy in mind.

Apple’s efforts to advance health primarily fall into two categories, which are detailed in two corresponding sections of the report. The first section describes Apple’s focus on personal health and fitness features on Apple Watch and iPhone that offer actionable, science-based insights and help protect users’ health and safety. The second section shares Apple’s work with the medical community to support research and care. Both sections — along with an Extensions and Spotlights section at the report’s end — include a variety of examples of third-party developers, health institutions, and organizations innovating with Apple technology.

“We believe passionately that technology can play a role in improving health outcomes and encouraging people to live a healthier day, and we are excited about the many ways users are benefiting from our health and fitness features, and by the ways third-party developers, institutions, and organizations are using Apple technology to advance health and science,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. “Our vision for the future is to continue to create science-based technology that equips people with even more information and acts as an intelligent guardian for their health, so they’re no longer passengers on their own health journey. Instead, we want people to be firmly in the driver’s seat with meaningful, actionable insights.”

Empowering Users on Their Personal Health Journeys

Since the release of the Health app in 2014 and Apple Watch in 2015, Apple has introduced a wide array of innovative health and fitness features, with the goal to provide users with easy-to-understand, meaningful insights so they can be empowered to live a healthier life. The report outlines the four pillars of Apple’s health and fitness features: 1) giving users a central and secure place to store and view their health data in the Health app, 2) offering features that enable Apple Watch to act as an intelligent guardian for users’ health, 3) offering features that help users improve their everyday health and fitness for better health outcomes, and 4) fueling innovative third-party health and fitness apps with developer tools.

With the release of iOS 16 and watchOS 9 this fall, Apple Watch and iPhone will offer features that focus on 17 areas of health and fitness, from heart health and sleep to mobility and women’s health, and more. Over the years, customers of all ages have shared how these health and fitness features have, in their own words, changed their lives. Several share their stories in the report, including customers who have discovered serious heart conditions, received emergency assistance after a fall, or dramatically improved their health through daily activity.

Users can now store over 150 different types of health data from Apple Watch, iPhone, and connected third-party apps and devices in one central view in the Health app, in addition to available health records data from connected institutions in the US, UK, and Canada. There are now tens of thousands of apps on the App Store that use the HealthKit API, which allows developers to incorporate data users choose to share from the Health app to offer innovative health and fitness experiences, with rigorous privacy and data security protocols. The report spotlights examples of globally popular HealthKit-enabled apps like Nike Run Club, Calm, and WeightWatchers, plus an increasing number of HealthKit-enabled apps — including Qardio heart health and Withings Health Mate — that use connected accessories to allow users to track and monitor even more aspects of their health.

Supporting the Health Ecosystem by Collaborating with the Medical Community

Apple believes the strongest health innovations are possible only through direct collaboration with the medical community, and the report describes four categories of this collaboration: 1) building tools to enable researchers to make new scientific discoveries, 2) helping strengthen the physician-patient relationship with meaningful data, 3) collaborating with health organizations to promote healthy lifestyles at large scale, and 4) supporting public health and government initiatives.

The ResearchKit framework gives researchers the opportunity to recruit study participants from a large user base of iPhone and Apple Watch users, and for participants to choose to share health data to help advance science. Through the Research app, Apple has collaborated with Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the American Heart Association, and the University of Michigan and World Health Organization to offer users across the US the opportunity to participate in three first-of-their-kind research studies: the Apple Women’s Health Study, the Apple Heart and Movement Study, and the Apple Hearing Study. Early learnings from the studies appear in the report, as well as information on other studies Apple has supported, like the Heart Failure Study with University Health Network and the Digital Mental Health Study with UCLA.

Health Records on iPhone in the Health app, along with apps and devices developed by third parties using Apple developer tools, help strengthen physician-patient relationships with meaningful data. Health Records is now available to patients at over 800 institutions across over 12,000 locations, making it easy for patients to see their available medical data from multiple providers in the Health app whenever they choose. Research has shown that connecting patients with their care teams remotely results in better outcomes with the Corrie Health app, UVA Health care at home programs, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs loaning Apple devices to veterans to connect them with their VA healthcare services. Care teams are better able to help patients with chronic conditions at Ochsner Health System and NHS Sunderland, and remote monitoring is reducing the cost and length of stays in the neonatal intensive care units at Odense University Hospital and the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital, where premature babies can come home with their parents but stay connected to care teams remotely.

