Google offers online personal health records
Can you trust your medical records to the guys who might one day place a nice online ad next to them, saying, “Flat feet shouldn’t hold you back”?
After more than a year of development, Google last week began offering online personal health records to the public.
The new service, Google Health, at google.com/health, is the latest effort by a mainstream tech company to collect and organize personal health data on the Web.
Online health directory WebMD and even Microsoft, with its HealthVault, have already jumped into that arena.
All of them hope to capitalize on providing a one-stop, convenient method of collecting all one’s key information related to health care.
Google tested its service with a two-year project involving 1,600 patients at the Cleveland Clinic.
The Google service allows users to send personal information, at the individual’s discretion, into any designated, pre-approved clinic or hospital, which can also then pull information from the clinic records into the Google personal file.
As one benefit, doctors say a one-stop collection point can identify potential harmful interactions if a patient has several prescriptions from different providers.
In the pilot project, Google has not sold any advertisements. It has not said whether ads one day might appear near Google health records.
Climate change, seen in Google Earth
Climate modelers are using Google Earth to help track the changes in global climate.
The Meteorological Office Hadley Center and the U.K. government have combined to develop an overlay that shows an interactive display of how temperature changes and climate could affect the next 100 years.
An overlay in Google Earth is done as a KML file. You can get information on the overlay at: www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadley centre/google/
After installing the overlay and opening Google Earth, click on icons to find out how weather change has already affected some areas of the planet and the likely changes occurring if current trends continue.
Live Search will pay you to search
When you have cash to burn, why not use it? That’s the new marketing strategy Microsoft just adopted in an effort to boost use of its Live Search service.
Announced last week, the new program will return money to online users who find and buy select products through its Live Search engine.
A number of retailers have joined the program, including Barnes & Noble, Sears, Home Depot, J&R Electronics, Office Depot and others.
Microsoft’s Live Search cashback site — at http://search.msn.com/cashback — says users can get payments ranging from about 2 percent to more than 30 percent if they find designated products and buy them online from participating retailers.
Google is the market leader for all U.S. Web searches, with roughly 50 percent of the market. Live Search is grabbing about 10 percent of all searches.