Posted 11/17/08 at 04:41:59 PM by Andy Salisbury

If you’re wondering whether or not you should bring that personal bottle of hand sanitizer with you to work today, Google has got your back. With their latest tool, the Flu Trends, Google is tracking where flu outbreaks are happening – and doing so weeks before the CDC is.

Google’s Flu Trends follows its users’ searches. Once a search for “flu symptoms” or “muscle aches” is tracked, it’s aggregated to its location and placed on a map. Since the Feds have taken notice, Google has been willingly sharing its information with the Epidemiology and Prevention Brach of the Influenza division of the CDC.

Thanks to the accuracy and speed of the Flu Trends map, lives could actually be saved. The flu still kills many elderly people and those with weak immune systems each year.

Who knows what Google will think of next? But goodness knows their all seeing eye is being put to good use.

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Google, tracker, CDC, Sick, Flu

Posted 11/03/08 at 01:00:00 PM by David Murphy

The best kinds of system applications are the ones that make your life easier without you having to lift a finger. While the freeware applications we're profiling in this weekly roundup still require you to input a few settings, they're great tools to help automate some of the critical parts of your daily computer life.  From hotkey creation utilities to applications that help you conserve power by turning off your PC at specified intervals, these freeware tools are must-have additions to your computing repertoire!

Click the jump to check out this week's batch of free, awesome apps!

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Software, open-source, applications, election, hotkeyz, startup delayer, amp winoff, tracker