Health organizations and companies around the world — including Paceline in the US; Vitality Active Rewards in the US, the UK, South Africa, and Australia; and LumiHealth in Singapore — have collaborated with Apple to integrate Apple Watch into their wellness programs. There are currently 55 programs running in 17 countries with over a million users taking part in an incentive program leveraging Apple Watch. These programs have been successful in increasing participants’ physical activity levels and uptake of health behaviors, such as aiming for more regular sleep patterns, focusing on mindfulness, and swapping in healthier food options.

Finally, the report highlights Apple’s partnerships with clinicians and local governments on unique ways to support their crucial work to promote public health, including building apps and features during the COVID-19 health crisis.

Grounded in Science and Designed Around Privacy

All of Apple’s health and fitness features have been developed with two overarching principles:

Rigorous scientific validation processes: Apple’s in-house clinicians are deeply involved in the product development process, and work hand-in-hand with engineers and product designers. This, combined with collaboration with experts from leading research institutions, ensures that products and features are grounded in science and user-friendly.

Privacy at the center: Privacy is a core value at Apple, and data privacy is critical for sensitive health data. Apple’s health and fitness features put users’ privacy at the center, and provide users with protections, including transparency and control. When iPhone is locked with a passcode, Touch ID, or Face ID, all health and fitness data in the Health app — other than Medical ID — is encrypted, and any health data synced to iCloud is encrypted both in transit and on Apple servers. And if a user has a recent version of watchOS and iOS with the default two-factor authentication and a passcode, their health and activity data will be stored in a way that Apple can’t read it. Health app data is never shared with any third party without the user’s explicit permission, and if users decide to share their health data, the Health app provides users with granular control over the types of data they share and who they share it with. They can review and manage permissions at any time.

Press Contacts

Clare Varellas

Apple

[email protected]

(408) 862-7311

Zaina Khachadourian

Apple

[email protected]

(408) 862-4327

Apple Media Helpline

[email protected]

(408) 974-2042

May 25, 2022

Waymap Starts Guiding Blind People Through Washington Subway Stations

A new mobile app designed to help visually impaired and blind people use public transport launched this week at three Washington Metro stations.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) partnered with UK-based Waymap(Opens in a new window) to bring audio navigation to the capital’s Brookland, Silver Spring, and Braddock Road subway stations.

Once the venue and route maps are downloaded to your handset, Waymap doesn’t require any external signals: no GPS, no Bluetooth, no mobile bars. Instead, the free app uses sensors available in a smartphone to measure movement, direction, and elevation and provide door-to-door, step-by-step instructions.

Waymap will deploy in phases, with the goal of reaching at least 30 D.C. train and nearly 1,000 bus stops by September, according to Reuters(Opens in a new window), which tipped an “early 2023” date for a Metro-wide rollout.

“Our goal is to provide our customers with reliable service,” Christiaan Blake, WMATA managing director of accessibility services, said at a Tuesday press conference, as reported by DCist(Opens in a new window). “It’s not always easy but each day we’re making strides towards that goal.”

The app works by feeding directions auditorily through a free and downloadable app, regardless of Wi-Fi access or cellular signal strength. It’s accurate up to three feet from a destination, and instructs users on exactly how many steps to take and how many degrees to turn, while adding contextual information.

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“When I lost my sight, I lost the ability to explore the world around me, and when I founded Waymap I wanted it to be more than just an app,” founder Tom Pey said this week. “I wanted it to be a community of people who could come together, supported by technology.

Waymap runs on iOS (with an iPhone 7 or later) and Android (for Galaxy 8 and more recent, or Google Pixel 3a and above). It was successfully trialed on London’s Arriva Rail(Opens in a new window), and several stations in New York City’s subway system are piloting the technology(Opens in a new window).

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October 23, 2021

Google Meet Hosts Can Now Mute People for As Long As They Want

Video calls are often interrupted by people coughing into their microphones, carrying on conversations with someone close to them, or speaking over each other. No longer: Google Meet’s latest feature allows meeting hosts to disable other people’s audio and video feeds and, perhaps even more importantly, prevent those people from re-enabling the feeds themselves.

