Midas Oracle .ORG » content management system

Reliable Enterprise-Grade Software
Qmarkets was written from day one as a site for massive use by a large number of users & organizations.
As such, Qmarkets is fully scalable in design (relying on Drupal’s core capabilities), allowing us to easily grow by simply adding more servers to our hosted solution.

Looking for a host for Qmarkets took a while, since we wanted to get a reliable & secure hosting services.
Eventually we found A-Plus, which came highly recommended for high-end telco-grade web sites (recommendations by CNET & PC Magazine, amongst others).
At APlus we use their dedicated servers hosting plans, that gives Qmarkets the required strength & security to provide you with the best service on the web.

Easy To Use User Interface (with AJAX)
On top of providing a reliable service, we at Qmarkets believe that user interface must be clear and simple.
That’s why we provide you with an easy to use AJAX interface, to allow fast information reload & an intuitive user interface.

We have simplified the task of asking questions (new markets), and even better – trading in markets has never been easier.
At Qmarkets, no training or preliminary knowledge of prediction markets is necessary in order to participate.

Pure “LAMP” (Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP)
LAMP is an industry buzzword that represents web sites written using the leading “standard” open source [technologies] out there – Linux OS, Apache Web Server, MySQL Database & PHP development language.
Qmarkets software was written using the best of breed open source technologies & frameworks out there, to ensure site stability, performance & support.

In addition, we built our site on top of the Drupal CMS (“CMS” stands for “Content Management System”), which provides the core infrastructure & utilities for developing a robust enterprise-grade site.
Drupal was our choice after reviewing all the top CMS systems our there (Joomla & Xoops came close). [*]
Drupal is a well know CMS platform, that won many prizes. It is great for its stability, robustness & flexibility, which allows extending it and adding new modules & features without ever needing to change the core of Drupal.

Open Source Technologies
On top of the discussed technologies, the Qmarkets software is using some excellent open source technologies & libraries.
We would like to use this [opportunity] to give them their credits for the wonderful job they did:
- JQuery Javascript Library – Excellent & Robust Javascript capabilities for UI
- XAJAX – Ajax Library – Elegant & Simple integration of PHP & AJAX. We also use their backbutton plugin
- Blix Template – Provide excellent base templates for Drupal

I corrected 2 typos in their text.

[*] What about WordPress, Noam?

Still unconvinced by prediction market journalist Justin Wolfers

Chris F. Masse — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:35:01 +0000

The Justin Wolfers series in the Wall Street Journal is plagued with rotten links to the WSJ’s bot-driven, play-money prediction sub-exchange (which is secretly programed to reflect InTrade’s real-money prices).

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The latest installment (which does not featured a single prediction market chart) is written by Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzwewitz. A pillar of prediction market journalism is to show dynamics charts of prediction markets. Just describing with words a rise or a free-fall does not do the trick. Here are some charts that the two Wall Street Journal stringers don’t want you to see:

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2008 US Presidential Elections

2008 US Presidential Election Winner

2008 Democratic Nominee

2008 Republican Nominee

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BetFair

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Next US President Will Be Democratic.

Â© NewsFutures

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It’s obvious to anyone (but to Justin Wolfers, Eric Zitzwewitz, and their technophobic editor at the WSJ) that prediction market event study would be more usable with charts legended with news markers. (Maybe that will give Nigel Eccles an idea for his next startup. )

So, let’s pass the truisms…

If Pepsi withdrew from the Cola Wars, then sales of Coke would go up; 7-Up isn’t quite as similar of a product, and so would benefit a bit less. So too in politics.

After the rich theater of the early primaries, the lead-up to Super Tuesday now looks pretty conventional, with each race expected to involve two candidates, and no third-party surprises.

And let’s try to spot some prediction market intelligence in their report. I don’t see any. It’s a boring historical report from two people whose specialty is everything (economics, prediction markets, betting, gambling, finance, sports) but politics. The ABC of reporting is to trade your passion. Political prediction market journalism deserves more that two university professors who are out of their turf and are using a clunky content management system to tout a bot-driven play-money prediction sub-exchange.

Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzwewitz are great prediction market experts, and their write-up in the Wall Street Journal is gentle, but that’s not enough because the competition is formidable. There is a glut of amateur and professional political analysts out there, who live and breathe by politics, and the top one percent of them outputs great, pertinent stuff that draws millions of pageviews. In such a cluttered field, you have to differentiate a lot by innovating a lot. Nothing in Justin Wolfers and Eric Zitzewitz’s political prediction market event study stands out. Instead of carving a niche, they are littering redundant banalities.

That said, they are true pioneers in prediction market journalism. They will make improvement, over the coming years, hopefully.

The real story behind Word Press that the Media won’t tell you.

Chris F. Masse — Fri, 11 May 2007 15:10:51 +0000

Matthew Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress (the open-source blogging software that runs Midas Oracle):

One thing Iâ€™ve noticed about talking to certain types of [Press], particularly mainstream, is that they have a pattern in mind before they write about something, and the better you conform to the pattern the more coverage you get. I think what they really want is an unusually young founder, possibly with a partner, who stumbled on an idea in an epiphany moment, implemented it in days, and then enjoyed overnight success, preferably capped with some sort of financial hook such as a huge VC funding or selling out to a large company for millions of dollars. Itâ€™s not uncommon to get leading questions trying to hit a point in the above patterns… Yes, WordPress really is four years old. I was 19. No, I didnâ€™t create it alone, if I did you would have never heard of it. Actually, it entered a rather crowded field, not even close to being first. No, not planning to sell it, there isnâ€™t really anything to sell, itâ€™s more of a movement. No, I didnâ€™t make 60 million dollars in 18 months. Whatâ€™s worst is I think these stories sell a false promise and hope to people outside of the industry â€” it attracts the wrong type of entrepreneurs â€” and inside of the industry it distracts us from what really matters. Someday I think there will be a realization that the real story is more exciting than the cookie-cutter founder myth the media tries frame everything in. Itâ€™s not just one or two guys hacking on something alone, itâ€™s dozens of people from across the world coming together because of a shared passion. Itâ€™s not about selling out to a single company, itâ€™s dozens of companies independently adopting and backing an open source platform for no reason other than its quality. Iâ€™m not a millionaire, and may never be, but there are now hundreds of people making their living using WordPress, and I expect that number to grow to tens of thousands. Thatâ€™s what gets me out of bed in the morning, not the prospect of becoming a feature on an internet behemothâ€™s checklist. Finally itâ€™s not Web 2.0, or another bandwagon me-too content management system with AJAX, itâ€™s a mature project that has been around and grown up over four years of hard work, and it has many, many more years of hard work ahead of it. I smile these days when I see WordPress referred to as an â€œovernight success,â€ if only they knew how long an overnight success takes.

Previous: The Myth Of Creativity – Innovation matters, but releasing your inner bohemian isnâ€™t the answer. – by Robin Hanson

Somewhat Related: Wikipedia on collective intelligence and the wisdom of crowds… and on WordPress and open-source software

Incite the free-market thinkers into practicing prediction markets.

Chris F. Masse — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:41:14 +0000

Which objective(s) should have the highest priority? 23 Responses

- Generate revenues and profits for Midas Oracle. 4 / 23
- Make Jason Ruspini quit whining about the fact that he blogs on Midas Oracle for free. 1 / 23
- Incite the free-market thinkers into *practicing* prediction markets. 4 / 23
- DIY prediction markets 2 / 23
- The â€œX Groupsâ€ (the relationships between media/blogs and the prediction markets) 1 / 23
- No Response Recorded 11 / 23

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CHRIS MASSE’S “REMARKS” (as Bo Cowgill says)

#1. Surveying the Midas Oracle readers is a cheap way to induce some kind of participation. I’ll do that more often. (I also said that I should do more e-mail interviews. I will do. I have a long to-do list, please be patient.)

#2. The survey above was half serious and half tongue-in-cheek (as that wet blanket of Bo Cowgill quickly “remarked”). I will do more on the same topic, or on related topics. My readers are invited to submit survey suggestions, too.

#3. “No Response Recorded.”: A high number of respondents either encountered a problem (maybe they answered the survey within their feed reader, and the responses were messed up, dunno) or they wanted to vote for “Dunno, Have No Answer, Your Survey Stinks”. (I should have minded a “No Opinion” answer option, maybe.) That’s OK. That’s internet democracy at works.

