Epidemiology 2.0 – Google Flu Trends

Google is using localized search activity statistics to track flu activity across the US:

And in an interesting departure from the Web 2.0 world, they also provide a raw CSV data download for building your own spreadmarts.

Of course, people are raising privacy concerns – but who should be surprised?  Assuming Google follows it’s own policies on anonymization and aggregation this is nothing new, and nothing that hasn’t been around on Google Trends for awhile now.

Technorati tags: google, health2.0, health, flu, epidemiology, healthcare

Less Running, More Tech

It’s no secret to any readers that I have become obsessed with distance running in the last 2 years.  My del.icio.us links and this blog have started to get taken over by that content rather than the promised tech content.  So to feed this passion, I setup a running site/blog at runlikemonkey.com, so check that out if you are interseted.  I am training for some ultramarathons in 2009, so it should be fun.

Meanwhile I think I finally figured out how to change Feedburner to splice in only tech links here, and will try to get back on track with posting more regularly.  Next up is a write up from the Health 2.0 conference last week.