Google’s new search engine, Google Trends, isn’t a typical breed. It doesn’t look up articles pertaining to the searched term, but rather breaks down the history of how popular the term has been, and the top cities, regions and languages in which the term has been searched.

It is a useful tool to get a grasp on important issues in the public sphere. A search for the term “gay marriage”, for instance, shows the topic peaking during the lead up to the US presidential elections in 2004, then a lull during 2005, only to rise again this year, as it is again being used as campaign fodder for the US midterm elections.

It is also a shows the popularity of consumer products. Searching for “ipod” reveals little interest in 2004, then a huge peak around Christmas 2005. Google Trends also shows Australians are more interested in searching for “McDonalds” than anyone else in the world.

The site can also give insight into local culture and public opinion. For example, a quick search for “guns” shows Phoenix, Arizona, is the city most interested in the subject. Not surprisingly, every city in the top ten is from the United States, with the exception of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Canada holds the top three slots for the term “drugs”. Interestingly, San Diego, California, is number six for searching both “drugs” and “straight edge”.

“Sex” is searched more in the Vietnamese language than in any other. Ironically, the United Kingdom’s Birmingham is the number one city to search both “porn” and “heaven”. (It makes one wonder if web surfers there are starting to feel a bit guilty about their internet activities.) While, “Birmingham” is searched more in Solihull, UK, than in Birmingham.

A look into the term “impeach” yeilds all top ten cities from the United States. Austin, Texas, ranks number two in searches for “Bush” and number 10 in “Nixon” searches. Perhaps they see a correlation.

Finally, people looking for a significant other in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, might have difficulty with mixed messages, as the city ranks number one in searches for both “love” and “hate”.

If a new US bill passes, online companies may no longer be able to cash in on internet censorship. The Global Online Freedom Act recently passed unanimously in a US House of Representatives subcommitee dealing with human rights and international operations. The bill, which aims to keep US companies from complying with other nations’ internet repression regulations, is a reaction to recent actions by internet giants Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.

In January, Microsoft admitted to removing Chinese journalist Zhao Jing’s blog from its MSN site, excusing its behaviour by citing its policy to comply with local laws. Zhao Jing was an outspoken critic against censorship by the Chinese government.

Google has also complied with Chinese censorship laws by creating google.cn, a censored version of its international search engine. Google.cn filters political material the government wishes to keep from the public.

Because of Yahoo!, Chinese journalist Shi Tao will spend 10 years in jail for sending “top secret” government information to foreign web sites. Chinese investigators were able to track down Shi because Yahoo! provided information that enabled them to link Shi’s e-mail address and the “top secret” message to his computer’s IP address.

The proposed bill would set in place rules banning these practices. It would outlaw American companies from keeping users’ e-mails that contain personally identifiable information on servers. It would also make turning over personal information to foreign governments illegal.

To crack down on censorship, the bill would require American companies to pass along a breakdown of how their searches have been restricted and list URLs that are not accessible. In addition, internet service providers may face a fine of up to $2 million per offense for blocking any US government sponsored site in foreign countries.

The Global Online Freedom Act is a welcome advancement in the fight against internet repression and could not come sooner as online censorship is rampant.

In recent news, Singapore has condemned the country’s most popular blogger, Lee Kin Mun, for an article he wrote that was critical of the government. In a statement, the press secretary for Singapore’s Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts stated, “It is not the role of journalists or newspapers in Singapore to champion issues, or campaign for or against the Government.”

The US Congress must pass this bill to protect journalists, bloggers and the free flow of information and freedom across the globe.

Argument across the internet about fraud in the 2004 US elections has taken the leap from the blogosphere straight into the White House press room. (The debate is only about 2 years overdue, but, hey, it’s better late than never.)

In its 15 June issue, Rolling Stone published an article by Robert F Kennedy Jr that breaks down the evidence pointing toward the conclusion the Ohio vote was rigged. Kennedy lists pages of his findings, from Ohio’s purging of voter records, to Ohio’s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell’s questionable ties to the Bush administration, to a lack of voting machines in democratic districts, to the statistical impossibility Bush won the election fairly. More than 700,000 people visited Rolling Stone’s web site to read the story.

