For years a group of my friends have held what we affectionately refer to as "The Basement Poker Tour". One buddy would sit with hat and dark glasses hoping no one could read his bluff. The problem was his right leg would shake whenever he didn't have the goods so I'd always pretend to tie my shoe before I called or raised him.
Physical opponent reads are not a luxury we have online. I've been studying ways to read online opponents and there is some material.
A long pause followed by a check denoting uncertainty, a quick call denoting confidence, the psychology of repeated insta-check or insta-fold etc. These factors in and of themselves can also be bluff methods depending upon the experience of the player.
Anybody have some direction regarding online reads?
Agree. I take notes all the time. On good people and bad. Bad notes are more helpful i.e. called a re-raise pre flop with A10o etc.. Also notes on good players even so much as "solid profit" (from checking SharkScope) and you can respect their raises more etc...
betting patterns is definitely huge, it is one of the biggest things that i use and there are a lot of different ones out there. obviously not all are the same but for the most part doing "characteristic A" is a bluff for the larger majority of players and so on.
Heads up is where timing tells are much more useful, not sure if many of you know about the show 'two months two million' but you can watches all of the episodes on pokertube.com and on one episode one of the guys says a read he has is when his opponent checks the flop and then takes time on the turn and bets big he always has it, or something like that and another read, i'm sure he had more that he wasn't telling also. it is very interesting though. the show is mostly about the life of these 4 poker players and not so much the playing but still very interesting.
I loved 2M2MM also. I hope they make a follow up. The online sessions they showed on TV were fascinating. I agree with the note taking. If I was out of a hand, I would look them up on ss or another site and note the stats, the players experience, recent string of sessions (if they're on a upswing or downswing) of the player type and even use the FT color dropdown to color code it, so I know to check that persons notes when they pop up in the same sng. I only starting doing meticulous notes recently and I feel it has helped my game tremendously. Like Pharreal said, recording betting patterns is a must. Especially by position, size, what they show at showdown.
As far as the timing patterns. I dont put too much stock into it. If someone else is multitabling like I do, you cant really make too many assumptions as far as the difference between a pause or an insta move. If you know they are just playing one table it may be a different story.
Some things I noticed:
- insta call on draw heavy board means the guy is really on a draw
- insta call on a rainbow board means the guy's connected with the flop and probably won't give up
- a small pause and a call on a rainbow board likely means the guy's not sure of your hand and will give up on a turn bet to a scary card
- long pause before a call means the guy's likely trapping you; if he calls your second bullet on the turn, forget about the pot
- when player to act pauses and checks to you, he's likely hit the flop hard and is hoping to trap you. Watch out for his bet on turn. A small bet to entice a 4bet raise is simply a trap.
There's of course many more tiny little things to note but that would require many more pages and time 
PS: timing tells are only good for HU plays. Sorry for confusion. I concur with other posters, the betting patterns is the best way to go most of the time. Cheers!
I would agree with most of what has been said above and add possibly 1 thing that I have found with peoples continuation betting. Most people who have position on you and have raised it up tend to bet bigger with (3/4 to pot) a wiffed AK/Q etc but will bet 1/3 to 1/2 pot if they hit. Obviously this doesn't apply to everyone and good players will mix it up. I like weak betting the flop knowing I will get a re raise steal attempt because I seem weak but people get wise to it soon enough. You can't really use anything other than bet sizing as everybody is in the forums / reading books on tells and trying to do the opposite. You can't beat good notes and your instinct as stated above. Just keep watching and making notes (hard if u multi).
I tend to go with betting patterns. Some ppl bet light when they have a weak hand and some bet hard when they have a weak hand. I use the note taking software religiously. If someone bets hard with nothing, I have that noted and make the best of the info. I don't put alot of faith in online time based reads because it might just be lag or they may have gotten up to let the cat out. The one thing that everyone has to do, sooner or later, in every tourney, is put money in the pot. The way they do that, IMO, is the most reliable way to determine their strength.