We’ve just been notified that we’ve also been nominated for a Best Design Award at the European Tech Awards. There are some great websites in the category so we’re extremely pleased to even be nominated for such an award. If you’d like to help us out then click here to place your vote. Again, there’s no need to register and it only takes a few seconds to cast your vote.

Thanks again for your support.

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Hubdub along with 34 other of the UK’s top digital/tech companies have been selected to go on Digital Mission to the South By South West Interactive (SXSWi) conference. The conference is in Austin, Texas and runs from the 13th to the 17th of March. It is considered one of the best tech conferences in the calendar.

According to TechCrunch, the 35 were selected from over 100 entrants. For more on Digital Mission and the list of all the companies attending click here. If any readers are going to SXSW then let us know. It would be great to meet up.

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At Hubdub we have many markets covering all the nuisances of the potential event. We have a market asking which bible verse his bible will be opened to:

Presidential Inauguration: What verse will Barack Obama’s Bible be open to?

We are also curious if Barack Obama will use his middle name while taking the oath of office, most Hubdubbers feel he will:

Will Barack Obama use his middle name when taking the oath of office?

One of my personal favorite markets is asking about the infamous “Yes We Can” line that began in New Hampshire, swept the country with the video by Will I AM, and was chanted at the acceptance speech on election night. Currently more than half of the Hubdubbers feel he won’t use the line at all, but I think he will, it fits his style, the American people want to be told that “Yes We Can”:

Presidential Inauguration: How many times will President Obama use the phrase “Yes We Can”?

For those of you who are going to be in the crowd during this day, we have a market right up your alley, the National Weather Service measures the temperature on Inaugural Day and we have a market asking what our Hubdubbers feel it will be, you better hope they got a good bead on this one, they are calling for a very comfortable 35degrees:

Presidential Inauguration: What will be the temperature at noon as recorded by NWS?

Another market more tuned into those of you who will be braving the weather, while the rest of us watch from the comfort of our homes or offices, is this market asking How Many Words Long will the Inauguration Speech be, again here at Hubdub we seem to feel that President Obama will carry on for more than 2250 words:

Presidential Inauguration: How many words long will President Obama’s address be?

and for those of you were were wondering here are the shortest and longest speeches - George Washington’s second address was the shortest (135 words) and William Henry Harrison delivered the longest (8,495 words).
And before we let you go, we would like to ask those in attendance to help us out if at all possible. If you see someone throw a donut at Rick Warren please notify the category editor right away so we may settle this market:

Will Mega Church leader Rick Warren have a donut thrown at him before or on Inauguration Day?

and finally if you see Tom Hanks at the Inauguration and you give him your seat, you will be helping settle a very fun but silly market:

Will Tom Hanks be given a seat at Barack Obama’s inauguration?

In a note of seriousness, please be safe, have a great time, and take alot of pictures. You may send all the pictures directly to me at destry@hubdub.com and I will share them on Picasa for everyone to see. Have a great time, enjoy your moment of history, and remember this “Now is the time to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”

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Hubdub’s Hot Predictions this week, as decided by Hubdub users and staff, are selected based on their newsworthiness for the week. These stories are bound to be big news this week - and we have forecasts on how they’re likely to turn out.

The Auto Bailout

America’s automotive producers have found themselves in a sticky situation these past weeks, and for the past months America’s banking giants haven’t been breezing along just fine either. With the possibility of a auto bailout looming, which failed giant will get better quicker, AIG or GM? Hubdub forecasts by over 55% it’s GM.

Which stock will rise the most in the month of December, AIG or GM?

The automotive industry kind of screwed up big time. Never fear though, the American taxpayers are happy to pick up the slack, or are they? This week the House is supposed to vote on a automotive industry bailout and by large enough margins Hubdub is predicting the bill will be passed with at least 218 to 290 votes.

Congress - How many “Yes” votes will be cast in the House for the Big 3 auto bailout?

Hubdub

There’s nothing like winning a Mashable Open Web Award to bring in the Holiday season! This year it seems Santa’s got his eyes on Hubdub. Mashable nominated an Open Web Award in Social News for Hubdub and we’re steam rolling through the competition. Currently Hubdub is trading above a 65% chance of winning the award, and for a Hubdubber those are damn good odds.