#4. “Jason Ruspini whining”: Actually, he “remarked” that finance experts who blog on prediction markets teach for free the corporate users of this forecasting tool. Jason Ruspini‘s point, if I understood well, is that organizations could write up their own software for prediction markets and avoid paying any external consultants. I think I disagree. Every Bo Cowgill needs a Hal Varian.

#5. “Imagination-based prediction markets (the ‘X Universes’)”: NOBODY VOTED FOR THIS. Well, it may be not a “priority” (important + urgent), but it’s important, long term. Look at the industry right now. 100% of the prediction markets are reality-based prediction markets, that is, whose expiry are based on news events (winner of a game, an election, etc.). The prediction exchanges (betting exchanges) are missing the other half of the market: event derivatives whose expiry is based on… fiction events (whether Harry Potter will die at the end, whether the Star Wars kid will fall to the dark side of the Force, etc.). You will tell me that, since the outcome is known by the universe creator, secrecy is needed. Yeah, that’s what the “entertainment industry” is based on, see: make-believe stuff + plot outcome secrecy. What we need for the X Universes to take off are prediction exchanges and universe creators working in symbiosis. More on this in the coming weeks, months, years and decades on Midas Oracle. Stay tuned. (Psstt… Don’t expect our good friends the scholars to foresee the future of the prediction market industry during their little surprise party at San Diego, next June. They are only interested in the past.)

#6. “DIY prediction markets“: I was first bearish on this, and now I’m bullish. If you think of it, the idea is to ease (via web services) the outsourcing of the creation and management of some event derivatives to either the Joe Six-Packs or the media/blog organizations.

#7. “The ‘X Groups’ (the relationship between media/blogs and the prediction markets)“: I’m not really convinced by the associations I’ve seen so far. But that’s not the point. If many more people propose event derivatives, then of course they will market their own event derivatives, and thus popularize the whole field of prediction markets. The long-term hope is that we see many more people trading socially relevant event derivatives. That’s the marketing part of the X Groups. But there’s a much, much more interesting aspect. Imagine a group of bloggers managing together an event derivative whose expiry will be based on… their collective judgment on an issue (e.g., their opinion on whether George W. Bush was true to the conservative movement). During the course of this prediction market, the traders reading the different blogs will be able to see how the bloggers are going to vote at the end, and whether their early opinions vary. See, DIY + X Groups = a brand-new kind of prediction market, whose expiry can be based on the opinions of the sub-exchange managers, as opposed to external facts. (Well, the aggregation of all the bloggers’ opinions becomes a de facto fact. ) One idea among thousands.

#8. “Incite the free-market thinkers into *practicing* prediction markets.“: The basic idea is simple. There are dozens of thousands of free-market, free-trade thinkers, out there, in institutions like universities, think tanks, consulting firms, and media/blog organizations. Here’s what to tell them: “You, guys/gals, will convey your free-market message better if you get your people into practicing socially relevant prediction markets, because that’s free markets at works.” Getting many free-market think tanks on this would solve two problems: number one, the socially relevant prediction markets are thinly traded (the think tanks would bring in traders), and, number two, the socially relevant prediction markets are unprofitable (the think tanks would subsidy the co-organization of these markets). Easy to say, difficult to do, of course.

#9. “Generate revenues and profits for Midas Oracle.“: I just found out about the Rolex Awards. Interesting. Any other prizes you can think of? Any other sources of cash you would think of, folks?

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For your information, I’m in the process of installing Word Press on Midas Oracle .NET and Midas Oracle .COM. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do. I have one idea: setting up a constantly updated wiki-like resource on prediction markets. See, WordPress is actually a “content management system” and, besides “blog posts”, you can organize your content as “pages”. Does this fly in your book, folks? Another idea would be to set up a comparator of market-generated probabilities. If you have other crazy ideas, feel free to submit them. (They can’t be crazier than the ideas I have developed just above. )

Previous: Prediction Markets Timeline + DIY prediction markets â€” X Universes â€” X Groups + How prediction exchanges can best encourage participation

Should prediction market firms use blogs?

Chris F. Masse — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:36:35 +0000

BusinessWeek on McKinsey’s global survey:

[...] Only 16% of the companies surveyed said they were investing in blogs, compared to 63% for web services, 28% for peer-to-peer networks, and 19% for social networks. 78% identified web services as the Web 2.0 technology/tool most important their their business. [...]