Google said this feature will be available to all Google Workspace, G Suite Basic, and G Suite Business customers. It started to make its way to Rapid Release domains (which receive feature updates sooner than other domains) on Oct. 21 and is expected to take up to 15 days to roll out. Scheduled Release domains will be subject to the same 15-day rollout starting on Nov. 1.

Google Meet's host control screen

The ability to mute individual users and prevent them from unmuting themselves will apply to Google Meet’s desktop client as well as its mobile applications. Smartphone users also can’t try to work around the feature by using a version of the app that doesn’t support it; Google said they won’t be allowed to join a room where this feature is enabled until they update their software.

This new feature is part of Google’s continued efforts to improve Google Meet—often by making it easier for meeting organizers to maintain some semblance of order in their calls. Hosts started to receive the ability to mute every desktop user in a “room” back in February, for example, and Google later extended support for those controls to Google Meet’s mobile apps as well.

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Google Meet wasn’t the only service updated to make focusing, whether it’s on a person who’s speaking or an important task, a little easier. Google also introduced a new Google Calendar entry type called Focus time that, “similar to the Out of office event type, has a different appearance on your calendar and includes the option to automatically decline conflicting events.”

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October 17, 2021

Diagnostics | Free Full-Text | Features of Mobile Apps for People with Autism in a Post COVID-19 Scenario: Current Status and Recommendations for Apps Using AI

The new ‘normal’ defined during the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to re-assess how people with special needs thrive in these unprecedented conditions, such as those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These changing/challenging conditions have instigated us to revisit the usage of telehealth services to improve the quality of life for people with ASD. This study aims to identify mobile applications that suit the needs of such individuals. This work focuses on identifying features of a number of highly-rated mobile applications (apps) that are designed to assist people with ASD, specifically those features that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. In this study, 250 mobile apps have been retrieved using keywords such as autism, autism AI, and autistic. Among 250 apps, 46 were identified after filtering out irrelevant apps based on defined elimination criteria such as ASD common users, medical staff, and non-medically trained people interacting with people with ASD. In order to review common functionalities and features, 25 apps were downloaded and analysed based on eye tracking, facial expression analysis, use of 3D cartoons, haptic feedback, engaging interface, text-to-speech, use of Applied Behaviour Analysis therapy, Augmentative and Alternative Communication techniques, among others were also deconstructed. As a result, software developers and healthcare professionals can consider the identified features in designing future support tools for autistic people. This study hypothesises that by studying these current features, further recommendations of how existing applications for ASD people could be enhanced using AI for (1) progress tracking, (2) personalised content delivery, (3) automated reasoning, (4) image recognition, and (5) Natural Language Processing (NLP). This paper follows the PRISMA methodology, which involves a set of recommendations for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

August 3, 2021

Millions of Young People Await Career Opportunities in Mobile Application Development

Our lives are rapidly digitizing and entering mobile. Business models in businesses are also transforming at a dizzying pace. Developing mobile applications for Android and iOS phones, data science and analytics, mobile marketing-sales, mobile education, mobile gaming, mobile shopping, mobile health, mobile therapy, mobile etc. Applications penetrate into every area of our lives. Today, the number of smartphones has exceeded 3,5 billion, and career opportunities await millions of young people in the field of mobile application development.

Evaluating the developments in the field of mobile application, TTT Global Group Chairman of the Board Dr. Akin Arslan said:

“According to Gartner’s reports, as of 2021, there is 87% Android and 13% iOS separation in the mobile phone market. While there is a balance of nearly 50% between iOS and Android in the smartphone market in the US, Canada and the UK, 87% of smartphones worldwide have Android operating systems and 13% have iOS operating systems. In Turkey, the ratio of phones with iOS operating system is around 14,45% in the smartphone market. In the mobile phone market, the iOS-Android war continues. On the other hand, while 2020 billion applications were downloaded from AppleStore and GooglePlay in 218, this figure is expected to reach 2021 billion in 250. The world inside phones is growing exponentially. Every month, hundreds of thousands of new applications are uploaded to platforms called “stores”. You look at a new application that did not exist in the previous year, it has reached over 400 million downloads. As our lives quickly slip into pockets, tens of millions of qualified mobile software developers, data scientists, analysts, designers will be needed. In this process, it does not matter which department the young people graduate from, whether they are university graduates or not. As long as he has mathematical acumen, understands the culture of algorithms, is willing to learn and is inclined to Apps as a user. And of course, it is necessary to have sufficient knowledge of English to understand what you read well and to use open source libraries effectively. In short, when hiring people in the next 10 years, we will not look at their university degrees, where they graduated from and from which department, it seems that it will not matter much in the choice.”

