A few interesting ways I keep an eye on longer term technology trends.
Google Trends: php, coldfusion, java, .net, ruby (This one has some problems, as “java” comes up for the country too…)
Freshmeat Tags, sourceforge
Indeed (job listing aggregator)
Drill down to Java ORM frameworks (and JDBC itself)
About jg
I'm an interactive creative developer and application architect, with over 18 years of web/interactive development experience, and have been developing with interactive tools since the early 90's (and programming for over 23 – I’ve been coding since I was 8)
I'm equally at home working on "back end" projects such as database optimization, data modeling, and warehousing/reporting as I am working on "front end" GUI programming for the web, desktop (.NET or Java), or mobile. I'm particularly interested in SOA, mobile technology, architecture, art, and design.
Interesting that jobs seemed to go up when the economy tanked. It also looks like Flash is beating everyone on Google Trends: http://trends.google.com/trends?q=php%2C+java%2C+.net%2C+ruby%2C+flash&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=2.