Lotto and sweepstakes sites enjoyed a surge in traffic in July 2006, rising 19% from June 2006 to 33.4 mln visitors. PCH.com led the category with 10 mln visitors, a 59% increase versus the previous month Piratesatmcd.com, the Pirates of the Caribbean McDonald’s sweepstakes site, which saw 3.6 mln visitors. Traffic to the promotional site contributed to an 87% increase in traffic to the McDonald’s Web property overall, which drew a total of 5 mln visitors. The Oprah Show Summer Sweepstakes, which gives viewers a chance to win an all-expense paid trip to an Oprah taping and contributed to a 42% increase in traffic to Oprah.com (3.7 mln visitors). The Pepsi Street Motion sweepstakes, which resulted in a 434% increase to 689,000 visitors to pepsistreetmotion.com. Additionally, the following state lottery sites saw traffic increases in July: CALottery.com (up 18% to 1.4 mln), FLALottery.com (up 24% to 1.4 mln), Powerball.com (up 9% to 1.4 mln), TXLottery.com (up 11% to 827,000), OhioLottery.com (up 15% to 549,000), IllinoisLottery.com (up 12% to 360,000), MOLottery.com (up 18% to 360,000), MASSLottery.com (up 36% to 359,000) and NC-EducationLottery.org (up 6% to 345,000), ComScore says.

High-tech added more than 140,000 jobs to employ 5.8 million people as of June 2006, the largest number since 2002, said American Electronics Association. This is a 2.5% growth compared to the first half of 2005.

Bureau of Labor Statistics’ list of the top-growing occupations between 2004 and 2014 includes retail salespeople, registered nurses, postsecondary teachers, customer service reps, janitors, waiters, food preparation personnel, home health aides, nursing aides and general managers.

The portion of new business software revenue generated from SaaS products is expected to increase to 25% by 2011 from 5% in 2005, Gartner said.

Users who frequent social networking sites such as MySpace show a predilection for online video, with 55% viewing streaming videos and 21% downloading long-form videos on at least a monthly basis, according to Parks Associates. People who visit a social networking site at least weekly are overall six times more likely to download long-form videos and 1.5 times more likely to view streaming Internet videos than are those who do not use these Websites.

ABI Research forecasts that the total number of Wi-Fi-enabled consumer electronics devices will grow from just 40 mln shipped in 2006 to nearly 249 mln in 2011.

More than 50 million DVB-H phones are expected to be sold globally by 2010, according to Informa.

“Middle-aged” women rule the $458 mln US online casual game market, Real Networks and PopCap found. 70% of casual gamers are females over the age of 40.

New markets for ad-servers and ad-splicing equipment promise dramatic near-term growth in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. ABI Research indicates that revenues from these new technologies will total $284 mln in 2006, but that the equivalent figure for 2011 will be approximately $1.8 bln.

Russian search engine Yandex found there are 1.15 mln Russian blogs on the Internet. The number grows daily by 100, and every second Russian blogosphere gets 3 more blog posts. For the blog hosting services Russians prefer LiveJournal.com (44.78%), LiveInternet.ru (19.98%), Diary.ru (13.15%) and blogs.mail.ru (7.34%). 60% of Russian bloggers are female. 80% of Russian blogger live in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Working Mother magazine published the list of top 100 companies for women to work at.

