Google has released a new tool, Google Trends, that could be useful in attempts at trend spotting and forecasting. The tool allows you to type in a phrase and see its search frequency over time, as well as its frequency in news articles.

For example, a search on "myspace" shows how the community site has quickly grown in popularity:


Similarly, a search on "singularity" shows a spike of search activity approximately when Ray Kurzweil released his book The Singularity is Near:


While it's still early in the tool's development, I think that many people will find uses for the information it serves up in intuitive graphical format.

On an interesting side note, sadly, the phrase "transhumanism" doesn't yet receive enough searches to register with Google Trends. Nor does "betterhumans." We'll have to change that.