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Tool:
Google Trends: Trend-discovery and Trend-Tracking Tool

URL:
google.com/trends

Key benefit:
Being able to discover new trends and opportunities and stay ahead of the game.

Tip:
Discover how popular certain products, product categories, people or events are. You can also use the tool to compare interest for up to five products or concepts. The underlying assumption here is that the trends can [...]

Tool:
Keyword Popularity Estimator by Google

URL:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2

Key benefit:
Just like Yahoo! tool described earlier on this blog, this keyword tool helps you identify the most popular keywords. This is extremely useful when designing your website, naming your website pages, doing SEO (search engine optimization) or when buying keyword ads. Even more importantly, the tool can help you estimate the online demand for your [...]

Tool:
iGoogle

URL:
http://www.igoogle.com

Key benefit:
Great tool to help you stay on top of all new trends and industry news

Tip:
Start your day with iGoogle:  review all important industry news before you leave home. Receive updates from carefully selected  websites and blogs.

Price:
Free

Cyri:
What does Cyri think? Check back shortly. Score: TBD

Ivan:
Customize your iGoogle page to receive RSS feeds from [...]

Tool:
Business Networking: LinkedIn

URL:
http://www.linkedin.com

Key benefit:
Leverage your business network you have developed over the years

Tip:
Make sure you fully complete your profile, apparently you are 40 times more likely to be contacted for your expertise if you do so. This involves filling in your work, education history etc. as well as having at least three recommendations. [...]

Tool:
16bugs.com project and bug tracking tool

URL:
http://16bugs.com

Key benefit:
This tool is marketed as a software bug tracker but I have found it also works really well as a simple and elegant tool to help organize your tasks or “to-list” for a project or as a central requirements and change management tool. It’s hosted so no special [...]