Keeping up with trends are hard. Just look at my fashions or lack of them! But web trends are equally hard. One of the main reasons is that there is different waves. There is the very early wave, the early adopter wave, then the mass market wave. (ready for metaphor) And it's easy to drown under all those waves. 

My approach? Rely on random luck and a great network. I have bookmarked a bunch of good sites that I visit over coffee a couple of times a month and browse through them. That is how I find my own stuff. Funnily enough, this is good to keep me up to speed on about 90% of things I need. Some sites include;

Digg - user generated news that they think other users will want. Then users vote on the news and the good stuff makes the 'front page'.

Springwise - general lifestyle news. It's a bit random but they have cool stuff that I normally wouldn't run into. Architecture, fashion, toys, etc. 

On Springwise;

BoingBoing - one of the oldest treasures of random stuff from across the net. These guys started crawling and now they have enough gravity that news comes to them and they filter it past their "gotta be really cool" process. 

Rocketboom - daily video that covers cool stuff. Random too. Sexy english host. 

The second part is making sure you're friends/colleagues know what you're interested in. This works pretty well and catches the other 10% (60%) of stuff you need to know. You do get 10 emails from friends when something big happens, but better then missing out.  

 Yeah, you can get reports like Trendwatching which is good but expensive.

That's my first online tip.  

Are there any non-tosser ideas :-)

I was explaining to someone the other day why ebay hasn't really changed in years now. Once products enter the mainstream it's critical that they do not significantly change. This same thing applies to pretty much any product over the 10 million user mark. MySpace is now the same, it wont change.

Of course being mass market, these products are not going to be displaced by an innovation - this happens *very* rarely. A better (functional) auction system will not beat ebay, simply because people achieve there goals with ebay already. You need to either rewrite the way people achieve this goal, and then achieve mass market acceptance. Craigs list might do this, but we'll have to wait and see. 

Hmmm, I think you're right!

Coming in late to this one... 

There's also the disruptive innovation theories of Christensen, where inferior or more expensive technologies can displace existing ones because they offer better performance in ancilliary areas. In fact, disruptive innovations can come from any direction, but it's often not because they improve on the traditional axes of performance.

gotta love the Clayton. I thought his point is that disruptive products start by servicing groups who are not currently being served. i.e. solar works great in mongolia since they don't have power grids and some power is better then none. 

Yep, that's it. In Christensen's model they cater to needs currently unmet by existing products. So the ultimate competitor to eBay would be unlikely to be a 'better' online auctioning system. But others make the point too that attacking from below is only one way of being disruptive.

Another sometimes interesting site for up-and-coming apps is Under the Radar.

And nobody mentioned www.TechCrunch.com?  Ts.ts.ts..  :)

TechCrunch is very specific about new apps. I don't think it covers actual trends so much. Maybe micro trends with web apps, etc. I think www.gigaom.com does trends a bit better.

There's always PSFK.com.  Had some involvement in this site when it was starting.  It's good for highlighting up and coming trends.  Be it on or offline.

Just thought that this was a bit like Sat Nav's, the street directory worked just fine but the lady speaking to you just makes it easier.

The lady speaking makes me wanna kill someone - preferable the lady behind the voice

grrrrrrr

thats right

Yeah she is funny! I think you can change it to be that faulty towers guy. That would be cool!

That's always been a sticking point with me....

Most taped voices are female. WHY?!?!?!?

Hi, sorry to be so late to the group but I can answer that one.

The reason female voices are generally used for recorded services/phones etc is technical but simple. The female voice is pitched higher than the male voice. It cuts through better ( people tend to lose the "bottom end" of their hearing well before the "top end". - low sounds get muffled - higher ones do not eg: we certainly don't refer to bass sounds as "piercing". And the higher frequency takes less time too - it's actually faster as well as clearer. Or could it just be the producer's girlfriend?

Wow, that's interesting.

Are you in that business Thinka?

I am a copybased Creative Director  and have spent countless hours in Audio and Video post production suites over the years - I'm old enough to have slightly sped up tape machines ( even manually!) to change pitch and cut a second or two of audio off a 30 second spot and still current enough to know the basics of modern compression software - sometimes the old ways work much better - but mostly I'm a writer who solves marketing probs.

Anyway the easiest example is , say, think about the "chipmunk" type voices -they are just sped up versions of very usually quite deep male voices ( I've even cheated and recorded/sung myself and sped it up just enough to have it sound female when we've run out of bucks or the singer didn't turn up! ssshhh:)

Boy, this tangler really is in real time eh_ imagine if i was on bband!

You're on dial up! Scary!

Until about 2001 I was using a tweaked up 14.4 aiwa modem for which even Aiwa couldn't give me the modem string - had to work it all out myself - I tend to learn to do things as necessary not exactly a geek here just an interested amateur. But yeah, I'd kill for a fast connection with unlimited download.

ps: where'd you get that picture of me??!!