Young people aged 15-25 are waiting for a great career opportunity

Underlining that great career opportunities await young people between the ages of 15 and 25, TTT Global Group Chairman of the Board Dr. Akin Arslan said:

“Focus yourself on being a mobile developer. Here you will have two main crossroads: Either you will develop an Android-based application (Kotlin, Java etc.), or you will progress on iOS (Swift). Hybrid models are still far from providing solutions to complex application needs. On these subjects, it is possible to access thousands of training courses on the internet, free of charge and at very low prices. YoutubePlatforms like , GitHub, Medium are full of application examples and experiences. Even if you don’t work anywhere, you can start developing applications with the imaginary-real projects of your choice and write your own story. A young person who works hard and perseveres can reach a very good level in Turkey in just 1-1,5 years. It can reach a net monthly income of 2,5-3 thousand TL in 8-10 years, and if it can find a place for itself in bright projects among the right teams, it can meet with a monthly income of 5-12 thousand TL in 25 years. He can be a part of teams abroad and open to the world. For example, over 5 thousand new applications from Turkey are placed in the stores every month. Everyone is looking for a qualified developer to whom they can entrust their work. While we employ developers in our projects, we don’t care about which university they graduated from. Whatever the field we intend to use it (iOS, Android, Backend, Frontend, UX/UI, Artificial Intelligence Coding), we are interested in its competence and hardware in that field. We look at core English proficiency, dedication and willingness to learn. Also, we prefer not to start out as much as possible with someone who has changed 3 jobs in 2 years. However, first of all, we give a chance to our young people who tried their own startups, wrote an application and placed it on the store, but did not get the results they expected. We find his experiences very valuable,” he said.

May 30, 2021

Apple previews powerful software updates designed for people with disabilities

Cupertino, California Apple today announced powerful software features designed for people with mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive disabilities. These next-generation technologies showcase Apple’s belief that accessibility is a human right and advance the company’s long history of delivering industry-leading features that make Apple products customizable for all users.

Later this year, with software updates across all of Apple’s operating systems, people with limb differences will be able to navigate Apple Watch using AssistiveTouch; iPad will support third-party eye-tracking hardware for easier control; and for blind and low vision communities, Apple’s industry-leading VoiceOver screen reader will get even smarter using on-device intelligence to explore objects within images. In support of neurodiversity, Apple is introducing new background sounds to help minimize distractions, and for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, Made for iPhone (MFi) will soon support new bi-directional hearing aids.

Apple is also launching a new service on Thursday, May 20, called SignTime. This enables customers to communicate with AppleCare and Retail Customer Care by using American Sign Language (ASL) in the US, British Sign Language (BSL) in the UK, or French Sign Language (LSF) in France, right in their web browsers. Customers visiting Apple Store locations can also use SignTime to remotely access a sign language interpreter without booking ahead of time. SignTime will initially launch in the US, UK, and France, with plans to expand to additional countries in the future. For more information, visit apple.com/contact.

“At Apple, we’ve long felt that the world’s best technology should respond to everyone’s needs, and our teams work relentlessly to build accessibility into everything we make,” said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives. “With these new features, we’re pushing the boundaries of innovation with next-generation technologies that bring the fun and function of Apple technology to even more people — and we can’t wait to share them with our users.”

November 10, 2020

Top 10 AI-Powered Mobile Applications for People with Disabilities

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said the great philosopher Plato. This is being proven every day by technology. As people’s needs grow, researchers and scientists work on more handy and accessible technology for everyone. Where do people with disabilities come in this circle of technology? Don’t worry! They are not left behind by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about 15% of the world populations (over one billion people) have some type of disability. Technology has been opening doors for individuals with impairs since long back. For normal people, AI is just a futuristic technology, but for people with disabilities, it is the light at the end of the tunnel. Henceforth, Analytics Insight brings you the list of AI-powered applications that makes a change in the life of people with disability.

