So why give it a second look? One reason: attention to detail. Most noticeable is an obvious concern for the aesthetic of the product. You get the idea that look and feel are important to the company when you first land at the Survs site - and that thoughtful design continues throughout the product from the survey composition tool to the reporting features.

But that's not the only detail to which Survs pays attention. The site leverages AJAX to make the survey creation process easier on the builder. No more saving and refreshing to see changes. Just double click and type. Survs saves everything on the fly. A small - and seemingly insignificant - touch that vastly improves the speed with which one can compose a survey.

Another example of "attention to detail" can be found in the look and feel of the surveys themselves. Themes and templates allow users to customize the colors of the simple and well-designed surveys, as expected. But what was unexpected was the option to edit the language of the survey down to the "Next" buttons.

Finally, Survs offers the option to run surveys through multiple channels at the same time. For example, you could send a survey out by email, embed it in a page, and link to it from somewhere else. Each channel can be monitored separately to determine the most effective means of interactive with your audience.

Now, the downside. Survs is currently in private beta for a reason. It's fragile. The server tended to choke while we were performing some basic functions. And survey embeds failed on a couple of occasions. But some of that fragility may stem from the fact that we're accessing Survs from the United States. (It will be interesting to hear if our European readers experience similar issues in reaching this Portuguese company.)

Suffice it to say, we wouldn't recommend using it for "mission critical" surveys at this point.

If you're already in love with a survey tool, Survs may not dissuade you from using it. But if you're new to the world of online surveys or have never really settled on a solution, Survs could be exactly what you're seeking.

Survs is currently in private beta. But, they have given ReadWriteWeb readers an access code to register for the service. Simply visit the registration page and enter the code F6W6HGOD. The offer is limited to the first 500 people, first come, first served.

The gist of the analysis is that people who use the internet at work also use it to do work at home; it makes them more efficient but also increases the demands on their time. Any of us who live that kind of life could have told you that - but what we find more interesting is the surprisingly low number of people who say they use certain technologies at work.

Specifically, the Pew study focuses on "networked workers" - defined as anyone who uses the internet or email at their work. At all. Can you guess what percentage of employed US adults say they use the internet or email at their work? Only 62%. Even that number includes people who make only the most rudimentary use of the most simple tools, however. A look at the details indicates that anything beyond the simplest tools (like the browser) is still a real fringe case.

The big take-aways from the above for us? That only 18% of people who use the internet at work use IM, only 10% report using social networks like Facebook, LInkedIn or MySpace and a mere 11% report reading blogs at work.

Only 1 out of 10 people who use the internet at work read blogs about their work; that seems like a real loss of opportunity for them.

If you or someone you love falls outside of these categories - please take our word for it - those are really useful tools! You can communicate really well (instantly, in fact) using IM and there's a whole lot of valuable information on blogs in any field. As for social networks, you'll see the value in those after you get comfortable with IM and blogs.

If you use the internet every day at work but never use IM and never read blogs on your field, you're not really using the internet - or you may as well not be. There's no shame in that, but that's how it is. To be fair, the 60% of respondents who use the internet at work probably includes a lot of people who feel pretty advanced for doing so at all after years of working without it.

Combine these numbers, though, with another reputable survey from last year that found that 11% of US respondents "said they were very or somewhat likely to...implant a device into your brain that enabled you to use your mind to access the internet if it could be done safely." An internet brain implant is a terrible idea, but they should definitely not be given to anyone who's never read a blog at work.

It's even crazier when you look at the chart above. Add the left-most numbers in this chart up and you'll see that 60% of these people use the internet at least once every day at work. But they don't read blogs, use IM or find contacts, answers or other resources on social networks.

Greg Sterling at SearchEngineLand says these numbers are probably low because people don't report accurately how much they use these tools at work - but Pew studies are really well done, they are anonymous and there's no reason to think them inaccurate as far as we can tell.

What Does it All Mean?

The survey and some early analysis of this survey point to the encroachment of work machines into our personal lives. As professional internet users, we'd point instead to the apparently huge gap between early adopter activities and the rest of the "networked world."

This is why Common Craft can make an entire business out of licensing 5 minute videos of stick figures explaining how Google Reader and LInkedIn work. That stuff is like a bright beam of light breaking through the clouds of the modern workplace. It's an important light to look at, too. Though business can clearly be done without meaningful use of the internet (obviously) - competition will likely only grow more intense.

As geek photographer and friend of RWW Aaron Hockley said on Twitter this morning "Social media search feeds. If you're not using them, you're losing business to someone who is." Those who are using them have lots of business to take, too, because almost 90% of people in the US who use the internet at work aren't even reading blogs.

Comscore issued their report for July website traffic in the online video sector today and two numbers really stand out. The company estimates that US web users viewed more than 5 billion videos that month and says that 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in July. Those are some pretty high numbers, but 3rd party traffic stats always have to be taken with a giant grain of salt. Do you believe that online video is this universal yet?

• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video.


