R.J. Pittman, Google's Director of Product Management, told me that by entering a domain name into Google Trends, Google will return traffic, search and geographic visitation data for that site. Trends for Web Sites will show sites related to the domain name you entered, it will also show searches that are correlated to the domain name and if you are logged into Google, it will show the estimated traffic for that site. In addition, you can enter in up to five domain names and Google will plot line graphs for all the domains you entered in.

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Zillion TV, SpotXchange, Votigo Raise Money; Zillion gets $4.01 million Series A for its pay TV subscription services; online video ad marketplace SpotXchange receives undisclosed sum of angel funding; user-generated promotion company Votigo pulls in $1.26 million. (Zillion TV: (PE Hub; SpotXchange: release; Votigo: release)

Mark Day Joins YouTube; bald-headed comedian moves from the yellow wall to manage the video sharing site's comedy channel. (YouTube Blog)

WGA to its Members: Easy, Tigers; while rumors swirl of the guild and producers reaching an agreement, the WGA reminds is members that they are still on strike and there is no contract yet. (Broadcasting and Cable)

Network Foundation Technologies Enabling Micro-Casts; company's streaming technology allows very small companies to create and target niche video ads. (MediaWeek)

Democrats Tap Level 3; CDN chosen to carry live video and content delivery for the 2008 Democratic National Convention. (release)

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Bad news for big downloaders who use Time Warner Cable as their ISP: you may soon face a higher bill. The nation's #2 cable ISP is set to begin charging customers more based on the amount they download.

A spokesman for the company says that the top 5 percent of downloaders can account for up to 50 percent of network capacity, which is why they are considering the new pricing structure. According to a report from the Associated Press, Time Warner Cable would offer various tiers of pricing, versus what could become painfully expensive pay-as-you-go charges for bandwidth. However, there is no need to freak out yet if you're currently a TWC customer for now, the new pricing structure is only being offered as a trial in Beaumont, Texas, and will only impact new customers.

While I imagine the immediate reaction to TWC's plan will be decidedly negative, it at least seems more reasonable than AT&T and Comcast's filtering of traffic for users that frequent p2p download services like BitTorrent.

On the other hand, if TWC's interest is truly to be fair, prices won't only go up for big downloaders, but they'll go down for those that consume little bandwidth (yea, right).

Is it fair for ISPs to charge heavy downloaders higher fees?
• Yes
• No
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Ron Paul's camp just blitzed this notice across my bow:

Yesterday was a remarkable day for Ron Paul, and it wouldn't have happened without you. For those of you who haven't yet heard, Ron Paul took over 10% in yesterday's Iowa caucus, handily beating Rudy Giuliani and finishing right behind both Fred Thompson and John McCain. This despite that Rudy Giuliani made more visits to Iowa than Ron Paul. And, entrance polls showed that Ron Paul took first place (29%) among independent Republicans!

I'm certainly a happy camper; hitting double digits in Iowa is nothing to sneeze at. Conversely, I'm happy to see that Obama came out ahead on the Dem side.

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