NOTE TO SELF: Set up customized e-mail alerts for brand-new, hot Midas Oracle stuff.

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Felix Salmon:

And while Barry might not like the overall quality of the writers at Seeking Alpha, the quality of the readers (as opposed to the commenters, who are an unrepresentative sample) is pretty high, for one big reason: Seeking Alpha&#8217-s email alerts. Most executives simply have no time to surf the web for content, which is one reason why it took a long time for econoblogs to take off. But a lot of them have signed up for SA&#8217-s email service, which sends them a bunch of posts on their particular company or industry on a regular basis. And I&#8217-m often very surprised at the number of times that high-powered people get in touch with me after I end up in one of those emails.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
  • STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
  • Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
  • Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
  • FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.
  • InTrade ditch market-leader Bloomberg for low-cost, second-tier data provider eSignal.
  • Drawing a parallel between our reluctance to seek advice and the experts’ reluctance to take the market-generated probabilistic predictions in an un-discriminating, un-critical fashion

Thanks to enterprise prediction markets, senior management can move faster to deal with problems or exploit opportunities.

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No GravatarAirplane thru Moon

Photo Credit: AFP

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Previously: The New York Times is telling the business world that enterprise prediction markets are an essential management tool.

[Via Xpree]

Previously: Do Google’s enterprise prediction markets work?

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
  • STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
  • Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
  • Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
  • FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.
  • InTrade ditch market-leader Bloomberg for low-cost, second-tier data provider eSignal.
  • Drawing a parallel between our reluctance to seek advice and the experts’ reluctance to take the market-generated probabilistic predictions in an un-discriminating, un-critical fashion

DAYS OF RECKONING: The New York Times is telling the business world that enterprise prediction markets are an essential management tool.

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Via forecasting expert Mat Fogarty of Xpree (cited but not linked to, alas, in that story), the New York Times (2 pages):

“The potential is that prediction markets may be the thing that enables a big company to act more like a small, nimble company again,” said Jeffrey Severts, a vice president who oversees prediction markets at Best Buy, the electronics retailer. The store chain has experimented with prediction markets on everything from demand for digital set-top boxes to store-opening dates. For example, Mr. Severts said that in the fall of 2006, the prices in a prediction market on whether a new store in Shanghai would open on time — in December 2006 — dropped sharply from $80 a share into the $40 to $50 range. Players made yes-no bets, and the virtual dollar drop reflected increasing doubt that the store would open on time. Indeed, Best Buy’s first store in China opened late, in January 2007, but the warning signs from the prediction market helped prevent further slippage. Mr. Severts noted that prices in a current prediction market — betting whether new offerings from its Geek Squad service will be introduced on time in June — are in the $90 range, an encouraging sign. Best Buy plans to move beyond pilot projects in prediction markets to involve more workers throughout the company, starting next month. “It helps on two fronts, the speed and accuracy of information, so that management can move faster to deal with problems or exploit opportunities,” Mr. Severts said.

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Previously: Do Google’s enterprise prediction markets work?

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
  • STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
  • Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
  • Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
  • FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.
  • InTrade ditch market-leader Bloomberg for low-cost, second-tier data provider eSignal.
  • Drawing a parallel between our reluctance to seek advice and the experts’ reluctance to take the market-generated probabilistic predictions in an un-discriminating, un-critical fashion

Video on InTrades political prediction markets

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Via Yahoo! Research scientist David Pennock (pictured in the video, with, in the background, a whiteboard full of complex mathematical equations, which impressed the young New York Post journalist)&#8230- this New York Post video (embedded just below).
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John Delaney&#8217-s statement that people (did he say &#8220-pundits&#8221- or &#8220-people&#8221-?&#8230-) were predicting a John Kerry victory in November of 2004 (while InTrade was predicting that George W. Bush would be re-elected) should be backed by supportive evidence. It&#8217-s difficult to quantify the chatter in newspapers, magazines, TVs, blogs, etc. Did someone do that for the 2004 presidential elections? I know that the polls were favoring Bush, slightly, but I don&#8217-t know whether the political buzz was quantified scientifically, really.
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Launch a prediction market startup for free thanks to Google App Engine.

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Run your web applications on Google&#8217-s infrastructure.

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Matt Cutts:

Google launched App Engine, which lets you write code for a web application, then Google takes care of the scaling/failover/logistics-type issues. You can store your data in a Google Bigtable using the Google File System (GFS). There’s a bunch of App Engine APIs to simplify things like sending email and fetching urls. Your application can authenticate users that are using Google Accounts, so you can avoid the whole “ask your users to create a new account” issue if you want.

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O&#8217-Reilly Radar

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Google App Engine

[Competitor: Amazon AWS]

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YouTube Video

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Bo Cowgill, this is completely crazy.

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UPDATE: Raves from TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider.

