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H1N1 influenza, better known as the swine flu, is guaranteed to make an impact across the U.S. and the rest of the world in the coming months. But knowing what to expect, and how to determine if H1N1 is impacting where you live, should be the first step in your evaluation of the swine flu.

And that’s where this roundup comes in. Listed below, you will find several resources that will help you not only track the swine flu, but probably help you learn a little something about it as well.

Find out about that swine flu

Centers for Disease Control –

The Centers for Disease Control has some of the best information on the swine flu of any site in this roundup. Everything from its causes to its symptoms are available.

Information on the swine flu from the CDC is the best I’ve seen on the Web. The site offers basic information for those who want an overview. It quickly digs deep into treating family members afflicted with swine flu, why a vaccination might be useful, who the flu is most likely to affect, and more. It also produces videos and podcasts. Overall, I liked the CDC’s presentation on the swine flu. It’s extremely informative.

The Centers for Disease Control is a great resource.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

FluTracker –

Rhiza Lab’s FluTracker app is one of the best ways to track the swine flu on the Web.

When you get to the site, you’ll see several colored circles around a map of the world. The color of each circle denotes the severity of the outbreak in a given location. Inside those circles are numbers, giving you a tally of confirmed outbreaks in a particular country. Perhaps most importantly, the site allows you to zoom in to see how many outbreaks have affected your area. You can even see how many deaths have occurred. If you’re looking for in-depth but easily understandable tracking of the swine flu, FluTracker is your best bet.

FluTracker tells you where the swine flu is.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

GeoCommons Swine Flu Tracker –

Unlike FluTracker, which provides in-depth information on what kind of impact the swine flu is having all over the world, GeoCommons Swine Flu Tracker doesn’t quite fit the bill.

I found that the GeoCommons tracker is really only useful if you want to see where H1N1 has hit the world. It shows that information on a Google Maps integration that you can move around, zoom in on, and more. The design of the map is nice, but it needs more information to be as useful as some other services in this roundup.

GeoCommons is a little more basic than other services.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

HealthMap — HealthMap is one of the most useful apps in this roundup. Not only does it let you track the swine flu, but it also allows you to see where outbreaks of other pandemics are impacting the globe.

When you get to HealthMap, you’ll see several different illnesses listed next to the map. At first, the site displays all the sicknesses all over the world. You have the option of choosing to track any number of issues as you go. The site even lets you choose where it gets the incident reports from so you can be sure that only trusted sources are used. I like HealthMap. Try it out.

HealthMap tells you what's happening around the world.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

H1N1 Response Center — Microsoft’s H1N1 Response Center allows visitors to take a swine flu assessment to help them determine whether they have H1N1.

When you get to the site, you’ll need to input some basic information, such as your symptoms, your age, and your location. From there, the site asks you if it can share your answers with health officials to help them do a better job of tracking the swine flu. It then provides you with an assessment of whether you have the swine flu. The site also features some basic information on the swine flu to educate you on its impact.

Microsoft's H1N1 Response Center helps you determine if you have the swine flu.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

Swine Flu Tracker — Another useful tracking tool to use Google Maps, Swine Flu Tracker displays all reported incidents of possible swine flu from confirmed cases to false alarms.

Overall, Swine Flu Tracker is very basic. It features a Google Map with different markers denoting what kind of impact is affecting different areas. You won’t find stats like you will in FluTracker. Unfortunately, all the site lists are the numbers of confirmed cases of swine flu in different states around the U.S. Other than that, you’re on your own.

Swine Flu Tracker tells you where the outbreaks are.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

World Health Organization — The World Health Organization provides some of the most informative data on the swine flu of any site in this roundup.

The WHO’s swine flu page is extremely informative. One of the most useful features on the site is its status-update page. That features the latest information on the spreading of the swine flu around the world. You can also find data on the swine flu’s impact. Everything from basic information to treatment is on the site.

The WHO has some great information on swine flu.

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Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET

My top 3

1. FluTracker: If you want to find where the swine flu is going, FluTracker is for you.

2. HealthMap: It covers everything from the swine flu to basic influenza.

3. Centers for Disease Control: Since many of these services rely on the CDC to get information, why not use the site yourself?

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Your resource for tracking the swine flu

The Accuterra topo map will get a slide-out control panel in version 3.1.

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Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET

As a wannabe weekend warrior, I’m happy to see topographical maps for mobile phones gaining ground on decidedly consumer devices. Interactive trail maps like Accuterra for iPhone make a lot of sense, especially with cellular reception and baked-in GPS chips strong enough in so many local hills and national parks that you can actively record your steps, share photos, and track your stats.

At CTIA Fall 2009 (see all stories), we got a sneak peek at the next version of Accuterra that will hit the iPhone app store. Version 3.1, which is expected in a few weeks, doesn’t layer on a ton of features, but there is a new slide-out panel we like that makes the controls much more accessible. With a well-aimed swipe and a tap, you’ll be able to toggle between the Accuterra topo maps and Google’s maps. The app will also contain a simpler library organized around a search bar up top and traditional iPhone tab menu buttons below.

By the end of the year, you should be able to purchase extra content within the app, such as a video of your location or a historical Civil War walking tour. Accuterra costs 99 cents in the App Store; with local maps selling for about $3 each.

Originally posted at CTIA Fall show

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App sneak peek: Accuterra 3.1 topo maps

Google's Street View is now live in Canada.

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Google

Google announced on Wednesday that it has launched its Street View service to 11 cities in Canada, including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, among others.

Google Street View, which originally launched in May 2007, allows users to virtually navigate neighborhoods in 14 countries around the world. When the service first launched, it was only available in five U.S. cities.

