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Popular mobile browser provider Opera released a demographic report about their users today that provides some valuable, if sometimes unsurprising, insights into just who is accessing the web on their mobile phones. The two primary take-aways: 88.1% of people using the mobile Web around the world are male and most people using Opera Mini are between the ages of 18-27

Those big conclusions may be relatively unsurprising but the study also includes a number of other tidbits that might be news to you, as they were to us. It's a really interesting snapshot of different cultural contexts and technology use patterns.

Prediction markets are speculative markets in which investors put money into ideas that are tied to a future event -- such as "Will the Lakers cover the spread?" The idea is that the more people who buy into an idea, the more likely it is to occur. This is an application of crowd wisdom. One such prediction market, Intrade, which has been in operation since 2001 and has 73,000 traders, is running a number of prediction contracts on the 2008 US presidential election. Are their predictions more or less accurate then good old fashioned phone surveys?