Predicting swine flu through Google

I've been meaning to post about the new UK-edition of Wired magazine but the usual things got in the way.
Suffice to say I was impressed with the first issue. Not overwhelmed, but certainly enthused by its intelligence and the luxury of its presentation.
Not overwhelmed because you expect a launch issue to blow your socks off. It's six months down the line that the quality shows through. You imagine that Conde Nast are in for the long haul so let's see what happens by issue six.
What did spark me to finally getting round to this was an item I caught today on their web site about how traffic analysis of Google searches pre-dated media reports on swine flu. It has interesting implications for journalists (and business and spooks) who want to get the jump on imminently breaking events.