Zeno's Bar & Grill

A new Google feature, called Google Trends is like an internet crystal ball—telling you what the world is interested in…as well as when and where (see NYT article.) For example, did you know that peace and war are most often searched by people in Edmonton, Canada and Brisbane, Australia, respectively? On the other hand, Washington D.C. took the top prize on a search of Lewinsky.

It’s also interesting for tracking stories that are blips on the radar screen—the James Frey and Kavya Viswanathan literary scandals show up as sharp peaks in otherwise flat landscapes.

We can imagine all sorts of interesting uses for Google Trends, probably most notably as a marketing tool. In our opinions, it would be even better if there were a feature that showed the rate of change in popularity of each search item—sort of a Google version of The Tipping Point.

All they would need to do is to show the first derivative (slope) of the data that’s already included in Google Trends. Then we could all figure out what the collective wisdom of the internet thinks is the hottest new thing. Give us a list of the fastest changing items and you’d have an instant trend tracker. Don't thank us, thank those college calculus classes.

--Melanie & Kelly