A lot of time is spent, a lot of internet ink is spilt, trying to figure out young internet users.

This endeavor is so difficult that one of the most ‘authoritative’ of these researches – at least as measured by the amount of press it received – was back in July when Morgan Stanley was able to capture that most elusive of creatures, the 15-year-old boy, and present his insider’s report on high-school habits as the final word on teens and tech.

The generational divide is fascinating and is always a source of crunchable numbers and crunchy ideas. As much as the teen demographic has been dissected and analyzed, it’s still a constant source of surprise, predictable in its utter unpredictability.

For example, this:

In a Junior Achievement survey of 1,000 teens ages 12-17, the most popular entrepreneur was Steve Jobs. The Apple CEO, who received the top vote of 35 percent of those surveyed, was more popular than Tony Hawk, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Kimora Lee Simmons, Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg.

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Netbook sales have grown 264 percent year-over-year, while overall the notebook market has dropped 5 percent in that period, according to DisplaySearch.

Netbooks, which represented 11.7 percent of notebook sales in Q2 2009, were the only category other than Portable PCs (those with displays from 13” to 16”) to post Q/Q growth.

Netbook sales broke $3 billion in Q2 2009.

One of the prime drivers for netbook sales has been a continually falling price. While in Q2 2008 the average sale price (ASP) of a netbook was $506. In Q2, the ASP had fallen 29 percent to $361.

When netbooks are taken out of the equation, overall notebook ASPs only fell 10 percent, from $867 in Q2 2008 to $781in Q2 2009. But adding netbooks to the overall sales makes the market change a bit more striking: portable PCs (notebooks and netbooks combined) have seen their ASPs drop from $849 to $688 in the past year, a decline of 19 percent.

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Organic electronics (OEs) use carbon-based polymers and small molecules, as opposed to traditional electronics, which use inorganic conductors such as copper and doped silicon.

While there are many hurdles to widespread adoption of OE technology, if perfected it could lead to innovative, and lower-cost, devices, according to a white paper published by Productronica, an international trade fair for innovative electronics production.

“From ‘electronic newspapers and magazines’ to smart windows, flexible film solar cell sheets to luminescent wallpaper, organic electronics has the potential to change the way we use computers and other electronic devices,” according to the white paper.

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Twelve percent of households own Apple computers, up from 8 percent in 2008, according to the NPD Group’s 2009 Household Penetration Study, based on the results of more than 2,300 online panelists.

More than 8 out of 10 (85 percent) of these households also own a PC and 66 percent of them own three or more computers, more than twice the amount of PC households who own the same amount.

No surprise considering the Apple tax and the fact that being an individual is pretty expensive these days, the average Apple owner is better off than most consumers. While 21 percent of all consumers make $100,000 or more, 36 percent of Apple’s owners make over that amount.

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The amount of times spent of social networks has tripled in the last year, according to Nielsen (PDF).

A year ago, users spent 6 percent of their online time on social networks, but as of August 2009, time spent on social networks now represents 17 percent of total internet use.

“This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used,” said Nielsen’s Jon Gibs.

“While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth,” Gibs said.

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Duke researchers have developed a smartphone application that creates fingerprints of an interior space’s ambience, which might be the answer to GPS’s weaknesses.

“We believe that SurroundSense is an early step toward a long-standing challenge of improving indoor localization,” Duke assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Roy Choudhury said. (Choudhury is also the head of another cool project we wrote about a few months back.)

SurroundSense takes a sound and light fingerprint from the space a user is in and compares it against a database of locations, using a smartphone’s camera and microphone to record information about the space.

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The PC industry has been hit hard this year, but it has fared better than initially predicted.

Gartner, which in June forecasted a 6 percent fall in PC shipments this year, reports that the actual total will be 2 percent, with 285 million PCs shipping in 2009.

“Mobile PC shipments have regained substantial momentum, especially in emerging markets, and the decline in desk-based PC shipments is slowing down,” said Gartner research director George Shiffler.

In the first half of 2009, sales were down 4.4 percent year-over-year.

Gartner’s predictions have gotten increasingly positive as 2009 has progressed. In March, the research company projected an 11.9 percent drop in sales, the worst-ever industry decline.

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On September 22nd, celebrate OneWebDay, a day inspired by Earth Day and intended to help shrink the digital divide.

OneWebDay is both a celebration of our digital lives and an attempt to make those lives available to all.

“The Web is a vital shared resource, but most people are not empowered to take part in defining the direction of this now indispensable resource,” according to the event’s website.

“Some take it for granted, some cannot breach the barriers to access, and some relinquish control to authoritative institutions that are all too happy to fill the void of public leadership,” according to the site.

OneWebDay was founded in 2006 by Susan Crawford, professor of law at the University of Michigan and President Barack Obama’s Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.

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A new study by The CleanTech Group reinforces the argument that e-readers are ultimately more eco-friendly than print.

The production of one e-reader is the equivalent of the production of 22.5 paper books.

CleanTech predicts that e-readers will save 9.9 billion kg of CO2 over the next 3 years, when e-reader sales are expected to reach 14.4. In 2012, CleanTech predicts, e-readers will save 5.3 billion kg of CO2.

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Analysts predict that e-paper, the display technology used in e-readers, will reach nearly $10 billion in revenues in 2009.

Research group DisplaySearch predicts that 1.8 billion units will ship in 2018, totaling $9.6 in revenue.

DisplaySearch forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 41 percent for revenues and 64 percent for units shipped. Total revenue in 2009 is expected to be $431 million, more than triple last year’s $129 million.

“E-paper displays are taking off with consumers due to their low power consumption and ease of reading, especially in sunlight,” said Jennifer Colegrove, director of display technologies at DisplaySearch.

“In addition, e-paper displays are ‘green’ because they reduce paper consumption,” Colegrove said.

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