Identify emerging trends and exploit them

"Where there is change, there is profit". Let's see if I have any new observations on some existing tools we have access to in order to see where to focus our energy.

The key is in identify the emerging trends and exploit them. The Google Trends and Google Insights tool seem very powerful and I'm particularly interested in observing what other countries are searching for. I used Google Insights to determine that the industry I'm leaving (cosmetic procedures) is experiencing more searches from abroad than within the US which may have peaked already and be on a decline (at least for now). I can use this information to consider targeting those countries for various aspects of my industry now.

I also found the "trends" section on ODesk interesting. It didn't reveal what I was after (which is trends on subject matter) but rather it shows the trends on various applications that people are outsourcing for. I garnished a touch of information (of interest to me) such as the category of Facebook and also Iphone (applications) but there was no real surprise there.

So I'm interested in other resources or techniques to allow us to observe trends such as these two examples (Google Insight and ODesk examples) seem to do. By observing a few different sets of data various conclusions can be drawn by various observers each one finding their own set of useful indicators allowing them to make an attack plan (or do some surveys or more research).

Can anyone offer other tools or "systems" for finding emerging trends in this WWWeb ? I'm am not a developer but rather a marketer and am taking my time to look for the next hot subject I want to go after so this is the thrust of my thread here.