I’m a big fan of John Battelle, which is why Federated Media represents DHADM and Transbuddha on media buys.

I’m also a big fan of his yearly predictions which are often very accurate. Here are the headlines, check out his site for the details.

When you go a read his predictions for 2008 and how they turned out it’s worth reading his predictions for 2009.

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1. Macro economy: We’ll see an end to the recession, taken literally, by Q4 09. In other words, the economy will begin to grow again by the end of the year, but it won’t feel like we’re out of the woods till next year at the earliest. …

2. The online media space will be hit hard by the economic downturn in the first half, but by year’s end, will have chalked up moderate gains over last year in terms of gross spend. ….

3. Google will see search share decline significantly for the first time ever. It will also struggle to find an answer to the question of how it diversifies its revenue in 2009. Search is the ultimate harvester of demand, and Google has become search’s Archer Daniels Midland - wherever a seed of demand might pop its head through the web’s soil, Google is there to harvest it. …

4. Despite #3 above, Google stock will soar in by Q3-4 of 2009,…

5. Tied to #3 above, Microsoft will gain at least five points of search share in 2009, perhaps as much as 10. This is a rather radical prediction, I know, but hear me out…

6. Yahoo and AOL will merge.

7. However, in the second half of the year, Microsoft will buy its search monetization from the combined company.

8. Apple will see a significant reversal of recent fortunes. I sense this will happen for a number of reasons (yeah yeah), but I think the main one will be brand related - a brand based on being cooler than the other guy simply does not scale past a certain point. I sense Apple has hit that point.

9. Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with "social media." They will take budget reserved for media spending (IE buying banners and building out branding campaigns) and start to become publishers in their own right….

10. Agencies will increasingly see their role as that of publishers. Publishers will increasingly see their role as that of agencies. Both can win at this, but only by understanding how to truly add value to real communities - not flash crowds driven by one time events…

11. Twitter will continue its meteoric rise. This is a very hard prediction to make, because so much depends on the company’s ability to execute two crucial - and exceedingly difficult - new features: The integration of search into the service, and the monetization of that integration…

12. Facebook will do something entirely shocking and unpredictable. I am not certain what, but it won’t have a "status quo" year. It might be a merger with a traditional media company, a major alliance with Google, hiring a head scratcher as CEO, or something else at that level of "WTF!?" …

13. Lucky #13 is reserved for my eternal mobile prediction: 2009 will see the year mobility becomes presumptive in every aspect of the web….

14. Lastly, I promise, I will have sold my book and will be hard at work on it. And yes, still running FM too. I think I have a way to do both, given I wrote 15K words last year without even knowing it….

Just a little promotion for our company.

Check it out and you can also find us on Facebook, YouTube and at Spiral16.com

I was thinking a massive heart attack with a glass of whisky in one hand, a fist full of dollars and a stripper pole in sight…but this is much more poetic:

On the day that Donald Peters died, he unknowingly provided financial security for his wife of 59 years and their family.

Peters bought two Connecticut Lottery tickets at a local 7-Eleven store on Nov. 1 as part of a 20-year tradition he shared with his wife Charlotte. Later that day, the 79-year-old retired hat factory worker suffered a fatal heart attack while working in his yard in Danbury.

On Friday, his widow cashed in one of the tickets: a $10 million winner which, in her grief over her husband’s death, she had put aside and almost discarded before recently checking the numbers.

“I’m numb,” Charlotte Peters, 78, said at Connecticut Lottery headquarters in Rocky Hill.

Full story here on Yahoo.

This is worth 40 seconds of your time. I wish 2008 had gone by that fast.

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

I’m a sucker for a cool visual effect even if it is not new. Freixenet did a nice job grabbing my attention.

Flowing organic, ink in water imagery makes me watch every time.

Maybe it’s all the ink blot tests I have endured.

Lame west coast youths search for chicks and booze.

The movie I would most closely relate this to would be Dazed and Confused.

Cheezy but hilarious at the same time.

A friend had this in a Twitter post so I looked it up. I had never heard of Jesus Camp (the movie) until now.

It reminds me of the Borat clip that I posted a while back.

It’s old news but new to me. I’m just catching up to 2006 news.

It has been shut down since the documentary came out, which is not a surprise.

Here is another article in the Seattle Times.

Another video by MGMT

Even more psychedelic than the other video I posted.

I’m a new fan.

I heard a DJ friend play Electric Feel at a club.

After he was done with his set, I asked him who the song was by even though I didn’t know how to describe it. He couldn’t tell me.

…but this past weekend I went to hear him spin again, and he was like “Have you heard this new MGMT sh*t?”

I was like “No.”

Then he started playing the track.

…and I said, “F*** ya dude, this is what I was askin you about a couple weeks ago!”

MGMT is a music group that is absolutely worth checking out.

If this video doesn’t play, here’s a link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnXRfhIDLtA&feature=channel

 

I have tried to cook Monkfish (a tremendously ugly fish), it didn’t go so well. I picked it up at Pike Place Market.

The texture was good, sort of like a lobster tail but I think I over cooked it.

It was only ok but I’m sure it was me not the fish.

I will have to try how Gordon cooks it, maybe it will be better next time.

Describing themselves as Healing, Easy Listening and Soul, MGMT is like a mash up of The Beatles and The Bee Gee’s.

The sound is then sometimes mixed with a dirty electro groove.
The favorite track amongst MySpacers and all fans alike would have to be “Electric Feel.”

One thing that bugged me about this video was the silly horn trumpet.

I did like the super saturated trippy slime about 2/3 of the way thru the video.

…oh, and how the nostalgia of the Rock-afire Explosion band. kinda spooky

here some of their songs on MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/MGMT