Try the new Crowdsource app for Android

[AnuragB]

Local Guides who love answering questions in Google Maps or who are passionate about translation and accessibility may enjoy the new Crowdsource app from Google. Currently available for Android.

Every day we hear from people around the world who wish Google products worked better in their languages and communities. Often we simply don’t know enough about the language or locale to make quick progress. But now you can speed this up: answer simple questions in the Crowdsource app, and you’ll help Maps, Translate, and Android work better for your local community. It’s easy to use whenever you have a few minutes to kill — waiting in line or commuting on the bus or train, even when you’re offline.

Here’s an overview of the various categories of questions that you can help with:

• Image Transcription: You can improve the speed at which new imagery and streets are added to Maps by deciphering text in images for products like Google Street View (available in English only).
• Handwriting Recognition: Want Google Keyboard to work better in your language? Transcribe short handwriting samples (available in 40+ languages).
• Maps POI Localization: You can help make Google Maps accessible for everyone by localizing names of businesses and places of interest in 35+ languages.
• Translation: Google Translate enables people and businesses around the world to communicate with each other (we use it here on Connect). By offering short translations or verifying translations from others, you can help make the web accessible in 100+ languages.
• Sentiment Analysis: Reviews help people make decisions about where to go and what to buy. You can help us understand the emotion expressed in reviews, so we can make our recommendations even more useful (available in 20+ languages).

Machine Learning

Why do we need your help with these questions, you might ask? Each of your contributions is fed into algorithms that basically teach machines how to think. We use this technique, called Machine Learning, to offer great experiences in several of our products. Reading street names from Google Street View images, understanding handwriting gestures on the keyboard or translating from one language to another are all done by software that “learns” these abilities by studying millions of samples of data of that type. The more good samples we have, the better we can make these features work. These questions are designed to collect such samples.

Badges

Because the questions in this app come from teams all across Google, we’re not offering Local Guides points for these tasks (yet). You can score cool badges in the Crowdsource app itself as you try out different tasks or cross different milestones. Tried out the app when offline? There’s badge for that. Answered a few Handwriting questions? There’s another badge for that — one that levels up as you answer more questions. You can share your badges on social media and in conversations using your favorite chat platform.

Helpful Tips

• Don’t know the answer to a question? Feel free to Skip it. We look at answers from multiple people before deciding on the right answer, so don’t feel pressured to respond to questions that you don’t know the answer to.
• While we run a lot of filters on the content of our questions, you might encounter something that contains offensive language. Please flag any such questions (using the Flag option on the top right of the screen) and we will take appropriate action.
• Have more questions? Review the Help Center (also accessible from the “Help and Feedback” menu item in the app).
• Is there something we can improve on? Please give feedback directly in the app.

Thank you for trying the Crowdsource app. We’d love to hear your feedback on what you liked, and what we can improve, here in the comments or directly in the app itself.