Who will win Mashable’s Open Web Award for Social News?

Sport

The Heisman Trophy is due to be awarded this Saturday. Sam Bradford a QB for Oklahoma seems to be the favourite. Hubdub gives him an over 65% chance of winning. That said ESPN may have shown some weakness to Sam’s main rival Colt McCoy who’s trading at 14%.

NCAAF - Who will win this year’s Heisman Trophy?

This Weekends Box Office

Can some tell me why all the evil disasters that befall Earth seem to always be centred around New York City? First you had Godzilla who made the move from Japan to New York in 1998 and now we have The Day The Earth Stood Still. No fear though Keanu Reeves should be able to clear this whole mess up and get tons of money in the process. How much money? Hubdub forecasts 40 to 50 Million on opening weekend.

US Box Office: How Much Will The Day The Earth Stood Still Make in its Opening Weekend?

Trading percentages given are at time of posting and may not match up with markets after the fact due to Hubdub users forecasting on said markets.  

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Image via WikipediaWe are pleased to announce our new partnership with the UK Independent, one of the UK’s most innovative national newspapers. The Independent successfully relaunched independent.co.uk earlier this year improving user interaction through blogs and forums. We are now adding predictions to that mix.

Press release:

The Independent lets users make the news

The Independent has just partnered with a new prediction website to allow their users to predict the outcomes of news stories.

The prediction site, Hubdub, allows users to trade predictions with virtual money on the outcomes of breaking news stories and future events, with approximately 2 million Hubdub dollars traded daily. As part of a new, dedicated section within the site, The Independent generates questions for users to trade on based on the latest breaking news, ranging in topics from the current credit crunch to football to politics.

Additional tools and resources are also included to help build a community for The Independent within the site, http://www.hubdub.com/partners/theindependent. These include a “friends” application, comment capabilities, links to the top Independent stories of the day and widgets which are embedded in The Independent’s own website.

Finally, because Hubdub prediction markets aggregate thousands of trades, the site often produces accurate forecasts on the likelihood of future events. Beyond weighing in on the outcome, users are able to reference the site for up-to-the-minute information on the public’s predictions about breaking news from The Independent.

Jimmy Leach, editorial director for digital at the Independent said: ‘It’s a tremendously exciting partnership we’re beginning, enabling our millions of news junkie users to predict the outcome of both the serious and the trivial. There’s a tremendous fit between our audience and the addictive functionality of Hubdub and we’re looking forward to expanding the offering in the next few months.’

Examples of The Independent’s questions on Hubdub:
• Will UK inflation hit 6% this year?
• Will house prices continue to fall until the end of the year?
• Will Scotland be given the 2012 European Championships?
• Will Kevin Keegan be Newcastle manager by the end of the month?

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We’ve just uploaded our sixty second pitch to TechCrunch Elevator Pitches. Here’s the video:

Please click through to the TechCrunch Elevator Pitch site and vote. Remember the old Irish saying, “Vote early, and vote often!”

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(I fully expect increased volatility in that market now oil producers are in on the game…)

What will a barrel of oil cost, in US Dollars, by the end of 2008?

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Silicon Valley PR Guru, Brian Solis, has pulled together a conversation prism. He describes the prism as:

The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate.

We think the prism is very cool (although it looks more like a rainbow flower than a prism). It is not only easy on the eye but it also includes Hubdub. It is at the top and slightly to the right (it is worth one point if you are a darts player*) and labelled ‘Crowdsourced content’. We are sandwiched between Newsvine, Mixx, Reddit and Digg, so we are keeping in good company.

Here is Brian’s post on the Prism. And here is Duncan Riley’s amusing reply.

[Full disclosure: Brian’s company FutureWorks handled our PR in January when we launched at DEMO, and did a fantastic job]

* And here is a darts board for those of you who aren’t:

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In a recent interview about the Doha round of trade talks on Al-Jazeera, the interviewee quoted a Hubdub forecast of the likelihood of a successful result. Here is the clip:

Since that clip was recorded the forecast has dropped to 17%.

In launching Hubdub we believed that the markets could prove a great way to follow any running news story. With the number of open stories/questions we are tracking approaching 2,000 the site is starting to achieve that potential.

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