Imagine if you could hear all of the conversations going on in the world? Imagine the insight, your ability to understand, to feel the zeitgeist, to measure the trends, the hot topics, the opinions, feelings and aspirations of mankind?

I dare suggest that we're getting pretty good at it already. Not via polling, focus groups or other infinitesimally small and overpriced groups and samples, but via massive online "databases of intent" that assist us to understand what our fellow humans are talking about, searching for and ultimately wanting in life.

These databases of intent measure things like search volume or user generated comments around specific topics, issues or even words, giving us a great understanding of the scale and tone of conversations - they key drivers of trust.

Some cool examples:
http://twistori.com/ - This site searches for terms such as "I wish", "I hate", "I love" and "I believe" within twitter, and publishes all of those posts in a stream.

WikiGroaning, a site which allows you to compare the popularity of a subject as measured by the amount of words which appear in its Wikipedia entry.

Google Trends - my personal favourite, a site that measures the search volumes of keywords and phrases in Google and tracks them over time.

And of course the likes of Technorati, BlogPulse and TrendPedia. As an obsessive who lives to sniff out trends and insights (and to coin a Steve Rubel-ism, "Faint Signals"), I love these sort of sites. What are some other good ones?