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Would you be surprised to learn that Google employs a stable of freelance researchers who answer questions for a fee? Google Answers has been around for several years now, but relatively few Internet users ever plow deep enough into Google's ever-expanding set of features to encounter it.

Google Answers is designed fill the void when the search engine fails you. Users post questions, something like "Who will be required to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax in 2007" and specify how much you'll pay for an answer. A low bid means your question probably won't get answered. But if your fee is acceptable, a researcher will find the information you want, post it to Google Answers, and send you an email.

One user recently posted the question, "How old was Eric Burdon(singer) of the 'The Animals' when he recorded 'House of the Rising Sun'?" He paid two dollars for the answer. Another user paid five dollars for an answer to "What is the life span of a chicken?"

Guest: Sarah Milstein, one of the authors of Google: The Missing Manual, 2nd edition

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A U.S. government agency is raising espionage concerns about a contract that has the State Department buying 15,000 PCs from Lenovo, which is owned in part by an arm of the government in Beijing.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission says it fears the machines could be fitted with technology to spy on the U-S government.

Lenovo, which last year bought IBM's PC business, says it has nothing to hide and would welcome a probe.

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A new study by the Nielsen Norman Group, a firm that researches ways to make Websites more user-friendly, finds that people scan Web sites very quickly, and instantly dismiss much of what they see. The study used special equipment to track eye movements of 230 users as they visited various sites. Web design expert Jakob Nielsen says he was a little surprised to learn that users tend to avoid most large pictures. He was less shocked to learn that people ignore pricey, graphic-rich ads.

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A reliable wireless internet connection is one of the amenities most requested by hotel guests. But the hotel Wi-fi experience is wildly uneven. The worst charge too much, have weak connections, and provide no technical support. Hotel Chatter, an online magazine with hotel news and reviews, has just published its survey of hotel Wi-fi.

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The company strongly denies it, but the rumors persist: Google will make its own Internet computer in an attempt to wean users from PCs filled with Microsoft products. The Internet box would direct users to Google services like GMail, Google Video, and Writely, the company's new online word processor.

On today's show, CNET editor at large Brian Cooley gives analyzes the merits and possibilities of a Google-branded computer.

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Last October's DARPA Grand Challenge pitted robotic vehicles against each other in a 100-plus mile race across the desert. Five of twenty teams cheered their driverless vehicles across the finish line, an amazing feat given that just a year earlier no robot got past the seventh mile. The Grand Challenge, sponsored by the Pentagon, provided a glimpse of the future of military and perhaps personal transportation.

The race is chronicled in a new hour-long documentary, The Great Robot Race, which airs on the PBS program NOVA next Tuesday.

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Americans are increasingly abandoning the traditional news media in favor of the Internet.

A Pew Internet and American Life Project survey finds that 50 million Americans obtain news online on an average day. And among the people who use the Internet the most, 71 percent go online for news, compared to 59 percent who watch local TV news and less than 40 percent who read local newspapers.

The study of 3,011 U.S. adults was conducted Nov. 29 to Dec. 31 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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Votefortheworst.com is at it again, backing the "American Idol" contestant it feels is the worst singer. This season the site has been asking people to vote for Kevin Covais, the 16 year-old singer nicknamed "Chicken Little." Acerbic judge Simon Cowell called one Covais performance "appalling."

Dave De La Terza, who runs Votefortheworst.com, wants the most popular show on television to stay cheesy as long as possible.

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Thirty dollars will free you of 70 pounds of digital waste.

Seattle-based Greendisk will send you a special cardboard box, called the Technotrash Can, that you fill with old cell phones, laptops, CDs and much more. When the box is full, you go to Greendisk's Web site and schedule a pick-up from the U.S. Postal Service.

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Earlier this month, Google agreed to a $90 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by online advertisers against Internet search companies. Online advertisers say Google overcharged them for invalid clicks on their ads. That's known as click fraud, and experts say it's a big problem that's getting worse.

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Multiple factors affect how quickly iPods and other music players eat up battery life. Users have some control.

James Kim is a senior editor at CNET and author of the MP3 Insider column.

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It's a sad but inevitable truth: All iPod batteries die. But most of us are unprepared when the end comes. You see, iPods betray their user-friendly reputation when it comes time to replace batteries. My iPod Mini will no longer hold a charge, and I can't decide whether to go the more expensive professional repair route, or the cheaper but riskier do-it-yourself way.

So I called James Kim for advice. Kim is a senior editor at CNET and author of the MP3 Insider column. He says Apple will replace your battery free in its first year of life. After a year, your first option is to ship your baby off to Cupertino.

If you choose to replace the battery yourself, here are a few places to start:

iPodjuice.com
eforcity.com
iPodbattery.com

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When Sacramento-based McClatchy bought the 32 daily newspapers of the Knight Ridder chain, it also bought the papers' Web sites. Big changes are likely for the Web sites of the former Knight Ridder-owned properties, including those of the twelve newspapers McClatchy plans to sell in the months ahead.

Guest: Chris Jennewein, who runs Internet operations for the San Diego Union Tribune.

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Google and the Bush administration were set to square off in court today over the government's request for data on Americans who use the Google search engine. The hearing marks the first time the Justice Department and Google have sparred in court since the government subpoenaed the company last summer in an effort to obtain a long list of search requests and Web site addresses.

