If you haven't already heard of Google's new trends tool called Google Insight, now could not be too soon.
Google Insight
This is a tool that goes hand in hand with writing on Xomba. I'll give you a scenario. Say you are sitting at the computer brainstorming up ideas to write about. You know unemployment is a really big thing right now. You know the economy crisis is another big thing. People are certainly reading about these things. What Google Insights will do, is eliminate that painful brainstorming process, to an extent! I'll do a step by step of what you might want to do with the word "unemployment" as an example. I'm sure you guys can come up with your own stuff to put in this thing.

Step 1 : Go to Google Insight!

Step 2 : In the Search Terms field, type in Unemployment

Step 3 : In the Filter field put in last 7 days (in some cases you may want to do 30 days or more)

Step 4 : Look at your Results

Step 5 : Lets look at Regional Interest, notice the United States makes up the majority of searches for "Unemployment".

Step 6 : Check out Top Searches and Rising Searches (These could help form your article title!)

Extra Step 1 : Click On United States in Regional Interest

Extra Step 2 : Check it out, now you have a state break down of the data. You may see different results, but as I'm writing this article, Oregon, Nevada, and Ohio seem to be searching for Unemployment the most.

Extra Step 3 : Use that information to your advantage!

You can use this for just about anything. Most new trends in google trends will not work. This is because there is not enough data on them yet. But big things, huge things... you know... like holidays coming up. wink wink nudge nudge.