Tech is the only reason our world is still working at 50% capacity after the great Coronafication. Without tech I couldn’t attend school to get the education to do well later in a non-Covid life. People couldn’t work to make money to feed their families and people who fell ill wouldn’t be able to consult doctors since they would be too scared of catching the virus during hospital visits. Technology has changed our lives for the better and helped a lot in dealing with the pandemic. And a lot of digital apps and services have helped humanity fight the battle against the Coronaster. What are these apps and services? I don’t know them all but here are my Top 6. A lot of these apps have been around even before, but they finally come to the light as amazing apps and services. Let’s begin and in no particular order.
Microsoft Teams
This part of the Microsoft 365 family is one that has been a saving grace for so many companies and schools. The assignment feature on Teams School Edition is helpful to keep track of work and the direct chats makes having personal meetings so much easier. Mix this up with Microsoft Outlook and you have a perfect end-to-end work experience. Some features they talk about are buried deep and are hard to find. Even so the help provided by teams nearly outweighs its small problems and I would rate it at 4.5/5
exam.net
This is school focussed but exam.net is one of the best ways to hold virtual examination. They have various proctoring (anti-cheating) measures and an easy-to-use interface and they aren’t kidding. The interface is simple and takes up your whole screen even removing the taskbar. They set the battery and timer on the right of the screen so you are up to date and there is a long list of action you can do or keys you can’t press to make sure nothing nefarious is going on. A solution for a problem that many schools are facing but the rules are a bit tough and accidental presses can lead to a total lock out. So, with that in mind their marks are 4/5
Paytm
Really not much to say here. These online banking platforms are becoming more and more prevalent. The reason behind this is that you don’t have to contact physical money that has probably been one of the vectors for virus transmission. However, some people don’t like connecting it to their bank accounts and straight up don’t use it. I don’t use these and don’t have on the ground feedback but on the helpfulness meter, 3/5
Practo
The leading telemedicine app. You can have full and detailed online consultation, finally make head or tail of your medical report using the medical directory and book appointments at your local hospital without waiting in a line for 2 weeks! PLUS, if they hadn’t told you yet you can get a full online prescription. For people who already have problems with illness and are scared about Covid-19, it’s perfect. Round of Applause. 5/5
MyGate
With our growing need to order things online, safety at the entry gate of residences is important. MyGate is a simple app where a security guard clicks a photo of the delivery boy and enter their name, address and temperature and some other important things. Then you get a notification asking for permission and that’s that. Now they need to make a MyGate Robot who checks all this himself. The app works better on Android because the notifications take up the full screen and though it can be a bit finicky it still deserves a 4/5
Google Lens
In the pandemic QR codes have become a big thing being use in restaurants for menu’s, Paytm and more. The leading app to use these is Google Lens! It not only is a high end QR scanner but apart from that it can also scan a picture of most animals and landmarks and using google image search it can match that to some information on the internet. Plus, it has direct contact with your google assistant and voice search. Not bad, eh? The Googlers nailed this so to google lens I give 4.5/5
While these are my Top 6 apps there are so many more that help us in our day to day lives. Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram have helped us stay in touch with friends and family. The online shopping and food delivery apps have made it possible to get essentials from home. There are so many more
Last but not the least a shout out to the front-line workers, delivery teams and all those men and women who keep going out to do their jobs and helping to keep the world going and slowly reach normal.
