According to this survey, a majority of American adults are even more pessimistic about how the economy as a whole will fare in the next six months (53% versus just 24% who are optimistic), and 64% of them say they are planning to cut back on spending for entertainment in the next six months. For more details, see the full results of the survey, Attitudes on Economy Remain Bleak; Spending Over Next Six Months Unlikely on Most Large Items, Entertainment and Dining Out.

The research also found that while environmentally friendly or ‘green’ products have become increasingly available in stores in recent years, the economic downturn is affecting purchases of these more expensive options:

This was another useful posting from the Marketing Charts website: http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/behavioral-marketing/restaurants-green-products-big-losers-as-pessimistic-consumers-cut-back-6868/. The full report can be downloaded from http://www.markettools.com/forms/resource_13.php (registration required).

This entry combine a short view of history, an inflated view of the new social media, and some real insights into how the digital trail of social media can be used to make better predications about the future.

The first two tendencies are on display in the introduction:  “History tends to remember only pivotal moments in time, discarding the day to day struggles. Even when the occasional diary survives, it only archives what one person does — it doesn’t track his or her interactions with others. But with social media … [f]or the first time in human history, the day-to-day interactions between people are being permanently recorded and formatted in easily organizable segments of information.”

The insights come in two of the subheadings: “Historical trend analysis will leap to a new level of precision” (by providing an archive of raw material that can be extrapolated into future trends) and “We will not use history to learn from our mistakes, but to prevent them before they happen.”

For an art gallery, the Armand Hammer Museum of Art has always been both interactive and inventive. The museum — which is part of the University of California at Los Angeles — not only offers patrons a wide variety of talks, readings, screenings, and field trips, but it also goes outside the box when it organizes exhibitions. On Monday, though, the museum surpassed itself -- and every other museum I can think of, either on a campus or off -- by unveiling a new Web site that all but vibrates with podcasts, video recordings of presentations, blog posts, slide shows, and more. Many museums offer images of works in their collections or in special exhibitions, along with calendar listings, directions, and hours, but usually that's about it. At the Hammer site, so much is available online that even those of us several time zones away have plenty to enjoy and learn from. And people who live in Los Angeles couldn't possibly attend all of the museum's events in person, so archiving presentations online benefits Angelenos as well. Among the site's current offerings — check the "Watch + Listen" tab — are a video of a screening of several delightful Brent Green short films (with live musical accompaniment), podcasts of a lecture by the artist William Christenberry and a reading by the writer Michael Ondaatje (author of The English Patient and much more), and a recording of a conversation between Leon Botstein, the conductor and Bard College president, and Frank Gehry, the architect. And this is, presumably, just the start. If the museum keeps adding to what's online now, within a few years the site will be a treasure trove. Making so much smart content available free online is a tremendous service to art and culture — a service other university museums would do well to study. — Lawrence Biemiller