I’m a big fan of Google Correlate, a service that lets you spot real-word trends through Internet users’ searches. For example, search traffic for the term “lose weight” spikes around New Year’s Day: 

A friend this morning told me about a new feature allowing anyone to draw random distributions on a line graph — and then see others’ correlated searches. You can also download the data from Google. 

In this graph, I drew a 45-degree decline (seen as a blue line). Google then charted search traffic (red line) for a specific term that’s similar over time. Here, you can see how people have gradually stopped searching for “flash movie” since 2004. 

Sorry, Adobe: 

Some searches have exploded, like “wordpress integration.” Good news for folks like Andrew Nacin.

This chart shows that QR codes have spiked recently. Perhaps there’s a correlation between that and the fact that someone at my office posted a QR code explainer in the elevator. 

Go draw something and send it to me. 

UPDATE: The first submission is from Kate Martin, whose chart correlates with “american spiders”. Not sure what to make of this trend: 

UPDATE 2: Love this one from Jed Sundwall: