This post from road.cc covers some of Shimano's upcoming offerings. Road.cc originates in a charming-sounding place called "England," which seems to be a lot like South Carolina except they say "chainset " instead of "crankset" . . . surely that's the only difference, right? Anyway, the post focuses on the forthcoming Tiagra group, which is :

1)Transitioning to 10-speed [insert wistful sigh or celebratory whoop here].

2)Maintaining the exposed cable runs of the current generation, but adding a barrel adjuster on the hood.

3)Adding some wide range options: a 50-39-30 triple crank paired with a 12-30 cassette . . . a wider range than their road groups have previously offered.

Item number 3 is interesting because it will add another figurative arrow to the virtual quiver of folks who are setting up touring-type bikes. It's going to be—at some level, anyway—competing with the new SRAM Apex group, which features a compact double crank and an 11-32 cassette. This group, in its 48-34 iteration, is the spec on the 2011 Salsa Vaya. Incidentally, we'll have our hot hands on that new Vaya next week. Five words: tiger blood and Adonis DNA.

Also teased in the article is a new tandem crankset (er, "chainset") which the grapevine says will be a hollow-armed alloy deal with outboard bearings. It'll be nice to have another option there. There are also two new CX groups, if that's your thing.

I imagine Apex and Tiagra will be slugging it out for the title of King of Value for the next few years. Thundercats ho!