13 February 2015

Google Knowledge Cards Show More Health Information



A few days ago, Google announced that health-related Knowledge Graph cards now include a lot more information. "We'll show you typical symptoms and treatments, as well as details on how common the condition is — whether it's critical, if it's contagious, what ages it affects, and more. For some conditions you'll also see high-quality illustrations from licensed medical illustrators."



I've searched for [type 2 diabetes] and Google displayed a lot of information: organs affected by diabetes, symptoms, ages affected, treatments, specialists. "When you search for a medical condition, you'll see three tabs: About, Symptoms, and Treatments. Right now, we show this medical information for the most frequently searched for health conditions, and we will continue to increase the number of conditions we cover," informs Google.












Google "worked with a team of medical doctors to carefully compile, curate, and review this information. All of the gathered facts represent real-life clinical knowledge from these doctors and high-quality medical sources across the web, and the information has been checked by medical doctors at Google and the Mayo Clinic for accuracy."



For now, the upgraded cards are only available in the US if you use the English interface. They're displayed in both the desktop site snd the mobile site/apps.








Material Design Refresh for Google Help Panes



Most Google services use floating help panes, so you can find relevant articles from the help center and read them inside the web app. Google Flight Search uses a new interface for the help panes, powered by Material Design. New icons, bigger headings and search box, new color palette.









You can check the new UI by visiting Google Flights and clicking Help. Google Maps, Gmail, Google Drive and other Google services still use the old interface.









The nice thing about Google's help panes is that they list contextually relevant articles. For example, if you go to Gmail's filters section from the settings page and click Help, you'll find articles about using filters, blocking unwanted emails and changing your Gmail settings.



{ via Florian Kiersch. }

YouTube Tests New Logo



YouTube's site tests a new logo that looks just like YouTube's mobile app icon. It's smaller, instantly recognizable and more consistent.









For some reason, YouTube still shows the old logo at the bottom of the page:






Here's the regular YouTube interface: