Current optical communications schemes rely on a narrow 1.55 micron wavelength band of about 10 terahertz, a band in which optical signals can be well controlled and loss of signal/data is fairly low. But to open up optical networks to the high data load of the future, we need to open up the span of available wavelength.

Last January, electronic textbook publishers turned down David Johnston's big idea: to make the first interactive marine science textbook. Frustrated by the experience, Johnston set out to create open source software to publish the book himself.

Your notes to yourself are a precious thing. These tools let you write quick and find ideas later, wherever you are.Our phones can give us turn-by-turn directions to the highest-rated Ethiopian restaurant in any city on Earth, based on a voice command. Yet to jot down a thought, we all too often send ourselves email.

A campaign to free up spectrum hoarded by old media bears fruit. New Hanover County, North Carolina, just rolled out Super Wi-Fi, which is its actual name, not just a patronizing euphemism I'm deploying because I think you can't handle "a new Wi-Fi standard operating in the 'white spaces' between 50-700Mhz, where previously only television stations were allowed to transmit."

From the air, one phone can blanket hundreds of towers, potentially disrupting the entire system

Just as the politics of oil shaped the 20th century industrial economy, so the politics of data will shape the 21st century digital economy.

Physicists have nailed down the maximum speed limit by which information can travel.

Even for the most privacy-conscious individual, contacts are a liability and may give away your location

Federal law enforcement officials have asked contractors to build software that would watch for signs of criminal activity

A poll of 16 to 25-year-olds on innovation turns up a few unexpected twists.

The Pirate Bay loves to be controversial--how could it not be, with its very existence an affront to much of the political mechanisms of American government? And now the organization is suggesting something that, in the light of the semi-failed SOPA/PIPA attempt to regulate the Net and squash piracy, casts an interesting light on the future of file pirating: What will happen in terms of IP rights and piracy when 3-D printed objects become commonplace?

For the moment, Bill Gates is no longer the world’s wealthiest man. But he didn’t lose the title to Mexico’s telecom titan Carlos Slim; he gave it away. And as a result, the businessman-turned-philanthropist can point to a different kind of scoreboard. “Well, it’s easiest to...

Sweeping privacy changes to merge user data across more services - and you can't opt out

Roomba with whiskers could help reveal how the brain interprets sensory information

In pursuit of fleet-footed prey, the northern goshawk wings through thick forest canopies and underbrush at breakneck speeds, dipping and diving to avoid colliding with trees or other obstacles. But it can only go so fast, apparently obeying an unspoken speed limit dictated not by biology, but by the density of its environment — beyond a certain threshold, it is certain to crash into something. This is an important lesson for makers of drones and other flying objects, according to researchers at MIT and Harvard.