Weekly Update - March 21, 2020: COVID-19 news and updates

On this first weekend of Spring, I feel like we should be celebrating new growth and renewal. But instead I - and I imagine many of you - am hunkered down at home, practicing social distancing, and doing my best to not get infected. Of course it’s affecting tech companies as well. Most have sent their workforce home, putting a crimp in both product development and support. 

But there are a few bright spots. Many companies are offering their paid services for free, at least for the next few months. And many artists and performers are continuing to work to keep us entertained.

I’ve rounded up the latest information below. One thing that is abundantly clear: tech companies need people to keep them running smoothly. And we need each other. 

Event Updates

• If you are a Local Guide, applications for the Connect Live 2020 event are still open through March 30. They are encouraging that local groups host virtual meet-ups for the time being.
• The Google Games Developers Summit Livestream is still on for March 23. The Keynote is at 9AM Pacific Time. Subscribe to the Android Developers YouTube channel and Google Developers YouTube channel, and set reminders for the video premieres you want to be sure to catch live.
• The Game Developers Conference is rescheduled for August. Hopefully that isn’t overly optimistic.
• Google I/O is completely cancelled “in line with recent “shelter in place” orders by the local Bay Area counties.” There will not be a digital version of the conference.
• Google Cloud Next: Digital Connect, which focuses on Google’s services for businesses, is indefinitely postponed.

Free Creator Tools

• Students and teachers can get temporary at-home access to Adobe Creative Cloud.
• You can get a 90 day free trial of Affinity Designer-Photo-Publisher Suite, or purchase at 50% off.
• Canva has free templates for social posts and posters to share “coronavirus awareness” information.
• Lifehacker has a guide to accessing Microsoft Office programs for free from home.
• Hootsuite is giving free access to Hootsuite Professional plan tools until July 1st, 2020.
• You can get free remote work “nudges” from Humu.

YouTube

• You can now subscribe to get an email when YouTube announces a new COVID-19-related change.
• Because of disruptions to YouTube’s workforce, it is temporarily relying more heavily on automated systems to review content. That may result in more content incorrectly removed for Community Guidelines violations. There may also be delays in reviewing appeals. Those delays will also extend to the review of channels for the YouTube Partner Program. YouTube has been working to make sure these changes are transparent, and answer Creator questions.
• Some channels may not be able to create Community posts, as there are limited reviewers to make sure they comply with Community Guidelines.
• It’s not all bad: YouTube is trying to promote positive content, with a new Learn@Home portal, the Stay at Home #WithMe initiative for creators and cute new life-in-the-time-of-coronavirus emojis.
• To promote authoritative news sources, YouTube has added a COVID-19 News Shelf to the homepage. If you are a news publisher, you can apply to Google News to include your videos.
• YouTube announced YouTube is reducing streaming quality in the EU, UK and Switzerland to limit bandwidth usage for the next 30 days. Netflix and Amazon Prime are taking similar steps.

Learn from Home

• Google has set up several portals with information for teachers and students. Teach from Home is a collection of tips and tools for teachers, to help them set up and manage distance learning. And Learn@Home has collections of educational YouTube channels and playlists for kids from preschool age to teens.
• Discord wants you to use the service for your classroom.

Video Conferencing and Messaging

• New features for Hangouts Meet for education were announced, to improve the experience for teachers. Now only meeting creators and calendar owners can mute or remove other participants in a meeting, so students can’t mute each other (or the teacher). And meeting participants will not be able to re-join nicknamed meetings once the final participant has left. Admins can also assign meeting creation privileges to teachers and staff only. Note these changes will take 2-3 weeks to roll out fully and are only available with G Suite for Education.
• Microsoft Teams announced a several new features for Teams meetings, including a “raise hands” feature, background noise suppression, and the ability to communicate directly with consumer Skype users.
• WhatsApp has a Coronavirus information hub, with information for educators, health care professionals, business and just regular folks on how to use the service.
• If you are using Zoom, you need to know how to keep the party crashers from crashing your Zoom Event.
• Zoom also updated their tutorial videos to get you started.

Live Streaming

• Twitter now lets you invite live stream guests ahead of time
• Think with Google has a new guide for hosting virtual events on YouTube
• The IBM Watson blog has tips for live streaming with a smartphone or tablet.

Take care of your business

• GatherUp shared that Google announced no new Reviews or Q&A During COVID-19 Emergency
• Team Whitespark has a frequently-updated resource with information on how to keep your Google My Business listing accurate & updated during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Tim Capper at Online Ownership argues that now is the time to allow hotels to use Google Posts.

Get Reliable(?) Information

• Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube made a joint industry statement:
  “We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We’re helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe.”
• Among a number of other measures, Google has set up a website with COVID-19 education and resources as part of their ongoing efforts to provide authoritative information.
• Alphabet’s Verily - a sister company to Google- is working with the State of California to develop an online COVID-19 risk screening and testing tool. You can check it out at www.projectbaseline.com/study/covid-19, but be aware the tool is currently only available to Californians in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
• WhatsApp launched the World Health Organization Health Alert, a chat bot that can provide reliable information 24 hours a day.
• Twitter is removing Tweets that provide false or misleading information about COVID-19, and trying to verify health experts. Like Google they are relying more on machine learning and automation to review content.
• Facebook has a COVID-19 information center, with news and health information. Like Google and Twitter, they will be relying more on automated systems to remove policy-violating content. 
• Microsoft is providing authoritative information in the Bing search results, and has a well-designed “COVID-19 Tracker” map showing all active, recovered and fatal cases.
• Wikipedia has a team of medical and public health experts working to prevent the spread of coronavirus misinformation on the site.
• Nextdoor added Help Maps and Groups “to connect neighbors during the coronavirus outbreak”
• Medium is has a curated COVID-19 content page.

Other Updates

• While most of the Google workforce is not coming into the office, there are limitations on Google support. There are longer wait times for support, and products like Google Fi are limiting support options to chat and email. Google says they are “prioritizing support work that is critical—like account recovery, security, and certain advertising-related reviews (such as preventing COVID-19 scams, or inappropriate ad placements).”
• If you are a webmaster, and are dealing with changes to live events, Google has introduced new schema properties for virtual, postponed, and canceled events. That will help ensure that the correct information displays in the search results.
• Google Translate can now transcribe conversation live. For example, if someone is speaking Spanish, that can be transcribed into English. This currently is available for any combination of English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.
• The Snapseed app is getting its first update since 2018! It’s nice to see this excellent mobile image editing app is not abandoned.
• Flickr is experimenting with new algorithms for its Explore page.
• Slack is rolling out a new simplified design.
• Due to “adjusted work schedules” Google is pausing releases of Chrome and Chrome OS. This week’s update to Chrome 80 for Chrome OS, desktop and Android are likely the last for a while.
• There’s a new “works with Chromebook” badge for accessories certified to work with Chromebooks.

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Image: Spring has sprung. Sweet alyssum photo taken yesterday by me.