Top 10 AI-Powered Applications for People with Disability

Lookout

Lookout by Google is an accessibility mobile application for the visually impaired people. The app can narrate the immediate surroundings in real-time when the user points the camera at things. It can recognize things like animals and people, as well as walls, traffic, and other potential obstacles. The app can switch between ‘home,’ ‘work’ and ‘play’ modes to enable its algorithms to focus on environmental relevant elements. Users review the app as being much more accurate than most of its competitors and it can even read things like menu and documents.

Seeing AI

Seeing AI is a Microsoft research project that brings together the power of the cloud and AI to deliver an intelligent app, designed to help navigate the daily life of people with disability. The application narrates the world around the visually impaired people. It uses the phone camera to detail persons, objects, and textual messages. Seeing AI is sophisticated enough to scan barcodes and recognize images from other apps. It can also read documents and specifies individuals’ gender, age, emotions and actions.

RogerVoice

RogerVoice app is designed to make calls accessible and simple for the deaf community. Empowered by voice recognition technology and speed synthesis, the application helps hearing-challenged persons to call anyone and get a real-time transcription of the conversation. RogerVoice works in over a hundred languages in many countries across the globe.

Wheelmap

Wheelmap is devised to assist mobility-impaired people. Users can find wheelchair-accessible places on a virtual map of areas like restaurants, cafes, toilets, shops, cinemas, parking lots, bus stops and much more. Wheelmap is built on OpenStreetMap and everyone can enhance the data stored in this online world map by flagging locations, contributing comments, and uploading pictures.

Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Otter Voice Meeting Notes is an artificial intelligence live transcription and collaboration app for students with learning disabilities announced by Otter.ai. The application removes student’s dependency on others by enabling access to the learning environment in a way that’s most efficient for them. Otter Voice Meeting Notes transcribes voice to text in real-time and generates rich notes for meetings, in-person, remote, live or pre-recorded conversations or presentation.

Wemogee

Wemogee app was launched by Samsung for people with aphasia and other language disorders. Currently, there are more than three million people worldwide living with aphasia, a disorder that causes the loss of language capabilities. Available in English and Italian, Wemogee functions as a kind of translator between text and emojis. The application includes a library of more than 140 phrases related to basic needs and emotional expressions.

Speechify Text Reader

Speechify Text Reader is designed to help people with disabilities such as dyslexia, ADHD, and low vision. The application can also be of great use as it now helps hundreds of thousands of people to consume their reading content with ease. Speechify Text Reader turns anything into an audiobook that helps people with disability to focus and retain more info.

Be My Eyes

Be My Eyes is a mobile application that connects blind people with normal sighted volunteers to provide help via live video streaming on smartphones. Volunteers can sign up to receive notifications to video calls from visually-impaired people. Once connected through the app, volunteers can speak to their callers and see what’s in front of the visually impaired person and help them with anything from checking the milk’s expiration data to reading a street sign.

National Relay Service

The National Relay Service is a government initiative that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing and have a speech impairment to make and receive phone calls. It features various call options, such as the ability to text and read speech, speaking to a friend but reading their responses on-screen, and signing conversation over Skype to be translated by a Relay Officer.

IFTTT

IFTTT is one of the best automation apps that is of great help to people with disabilities. It helps users to set up automated actions like reading out texts loud, turning off the lights and much more. The IFTTT app will make life easier for impaired people.

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March 20, 2020

Food deliveries, online game purchases up as people stay at home during COVID-19 pandemic – Business

For Indonesians, more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic means more time playing games and ordering in food deliveries, a recent study shows.

A study by American based mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform AppsFlyer showed that downloads of food and beverage (F&B) delivery applications rose 23 percent from January to early March in Indonesia. Meanwhile, transactions from said applications rose 17 percent over the same period.

Similarly, there has also been an 11 percent increase in in-app purchases on mobile gaming applications, although downloads have fallen 12 percent.

