Some early observations:

Boy, do they have a lot of process. (Refreshingly, it's aligned with corporate and client objectives.)

They brainstorm just like we do: Way too many random whiteboard pattern-matching exercises!

In all seriousness, just for an example of what we should be able to do combined that we couldn't do apart: Earlier this year, Corina Matiesanu and I tried to build a model based on analyzing historical survey trends to project what interactive behaviors are generational versus age- or lifestage-based. We took a good college try, but our data wasn't deep enough to pull it off. I think Forrester's is, and I am looking forward to take another shot.

This should be fun.

(Sadly, my HTML skills are not such that I can make the order now flash a one-click purchase option.)

First, we have sharks and Brennivin:

The seafood-related alcohol beverage. "When we eat the shark we drink this Brennivin," Sigfus Sigurdsson said, referring to the Icelandic caraway-flavored schnapps that is sometimes called "Black Death."

"You put it in the freezer for a few weeks so the liquid becomes real thick," he continued, "and then the way you work the shark you can't describe it, but it smells awful."

But it tastes good, right? "No," Gudjon Sigurdsson said with a laugh. "But you have to do it. That's just the way it is."

And then, we have the existentialism flavored with mysticism:

So yeah, the captain of the Icelandic men's handball team has a degree in humanities, once considered entering a Buddhist monastery, has read many of the French 20th century deconstructionists and deep thinkers (such as Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze), refers to himself as an existentialist ("it gives you anguish, yes; basically existentialism is to say it doesn't matter whether God lives or he doesn't, you create your own life, and by doing that you make an example for others"), speaks of quantum physics, has read Karen Armstrong's works on mythology, and chose for his Olympic reading "Man Without Qualities," the three-part novel by the Austrian author and essayist Robert Musil.

And magic elves?

"It's not so much a matter of 'believing' in the regular sense of the word, it's more of enjoying the possibility of it actually existing," he said. "And it doesn't matter whether somebody judges you or not for having that possibility in your mind, because it's a funny possibility and it enlightens your life and makes it more colorful."

How could you not love these guys?

The sixth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, originally scheduled for a November 21 release, has now been moved to July 17, 2009 in the US and major international markets

Warners claims it's because the writers' strike threw off the skeds for other potentially big openers. Does that mean it needs Potter to save 2009, after 2008 got the surprise benefit of a bigger-than-expected Bats? Or does Potter 6 need major re-work? Furious fans want to know...

"We all want this movie to go into production as soon as possible," (Paradox Entertainment president and CEO Fredrik) Malmberg (who's producing the Conan re-make) said. "It's a fast-tracked movie. Lionsgate felt the process was enhanced by having a second team come in and do a script."

People don't look at their phone for very long. It's about 30 seconds. And that's how people are used to enjoying non-voice content on their wireless devices. For a live baseball game, I'd rather get five updates from five games rather than watch two minutes of a baseball game. That may change as quality gets better, as the pipe gets better, as all of these things get better, as screens get more robust. But right now, that's where it is.

MLB.com is one of the rare successes in online paid content, though a ton of its revenues come from ticketing. Oh, and he says he won't sue his fans.

Paper Planes by M.I.A.

I'm a little late to Gartner's social marketing party, but (new) colleague Jeremiah Owyang tweaked me to it. Gartner analyst Adam Sarner goes into a little more detail in this Forbes column.

Gartner calls its system a generation, but disavows age and other demographics. (And predicts more marketing spending online than off- in ten years.) Whatever. Jupiter, Forrester and most marketers and programmers I know still think a lot about demographics. Still, I'm partial to a more "psycho" approach -- I've been convinced over the years that attitudes and experiences are highly predictive of future behavior. And I've been working on Millennials analysis as well.

But the coolest bit of the Gartner approach, at least as it's laid out in the column, is the idea that since people have multiple personae online, marketers and programmers need to match up with those, rather than with the individual behind them.

I wonder if social media behavior aligns more with generation, with brands, or with activities. Do you update your Facebook status, but never post reviews? Or do you review movies on Flixster but not on Amazon? Or search for books the same way you search for movies, let alone healthcare products?

Modal, contextual personae. Now that's a segmentation that'll generate consulting $$ and agency fees for years to come....

Some relevant Jupiter reports on living in Google's world:
Living with Portals
Herding the Cats
21st Century Portals
and the perennial Understanding Google (I think that one still has some utility, though it's getting hoary)

- Google. Own sites up 42% to $3.5 billion. Network up 22% to $1.7 billion. International outgrew US and is over half of Google's total for the first time.
- Yahoo. Own sites up 14% to $1 billion. Network down 4% to $570 million
- MSN. Up 18% to $618 million, but not all that growth is organic. Some of it's from acquisitions. And it was Microsoft's fiscal fourth quarter, so they had feet on the gas.
- AOL up 2% to about $600 $530 million (more detail after the earnings call). UPDATED AOL's display ad sales on its own properties were down 14% to $191 million. Search was up 10% to $172 million and its third-party network up 15% to $167 million.
- Fox Interactive Media - which is mostly MySpace - up 23% to $225 million.

New York Times Digital was up 18%; Martha Stewart up 31%, Washington Post up 4% but display was up 11%. Disney and Viacom didn't say much, so presumably they had some growth but not high double digits.

Jupiter's forecast for 2008 US online display ad spending growth of 15% to 16% is achievable, but it'll take some strong second half kicks.