We spent some time recently looking back at the patterns in the content in PSFK to try to identify emerging themes within specific target categories. ‘Four-Wheeled’ is one of three trends we identified from the data found on our site.

Socialseek is a new desktop app that allows you to search topics, brands, companies and trends through all aspects of social media- such as blogs, image, video and event sites.
You can measure and compare the popularity of each topic, localize your searches to specific cities, and receive real-time updates about how active your query is across specific platforms.

Socialseek is one of many new apps offering social media tracking- competitors include Viralheat and Peoplebrowsr. You can download it for free here.
[via Tech Crunch]

London-based global briefing publisher Monocle have recently released The Future of the Workplace, the first edition of their Design Dialogues podcast series.  Tyler Brule, editor-in-chief of the publication looks at the economic recession’s impact on design and the affects of large and small scale companies pushing more employees to work for home.
In particular Monocle takes a close look at:
How the economic climate influencing architectural thought?
How does geography affect office design?
What is missing from the workplace?
What are the key trends for the coming year?
Find the podcast here.
[via Tank]

It’s hard to get kids to see the joy in cooking when they could just drive through McDonald’s and get a happy meal with a toy for no effort whatsoever. In Japan, there are whole lines of entertaining cooking tools that are great for even big people taking on the skillet. CScout Japan profiles several of them, including a sushi roller, a mini sandwich maker, and one fun contraption that looks like a game of Mouse Trap:
Somen (thin noodles eaten chilled during the summer months), when served nagashi-style, are sent down a bamboo chute. During the course of the journey [...]

The videos from PSFK’s Good Ideas Salon in London are now available (and embeddable) for your inspiration:
Simon Waldman’s Good Ideas in Media
Good Ideas through Collaboration Panel
Good Ideas in Storytelling With Colin Nightingale

Good Ideas and Youth Panel
Good Ideas in Mobile Panel
Richard Banks on Good Ideas Over Time
Troika Design at Good Ideas Salon London
Christian Nold on Good Ideas for Communities
Good Ideas in Design Panel
Good Ideas from London Panel
Mark Earls on Why Good Ideas Matter
Hope you enjoy them enough to share the ideas.
Good Ideas Salons

If you’re interested in trends and ideas and how to use them in your work then you have to add the writing of anthropologist Grant McCracken to your must-read list. The previous PSFK Conference NYC speaker and MIT professor writes one of the team’s favorite blogs This Blog Sits At The Intersection of Anthropology and Economics and has produced a series of books that should be in every trends analyst’s library. His last book Transformations looked at self reinvention and how it has become a preoccupation of contemporary culture:
“In the last decade, Hollywood made a 500-million-dollar bet on this idea [...]

This past January, PSFK hosted the Good Ideas Salon London. After Mark Earls spoke on Why Good Ideas Matter, the discussion moved to a panel of Londoners who discussed Good Ideas from London. Given the question: “What positive inspiration is growing out of London’s creative renaissance?”, moderator Matt Hardisty (AnalogFolk), Matt Brown (Londonist), Justin Quirk (FHM), Taryn Ross (Urban Junkies), and Paul Andrew Williams (Steel Mill Pictures) explored empirical evidence used to compare the current creative climate of London to previous years to prove that London is still thriving culturally.
The panel discussed particular reasons why London was creatively unique and [...]

Eric Wilson writes an interesting piece in last week’s New York Times, “Change? It Wasn’t in Fashion” pointing out how in 2008, compared to the topsy turvy year in the American political arena, the fashion industry was decidedly more cautious (or in his words, stubborn). Marc Jacobs revived designs from earlier collaborations with Murakami and Steven Sprouse, even marketing them with tried and true imagery. Models from the 1990s are making a comeback. Trends which have been around for way too long (they are trends after all, meaning they’re supposed to shift and morph with significant timeliness) just won’t go [...]

At the PSFK Conference Asia 2008, Piers Fawkes (PSFK) moderated a panel discussion about youth culture trends in Asia and how they will impact business around the globe.  With the help of trends experts from across the continent, including Achara Masoodi (Mindshare), Michael Keferl (CScout), and Sonal Dabral (Bates141), the panel shares insights and advice about gathering trends, and more importantly, how to best use them to stimulate change.

For tickets or information on our upcoming event, Good Ideas Salon London go to www.goodideassalons.com.

Enabled by the connectivity and community sourcing abilities of the web, we’re now more than ever able to share what we know. In both real world meet-ups and online forums, people are coming together to teach and learn from each other.

Tokyo has always been the cool trendsetter of our global high school. And even as the city ages with the rest of Japan (20% of the population aged 65 or older), Tokyo is proving once again to be a beacon for anyone looking to catch a glimpse of the best, newest, products on the market. The Baby Boom generation – with their collective wealth and supposed lifelong sense of entitlement (i.e. tendency to spend) – is an especially attractive demographic to brands and marketers. The latest issue of Monocle discusses how industries all over Tokyo – from travel agencies to [...]

This morning I spoke to a very nice reporter from a Brazilian magazine called Veja – which I am told is their equivalent to Time Magazine. The angle for her forthcoming article is that you can do trend spotting by reading blogs. I half agreed with her. Scanning blogs can be a great start but there’s a lot more to trends analysis than that. For PSFK consultancy clients we mix secondary deep scanning (from an international team of scouts) with primary research on the street and with an extensive network of informed opinion makers whom we have met through publishing [...]

Residents are opting for a wireless router that frees them from a PC tower and home-office desk so that they can use their computer from room to room, house to garden.But WiLife is not just about the freedom to play on the web wherever you want…. What happened: iPhone & iTouch, Chumby , WiLife , Bedouin Worker PRIVACY EPIPHANY What we said : The general public will have a privacy epiphany as they become aware of their lack of privacy and flow of personal data.

‘Leading Trendspotter’ Marian Salzman, and Ann Mack, the ‘Director of Trendspotting’ at JWT, have issued a press release with their predictions for the world in 2008. The ‘trends’ described for the coming year are nothing surprising, or particularly new, but seem to be more about the mainstream acceptance of many of the things that have been talked about during 2007 including the rise of personal genetic profiling, tech-enabled clothing, and the changing nature of free time.
Most interesting is their forecast for ‘Radical Transparency’ as ‘The new generation gap, a divide between those who relish privacy and those who want to [...]

PSFK creates 6 reports a year with a focus on UK young adults aged 18-34 for corporations, government bodies, exporters and their agencies. They provide original insight and inspiration way…