During the last presidential election, Andrew Rasiej was busy advising Howard Dean on his campaign´s use of technology. Micah Sifry was a journalist covering the intersection of politics and the Internet for The Nation. This time around, the two are running the first-ever Web site that tracks how the candidates are using-and just as often, failing to use-technology to bolster their campaigns.

My favorite moment at the Web 2.0 Summit so far happened this afternoon, when Bill Tancer, the global research manager of online research firm Hitwise, described how five months ago, his company predicted the success of seemingly out-of-nowhere chart-topping rapper Soulja Boy.

In case you're not familiar, Soulja Boy is the auteur of the incomprehensible but highly dance-able song "Crank That," which has been number one in the Billboard 100 for the past six weeks.

Apparently, Hitwise charted the Soulja Boy boom by tracking the amount of traffic streaming from social networking sites to search engines to his official Web site, and predicted back in May that the rapper (who was virtually unknown at the time) would become a major mainstream success.

"If theres buzz on the social networks, we track traffic going from those sites to a band's official web site. Buzz bleeds over to search and you can chart that and see the tipping point in advance," Tancer said.

Who knew Hitwise was so hip? —Megan Miller

Ever wonder if sexual predators might make use of social networking sites like MySpace? Well the answer is a big, enormous, resounding, Yes. The site, which pulls in 60 million unique users each month, and has 180 million profiles, announced just a few months ago that it had kicked 7,000 sex offenders out of the community. But yesterday the company revealed that they have actually knocked out 29,000 convicted sex offenders using the system—a number that authorities say will continue to grow. This isnt the first scary news of this sort for the site. In an article covering the MySpace news, the Boston Herald reports that on Monday, a Virginia man pleaded guilty to kidnapping a 14-year-old girl he met through the site. But now a coalition of several state attorneys general is leading the charge to keep MySpace safe, and possibly require kids to get verifiable permission from their parents before they register on the site. Yeah, that seems like a pretty good idea.—Gregory Mone

A massive new study of 18,000 kids from 16 different countries revealed some surprising details about how the next generation thinks about technology, and how its impacting their lives. Conducted by Nickleodeon, MTV and Microsoft, the survey was obviously intended to figure out how to sell more stuff to todays youth, or tomorrows adults, but the findings are fascinating from a purely sociological perspective, too. Consider this: the average young person in China has 37 online friends he or she has never met. Globally, the average is 20, which is surprising enough. But in tech-savvy Japan, a teen will only have 7 such online friends. One reason for the much larger number in China, the reports authors suggest, is that home life is vastly different for these kids. They have few or no siblings, and reach out to others over the Web through social networking sites, blogs, and instant messaging. China also stood out because its kids were the only group that preferred going online to watching TV—everywhere else in the world, the old-school screen still rules. More details can be found here.—Gregory Mone