Google has refused to cooperate, maintaining that the government's demand threatens its users' privacy as well as its own closely guarded trade secrets.

Guest: Lauren Gelman, associate director of the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society.

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Gone are the days when malicious hackers were in it for the thrill. It's not about vandalism or data destruction anymore. Whether it's viruses, worms, or spyware, the point is to steal your money.

Guest: Dean Turner, executive editor of the widely-read Symantec Internet Security Threat Report

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Google has bought the maker of Writely, an online word processing program that gives the search engine leader another potential weapon in its escalating battle with Microsoft.

The acquisition of Upstartle continues Google's effort to assemble a suite of software applications that are tethered to an Internet connection instead of a single computer's hard drive. Google is also developing an calendar application, and an online data storage service.

Michael Arrington, who writes about Internet companies on his widely-read weblog, TechCrunch, says the acquisition of writely is a shot across the bow of Microsoft's ship.

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This July, graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will try to make a car take to the air.

Terrafugia, a start-up created by students at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, wants to show off a "personal air vehicle" at the EAA AirVenture Conference in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The hybrid car-airplane will carry two people and is designed to go 100 to 500 miles at a stretch. The vehicle exists only as a one-fifth scale model at the moment.

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A new online music service called La la is offering full-length CDs for one dollar plus 49 cents shipping by letting members trade used discs.

La la, which is backed with $9 million in new funding, works like an online music co-op by enabling members to trade physical CDs they own for physical CDs they want. With 1.8 million album titles available, members trade the CDs in prepaid envelopes.

La la will also sell new CDs, and likely will offer digital downloads.

To try Lala before it officially launches, click here or go to:

http://www.lala.com/invite/futuretense

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Programmers around the world have created new applications using the code behind Google's map service. They mix Google Maps' A.P.I. (application programming interface) with other data. These new sites let you pinpoint pizza joints in New York City, reported crimes in Chicago, apartments for rent in Minneapolis, and free wireless networks in Seattle.

Mike Pegg tracks the creative use of Google Maps on his blog, Google Maps Mania.

See our own use of Google Maps to show the stations where you can hear FutureTense on the air.

Update: Mapquest has released its A.P.I., hoping to grab a piece of the mashup pie.

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Almost one in three American adults say they know someone who has used a dating website, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Thirty million Americans say they know someone who has been in a long-term relationship or got married after first meeting up online.

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New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen believes newspapers must publish Weblogs to meet the changing expectations of readers. Rosen, author of the Pressthink blog, has just completed an analysis of blogging at U.S. newspapers. The Houston Chronicle comes out on top. Rosen says other U.S. newspapers doing the best blogging are the Washington Post, USA Today, the St. Petersburg Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the San Antonio Express-News.

Rosen gives newspapers high marks when they use blogs to tap the knowledge and expertise of their readers. He's also praised Minnesota Public Radio's innovative Public Insight Journalism, which recognizes that its audience is very smart and knows more than it does. From MPR's Public Insight Journalism Web site:

Your work, education, life experience - even your hobbies - give you more knowledge about some issues and events than even our most experienced editors and reporters possess. What you know can help us cover the news in greater depth and uncover stories we would not otherwise find.

Public Insight Journalism taps knowledge in the audience and brings it into the reporting and editing process to create coverage that is more credible, smarter, and more relevant than that of today’s journalism.

Minnesota Public Radio has used Public Insight Journalism to create stronger, more relevant coverage on dozens of issues. Our network of sources has helped us find and report stories on the growing obesity epidemic in rural areas, the decline of labor unions, and the impact of the Iraq war on the families of soldiers.

Interested in becoming part of Public Insight Journalism? Click here.

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Tomorrow, the Minnesota Republican Party plans to mail to some CD videos to voters. The CDs promote a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. But the discs have a second purpose: to collect personal information and political information on Minnesota voters.

The CD ignited a controversy this week after a Minnesota Public Radio Weblog pointed out that a version of the CD given to the media gave no indication it would route information gathered from an interactive issues survey on the CD back to the Republican Party. The CD contained no privacy policy or guarantees that the information wouldn't be shared or sold to other groups. A blogosphere tempest promptly erupted, with some likening the CD to spyware, and others saying it should be obvious that voters' answers to survey questions would be sent somewhere.

Christa Heibel heads up CH Consulting, the group that designed the CD for the Republicans. She says the CD does not deposit tracking files or other snooping software on users machines.

Heibel says personal data collected by the CDs will be locked down. Earlier this week, a test version of that data was publicly available on a Web site.

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America Online is vowing to carry out its plans to institute fees for mass senders of e-mail, despite protests from groups representing 15 million people that claim the move will stifle communications instead of merely halting spam.

Political group MoveOn.org Civic Action, the AFL-CIO labor union and other organizations have criticized the service, which will charge senders a fee to route their messages directly to AOL users' mailboxes without first passing through AOL junk mail filters.

AOL says the system will help it reduce spam because only legitimate senders of mass e-mail are likely to pony up the fee — ranging from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per message. But critics, including Timothy Karr with the non-profit media policy group Free Press, say the system will end up blocking many e-mails from groups that can't afford the fee.