How Much of the Internet Is Porn? Less than You'd Expect

The Internet really isn't as pornography-filled as you might think. In fact, according to one expert, only 42,337 of the one million most-trafficked websites online are offering sex-related content, which translates into somewhere around 4% of sites on the Internet.

That surprising figure—am I the only person who expected it to be much higher?—comes from neuroscientist Ogi Ogas who, along with his partner Sai Gaddam, collected porn statistics as research for his book A Billion Wicked Thoughts. He went on to say that 13% of all web searches between July 2009 and July 2010 were for "erotic content," down from an estimated 40-50% ten years earlier. So has the Internet just become more family-friendly as it grows older?

Ogas isn't convinced; he thinks that what may have happened instead, is that hard fact has replaced fearmongering and rumor:

There have been a bunch of false and ultimately mythic stats floating around for years that say half the Internet is porn or one third of the Internet is porn, though this has never been remotely true... Web filtering companies used to always release competing figures on the number of porn sites they blocked, but these numbers were almost certainly boosted to get sensationalist headlines  and to seem competitive with other filtering companies that filtered “less” adult sites. For example, N2H2 claimed there were 260 million porn sites–haha, one for every American citizen!  Conservative groups are always coming up with porn figures that are crazy high, too, especially with regard to children's exposure to porn.

Perhaps the most surprising piece of information Ogas shares about Internet porn, however, may be that people still pay for pornography online. In fact, that may be more true depending on where you live. According to Ogas, "I've heard from different adult operators that the Republican states have higher per-capita subscription rates. Meaning they're more likely to pay money—they don't know about free porn viewing."

I eagerly look forward to the next Republican Presidential Nominee Debate featuring candidates boasting about the jobs they've created in the online porn industry.

TechCrunch Founder Leaving AOL-Owned Blog

NEW YORK (AP) -- Michael Arrington, founder of the popular technology blog TechCrunch, is leaving the blog and its owner, AOL, to work on the venture capital fund he recently started.

Arrington, 41, sold TechCrunch to AOL nearly a year ago. When he and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced the acquisition last September, Arrington had said he expected to stay with the company for at least three years.

In a statement, AOL spokeswoman Maureen Sullivan said the "TechCrunch acquisition has been a success for AOL and for our shareholders, and we are very excited about its future."

"Michael is a world-class entrepreneur and we look forward to supporting his new endeavor through our investment in his venture fund," she said.

Arrington started his venture capital firm with an initial $20 million. Its investors include AOL as well as venture capital firms such as Greylock partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.

Erick Schonfeld, who joined TechCrunch in 2007, has been named its editor.

Addictive Blooms: 'Fractal' Review

Like any watershed work of art, 1984's Tetris sired lots of offspring, some more bastardly than others. And it's been fascinating to see the way the falling block puzzle genre has transformed that since the Russian-born game made the Game Boy a must-have device. Time limits, RPG elements, multiple colors and a plethora of shapes have made titles like Bejeweled and Puzzle Quest blockbuster triumphs in their own right.

It's too soon to say if Fractal–the new iPad game created by indie development studio Cipher Prime–will join those ultra-successful block puzzlers but it does bring some interesting elements that make it feel fresher than any similar game in recent memory.

The first change is in the shape that players are tasked to make. You'll need to nudge seven hexagonal tiles into a bloom–a shape that sort of looks like a flower–to clear them off the board. It's not the easy horizontal lines of Tetris or friendly squares of Lumines, and you'll need to train your eye to spot the opportunities. The bigger tweak that Fractal introduces is a limited pool of resources. You only get a certain number of moves to fulfill each level's quota and this creates a radical shift in how you play.

Other games in this genre keep delivering an endless supply of chances to break out of gridlock and you're strung along waiting for the "right" piece or a magic tile that clears huge swaths of screen real estate. Fractal does away with that, adding an element of resource management that makes it feel leaner and meaner than other Tetris-style games.

Fractal does other things, too–like having two-color levels but only giving moves for one of those hues–that make it feel inventive and challenging. But some of its tricks make for a tough learning curve. I've played Fractal for more than a week in Campaign Mode and have consistently hit bottlenecks where I repeatedly failed to advance. I thought it was just me, until I handed it over to a friend who works in game development. It wasn't until I wandered over to the Puzzle mode that I realized that's where the real eye-training necessary to succeed happens. It's there so that you learn how to create shapes and spaces and how to ration pushes.

The odd thing about Fractal is how it manages to be addictive despite its frustrating opacity. In the Arcade Mode, it's easy to lose hours blowing down level after level because you have no push restriction and can earn more seconds to the one-minute time limit as you do better. The aforementioned Puzzle mode comes in three different flavors which tweak colors and resource settings according to how masterful you feel.

The bloom shape that you're supposed to make can be hard to see in the mosaic of colors on the screen. Not hard to see in a poorly designed way, but hard to see in a re-orienting your vision way. It's also hard to predict where pieces will float to when you make a bloom using the Explode or Electrify power-ups. You feel lucky but not strategic while playing. And, while that creates an interesting tension, you'll still need actual strategy to move forward and it's hard to formulate one with as much randomization as Fractal has baked into it.

