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.  

Popularity: 12% [?]

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.

2008 Election Over?

Some are saying it’s already over and packing their bags, but is it? McCain has many obstacles to surmount in the next week, but John has comeback from the dead before. Endorsements from party faithfuls like Colin Powell don’t help though. Currently Hubdub forecasts McCain has less than a 15% chance of winning.

Who will win the 2008 US Presidential Election?

Pundits are saying November 4th is shaping up to be a landslide win for Obama. This election could still get very, very tight though, and in the end it’s all about the electoral votes. For now Hubdub users disagree with pundits and predict a narrow election by just 45 Electoral Votes or less.

ELECTION 2008: What will be the ELECTORAL MARGIN between Obama and McCain?

North Carolina’s known for being a staunch GOP state. In the Dem. primaries Obama won the state, but for the summer McCain was in the lead by double digits. As the economy nears the edge of recession though it seems North Carolina may switch sides. Even now by over 60% Hubdub forecasts Obama grabs the state.

Who will win North Carolina in the 2008 Presidential Election?

Barack Obama has purchased 30 minutes of primetime TV on October 29th to address the nation. This will be Obama’s last chance to ’seal the deal.’ But how many people will be watching? Hubdub users think 50 million or more.

How many people will watch Barack Obama’s primetime address on 10/29?

Odd Stuff

Some might think Rock, Paper, Scissors is just a kids game but this stuff is hardcore! There’s even a World Championship in Toronto on the 25th. As to what will be the winning play rock, paper or scissors even Hubdub’s unsure just yet.

Rock Paper Scissors-What will be the winning final “throw” @ 2008 Int’l Championships?

Sports

It’s World Series time, and although the elections and economy might be getting the most attention, sports fans are going crazy. This year we have the Philadelphia Phillies facing off against the Tampa Bay Rays. By tight margins Hubdub users are forecasting a win by the Rays, but the Phillies aren’t pushovers. Good luck to both teams!

MLB World Series - Philadelphia Phillies vs Tampa Bay Rays - Series Outcome?

World News

Thailand’s in the midst of a political crisis right now. The first two prime ministers have gone rather quickly and now just a month into the job the thirds tenure is looking shaky. Hubdubbers predict the third prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat is gone by November.

When will Thai PM Somchai Wongsawat resign?

The Internet

Reddit is one of the most well known social media sites on the web, although we at Hubdub like to think we’re pretty popular too. In September Reddit brought in 3,300,327 unique visitors. Can they top that result by getting over 5 million unique hits before 2009? Less than 30% of Hubdubbers say yes.

Will Reddit.com reach 5 million Unique Visitors - Monthly in 2008?

Financial Meltdown

We’ve been through turbulent times these last weeks. The markets have gone up and up and then teetered off a cliff into a pack of ravenous wolves. Are we through the worst of it? Will we have anymore big swings in the Dow during October? Hubdub says don’t hold your breath it ain’t over yet!

How many 500+ point swings will the Dow have remaining in October?

Everyone likes to think that American money is American money. We’re in a interdependent world though, where one thing effects another. We’re also a country in tons of debt, who has all of our debt? Japan, but China’s catching up. By March 2009 Hubdubbers still forecast Japan holds the most American debt.

Who will hold most of the U.S debt? (March 2009)

Popularity: 21% [?]

They say things come in threes - and we’ve picked up three websites who have made big changes to their websites in the past couple of days…

Propeller, Netscape’s social media site, has radically overhauled its interface … apparently, to catch the 3 to 5 demographic! They have enlarged their font size radically which reduces the amount of stories visible on the front page; changed the colours to bright primary ones; and added a big cartoon mascot! Some of the most user-unfriendly changes I’ve noticed are an increasing number of click-throughs on an already slow-loading site; ‘help’ links being far more prominent than the links you are actually trying to get ‘help’ for (eg multiple times when I was trying to view a specific group, my first view was the general help topic on ‘how to view’); and baffling help topics - for example, the site had an explanation of what a ‘url’ was on their submit page, just in case anybody finding themselves trying to submit a story on this social media site didn’t know!

Not surprisingly, the top propped articles for both days have been about how bad the changes are … the first one was removed, which has led to even more criticism of the site.

Another site close to Hubdub that has undergone some recent changes is Blubet. This site, which runs quizs and bets for virtual money, recently announced new items for sale at their BluBet Store - including real money tokens to buy their virtual currency. It seems there is some disgruntlement at the site selling out, and also not consulting with users before the changes were made, but I suppose the quiet ones are just continuing to play the site.

To round out the three, the Huffington Post has just launched its ‘Big News Pages‘ feature, where topics such as Obama, Amy Winehouse and Climate Change are given a unique page that aggregates all the blogs and stories specifically on that topic. We think we’ll be keeping an eye on the Technology one. This seems to have been the most popular change of the three - or perhaps the gushing comments are also attributable to giant crushes on Arianna herself.

Obviously, there is a fine line between refining a product for the better, and making radical changes without consulting the user base or at least explaining the rationale behind them. As always, we welcome comments on how you are finding Hubdub, and suggestions on changes you’d like to see!

Popularity: 6% [?]

The Firefox 3 browser launches today and they are aiming to exceed 5 million downloads in one day. Firefox 2 was downloaded 1.6 million times on the first day but this time they are aiming higher. VentureBeat has a great write up of it here.

You can follow progress on the downloads via Twitter. Download your copy at Mozilla.

