research how do you do it?

[spazlabz]

Ok, recently I have found a particular habit of mine to be quite useful and thought I would share it. It is probably old news to everyone in the biz, but bears repeating I think.
When I started in the business a few years ago, for some reason I decided that I needed to stop surfing porn. I don't know why this occured with me, but I was driven to not look at other peoples sites/page et al. I had/have a partner who, at the time, was encouraging me to surf pages like the hun and the likes. But for some reason I disregarded this advice and went about my business oblivious to anything going on in the rest of the world. It worked for awhile to, made what was to me at the time, mad cash. I also had others telling me to check out webmaster forums. Nope, not for me, waste of time, nothing of substance to be found on any of those.
But over the course of the past year or so I started to pay a lot more attention to webmasters boards, and over the past 6 months the hun has been a daily visit for me. I don't miss a link (except the beasty and pissing ones.........I have no desire to see that) and I have found that my eye for porn has changed. I really can pick up good ideas by seeing whats out there, seeing how others present their content. Not only that, but much can be learned by visiting these boards and asking questions.
So for me, my research process can be summed up with these two things
1)TGPs (as this is my primary venue for marketing)
2)webmasters boards (this one specifically, not blowing smoke up either GG's or Jim's ass, this is just the best I have found so far, and the only one I can even remotely be considered active at)
So am I missing anything? is there something else I should be watching closely as part of my research? post your ideas as well, would love to find even more things to learn from

spaz