1. Abbott Laboratories
2. Accenture Ltd.
3. Aflac Inc.
4. Allstate Corp.
5. American Express Co.
6. Arnold & Porter LLP
7. AstraZeneca PLC
8. Avon Products Inc.
9. Bank of America Corp.
10. Baptist Health South Florida
11. Bayer AG
12. Bon Secours Richmond Health System
13. Booz Allen Hamilton
14. The Boston Consulting Group
15. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
16. Bronson Healthcare Group
17. Capital One Financial Corp.
18. Carlson Cos.
19. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta
20. Children’s Memorial Hospital
21. Citigroup Inc.
22. CJW Medical Center
23. Colgate-Palmolive Co.
24. Cornell University
25. Covington & Burling LLP
26. Credit Suisse Group
27. DaimlerChrysler AG
28. Deloitte & Touche USA LLP
29. Deutsche Bank AG
30. Discovery Communications Inc.
31. Dow Corning
32. DuPont Co.
33. Eli Lilly & Co.
34. Ernst & Young LLP
35. Fannie Mae
36. First Horizon National Corp.
37. First National Bank of Omaha
38. Ford Motor Co.
39. Genentech Inc.
40. General Electric Co.
41. General Mills Inc.
42. GlaxoSmithKline PLC
43. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
44. Grant Thornton LLP
45. Gurwin Jewish Geriatric Center
46. Harvard University
47. Hewlett Packard Co.
48. HSBC USA Inc.
49. IBM Corp.
50. Ikea
51. Inova Health System
52. JFK Medical Center
53. Johnson & Johnson
54. JPMorgan Chase & Co.
55. Kellogg Co.
56. KPMG LLP
57. Kraft Foods Inc.
58. Lego Systems Inc.
59. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
60. Massachusetts General Hospital
61. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.
62. McGraw-Hill Cos.
63. Merck & Co.
64. Mercy Health System
65. MetLife Inc.
66. Microsoft Corp.
67. Morgan Stanley
68. Motorola Inc.
69. Northern Trust Corp.
70. Northwestern Memorial Healthcare
71. Novartis AG
72. Patagonia Inc.
73. Pearson PLC
74. Pfizer Inc.
75. Phoenix Cos.
76. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
77. PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
78. PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP
79. Principal Financial Group
80. Procter & Gamble Co.
81. Providence Alaska Medical Center
82. Prudential Financial Inc.
83. Republic Bancorp.
84. Rodale Inc.
85. RSM McGladrey Inc.
86. S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.
87. Schering-Plough
88. Scripps Health
89. Texas Instruments Inc.
90. Timberland Co.
91. Trihealth
92. Turner Broadcasting System Inc.
93. UBS
94. Union Pacific Railroad
95. Verizon Communications Inc.
96. Wachovia Corp.
97. Wells Fargo & Co.
98. West Virginia University Hospitals
99. Wyeth
100. Yale-New Haven Hospital

According to Dow Jones VentureOne, 49 Web 2.0 companies have been funded in the first half of 2006, garnering $262.3 mln in equity capital. That compares to 51 deals and $199.1 mln invested into similar companies in all of 2005, indicating activity is likely to double 2005 level. A total of $13 bln was invested in 1,213 US venture-backed companies in the first half of 2005. The median size of a Web 2.0 financing round 2005 is $4.4 mln, compared to $7.5 mln for a venture financing overall. 65% of the Web 2.0 deals so far 2005 have been seed- and first-round deals. Among the largest Web 2.0 deals 2005 are Facebook, which received a $25 mln second round and Zimbra, which received a $14.5 mln later round.

Conversion rates for paid search was just 9% higher than unpaid search, WebSideStory said. Keywords bought on a pay-per-click basis had a median conversion rate of 3.4%, compared with 3.13% for unpaid results to search queries.

Only 33% of employees are satisfied with the quantity and quality of communications from their employers, according to Morton Worldwide. Among US workers, the preferred medium of communication which posed the opportunity for improved behavior was hearing directly from an immediate manager (30%), followed by live experiences at events or meetings (16%) and hearing from a co-worker (15%), followed by hearing from a CEO (13%).

Ajaxian.com survey of most popular AJAX frameworks resulted in Prototype winning with 43% followed by Scriptaculous with 33% and Dojo with 19%. DWR (Direct Web Remoting) was 4th with 12% of developers preferring this framework, followed by Moo.fx (11%), jQuery (7%), Yahoo! UI (5%) and Rico (5%).

Over 157,000 unique phishing messages were sent out around the world in the first half of 2006, an increase of 81% compared to the second half of 2005, Symantec said.

Baby boomers make up the Web’s largest constituency, accounting for one-third of the 195.3 mln Web users in the US, according to JupiterResearch. Ad buyers targeted boomers with close to $5 bln in ads 2004, according to Jupiter, out of a total $13 bln spent in Web advertising.

The number of blog sites in China reached 34 mln last month, a 30x increase from 2002, state media said on Tuesday, despite a series of curbs on media and dissent. China has more than 17 mln people writing blogs and more than 75 mln people reading them. Out of the 34 mln blog sites, 70% were “dormant”, Xinhua reports.