• 91 million viewers watched 5 billion videos on YouTube.com (54.8 videos per viewer).


• 51.4 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace.com (7.8 videos per viewer).


• The duration of the average online video was 2.9 minutes.

How good are these numbers from Comscore? It's hard to know. The company is widely respected, but so is Hitwise, another traffic analyst firm that comes up with very different numbers. See our write up in June of a Hitwise report that argued that the video market in general was declining but that YouTube had a 75% marketshare in May. Comscore reports that YouTube has a 44% marketshare. Both companies agree on who the leaders are, perhaps Comscore is just looking further out the long tail in who it includes in the category.

All of these numbers are subject to interpretation and no one's data collection method is anywhere near perfect. Do you believe the assertion that 75% of the US market online watched online video in July? We regularly talk to people who don't know the first thing about anything regarding the internet, but perhaps even they spend time on YouTube or use Windows Media Player to watch news video on the big news portals.

Let us know your take on the believability of these numbers in the poll above. For more details, see Comscore's full report.

Investigative Journalism?

Survey respondents claimed that there had been an actual increase in investigative efforts, despite theories (see Nick Carr, for example) that the web would cleave entertainment news ad revenue from the investigative journalism it has long subsidized.

Respondents reported a decline in institutional knowledge but an increase in use of the web for research. Web publishing included, the editors report that they are publishing a greater quantity of stories than ever before - but with fewer editors watching those stories for quality.

The Rise of Local News

Newspapers are increasingly delegating national and international coverage to the biggest news organizations among them. Local news is where local press shines. While that makes sense, we wonder whether the rise of location-aware computing devices could lead to a shift in even local advertisers and be the last nail in the coffin after Craigslist.

There may be other ways for even local news to be monetized, though. How many online news organizations make their biggest money from events? Newspapers could certainly organize sponsored events concerning topics of local interest. While that's one interesting idea, there are probably a limited number of viable ideas to keep the revenue flowing long term.

This is What Change Looks Like

The fast paced firehose of the web seems to beg for shallow, poorly edited reporting - but perhaps things are just changing. We don't write in Old English any more, either.

Here at RWW, many of us love the print newspaper and don't want to see it go away. We'd also like the newspaper companies to stop delivering giant piles of paper to our houses each morning, though.

Declining revenue and staff is probably not good for any institution, but the editors interviewed by Pew said their remaining staff is fired up with competitive enthusiasm. That's something that's been missing in the newspaper business for awhile.

These are changing times, clearly, and we believe that news is just one of countless industries that will be upended by the changing web. For a look at one way newspapers might thrive in these times, check out our coverage of the Guardian's recent acquisition of leading business blog PaidContent.

Photo: 60's Paper by Flickr user DaisyBush, proof again that vapid reporting is nothing new.

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.

• The United States has the world's highest percentage of Opera Mini users over the age of 48 (7%) and 20% of US web users are women.


• Mobile web users in India are 97% male and that country has the lowest percentage of under-18 mobile web users (5.6%)


• South Africa has the world's highest percentage of women mobile web users (25%) and Facebook is the top site accessed in Opera Mini in that country.

The study is full of interesting statistical observations like the above and is displayed in a very readable format.

While the mobile web and Opera Mini in particularly are very widely used around the world, they are also only a part of the emerging global mobile experience. We like to read about mobile social change activities, often based on SMS, over at MobileActive - a great place to learn about different ways people around the world are using their phones. danah boyd's recent blog post about the way that Palestinian girls receive cell phones as a gift from boyfriends to facilitate serendipitous communication and then struggle with expectations that they will not use it to communicate with other people is also a very interesting read.

Some people argue that a binary definition of gender is falsely limiting and inappropriate for an accurate observation of any cultural experience, but the vast majority of people in much of the world do self-identify as one gender tied specifically to their sex. In that context, it's unclear on what it means that men are 10X as likely to use the mobile web as women - but who would have been surprised if the study had concluded that men spent 10X as much time on the mobile web (including at the dinner table)?

Opera's study will no doubt be discussed in settings ranging from marketing to advocacy of social equity in technology. It's a good one to have in the back of your mind when thinking about the mobile web.

Intrade has contracts open for the electoral vote in each member of electoral college in the US. Based on that data, ElectoralMap.net has come up with a predicted map that's updated every couple of days. With 270 electoral votes needed to claim the presidency, the Intrade prediction market currently has Obama winning 289 to 227, with 18 votes up for grabs.

The map at Electoral-Vote.com, which relies on the latest phone survey data, has Obama winning 287 to 227 with 24 votes in a dead heat. Both maps show similar states in play, though the phone surveys tend to show a more nuanced picture of how the country may be planning to vote (note: that could be due to how each site's author is reading the respective data sets).

That said, it is still very early in election season, so you can expect both maps to change between now and November 4th. It will be interesting to see which of these methods is more accurate at ultimately predicting the outcome of the election, though it seems likely that the prediction markets will mirror the phone surveys because that's one of the major sources of information about how each state may vote for the investors.