Quest To Find The Flu

Posted by Chris Hall on February 17th, 2011

The flu has always been a fascinating thing to me. In my X number of years on earth (I don't want to date myself... not that I'm old) I have never had the flu and have never gotten a flu shot. Maybe it's just pure dumb luck, but I completely attribute my no-flu streak to not taking medicine and not drinking soft drinks.

As the years go by though, I become more and more fearful that I'm going to catch some kind of H1N1 mega flu, just to make up for lost time. I've haven't done it yet, but it's only a matter of time before I start wearing cloth face masks, or just avoiding the public altogether. My goal is to go about my life as I normally would and then completely freak out once the flu arrives to my zip code. How will I know when that happens? The new flu tracker WheresFlu from Theraflu will tell me of course.

With WheresFlu (shouldn't it be Where'sFlu?), I can track flu symptoms, as well as the full on guerilla, around the country. The app also shows you the top 5 most affected flu cities at any given time, which means that I can cancel all plane flights to areas that should be shut down by the CDC. With Wheresflu, nothing can stop me. Well, I guess I'd be in trouble if a terrible strain ever made its way down to Phoenix, but even then I could just move. Right?

Aside from the lovely flu tracker, Theraflu has added a little dilly to their app website that I've never seen before. Maybe I'm just out of touch, or maybe I just don't frequent developer websites very often, but the Theraflu website contains a huge QR code at the bottom of the screen that, after scanning (with any good barcode scanning app), shoots you directly to the App Store page on the phone. I could just be a sucker for using RedLaser every time that I get the chance, but I have to give kudos to the Theraflu design team for giving me something interactive to play with. If QR scanning fun is your cup of tea too, check out there app website here.