Street View has come under some fire since its debut for the service’s alleged potential to infringe the privacy of those people found in its images. To address that issue in Canada, Google said in a statement that it “has gone to great lengths to ensure Canadians’ privacy.”

The company said that all the images in Canada’s Street View are already visible from public roads. Identifiable faces and license plates were blurred to ensure no one in the images could be identified. As with its other Street View services, Google’s Canadian Street View features a “Report a problem” link, allowing concerned users to request images be taken down.

Whether Google would ever be able to bring Street View to Canada was very much up in the air not too long ago. In September 2007, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart wrote to Google saying that she was concerned that the service might violate her country’s privacy regulations. She believed that Street View could infringe Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2004.

For its part, Google said in the statement on Wednesday that it “consulted with Canada’s federal and provincial Privacy Commissioners in developing Street View and its privacy safeguards.” Evidently, that has helped the company bring Street View to the country.

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Google Street View arrives in 11 Canadian cities

My Phone's Web dashboard resembles an in-box.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET

In step with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, Microsoft also graduated its My Phone syncing service for Windows phones (6.0-6.5) from beta to a full release. As we reported earlier morning, most of the new features are premium additions to help you find your phone if it gets lost or stolen. We’ll get to these later on. For the most part, the My Phone service acts as we expect it to–as a small app you download onto your phone, with the bulk of the management taking place on your dashboard online.

Sure enough, after downloading My Phone and signing in with your Windows Live ID (or signing up for a new one), you’ll pick from a list of data types you want to sync. These include contacts, calendar items, notes, tasks, memos, photos, and videos, songs and text messages, and documents.

Syncing took over a half hour the first time around, but we were on a terribly weak EDGE connection. Let that be a lesson to all. In the style of our times, the online dashboard resembles an e-mail in-box. From it, you can view the contents of your phone, and to some extent manage certain aspects. for instance, you can add a new calendar item and comfortably edit contact info from the desktop keyboard, but we haven’t found a way to add a contact or create a new text message. You can upload songs from any desktop to remotely load onto your phone, but My Phone missed the smattering of songs we already had on the phone. The photo sharing feature is more fleshed out, with options to publish images to Windows Live, Facebook, Flickr, and MySpace.

My Phone gives you some management option from the Windows phone.

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Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET

We’re bummed that Microsoft hasn’t broadened the syncing and sharing capabilities since My Phone’s beta days. With so many other start-ups creating fuller featured in-boxes and management dashboards than My Phone, it seems to us that Microsoft has unnecessarily reinvented the wheel.

Wheels are good things, but we would have much preferred to see Microsoft strike a deal with a partner like Dashwire, which made a similar, much more customizable dashboard you could use to originate texts and share a variety of media over e-mail. Dashwire is in the process of offering a similar product branded for Best Buy Mobile’s mIQ syncing service. The legacy Dashwire dashboard had a stylish look that could have helped increase Windows phones’ cool factor (My Phone is typically aesthetically bland), and best yet, Dashwire headquarters are practically around the corner from Redmond’s mother ship.

Despite failing to wow us with syncing and sharing features, My Phone’s premium add-ons are what differentiate its package. If you lose your phone, you can force it ring loudly for 60 seconds (they mean it), even if set to silent or vibrate, just so long as it’s on. You can choose to map its current whereabouts, based on GPS or cell tower triangulation. A free variant on this maps the last known location your phone was in, which may not be the same as where it was when it disappeared. In addition, you can lock your phone remotely, also sending a message to the screen, maybe offering a reward for the finder, or sending a contact number. You’ll need a pin to unlock it when the phone is recovered. Lastly, there’s remote erasure, the most extreme measure.

My Phone costs about $5 for seven days of access to the entire package. You purchase it as needed from the My Phone site, from within the “Connected Phones” navigation. Microsoft is letting users try the premium find-my-phone features for free until November 30, 2009. Note that you’ll see a message that you can try it out for 7-day increments.

While we haven’t been overly impressed with My Phone’s limited syncing and sharing features, the affordable phone-finding and securing tools do offer peace of mind–and maybe even a recovered phone.

Originally posted at CTIA Fall show

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With My Phone mobile sync, Microsoft reinvents the wheel

Google made two significant enhancements to Google.com on mobile phones on Wednesday.

The first, history sync, now makes it possible to carry over a record of your search queries when you switch between mobile and desktop versions of Google.com. Dubbed “Personalized Suggest,” Google will now remember your searches and will add them into the list of search suggestions you see as you type into the search bar. The new feature saves you from browsing through your history to repeat a query.

Of course, you do have to be logged into Google for this to work, and you’ve got to have Web History switched on. Enable it on a phone by selecting “save searches” in the Settings menu on Google.com. At launch, the feature is only available in the US on Android, iPhone, and Palm WebOS phones.

Google Local on mobile.

(Credit: Google)

The second addition today similarly gets the mobile and desktop versions of Google.com talking to one another. Google has redesigned local search to make finding places of interest while on the mobile Google site much more finger-friendly. Click or tap “Local” on the mobile browser and you’ll see a start screen with categories you can browse to find restaurants and other businesses nearby, similar to what you can do on Google Maps. You’ll need to have the My Location feature enabled.

There’s also a category for viewing the points of interest that you starred as favorites on a Google Map. Starring essentially bookmarks the location’s Google Place page. Bookmarking isn’t anything new, but the browsable layout is relatively new to Google, which generally favors bare links to graphical enhancements. This treatment has the mobile Google site looking like a mobile hotspot-finding app you might find in an on-phone app store. We have to say, it’s a nice change.

The rejiggered Local Search kicks off in the US and China, with support for more regions in the works.

Read more here:
Now syncing: Google history on mobile phones