UPDATE: Google AppEngine – A Second Look

UPDATE: Praxy

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Towards an anti-drugs and anti-corruption body for all sports? – BetFairs proposal…

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No GravatarPlay The Game [I like that website title :-D ]:

Betting industry leader calls for sport world anti-corruption agency

8 April 2008

by Michael Herborn

Mark Davies, managing director of global betting giant Betfair, has called for a world anti-corruption agency for sport. He envisions that the anti-corruption agency would operate along the same lines as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), perhaps encompassing the role as both global watchdog for financial as well as pharmaceutical corruption of sport. “There isn&#8217-t a body that sits at the top of sport that&#8217-s something we&#8217-d love to see, a world integrity agency that encompasses both drugs and betting and any other form of corruption,” Davies told New Zealand newspaper the Sunday Star Times at the Leaders in Sport conference in Auckland on 4 April 2008. “For me it should be the same body. If a sportsman is trying to corrupt by enhancing his performance by drugs or trying to corrupt by minimising his performance and make money off the back of it, I don&#8217-t see a distinction.” [&#8230-]

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
  • STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
  • Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
  • Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
  • FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.
  • InTrade ditch market-leader Bloomberg for low-cost, second-tier data provider eSignal.
  • Drawing a parallel between our reluctance to seek advice and the experts’ reluctance to take the market-generated probabilistic predictions in an un-discriminating, un-critical fashion

Do BetFair understand the statistical concept of expectation?

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No GravatarGraham &#8220-Sharp&#8221- Minds:

[&#8230-] When I was interviewed by BetFair and they explained to me all of the problems with the multiples operation, most importantly the fact that it is a loss making despite the huge overrounds, I was asked for my opinion. I told them the simple solution was to take the bets on the chin like a traditional bookmaker and keep away from the markets as the bets they placed were likely to be taken by traders that are shrewder than their own, especially in-running where most of the BetFair trading activity actually occurs.

They were horrified at this prospect and were insistent on producing a formula to place the bets into the main BetFair market to reduce the risk as close as possible to zero. I was more horrified that they didn’t understand the statistical concept of expectation.

Discussion here, too.

Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
  • STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
  • Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
  • Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
  • FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.
  • InTrade ditch market-leader Bloomberg for low-cost, second-tier data provider eSignal.
  • Drawing a parallel between our reluctance to seek advice and the experts’ reluctance to take the market-generated probabilistic predictions in an un-discriminating, un-critical fashion

Problem 17: Prediction Markets – USMA D/Math Problem of the Week – Submission Deadline: April 3, 2008 at 1600

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HubDub

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And we have a winner, Chris Hibbert of Zocalo:

You can buy Giuliani on Q2 for .12 and sell Giuliani on Q1 for .52, and have a combination that will pay $1 no matter what for an outlay of .64. We want to take that .36 gain and turn it into $100. 100 / .36 = 277.777&#8230-

So we&#8217-ll buy 278 shares of each.The 278 shares cost 278 * (.12 + .52), which is 177.92. Whatever happens, you&#8217-ll win $278, which puts you ahead by $100.

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Midas Oracle is now powered by WordPress 2.5 -and you should be too.

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  1. Just updated to WordPress 2.5. (See a screencast here.)
  2. I waited one week before upgrading, so as to take the time to monitor the WP 2.5 compatibility with our plugins.
  3. To upgrade, I used the &#8220-Wordpress Automatic Upgrade&#8221- plugin. The automatic process failed, but the step-by-step process worked fine. Overall, I&#8217-m happy. This plugin is a time saver.
  4. WordPress 2.5.1 is due for May 2008. In the meantime, if you spot some gremlins, let me know.
  5. Speaking of gremlins, WP 2.5 has now a better compatibility with Safari, so maybe Tom W. Bell will come down here to tell us what he thinks of the new US anti-gambling regulations.
  6. The Midas Oracle post/page authors will spot a totally reconfigured &#8220-Write Post / Page&#8221- area.
  7. They have added a bunch of &#8220-media buttons&#8221- (to insert pictures, sounds, videos, etc.) and an &#8220-embedded media&#8221- button (which you&#8217-ll find if you click first on the &#8220-Kitchen Sink&#8221-). I have yet to fully experiment all that.
  8. There is now a &#8220-full screen mode&#8221- for the writing area.
  9. They have hidden the 2 blockquotes button under the &#8220-Kitchen Sink&#8221- sub-menu.

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UPDATE: Gartner is out today saying that open-source software will take over the free world, eventually &#8212-and that includes Chapman University and Tom W. Bell&#8230- :-D

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Matt Mullenweg

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Problem 17: Prediction Markets — USMA D/Math Problem of the Week — Submission Deadline: April 3, 2008 at 1600
  • Would be fun to have the equivalent for event derivatives.
  • “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow.” “Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” said Turner, 69. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state —like Somalia or Sudan— and living conditions will be intolerable.”
  • QUESTION TO THE READERS: Could anyone guess what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would think of the prediction markets?
  • YouTube Videos on Prediction Markets