What's Cool

There are a lot of trends sites around. Here are a couple of goodies. First: The Cool Hunter at http://www.thecoolhunter.net/. The site, and the on-site blurb, below, is a little like a slightly overpowering perfume, but it interesting and looks nice nevertheless.

The Cool Hunter celebrates creativity in all of its modern manifestations. We are a leading online publication and an upmarket hub for what is the most creative, the most innovative, the newest, best and coolest. We value global relevance, not global trends, channeling what we find to our worldwide audience. The Cool Hunter brand is a natural fit for creative influencers, those who stay in the know and ahead of the curve. Global in outlook, culturally discerning.

I must say I rather like today's second offering, 2Modern Design Talk at http://blog.2modern.com/ blog/site. It feels a little more purposeful, a little less self-conscious and I like the fact that there is contributor commentary. Here is its blurb:

2Modern is a consortium of designers, artists, innovators, furniture connoisseurs and regular, everyday people. What is unique about 2Modern Design Talk? We provide a wide-range of views and commentary focused on contemporary design. Contributors to the blog are designers, manufacturers, editors, retailers, architects and consumers.

I suspect that 'CoolHunting', at http://www.coolhunting.com/ , served, at some point, as the inspiration for thecoolhunter.net (you clearly have to mind your "nets" and "coms" in all this). Its blurb:

Cool Hunting is a daily update on ideas and products in the intersection of art, design, culture and technology, and features weekly videos that get an inside look at the people who create them. Money can buy you a lot of things, but it can’t buy you coverage on Cool Hunting. All of our content is editorially based using the standard of “stuff we like".

The picture, in case you were wondering, was the first image that was served up to me on when I Googled "what's cool" in Google Images.

The Innovation Index Fund

The Innovation Index Fund is a fund that tracks the top 20 innovative companies in North America. The Index was introduced in December 2006. If the Index is tracked Dec 31 2001 - Dec 29 2006 it would have outperformed the S+P 500, the NASDAQ and The Dow Jones by a factor of seven. By the way, though the home page looks a little plain, the material behind it is excellent, especially the blog.