UPDATE: I have completely re-written this blog post. I have just found out (at the bottom of a FAQ, which was itself linked from the bottom of a page!) that the Yahoo! Shortcuts only works when the WordPress rich, visual editor is disabled. That explains all. So I am now typing this with the raw editor, and will now make another test of the plugin for WordPress.

Let’s try it in avant-premiere… well, that is, before David Pennock installs it on his own blog. Let’s type some pointless sentences with plenty of keywords in them, to see how the plugin reacts:

• Google’s Bo Cowgill’s one is longer than Yahoo!’s David Pennock’s one —I’m talking about their experience as administrator of enterprise prediction markets (what were you thinking of, this is a serious blog).
• One Google stock can buy ten Yahoo! stocks.
• Google’s street address in Mountain View, California, Vs. Yahoo!’s street address.

So as I typed the sentences above, the Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin has found 2 shortcuts. OK. I click on “Review this post”. It takes me painfully to another page, where I can accept or refuse the implements. The plugin did embed things under “Google” and “Yahoo! Shortcuts”. Problem: I have no idea what the hell they have embedded in my text. Let’s hit the “Publish” button to see what it looks like.

UPDATE: Does not work. Nothing appears on the published blog post.

APPENDIX: Screen shot #1. – Screen shot #2.

ABOUT A PREDICTION MARKET PLUGIN: It should be simpler than that. I vote against the automatic detection. And I vote against the machine dictating you what should be inserted. What about freedom of choice???? I will go for a manual selection of prediction market charts in a list, and the blogger would select the one(s) he/she wants to insert —and he/she would mark exactly where to insert it.