Google's lean, mean, browsing machine called Chrome is pretty darned zippy, but the search giant envisions a much faster Web. Enter SPDY, pronounced "SPeeDY," an early-state research project that is part of Google's effort to supercharge Web.

"SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over Web," Google wrote in its Chromium blog. "It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization, and HTTP header compression."

Google is toying around with SPDY as a successor to HTTP. So far, it has only tested SPDY in lab conditions with some pretty impressive results. According to Google, it saw "significant improvement" when downloading the top 25 websites over simulated home network connections, with pages loading 55 percent faster.

"Thee is still a lot of work we need to do to evaluate the performance of SPDY in real-world conditions. However, we believe that we have reached th stage where our small team could benefit from the active participation, feedback, and assistance of the Web community," Google added.

Intrigued? Hit up the following links:

Early stage documentation
Curret code
Chromium Google Group

This whole mobile thing is really catching on, as women, teens, and seniors 65 and older are finding out. According to Nielsen, web visitors using a mobile device shot up 34 percent year-over-year, catapulting from 42.5 million mobile surfers in July 2008 to just shy of 57 million in July 2009. And most of those visitors are from the three previously mentioned demographics.

In fact, year-over-year growth among teens aged 13-17 increased 45 percent, while seniors shot up by over 67 percent, Nielsen said. Those were the two most active demographics, and while male surfers still make up the majority of the mobile Web at 53 percent, visitors of the opposite sex outpaced their male counterparts in July.

"As with other forms of Internet technology, more men were early-adopters of the mobile Web and still make up a slightly larger presence today," commented Chris Quick, client services manager, mobile media. "Now that the technology is more mainstream, women are quickly embracing the benefits as 'connected customers,' tapping the convenience of Web access on mobile phones to network, browser the latest shopping deals, and get ideas for dinner, all while on the go."

An interesting side note: People.com (No. 1), MySpace.com (No. 5), and Facebook.com (No. 9) were among the top 10 mobile sites among women in July, while men were busy surfing Gizmodo.com (No. 1), Maxim.com (No. 2), and Wired.com (No. 10).