Pete Warden, an entrepreneur based in Colorado, used Facebook data to show US locations with connections drawn between places that share friends. His ‘social graph’ would have been a powerful tool for social scientists. But Facebook threatened legal action, forcing Warden to destroy all his records.

Read Article...

Forget exit polls, focus group studies and intuition about past performance. Data-mining on Twitter is proving to be an accurate mirror of mass sentiment.

Read Article...

Extraction of energy from tidal waves is theoretically possible—but in reality, there is very little to be had. And whatever energy can be tapped will come with a very high ecological price.

Read Article...