(Note: all views expressed are SOLELY those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Mobileshop.com)
Oh come on, it’s been all over the news for days, there’s no way I couldn’t do a swine flu story. I’m just amazed I lasted as long as I did. However, today, I’ve finally got my chance, courtesy of a story on Tech Crunch.
Yep, some enterprising developer’s released an iPhone app that will let you track the progress of the porcine-death-monster-virus on your handset.
Oh goodie, now the paranoid mass panic can spread onto mobile phone users, too. Now, I’ll be fair to the guy who created the app, he’s only meeting an apparent demand by punters who want news every second, now dammit, I must know when the pig flu will turn into the plague. You know the sort, the ones who go legging it to Tesco at the first sign of somebody with a bit of a sniffle, and grab all the bread off the shelves, so you have nothing to make bacon butties with when you calmly wander down there.
Of course, a sizeable proportion of the panicked masses probably believe you can catch swine flu from bacon butties, but still, all the more for us, eh!
Despite this being a rant, I actually rather dig what the developer’s done with the app, producing a program that will aggregate official reports and keep people informed about the spread of a virus. In this case, everyone’s going mental, and panicking over nothing, but the app does have a lot of potential if something more serious ever broke out. You know, a virus that would kill you really quickly, and which didn’t just make you feel a bit peaky for a few days.
Yes, alright, I mean a zombie apocalypse. You knew I was going to mention it didn’t you. If the walking dead ever do walk the earth, I’d want an app like this on my Sony Ericsson X1, to let me know where the White Zones are, so I can avoid baleful, malevolent and above all, rather peckish revenants (can you tell I’ve just started reading World War Z, the best zombie novel ever)…
So, yes, serious note, I do applaud the developer for making an app that can aggregate proper news stories and official reports about the upcoming (allegedly) pandemic.
Get a really serious disease like the beastie in Outbreak, and this app’d be invaluable, ‘cos that one was nasty. Albeit fictional. But it could happen!
Swine flu ain’t Motaba (seriously, go watch Outbreak, it rocks), though. My problem lies with the masses of ignorant, uninformed people who really believe it’s the end of the world as we know it, and just won’t accept that 80% of the world’s population won’t be dead in the next fortnight. We will not, as a disturbing number of people I’ve spoken to think, see a vast dark cloud of pig-death inexorably heading towards us across the Atlantic. Sure, be cautious, if you want, like washing your hands when you sneeze, but hey, that’s just common sense with any potential for communicable disease. Why do you think hospitals have them little antiseptic dispensers on the walls roughly every 3 feet?
But legging it to Tesco and stealing all the bread is a bit extreme, don’t you think?
Of course, when it escalates up to being zombie flu (I expect in about 28 days time this will happen… work that one out), then I’ll see you in there, myself…
The Swine Flu Tracker is awaiting approval from the Apple App Store, so expect to see it any day now. And if I were a betting man, I’d put money on a version of it appearing on something like the HTC Magic veeeeeeeery soon, too…
Do you think swine flu is going to end civilisation? Or is it just another disease we’ll beat since medicine nowadays is really quite good? Leave us a comment and have your say (just don’t cough in the comments, or I’m sending men in hazmat suits round)!