Despite all of that, Cipher Prime's latest title does feel, well, fractal. You feel caught up in a loop of naturally occurring patterns that feel mysteriously organic. Devilishly designed to tweak the standard match-three, color-combo puzzle game template, Fractal walks the line between minimalism and mystery. You keep playing because of the sensation that some part of your brain will figure the mechanics out eventually. The fact that things only click occasionally may make it a little aggravating to play, but no less rewarding.

Windows 8 Revealed: Live from the Microsoft 'Build' Conference

We know a little bit about Windows 8 already, but only a little bit. Today at 12pm ET, Microsoft is holding a keynote at its BUILD conference in Anaheim—and by the time it's over, odds are that we'll have a pretty good idea of the operating system upgrade's overarching aims, feature highlights, and potential pitfalls.

We'll be in the audience and will liveblog the news as it happens. And we hope you'll join us right here.

PHOTOS: The First Windows 8 Tablet

More on Techland: 

Microsoft Rolls Out Windows 8: Nope, Definitely Not an iOS Clone

50 Windows 8 Screenshots, Hardware Photos and More

All Microsoft Build 2011 Coverage on Techland

Report: Speedier MacBook Pros on the Way

After rolling out new models in February, Apple is reportedly planning a marginal speed bump to its line of MacBook Pro notebooks before the end of the year.

That's according to a rumor from Apple Insider, which quotes not the standard "people familiar with the plans" but "people with proven insight into Apple's future product plans." In other words, take this news with a grain of salt, as with all rumors, but maybe make this particular salt grain a bit coarser and larger than normal. Perhaps a grain of sea salt if you've got one handy.

(MORE: New Lighter, Faster MacBook Pros Have Landed)

Anyhoo, here's the supposed skinny:

"Word of the new models comes just one week after Intel quietly refreshed its Sandy Bridge lineup of processors, adding four new Core i7 chips suited for adoption by the MacBook Pro in addition to slashing prices on some other chips, while phasing out a handful of others.

In particular, the chipmaker introduced new 2.4GHz, 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz quad-core Core i7 processors that could replace the 2.0GHz, 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz versions offered in the current 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros, in addition to a 2.8GHz dual-core Core i7 that could serve as an upgrade path for the current 2.7GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro.

As for the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, Intel continues to list a couple of Core i5 chips at speeds of 2.5GHz to 2.6GHz that Apple could elect to use to bump 2.3GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro for little to no cost increase."

As for timing, these mysterious product-plan-insight people say that the new models may be introduced as early as the end of the month. Hmmm, if only Apple had something else to announce soon. Something smaller and capable of making phone calls and whatnot. My, wouldn't that be convenient to announce everything at the same event sometime in the not-too-distant future?

Yoko Ono Is Following You (and 692,318 Other People) By Graeme McMillan on September 13, 2011

Yoko Ono is more interested in the lives of strangers than you are.

In fact, you might be able to make the argument that she's more interested in the lives of strangers than anyone else, as she's currently following 692,318 people on Twitter (as I type these words), more than any other account on the social media service. The next most friendly Twitterer? U.S. President Barack Obama.

(MORE: Twitter Reveals Active User Number, How Many Actually Say Something)

According to the All Twitter blog, Ono became Twitter's biggest follower at some point during the last six months, overtaking Obama—who apparently unfollowed more than 10,000 accounts—and taking the top spot of a list that includes Britney Spears, Whole Foods and the generically-named "UK Prime Minister" account.

The "Top 10 Twitter Accounts" sorted by "Following Other Accounts" list:

1. Yoko Ono (@YokoOno)
2. Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
3. HootSuite (@HootSuite)
4. Threadless (@threadless)
5. Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods)
6. UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov)
7. Britney Spears (@britneyspears)
8. Lonely Planet (@lonelyplanet)
9. Zappos (@zappos)
10. Jean-Sébastien J. (@Wakooz_RSS)

I'm currently following less than 300 people. Either I'm doing Twitter all wrong, or if I want to play in the big league, I need to start taking "Follow Friday" more seriously.

And the Top Android App for Men Is...

According to a new survey by Nielsen, the most used app by men as indicated by metered device usage is—drumroll, please—Google Maps.

In taking a look at how many Android owners used an app in the past 30 days, the study found that 77.1% of males used Google Maps (disregarding the requisite Android Market app).

(MORE: Guess How Big Android's Lead Over Apple is Now?)

Gmail came in a close second (75.5%), with Google Search (72.4%), Facebook (66.9%), and YouTube (53.7%) rounding out the top five. Angry Birds was also on the list with a respectable 27.3%.

So why do men love Google Maps so much? Here's my guess: It's not that we (men) don't like asking for directions, it's that we just don't trust other breathing humans to point us in the right ones. As a guy with an awful (and I do mean awful) sense of direction, I'd much rather bury my head in my phone and poke through a bunch of menus than cave in and ask a stranger on the street to send me towards a place he or she's never heard of. I'm not speaking for all guys; it's just a hunch. Google's all-knowing omniscience > all. (Unless my girlfriend's there—she's impatient and likes talking to people.)

The most used app by women? Facebook sits at the number one spot with a commanding 81% lead, followed by Gmail (73.4%), Google Maps (71.9%), Google Search (71.3%) and YouTube (48.7%). Here are the full results:

Nielsen

So why do women love checking Facebook so much? (It's nearly an 8% jump between first place and second place.) I have no idea, but I'm guessing you do.