Yikes. According to Symantec, the fourth most popular search term for children 7 and under is "porn" - just ahead of kids' networking site Club Penguin.

Symantec's top searches for 2009 arraigned by age group

Symantec recently released the anonymous results of 14.7 million searches run by users of its OnlineFamily.Norton service in 2009. The service allows parents to monitor web activities and supposedly blocks questionable sites, so let's hope the toddlers searching for "porn" were unsuccessful.

It's understandable that "sex" is one of the top searches for teens, but I was surprised to see that children as young as 7 were familiar with "porn." While services like OnlineFamily.Norton may filter most inappropriate content, they are not perfect - and are no substitute for parental supervision.

Other search terms popular with children included social-networking sites, celebrities and online games.

Interestingly, "Google" was also a top search term, which leads me to believe a lot of kids don't really understand how search engines work.

What was the world buzzing about most in 2009?

Michael Jackson’s death, the rise of Twitter, “New Moon’s” vampires and Microsoft’s Windows 7 release, among other hot topics gathered by Google for its annual Zeitgeist survey.

The year’s other “fastest-rising” topics, culled from Google search results in almost 50 countries, included Facebook, emerging pop star Lady Gaga, Spanish social-networking site Tuenti and Torpedo Gratis, which I believe has something to do with sending free text messages in Brazil.

These replace 2008’s hot topics, many of which landed on Google Zeitgeist’s “fastest-falling” list for 2009: The Beijing Olympics, Barack Obama, Wii, Heath Ledger and Amy Winehouse.

To compile the 2009 Year-End Zeitgeist, Google says it studied the aggregation of billions of queries people typed into Google search so far this year.

“We use data from multiple sources, including Insights for Search, Google Trends and internal data tools. We also filter out spam and repeat queries to build out lists that best reflect 'the spirit of the times,' " Google said in a statement.

Last year's fastest-rising topic, Sarah Palin, didn't make the fastest-falling list this year, which means people must still be intrigued with her. Maybe it's all the fuss over her book, press tour and chat with Oprah.

The only topics to make the "fastest-rising" list for 2008 AND 2009? Facebook and Tuenti.

Some of YouTube's videos started featuring machine-generated captions this week. That's a potentially huge change for the deaf and hearing impaired, who still don't have access to the vast majority of online video.

Writing on the Official Google Blog (don't forget, Google owns YouTube), software engineer Ken Harrenstien says voice-to-text technology - while clunky at times - must be used to caption the world's videos. The problem is too large for people to handle alone, writes Harrenstein, who is deaf:

Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me.

The YouTube auto-captions use the same speech-to-tech technology as Google Voice.

Check out a video demo here.

Harrenstien says this week's announcement of auto-captions makes him "more hopeful than ever" that Google can achieve its goal of "making videos universally accessible."

NYTimes notes that the captions also stand to make YouTube money:

The technology will also open YouTube videos to a wider foreign market and make them more searchable, which will make it easier for Google to profit from them.

For now, the captions apply only to a handful of YouTube channels, but it will be interesting to watch where this technology goes. The BBC says that, even in Google's demo, the caption technology is not perfect. The phrase "sim card," for instance, was mistaken for "salmon" when it was captioned.

Will this technology help you, or someone you know? Or are you frustrated by machine translations of speech into captioning? Let us know in the comments section.

Google's phone service prides itself on simplicity. You get a Google phone number and then Google Voice forwards calls to your Google number to your home, office or mobile phone.

One number. One business card. Pretty simple.

But that approach creates another issue: To use Google Voice, you had to change your number.

On Tuesday, Google announced on its blog that that's not the case anymore. You can sign up for Google Voice with most any number you choose. One of the biggest advantages is that Google will - for free - transcribe your voicemail so you can read it online or in text messages. That way you don't have to listen to ramble-on info when all you want is the call-back number.

Here's a video that explains how Google Voicemail works.

There are still a few catches, though. The first is that you can't access all of Google Voice's features when you're using a non-Google number. That means you can't have calls forwarded from that number to other phones. And, for now, Google Voice is available by invitation only.

What do you think? Is Google Voice without the Google number useful? Do you think this will catch on in a big way? Let us know in the comments below.

Google has announced it is testing a new form of search architecture codenamed "Caffeine," and the company wants your help to examine the results.

According to a post on the Google Webmaster Blog:

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

Google's current search infrastructure relies primarily on hyperlinks. Pages that receive a large number of incoming links from external sites are given a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear near the top of Google's search results.

Google is unlikely to stray far from its successful PageRank system, but the possibility of new search results is a huge deal to companies that rely on Google-generated traffic or those who have invested heavily in search engine optimization (SEO).

Business Week claims "Caffeine may cause corporate jitters:"

Google suggested that Caffeine could change search results, which raises the prospect of companies' needing to change their search engine optimization (SEO) to protect their Google ranking.

To test Caffeine for yourself, visit: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Google admits "most users won't notice a difference in search results," but the company is still looking for "feedback on the differences between Google's current search results and our new system."

Did you notice any substantial differences in your searches with Caffeine? Were they more accurate than Google's current results?

