Google in Process Of Testing "Study Kit" Apps To Collect Health Data

Google has decided to make its Baseline Study public with the Study Kit testing phase.

Latest Google news is that the company has announced that Study Kit is in the testing process before it releases. Last year in July, the search engine giant announced the idea of Baseline Study. It is a “moonshot” which involves the collection and analysis of diagnostics coming from the people in order to paint a “what it means to be healthy” picture utilizing that data. While this started as a pilot which was limited to the students of Duke University and Stanford University, with 175 participants in July 2014. However, it is reported that the company has decided to take this project further and will launch it in this year, a bigger launch it would be.

In this regard, Google news reports that it has been testing the “Study Kit”, the very first app which shall be used to collect the data. The Study Kit shall be available in the form of Android and iOS apps and also as Chrome extension. This all is available only to the limited number of participants included in the Baseline pilot and is not public yet.

One of the search engine giant’s spokesperson expressed that, “an app is one route we’re considering and some of our pilot participants are testing this early version.”

These apps included in the Study Kit were introduced in the end of March but people couldn’t understand anything about them.

Some of the people thought that Study Kit was an answer to the Research Kit by Apple, an open source project. This project lets the nonprofits in medical and other companies setup the research projects. Such as on Parkinson’s disease or asthma. In this way, the consumers will be able to upload data to the projects with the help of their Apple devices. This can be called the re-imagination of a research lab. However, the ambition for the company’s Baseline Study is at the same time, more complex and more singular sounding.

One aspect that is clear is that at such an early stage of the project, Google wishes to stay away from the idea that this project is connected to the wider business objectives and interests of the company such as mobile, advertising, search and connected home and its products, payments and what so ever the product its team could think of in the next years.  

The tech giant points out in the two page description which highlights the intervention of making the project that it is “a contribution to science; it’s not intended to generate a new product at Google.” Baseline will be overseen by the independent boards that shall look after the process in which the data is used and also assure that it remains anonymous.

Google Photos Introduced As An App, Breaks Free Of Google+

Google has begun its venture at I/O conference in San Francisco. It introduced Google Photos as a separate app for all devices.

Latest Google news is regarding the revamp of service pertaining to photo-sharing, Google Photos which had been in rumors for a long time. The revamp was announced by the search engine giant at I/O developer conference being held in San Francisco today. Isn’t this a killer feature? Users have now the ability to back-up the photos and videos in full resolution, approximately up to 16MP for the photos and for videos it shall be 1080p, on Google’s cloud, for free. This service is planned to roll out to the iOS, Android and web users from today, as per the company.

The option for free storage makes sense for the people that have cameras with point-and-shoot and also lets the user keep one copy of the photos that are good for typical printing and needs regarding photo-sharing. However, the users with DSLR cameras or the ones who wish to store the videos and photos in the original sizes have the choice to go for a different plan which taps into the user’s Google Account which is of 15 GB in storage. This had been available before, and now the storage quota can be increased for free, as per the need.

For some time, we all had been hearing about the Google breaking out the Photos from Google+, where it had been more like a feature within the social networking platform which was huge, instead of being a standalone product. Google news reports that with the Photos being re-launched, which shall be available from all the devices, the company wished to provide the users with a way to securely and privately backup the photos and also share them from only one destination.

This app is said to also highlight the company’s capabilities regarding machine learning which are improved as compared to when it was only a part of Google+. There are a lot of users which were not aware that they were able to search their Google+ photos for places, persons or things. However, the new app has made this ability more visible in its UI.

Anil Sabharwal, the Photos director explained, “Google Photos can automatically sort photos based on the people and places that matter in your life.” He also expressed that this information is private and complete secure.

The feature means that the user will have the ability to find the specific photos easily, be it kid’s birthday, the beach vacation, or the dog, and etc. It will happen without being asked to organize or tag pictures in albums.

More importantly, this is considered to be an update on Google+’s “auto awesome” feature, however with more improvised UI.