Swine Flu craze intermixes with technology
So, I know this course is almost over, but I was helping a friend look up the symptoms for Swine Flu(she thinks she has it, but she doesn’t), and found that there is now an Iphone App for information like that. Barry Schwartz created IntuApp, which is more or less a Swine Flu tracker. You are able to see the current threat for the disease, a map that shows confirmed and suspected areas of risks for it, a symptoms area to see all the symptoms that have been reported for it, and of course, an alert page for breaking news concerning the Swine Flu.
Wow. I guess watching the news has become overrated, or too many Americans simply feel they don’t have time to do so if this type of application is popping up. The mass amount of information we found on google apparently isn’t enough either, they literally want the information to be right at their fingertips. The good thing about this app, however, is that the Swine Flu is actually a very serious matter despite the whole sickly pig image that is now the face of Swine Flu. This app allows people to have access to any alerts or information about it whenever they need to, but I think that the people that are capitalizing on the scare of Swine Flu might want to settle down just a bit. It is a very dangerous thing to put the imformation about it in the hands of so many different people, as rumors that don’t have an ounce of truth about them could easily surface. It’s great that technology is getting the information out there, but I for one will not stop watching my trusted New Channel 14 and Fox 8 News for information that arises with this awful sickness that has began to spread!
I was able to find the story on TechCrunch as well, so the link is posted below.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/30/want-to-avoid-swine-flu-theres-an-app-for-that-too/