BibSonomy ::  user :: cschie ::

Free or low-cost sources of unstructured information, such as Internet news and online discussion sites, provide detailed local and near real-time data on disease outbreaks, even in countries that lack traditional public health surveillance. To improve public health surveillance and, ultimately, interventions, we examined 3 primary systems that process event-based outbreak information: Global Public Health Intelligence Network, HealthMap, and EpiSPIDER. Despite similarities among them, these systems are highly complementary because they monitor different data types, rely on varying levels of automation and human analysis, and distribute distinct information. Future development should focus on linking these systems more closely to public health practitioners in the field and establishing collaborative networks for alert verification and dissemination. Such development would further establish event-based monitoring as an invaluable public health resource that provides critical context and an alternative to traditional indicator-based outbreak reporting.

One year ago I penned Event Processing in Twitter Space, and today parts of the net are buzzing about Twitter. In a nutshell, Twitter is a one-to-many communications service that uses short messages (140 chars or less). Following on the heels of the blogging phenomena, Twitter has been primarily used for microblogging and group communications. Twitter, and Twitter-like technologies, has great promise in many areas.   For example, you could be subscribed to the @tsunamiwarning channel on your dream island vacation and get instant updates on potential disasters.   A team of people working in network management could subscribe to the @myserverstatus channel and receive updates on their health of their company IT services.   Passengers could subscribe to the @ourgatestatus channel and follow up-to-date information on their fight. Twitter was created to answer the simple question, “What are you doing now?”

In 2009, Web analytics managers have a multitude of different tools to select to deploy at their corporation.  Sets of tools from industry leaders, such as Omniture, WebTrends, Unica, CoreMetrics , Google, and Yahoo, are among the most popular, while options from smaller players like ClickTracks and Woopra exist as well.  In theory, you deploy a tool, customize it to fit your needs, and start analyzing the reports — and it all goes swimmingly, right? Then why have many corporations already chewed through two, maybe even three tools over the last several years, or deployed multiple tools in an attempt to arrive at where they need to be — delivering comprehensive and systematic analysis to their business community, helping to drive action from insight and taking the mantra of “competing on analytics” and “data driven culture” to the next level?  Several factors cause disconnects between the promise of a tool and the successful use of a tool, which cause a tool to fail: