Google Health Is Dead!

 If you have ever signed up for Google Health, you probably know that Google is shutting down it's Google Health service. So, you are left with a very few days to back up any data you may have in your Google Health account. I recently got an email from The Google Health Team and followed the instruction to download all my data and deleted my account. In this blog post I'll walk you through this process.

Here's the email I got.

This is an important Google Health service announcement. You are receiving this email because you have an active Google Health account.

As we announced in June, 2011, the Google Health service will be discontinued as of January 1, 2013. After that date, any remaining data in your Google Health account will be permanently deleted, and you will no longer be able to access or download any data from Google Health.

If you want to keep using the data you have stored in Google Health, you will need to take action before December 31st, 2012 to download it or transfer it to another online health service. We've made this easy for you. All you have to do is:
 - go to the Google Health site at https://health.google.com
 - log in with your Google account
 - follow the on-screen instructions to download your information and close your Google Health account.
For more information, see our help center article at http://www.google.com/support/health/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347989

Note that, if you log in to Google Health, and are not given an option to download your data, it means that you do not have any data stored in Google Health and you do not need to do anything more.

If you have not retrieved your Google Health data by January 1, 2013, it will be removed from Google's systems and permanently and irrevocably deleted. Google will be unable to recover any Google Health data for any user after this date.

For more details on the discontinuation of Google Health, see our blog post at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/update-on-google-health-and-google.html, and see answers to frequently-asked questions at http://www.google.com/intl/en/health/faq.html.

Note: you will continue to receive periodic service announcements as long as you have an active Google Health account. If you do not wish to receive further announcements, simply go to https://health.google.com and follow the process to download your data (if desired) and delete your Health account.

Thank you for your support and use of Google Health.

The Google Health Team

1. Go to https://health.google.com and login with you Google account.
   
2. Now you'll see a 'Download as ZIP' button.
   
3. Click on the 'Yes, download' button. Open the downloaded file and verify the contents before continuing.
   
4.  Now that you have safely backed up your health data, it's time to close the account. Click on "Close my Google Health account" button
   
5. Select the check box and click on "Remove Google Health" button.
   
6. That's all! Make sure you keep the downloaded health records in a safe place!

Cheers!

Facebook Year In Review

Facebook just introduced a new feature that showcases 20 important stories from your timeline. This personalized custom story is called Year In Review.

When I logged in to my Facebook account this morning, I saw this new box:

Facebook Year In Review

The box has a link that says "See Your 2012 Year in Review" Look back at your 20 biggest moments from the past year.

Clicking on the link took me to a customized page, that looked like this:

Facebook 2012 Year In Review

The page shows 20 selected stories from your timeline. A big popup shows a familiar Share button that lets you share your Year In Review on your timeline. I noticed the URL of this page. It's
http://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/<my-user-name>

I did some experiment and figured out that

• You can see your friends Year In Review by using their facebook id in above URL
• If you are logged in, http://www.facebook.com/yearinreview/ will take you to your Year In Review(there's no need to append your facebook id.

As you can see in the above screenshot, the pop up has one more link See Facebook Trends from 2012. That will take you to page listing Facebook Trends for 2012. Check it out. It reveals some special and interesting stories about how people use Facebook in extraordinary ways.

I liked this feature. Click here to see YOUR 2012 Year In Review. Kudos to Facebook for this.