When you first hear about Hunch, a new site that says it helps people make decisions, it's easy to be skeptical.

But, before you write the site off entirely, consider the fact that Hunch is really more about information than decisions. Hunch essentially is a site that makes searching the Internet fun.

In a recent interview with CNN.com, Caterina Fake, the site's founder, was careful to say that Hunch is not a search engine, it's "something new." That's true. But it does what Google, Bing and Wolfram Alpha all want to do: it learns something about you and then answers your questions, without sending you to a middle-man Web page that contains a giant list of hyperlinks that may or may not have what you're looking for.

Hunch isn't perfect, but, as Fake points out, it should get better over time, since its computers learn from all the people who use it.

I tested the site ahead of its public launch Monday, and it seemed to know me pretty well. I asked the site which Atlanta neighborhood I should live in, and Hunch's top response was my actual neighborhood. I asked Hunch what blogs I should read and the site spat back a couple of sites I do read and one, called Notcot, that I hadn't seen before, but do find to be neat.

It missed on some other topics, though. For instance, Hunch told me that, if I ever wanted to pick another line of work, I should be an electrical engineer. No chance there.

It's also important that Hunch is pretty fun to use. Using the site feels like taking a bunch of online quizzes, which already are popular on online social networks.

Check the site out and let me know what you think. Also listen to this short clip from my interview with Fake, who also is a co-founder of Flickr. It's my favorite part of our conversation. In it, she explains why she thinks the Internet is so powerful.

Apple appears to be planning a major upgrade to its online capabilities. Reports indicate the company is shopping around for a location to build a $1 billion server farm. This cluster of networked computers would power Apple's future Web operations.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs delivers his keynote speech at Macworld on January 9, 2007 in San Francisco.

The iTunes and the iPhone app store are certainly growing, but this massive project suggests Apple may have something new up its sleeve - or is the $1 billion price tag expected given the Apple gear that will likely be used?

Data Center Knowledge writes:

The size of the project raises interesting questions about Apple’s ambitions for its online operations. The $1 billion price tag is nearly twice the $500 to $600 million that Microsoft and Google typically invest in the enormous data centers that power their cloud computing platforms.

While the location of the data center is not yet decided, the Associated Press reports North Carolina lawmakers are salivating at the prospect of of bringing a billion dollars to their state. Legislators have proposed tax breaks for Apple that could amount to $46 million in the next decade, assuming the company reaches its $1 billion investment target within nine years:

Though the Apple site is initially expected to employ fewer than 100 full-time workers, legislators said the potential prize was so juicy it justified changing the state's corporate tax formula to benefit a single company.

Is Apple hoping to compete with Google's online cloud-computing capabilities or is a new video service like Hulu in the works? How do you think Apple will use its new online muscle?

The tech community, always moving toward the newest thing, has come up with a fresh term for the world to chew on: Web 3.0.

The idea, which vaguely refers to a third era of Internet technology, is nascent enough that many discussions about it seem to center on its definition.

Nova Spivack, Twine's founder, said in an interview last week that Web 3.0 is more chronological and simple than some would make it out to be. It just means we're in the third decade of the Internet, which technically began in March, he said.

"We’re in Web 3.0 now. It happened," he said.

TechCrunch's MG Siegler said in another interview that Web 3.0 isn't worth defining yet because the next phase of the Internet won't come until the economic recession lifts and investors start pushing cash back into tech companies.

We will need a term to define that new era, but it likely won't be "Web 3.0," he said.

A little background may help set the stage for the term. Web 2.0 generally referrs to the period between 2005 and 2008, when the Internet got much more social. MySpace, Facebook and YouTube blossomed, and the Internet became more conversational than before. Web 1.0 - you guessed it - came before Web 2.0. In those days, Web sites were less interactive. Some say Web 1.0 ended with the California dot-com market crash in 2001.

Perhaps more useful than discussing the merits of Web 3.0 as a term would be to list some of the up-and-coming trends in technology online. Here are a few that seem to be getting the buzz lately. Some of these ideas may factor into the next phase of the Internet, whatever we decide to call it:

1. Real-time: Information is moving faster online now than before. Breaking news events occur on Twitter, the micro-blogging site, not just on news Web sites. Real-time searches allow users to get the latest buzz and to converse. Read more from Siegler at TechCrunch.
2. Semantics: Researchers are trying to teach computers to understand us better so they will know what we mean when we search for something, not just which keywords we're typing in. CNET's Tom Krazit writes that Google is downplaying the importance of the 'Semantic Web' but is actually moving in that direction.
3. Open communication: There's a lot of data online. Citizen scientists are compiling it and computer scientists are using it, but some predict open communication and product development will be stamps of the new Web era. More on this from Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb.
4. Mobile and Geography: Some say geography is playing a bigger role in the informaiton we post online. As Will Sullivan points out in a recent post to Poynter.org, the rise of GPS-enabled phones is feeding this trend.

What are you all noticing? Chime in with a comment to this post and I'll do my best to respond.

Google today announced some upgrades to its Web browser, Chrome, which originally was released about 8 months ago.

