I was feeling quite ill this morning, and while trying to figure out if there was anything I could do (in the end, I drank lots of water and slept), I found that Google has been helping the CDC track outbreaks of the flu:
“We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.”
No way! Two weeks + Google + “pukey feeling” = medical breakthrough! I love it. So sweet.