The Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC).  It is a "five year qualitative research effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning or creative expression within learning-focused organizations".

The main section of the report describes six emerging technologies or practices that will become mainstream over the next 1-5 years.  Social networks are helping to add the context that's been missing in search.  For the complete report: http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/horizon-report-2008-social-operating.html.

On the other hand, franchises are an important growth market for well-known quick serve, fitness and home repair industries. Franchise ownership information is missing from the largest and most well-known directory-database and credit-reporting firms. The data that does exist - using the UFOC is largely limited to single ownership operations and the large ownership multi-franchise operators - oten owned by private equity, holding companies and other private firms - is hidden. This is an area of great interest to companies that recognize the storefront franchises are not small businesses but actually large big business entities and should be approached as such.