“Since beginning work from home on Monday, I have ordered in food at least six times as of today [Thursday],” said Adiyasa, a 24 year-old 3D artist whose office in Jakarta has implemented a voluntary work from home policy since Monday.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Sunday called for social distancing, urging people to “work from home, study from home and pray from home” to slow the rapidly spreading novel coronavirus. Social distancing is a public health tool to slow transmission of an infectious disease by encouraging people to maintain physical distance from one another.

Adiyasa said he typically only used F&B delivery services about four times a week for dinner or late night snacks, as he usually bought lunch at food kiosks or restaurants around his office. However, since beginning work from home, he has begun ordering lunch.

Wait for it: Ride-hailing app drivers queue up to buy food for their customers at the Pisang Goreng Madu Bu Nanik food outlet in Tanjung Duren, West Jakarta, in October 2019. (The Jakarta Post/Arief Suhardiman)

“I’ve also exceeded my monthly budget for mobile gaming purchases,” he said, explaining he had spent Rp 143,000 (US$8.93) over the past week on in-game boosters. He said he normally only spent Rp 100,000 on mobile gaming each month.

“When I’m at the office, I don’t pay much attention to games,” he said. “But since I have more time at home, I’ve found myself playing mobile games more often.”

The booster packs, he said, could speed up some features of the games, such as gaining experience points or gold in AFK Arena — an away from keyboard strategy idle mobile game.

Under normal circumstances, Adiyasa said he would wait until the end of the day to collect the points and gold, but as he now checked the game more frequently, he wanted to speed up the game to advance.

“The lesson we can learn from the global pandemic is that even if there’s a hit to the economy, the consumer goods sector can bounce back quickly,” said AppsFlyer Asia-Pacific managing director and president Ronen Mense in a written statement on Wednesday.

He went on to say that applications that saw a significant surge in new users or purchases should enhance their security, as estimated annual losses due to mobile app fraud totalled US$1 billion in the Asia Pacific region.

AppsFlyer collected data from India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea throughout January when most of the COVID-19 cases were still confined to China and then again from February until March 2 when the coronavirus had spread to other parts of the world.

Indonesia has seen an increase in coronavirus cases since early March, prompting companies to implement work from home policies and limit business trips, on top of the President’s calls for social distancing.

As such, travel applications have seen a decrease in downloads and bookings as people cancel tickets and postpone travel. On average, bookings on travel apps have decreased 25 percent in the four countries.

“It is not surprising that travel applications have seen a decrease in transactions due to the COVID-19 spread,” said Mense.

He also called for businesses to market their products responsibly by avoiding hard selling and advised them to participate in campaigns to raise awareness about the pneumonia-like disease without sparking fear.

Data from the three other countries also show similarities with Indonesia. South Korea, one of the countries most affected by the virus, has seen a 35 percent increase in mobile gaming purchases and a 12 percent increase in F&B deliveries. Bookings on travel apps have also fallen 52 percent.

Japan saw a 40 percent increase in F&B deliveries, while travel bookings fell 28 percent. Meanwhile India, which as of Wednesday had reported a total of 151 COVID-19 cases, saw a whopping 95 percent increase in F&B deliveries, with in-app mobile gaming purchases also up 14 percent.

August 29, 2019

Winston filter promises to give people control over their online privacy

A hardware filter called Winston that users plug into their modem to protect their data has launched, in response to mounting concern over digital privacy and surveillance.

Created by US start-up Winston Privacy, the filter promises to prevent online tracking and profiling for every member of the household where it is installed, and across every device on the network.

This includes smartphones and smart-home products like connected fridges and speakers.

By scrambling, encrypting and anonymising the flow of data, Winston eliminates a raft of intrusive or annoying aspects of online browsing.

One of these is airline price bumps, where ticket prices rise after a user’s initial visit to a website to entice them into panic buying. Another is price manipulations, where retailers show different prices to different customers based on their past online behaviour.

Although there is an existing patchwork of software that can perform similar functions, Winston is different in that it is designed to be a simple, plug-and-play solution that anyone without tech knowhow can use.

It is effectively virtual private network, anti-spyware, anti-malware, firewall and ad-blocking software in one.

Users plug it in between their modem and router, and one minute after they turn it on, the device should be effective.

Winston Privacy identifies big tech companies, advertisers, data brokers, governments and hackers as parties its users would have an interest in blocking.