Update: TechCrunch and Silicon Alley Insider are also covering this story although it looks like Mozilla have unleashed a massive DDOS attack on themselves. Still trying to access the download page…

what is this?

Will Firefox 3 Exceed 5 Million Downloads In One Day?

% chance over time

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’ve just bought and installed new anti-spam software. Here is a screenshot of my spam bin the first time I connected to the email server.

If they can’t figure their own activation email isn’t spam it isn’t looking good is it…

Popularity: 6% [?]

TechCrunch are reporting that a small bug in the PayPal payment system which is causing merchants to lose money has not been fixed for over 10 days. PayPal have acknowledged the bug in a blog post but not fixed it. TechCrunch reports:

It appears that they simply aren’t storing the value of the country when a user changes it, a very simple thing to change, perhaps a single line of code. In fact, it probably took them longer to write the blog post noting the bug than it would have taken to simply fix it. The most likely explanation for the ridiculous amount of time it has taken to fix it: it’s probably stuck in a bug queue, and has to wait its turn.

My personal experience with PayPal is that they excel in poor customer service. Their developer relations is so bad that developers I know who have had to integrate with PayPal come out in a rash if their name is brought up. This bug seems to have caused a lot of that anger to boil over with it being angrily discussed at Get Clicky, CenterNetworks and the PayPal Developer Community.

With this starting to become a major tech story one would expect the pressure will be on PayPal to fix this ASAP. The market is opening 80% that they get around it by the end of the week.

what is this?

How Long Will It Take PayPal To Fix The Drop Down Menu Bug?

% chance over time

    May 26

    May 27-28

    May 29-31

    June 1-6

    June 7 or later

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Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 8% [?]

If you want to keep up to date with what is happening at Hubdub HQ, new markets, stuff and trivia then follow me (Nigel Eccles) on Twitter.

Moving from the bottom of the leaderboard to the top with news that Leo Laporte has put 500 followers between himself and Kevin Rose. It is now trading at about 50/50 but I think the grey (Laporte) is going to pull it off. Offering to give a way a top end gaming PC to one of his followers at random seems to have done the trick!

what is this?

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

% chance over time

    Kevin Rose

    Leo Laporte

    Jason Calacanis

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

    Wil Harris

Get this widget

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 11% [?]

The early leader, Leo Laporte, is still way out in lead by just under 1,000 followers. So confident was he in his lead that he didn’t even mention Twitter in his weekly tech podcast. That complacency might cost him dear (well at least a Hubdub T-shirt!) as Kevin Rose is gunning for the top spot and he is willing to play dirty to get there. Last week he sent out a tweet saying he was going to give his old iPhone to one of his followers chosen by random.

Only a few more followers and Rose will have bested Obama and it will be man-o-man between Laporte and Rose. Also looking comfortable in the saddle is Jason Calacanis who has rocketed up to 4th position. Could his new Tesla sportscar give him the firepower he needs to catch them at the finish line? The cameraman is opening his bag for what looks like will be a thrilling finish!

Prediction markets

what is this?

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

% chance over time

    Kevin Rose

    Leo Laporte

    Jason Calacanis

    Robert Scoble

    John C Dvorak

    Wil Harris

Get this widget

Can you get it right? Make your prediction…

Hubdub - The News Prediction Game

Looking at the prediction markets now shows that punters have recognized Rose’s push up the field with them currently putting him at favorite with a 48% chance to win. Punters aren’t convinced that a late Calacanis surge is going to happen but a mystery punter has gone out on a limb and placed a stack on John C Dvorak. Dvorak looks like he has a mountain to climb but does someone out there know something we don’t?

Me? I’m putting my money down on Rose to pull ahead on the final furlong.

TWiT Twitter Derby: Who’ll be most followed by midnight May 25th?

I predicted Kevin Rose   on last Friday

what is this? The News Prediction Game

Popularity: 15% [?]

The Inquisitr reports that traffic to Google owned sites have surpassed Yahoo for the first time. The data from ComScore shows that Google sites had a total of 141 million visitors compared to 140.6 million for Yahoo, with much of Google’s gain coming from YouTube.

Google have taken the beachhead

As Inquisitr points out when Google takes the lead in the market it generally consolidates it. Inquisitr is going to report the numbers next month. I’m opening the bidding that Google have a 60% chance of being ahead in May but I think our users will bid that up more. With the momentum that YouTube has it is hard to see how they could fall behind next month. Will Google still be ahead of Yahoo in May?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Recent analysis conducted for ReadWriteWeb has shown that the presence of Tech stories on Digg has halved every year for the past 3 years. They found the percentage of most popular stories that are Tech on the front page were:

1st Week in March 2006: 75.72%

1st Week in March 2007: 37.89%

1st Week in March 2008: 19.78%

Get over it, we’re mainstream now

The reason for the drop is pretty clear as Digg tries to make itself more mainstream, potentially in preparation for a sale. In last night’s town hall event Kevin and Jay pretty much seemed to be say “Get over it, we’re mainstream now”. So what will the percentage of tech stories in most popular be in March 2009 compared with March 2008? If the current rate of halving continues it will be around 9%. However, I don’t often see tech on the front page of Yahoo News so if that is the aspiration it could be even less.

Currently the forecast is around 12-18%, although some are forecasting a even steeper drop. What do you think, is there a future for tech stories in Digg?

Popularity: 9% [?]