Google Assistant Rolls Out in Waze

Continued better integration of Google methods within their Assistant.

The Google Assistant is now available in Waze
Austin Chang
Director, Google Assistant

Think about the last time you were stuck in traffic—the minutes you spent staring at a long line of red taillights probably didn't feel productive. The Assistant can already help with navigation in Google Maps, so it’s easier to search for places along your route or add a new stop while you’re on the go. And starting to roll out today in the U.S., you can get help from the Assistant in Waze on Android phones in English.   .... " 

Waze Gets Voice Controls

Voice expanding into other hands-free applications.

Navigation app gets the Google treatment with ‘OK Waze’ voice controls
By Christian de Looper   in DigitalTrends ...

GPS Navigation in Tunnels

Navigation via Waze, but only in tunnels with Waze beacon support.    " .... Waze worked with Bluvision to create custom beacon hardware designed to suit moving vehicles and solve historic, tunnel-specific location challenges. This makes Waze the first navigation app to accurately route drivers, in real time, as they navigate through tunnels where Waze Beacons are installed. ... " 

Google Building a Matrix?

In Adage:

What could the Alphatrix look like?

If Alphabet has its way, in a few years, we'll be living in connected homes intelligently powered by Google Home wearing Google VR headsets on our faces. We'll swap those out for Google Glass-like augmented reality devices when we leave the house. We'll wear connected clothing with built-into gestural controls powered by Google's Project Jacquard. We'll hop into self-driving cars powered by Android Auto. Waze will shift from monitoring traffic patterns to determining them.

Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs hints that it will soon be building connected cities from scratch. Imagine cars, traffic lights, parking spots, moving sidewalks, restaurants, retailers, hospitals and homes all instantly and harmoniously choreographed into one seamlessly orchestrated, um, matrix. Healthcare IT News has even suggested that Google Cloud Machine Learning could be used for "population health management" (maybe we will become batteries after all). ..... "

Waze Making us Think Like Ants in Traffic

Ants avoiding traffic. Reminds me of swarming algorithms for tracking or searching.  Considered it in warehouses.   Have used Waze from time to time but have never had it direct me 'algorithmically'.    Doubt if many people do.  I do think this might be just the thing for self driving cars.    Once people trusted the swarm.

Attempting to Define the Enterprise in 2020

Good thoughts.  How exactly things like wearables will fit into the enterprise of 2020 is difficult to say. Obvious for specific focused applications, like machine maintenance, but for the typical knowledge worker?    Analytics will grow quickly in breadth and depth, it will ingest Big Data. There will also Cognitive automation doing prediction.   IoT also will start, has already started, with narrow applications but has huge industrial and even consumer product implications.

How Wearables, Analytics and the IoT Will Redefine the Enterprise of 2020 .... by Daniel Gutierrez

New technology like wearable computing, mobile apps, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and data analytics are beginning to influence all aspects of our lives. As a consumer, it can feel like your applications are always a step ahead of you. Use navigation app Waze at a certain time of day, and it knows you are heading from the office to home, pre-populating the route. ...

This pervasive connectivity, and abundance of information about users, places, and things play a pivotal role in creating highly contextual and efficient experiences. In the case of smart apps, the experience begins 30 seconds before the user taps it — it knows what the user is looking for before they do.... " 

Waze as Panopticon

In the New Yorker.   Google subsidiary, social driving App Waze is sharing its data with Los Angeles.  Data driving and pattern improvement and intelligence.   How is this like Bentham's Panopticon?  What are the implications?

" ....  The L.A.-Waze partnership is, at least in theory, an initial step toward allowing the city’s planners and engineers to regain a healthier role in mediating the kinds of longstanding cross-town conflicts that Waze has renewed and amplified. Whether the deal will help to resolve fundamental long-term issues related to the city’s growth and inadequate infrastructure is another matter. It’s even still up for question whether improved data-sharing will improve conditions in the short run. .. " 

Wix as Easy Internet Presence

After mentioning the startup Waze, recently acquired by Google, I was sent a note to take a look at the startup Wix.  I was intrigued by their description of it as a means of constructing low cost web presence.   A mix of blog and site and marketing presence with advertising clout.

" ... Adding to the novelty of Wix's IPO is what the company actually does. Its model is similar to Squarespace, Weebly, and even WordPress. Wix offers web hosting and drag-and-drop website design for a clientele, primarily small businesspeople, who don't want to deal with hiring a web designer or the messiness of hand-coding HTML and Javascript. It even offer its services on a freemium model--users can put their sites online for free, although they'll include advertisements for Wix's services baked into the home pages. Wix has tens of millions of users, but its still small potatoes compared to hosting giants GoDaddy and DreamHost, neither of which has filed for an IPO yet.mplemented across homes; .... " 

Will take a closer look.

Crowdsourcing Maps?

Waze, now part of Google maps,  also made me thing of this, at least in outsourcing the metadata about the maps.  Can maps be crowdsourced?

Waze and Google Together

Was an early user of Waze, which did some very interesting things with social car travel.   Intriqued about how Google bought them for $1 Billion.  Now the US FTC has decided not to interfere. Looking forward to an integration with Google Maps.