You could argue the search-engine powerhouse takes the car metaphors a little bit far with this post about the update: Google says the upgrades mostly focus on speed, which comes from a new browser "engine," which Google calls "V8."

For those interested the under-the-hood mechanics of Chrome, Google says the browser tops others because it is able to handle complex Web pages with lots of Java Script very quickly. From another post to the Chrome blog:

Web applications are becoming more complex. With the increased complexity comes more JavaScript code and more objects. An increased number of objects puts additional stress on the memory management system of the JavaScript engine, which has to scale to deal efficiently with object allocation and reclamation. If engines do not scale to handle large object heaps, performance will suffer when running large web applications.

I installed the Chrome update (you can download the new version here) this afternoon, and it definitely is speedy - noticeably faster than Firefox, which I often use. On the downside, the new version still doesn't seem to automatically spellcheck as you write. I'm using Chrome now, so please forgive any typos.

I thought this point from TechCrunch was useful, too: if you use Gmail, Google Reader, etc., Chrome seems extra-fast:

JavaScript-heavy webpages (such as Gmail), will now run 30% faster on Chrome, according to Google. Given how fast they were already running, that’s fairly insane.

What do you all think? Is this browser worth using? There's always that ol' anti-trust issue floating around, and some have questioned why Google would get in the browser and mobile phone businesses when they don't seem likely to be profitable. Is it scary for Google to creep into yet another facet of our online lives, or is this just expected at this point?

And, while we're on the subject of browsers, do any of you use the Firefox add-on that lets you skip Web ads? Slate raises an interesting point: is it ethical for a writer who makes money from an ad-driven Web site to block Internet ads with his or her browser? I tried out the ad blocker, and it's kind of shocking. All of the news Web sites look like ghost towns without ads blinking and yelling for your attention. But I think that's something I could get used to.

Getting news these days is more work than it used to be.

In times of old, reading the local newspaper was probably enough: you could get local, national and international news in one place, and it was neatly categorized by its perceived importance.

As yesterday's CNN.com story on "hyperlocal" news explains, that's changed. Now some publications focus exclusively on local happenings. Many news consumers turn to dozens of blogs, Twitter feeds, news stories and video links to get their daily fix. It's more work, but potentially there's more of a reward, too. For some, this is a sign the media is becoming more democratic: everyone gets a voice.

But for the reader, sorting through all of this online information can be a maddening and infinite task.

Enter the RSS reader, which brings headlines and scraps of information from your favorite sites to you in one place. But, as a recent Slate post suggests, there's a growing backlash against the RSS mindset partly because the interface is so artless. When you get all of your news through RSS, it all looks the same. There's no design flair, no prioritization of the content, no local flavor to the text-based feeds. It's like shoving the contents of all of your favorite boutique and thrift stores into a Wal-Mart-style warehouse.

Farhad Manjoo writes that his once-beloved Google Reader has become more of a chore than a pleasurable reading experience:

You know that sinking feeling you get when you open your e-mail and discover hundreds of messages you need to respond to—that realization that e-mail has become another merciless chore in your day? That's how I began to feel about my reader.

Other news sites point to further reasons RSS may be falling out of favor: The Guardian, out of the UK, suggests RSS is being overtaken by Twitter. TechCrunch offers up an obit for the service.

Manjoo, of Slate, points to a retro solution to RSS headache, which he pulled from the blog DesignNotes. The basic idea is to use browser tabs instead of RSS, to organize them into neat folders, and then to open them in groups. That way you can still see some Web design, and all of your news isn't shoved into a two-line, modular box. From the DesignNotes post:

... I bookmark blogs and place them in folders in Firefox that then become tabs that I can open. What that means is that within a couple minutes I can open between 35 – 60 blogs and sites ... My tab method is as follows. I’ve named them M1, M1B, M2 etc… the M1 is a bunch of blogs that I check out quite often during the day and as the folder numbers progress the less I check them out. The last folder (M5) is for new blogs and sites that I’m checking out. It’s a test phase to see whether after a couple weeks if they’ll make the cut to be placed in one of the other folders.

Now, I know how to make bookmarks (I even share some on Delicious), and I have 15 tabs open on this browser window alone, but I wasn't sure how to make bookmark folders that I could open in bulk. For those of you who are similarly clumsy with browsers, here's what you do in Firefox: open up a bunch of sites you want to put in a folder; from the Bookmarks tab, select "Bookmark All Tabs"; give the folder a name ("tech blogs" for example); then, when you want to see all of your favorite tech blogs, just pull up the folder, again from the Bookmarks menu, and select "Open All Tabs" from the bottom of the list.

And Shazam! All of your favorite sites in tabs. The major problem seems to be that this method can clutter your desktop. It's also a bit more difficult to constantly check to see when your favorite blogs have updated.

What do you think? Have RSS feeds, as DesignPosts says, become a "never ending chore?" There are plenty of RSS evangelists out there: what do you have to say? Any other methods for making online news faster and more fun?

I'm going to try out the tabs method this week and will report back on how it goes. Until then, jump into the discussion in the comments.