Founder Richard Stokes came from the ad-tech industry and started the company after watching technologies that track, mine and sell private information rise to the fore in that space.

“With every post, click and purchase, we have become the product. I didn’t agree to that, and I bet you didn’t either,” wrote Stokes in a column for Fast Company. “We need a combined political and technological solution to unwind this surveillance economy.”

In the year since the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal raised awareness among people of how their data was being collected and used, there is also appetite for such a product.

Winston raised more than US$500,000 when it launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, and is extending that with further crowdfunding via Indiegogo.

It works by routing the household’s web traffic through 20 to 30 other Winston units that are randomly selected several times each hour. This makes it impossible to correlate individual users to their IP addresses.

As well as the hardware filter, there is a software component to Winston that users access through an annual subscription.

Along with stopping surveillance, Winston blocks ads on most devices, resulting in faster load times and an up to 45 per cent drop in data usage.

Winston Privacy says its system is designed as “zero-knowledge”, meaning no-one at their company can access or sell the data of its users.

The product follows on from last year’s launch of the Helm Personal Server, created with New Deal Design, another piece of hardware designed to bring high security to home internet connections.

July 11, 2019

Second Transform 2019 AI showcase highlights people and processes

Following the morning showcase at VentureBeat’s Transform 2019 AI event, the next five companies — Mesmer, Aperture Data, Spoke, Kinetica, and Inference Solutions — took the stage this afternoon.

Mesmer

Mesmer emerged from stealth today, equipped with fully operational mobile application testing capabilities and $15 million in funding led by Intel Capital. The company employs robotic process automation (RPA) technology to perform the process of testing mobile applications more quickly and accurately than humans, but its strongest appeal is simply the fact that it obviates the need for human developers to perform the laborious and tedious tasks involved with tapping through every part and feature of their apps on multiple platforms.

Even though it’s been in stealth for the past two years, the company already has a roster of large clients and a strong revenue stream.

ApertureData

ApertureData wants to take machine learning to a new level by using a unified approach to visual data. Its solution is concerned with not just data, but metadata. This is a case of a company solving its own problem. “We could not find a unified solution that offers as rich an interface and set of functionalities that our platform does, as attested to by our customers. Any other solution required putting together an assortment of systems for metadata, image, and video serving as well as preprocessing (eg, OpenCV), and it was particularly hard to find a persistent index to perform similarity search on feature vectors,” the company told VentureBeat.

Using the open source Visual Data Management System, ApertureData offers users a clean interface, and it works with Python frameworks and has built-in support for image and video preprocessing.

Today, the company announced a beta program for the next phase of its development.

Spoke

Spoke wants to help businesses streamline their internal processes, like onboarding new employees. The company launched its AI-powered ticketing system out of beta in 2018, and today it announced new workflows to expand its offerings from ticketing to full workflows.

“The modern workplace demands fast, personalized access to knowledge and services,” said Spoke cofounder and CEO Jay Srinivasan. “The new workflows from Spoke allow support teams to help people faster without forcing people down unnecessarily complicated steps, so everyone has more time to get more things done.” Spoke works with Slack, email, and on the web to let teams across a company track progress and see results. It’s intended to break down friction points and barriers in communication and project completion across organizations.

The new capability makes it easier for companies to make not just knowledge requests, like an HR question, but also work requests, like setting up a training with the IT department.

Kinetica

Kinetica, which raised $50 million back in June 2017, provides businesses and organizations with real-time data analytics. More specifically, Kinetica’s platform combines historical data analytics, streaming data analytics, location intelligence, and artificial intelligence. It’s applicable for 5G network optimization, mitigating financial risk, and more. But with Kinetica, financial institutions can calculate risk in real time instead of, for instance, overnight. It works by applying machine learning to both streaming and historical data.

Announced today, the company is getting into the autonomous vehicle market, with the goal of helping autonomous vehicle companies achieve level 5 status.

Inference Solutions

Inference Solutions develops virtual agents for sales and service organizations. The company today announced a partnership with Pizza Hut Australia. In short, Australians who call Pizza Hut will have their call intelligently routed to either a contact center representative or a nearby Pizza Hut store location. The company also announced today that it offers WhatsApp integration through an API.