Google Mapping Swine Flu Outbreak

The intelligence behind Google never seems to fail. At first word of the Swine Flu in Mexico, Google began to monitor all searches pertinent to the illness, terms such as “flu symptoms” “body aches” “thermometers”, along with others. Their findings were quite compelling, plotting the geographic locations of the search inquiries and showing a densely populated region in Mexico City where later an outbreak had been announced. Google has continued tracking the relevant searches throughout the U.S. Many other sites as well  provide valuable information in the forms of traveling alerts, breaking news headlines, outbreak mapping, and prevention methods. If you’re interested in seeing these other sites and learning how to react to disease outbreaks using the tools provided online take a look at this post on Mashable: http://mashable.com/2009/04/25/track-swine-flu/