Ron Kernahan's Test Wordpress site

There are quite a few health Widgets available which can be added almost anywhere on your website, blog or sidebar. I wanted to take a look at a few of these to evaluate their worth.

Let’s start with the CDC (Centers for Disease and Control) which is offering several. These include the H1N1 (Swine Flu) Widget:


< ![endif]-->

Other Widgets from the CDC include:
• HHS (Health and Human Services) 2009 Flu Info
• H1N1 (Swine Flu)
• H1N1 Higher Education
• H1N1 School Guidance
• Flu IQ
• Seasonal Flu Updates
• FluView National Flu Activity Map
• CDC Emergency Text Messages

These widgets all seem to work well and come in different sizes and colors. It is easy enough to past the code into a WordPress sidebar text box if your theme supports it.

Although the information is good, it is of course targetted specifically for the USA. This is my complaint about most of the widgets out there. Good at least is that there are some Spanish variations. I was unable to track down any Chinese, German or other major language widgets specific to H1N1 news.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) also has a few widgets, especially helpful to those living in the USA. Below is one of the FEMA widgets in action (using iframes, which not everyone will want):

Live Twitter Search:

Twitter has added some very good search capabilities. Have a look on the sidebar and you’ll see any live results from Twitter right now.

And here is where you can add your own: http://twitter.com/goodies/widget_search

Although you don’t need WordPress for this, there are some WP plugins to allow you to do a live Twitter search directly from the sidebar or post. This allows you to post specific search results for Swine Flu or H1N1 which are up-to-date, assuming someone is tweeting about the subject. Specific plugins to help you add Twitter Search quickly and easily include (there are more):

http://juitter.com/ – see it in action on the juitter site, (using jQuery)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-for-wordpress-extended/

There is also the “Flu Pandemic Level”, a WordPress plugin that will fetch the current WHO (World Health Organisation) phase of pandemic alert. You can view the plugin homepage and then install it directly from the WordPress Repository.

RSS

Another way to add news to your sidebar is to use RSS feeds. For example, if you Google H1N1, you can then save the results in an RSS feed format and simply paste the code into your sidebar. The example I’ll use here is from Google, but other search engines offer similar possibilities.

And in case you haven’t heard of it, WidgetBox offers hundreds of widgets which you can simply cut and paste into your blog. These can be added to MySpace, Blogger, Facebook, WordPress, TypePad, iGoogle or your favorite website. http://www.widgetbox.com/search?q=Swine+Flu+News

PandemicFlu.gov offers a map (only of the USA) which you can include.

Google offers it’s own Tracking Flu Trends maps.

FluTracker is another: (you can also embed this) http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/

Let us know on Twitter or via comments below of more of your favorites!