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Announcing the Pollen API

cloud.google.com

11–20 of 88 posts

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#11

I’m a bit surprised to see a single geodata theme packaged as a whole “thing.” And goodness the marketing fluff is quite repetitive given they have so little to talk about. Call me jaded but it feels like someone’s really announcing, “I shipped something! Give me my promotion!” > Our Pollen API is based on a model that calculates the seasonality and daily amount of pollen grains on a 1x1 km2 grid in over 65 countries…

I'm disappointed as i thought they'd use actual sensors instead of guessing using old data.

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#12
post #11

I’m a bit surprised to see a single geodata theme packaged as a whole “thing.” And goodness the marketing fluff is quite repetitive given they have so little to talk about. Call me jaded but it feels like someone’s really announcing, “I shipped something! Give me my promotion!” > Our Pollen API is based on a model that calculates the seasonality and daily amount of pollen grains on a 1x1 km2 grid in over 65 countries…

I'm disappointed as i thought they'd use actual sensors instead of guessing using old data.

Yeah same here, a much more challenging project would be to aggregate data from the thousands of individual pollen services in various countries. I know of at least two here in Sweden. Isn't this what we should use AI for?

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#13
post #11

I’m a bit surprised to see a single geodata theme packaged as a whole “thing.” And goodness the marketing fluff is quite repetitive given they have so little to talk about. Call me jaded but it feels like someone’s really announcing, “I shipped something! Give me my promotion!” > Our Pollen API is based on a model that calculates the seasonality and daily amount of pollen grains on a 1x1 km2 grid in over 65 countries…

I'm disappointed as i thought they'd use actual sensors instead of guessing using old data.

There’s nothing wrong with building a model using related data if the thing you care about is hard/expensive to measure at that scale (which I don’t know if that’s true or not). But you’d want to validate your model using actual pollen samples.

The data here is pretty much worthless without a paper explaining the model and the validation.

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#14

I’m a bit surprised to see a single geodata theme packaged as a whole “thing.” And goodness the marketing fluff is quite repetitive given they have so little to talk about. Call me jaded but it feels like someone’s really announcing, “I shipped something! Give me my promotion!” > Our Pollen API is based on a model that calculates the seasonality and daily amount of pollen grains on a 1x1 km2 grid in over 65 countries…

I have doubts about the accuracy of the data as well. Pollen can be very localized. I'd love to see an independent study on it.

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#15
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm disappointed as i thought they'd use actual sensors instead of guessing using old data.

Yeah same here, a much more challenging project would be to aggregate data from the thousands of individual pollen services in various countries. I know of at least two here in Sweden. Isn't this what we should use AI for?

> Isn't this what we should use AI for?

Nah, this is just data collection and statistics.

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#16
> According to the World Health Organization, up to ⅓ of the global population suffers from allergic rhinitis,

Has anyone yet figured out why so many humans suffer from an allergy to many natural plants which we have lived around for millions of years?

It looks like the first documented case of Hayfever was March 1819[1], and at the time it was considered a very unusual and rare affliction. When and why has it now become so common?

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110966/#:~:tex...,

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#18
> Pollen data presents a unique opportunity for businesses–whether it’s an opportunity to build brand loyalty and trust, increase engagement and product value, or become a catalyst for a more resilient community.

Such a perfect example of Google-speak. Every data point is an engagement hack.

Re: Announcing the Pollen API

#20

> According to the World Health Organization, up to ⅓ of the global population suffers from allergic rhinitis, Has anyone yet figured out why so many humans suffer from an allergy to many natural plants which we have lived around for millions of years? It looks like the first documented case of Hayfever was March 1819[1], and at the time it was considered a very unusual and rare affliction. When and why has it now be…

Some allergies are triggered by a disease[1]. It is possible that hayfever is an outcome of a disease which has become common since 1819. The disease may have no other symptoms, and hay fever a symptom in only some people, and therefore be very hard to track.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2023/p0727-emerging-tick-...

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