I've updated the code that runs @trendingtopics. It will now tweet sooner, avoid duplicate tweets, ignore hashtags and add links to Wikipedia and Google where appropriate. My aim for this update was to be a bit more intelligent in what to tweet and when. I also wanted to show a bit more about the topic without having to read through a stream of tweets on a Twitter search page. This update goes some way towards those goals but I'll be tweaking it more over the next few days so please let me know what you think, either here on or Twitter.
Update: here's a technical description of how it all works.