Immediately, chatter in both liberal and conservative blogs exploded. While many bloggers lauded the article, the online magazine Salon jumped into the frey with a story condemning Kennedy’s sources of evidence.

Eventually, the mainstream media woke up and realized, with so many people discussing the issue online, the subject might deserve some attention. So, the New York Times devoted an entire column to the article in its 12 June issue. Reporters also began confronting White House press secretary Tony Snow with questions about the fraud allegations.

This serves as a good example of blogs pushing important news stories into the mainstream press. It is likely without the widespread debate online, traditional news outlets would have been content to leave the topic to Rolling Stone and its liberal base of readers. Instead, their influence propelled the story into the awareness of millions more.

The Institute for Applied Autonomy is developing a system to track the routes the CIA uses to fly captives for extrordinary rendition, using data from a collection of obtained photos and flight plans. The project will allow viewers to keep track of a regularly updated map of arrivals and departures of the airplanes. People can also use the project’s SMS service to receive notices when a torture plane will be arriving at an airport near them.

It is three days past the zero hour and there have been no horriffic terrorist bombings, deadly subway gassings or nuclear fallouts. The world, it appears, is still normal.

Some people are a little surprised.

Six months ago, a website named eon8 debuted, consisting of nothing but a noir black and white image of a world map, a count down timer to 1 July and bits of code. Viewers of the site assumed the worst. They assumed the site was counting down to the date of our oblivion. The end of the world. Some even linked the site to apocolyptic passages of the Book of Revelations to stoke their fears.

But, it was all a hoax. Well, not a hoax, exactly. The site’s creator chooses to file it under the term “social experiment”. In a message posted on the site after the ticker turned to zero, he said he wanted to see what conclusions people would come to about a site with such little information. Of course, people assumed the worst.

“We were amazed to discover that the site was instantly linked with terrorism, simply for the fact that it seems mysterious”, he said. “Evil was the number one first impression people had of the site, in spite of the fact that there are no threats on the site”.

The experiment, while indentifying the bleak state of society’s paranoia, also showed people’s desire to band together during moments of fear. Some eon8 fanatics held countdown parties. Others used it as an opportunity to make ammends before the ticker ticked out.

The site’s creator concluded, “People take things too seriously and panic over the most trivial things”, he said. “You can’t let pointless speculation rule your lives and force you to live in fear”.

I suppose the name “Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information” sounds a whole lot better than “Air Force Eye Command Group for the Pilfering of your Myspace Pages.” Either way, the new $450,000 blog-snooping project recently hatched up by the US Airforce seems really creepy and massively Orwelien.

The Air Force maintains the purpose of the investigation is to better understand how blogs work, what subjects people write about and blogs’ power to influence international uprisings, such as the furor over the Danish anti-Moslem cartoons. Yes, but I can’t help but picture men in black suits and fedoras sifting through digital photos of college students at keg parties and reading rambling posts about The Shins and new Mac Books at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Oh, wait. That’s a different programme.

The US National Security Agency is conducting a “mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks”. By trawling through web sites such as Myspace, Friendster and Facebook, the organisation could be collecting the knowledge to create a future database of people’s interests that could be combined with banking, retail and property records to become a group of all-inclusive government files on citizens. (These details could, of course, be added to the current NSA logs of citizens’ phone calls.)

Another goal of the NSA’s snooping project is to analyze the “friends” web surfers make through online social networks. By collecting this information, the government can track people with the same interests, such as skipping rocks in the lake, folding oragami swans, or flying planes into New York City skyscrapers.

Beware bloggers - the US government has finally learned our secret. They’ve found out we are all tough, iron-pumping, dozen-eggs-for-breakfast-eating, bomb-belt-wearing, key-board-wielding, leftist maniacs.

Or maybe they have just never heard of Technorati.