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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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!”

Popularity: 6% [?]

Predicting Which Start Up Will Win Techcrunch50

Prediction market startup Hubdub is running a market on which of the 50 companies launching at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco will win. Although Hubdub is based in Scotland, they are actually a news prediction market aimed largely at the US. In fact, CEO Nigel Eccles recently wrote a great guest post on how to aim your startup at the US, without leaving Europe.

Popularity: 6% [?]

With all the furor around the battle of the launch conferences (that we kinda got involved with too) let’s remind ourselves what it’s all about: the start-ups. They’ve slaved away for months for this important moment, and every company can only launch once so it’s hugely important to get as much from all that effort as possible. We know, we’ve done it.

Several awards will be given to lucky members of the 52 hopefuls judged by impressive panels of the industry elite (including Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Mark Cuban, Om Malik and Marissa Mayer amongst others). The top award is the TechCrunch50 Best in Show winner, and all 52 companies are eligible.

Think you know what makes a good start-up? Can you predict who the judges will pick? Make your predictions here. The current forecast is shown below.

TechCrunch50: Which company will win Best in Show?

Popularity: 8% [?]

TechCrunch50, the start-up launch conference brought to you by Mike Arrington and TechCrunch, kicks off this Monday. From the 52 hot technology companies that will unveil themselves to the world there, only one can win the $50,000 Best in Show prize. Despite sounding more like a dog prize than a coveted industry accolade, all 52 companies will be clamoring to be the chosen ones and join Aaron Patzer, last year’s winner with Mint, on the Internet start-up A list.

Who will win? Hubdub will be forecasting it live from when the companies are announced on Monday morning (PT), throughout the pitches, right until the winner is announced. You’ll be able to make your predictions and see whether you’ve got an eye for a hot start-up.

If you’re a company launching at TechCrunch50 who thinks you’re in with a chance, or an armchair tech pundit who thinks they can predict who the judges will choose, watch this space. The Hubdub prediction market on the winner will be live from Monday morning and linked to from this post.

Update: Question is live here: http://www.hubdub.com/m15609/TechCrunch50_Which_company_will_win_Best_in_Show

In the meantime, check out how the war of the launch conferences is going with TechCrunch50 taking on DEMOfall08 head to head:

DEMOfall v TechCrunch50: Who Will Win?

Popularity: 7% [?]

TechCrunch UK recently invited guest posts. My post on how to compete in the US without leaving the UK went up today. Check it out (BTW I am still chuckling about the second comment).

Popularity: 7% [?]

By Nigel (Chief News Junkie)

TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter is going to abandon Ruby on Rails. Twitter famously has had massive scalability problems which many commentators have put down to their use of Ruby on Rails. Their former Chief Architect Blaine Cook famously claimed that scaling Rails was “easy”.

TechCrunch is saying they are picking this up from multiple but un-named sources so looks to me about 60% likely that it will happen with 3 months. So, will Twitter announce it is abandoning Ruby on Rails by the end of July?

Popularity: 6% [?]

By Nigel (Technology Editor)

We were really excited to find out this week that we have been selected to go on Web Mission 08. Web Mission is a showcase of the best UK internet start-ups. There were over a hundred entries and we were selected as one of the 20 start-ups to participate. Some of the other companies such as WAYN (which was rumored to have a price tag of $200m) and TIOTI are really big names so we were pretty surprised to be selected. TechCrunch is covering the event.

Anyway, I’ll be over in San Francisco on April 19-25th hopefully taking in the Web 2.0 Expo.

Here is the press release we issued this morning:

News Prediction Website, Hubdub.com, selected for Web Mission 2008

Hubdub.com, the news prediction website, is selected to take part in Web Mission 08, a prestigious showcase of the best of the UK’s internet start ups to be held in Silicon Valley next month.

Edinburgh, UK – March 10th, 2008 – Hubdub.com is one of 20 UK companies hand-picked to attend Web Mission 2008, a new initiative set up to enable successful UK-based entrepreneurs to build relationships with influential people in Silicon Valley and explore possible future opportunities.

Launched in January 2008, Hubdub allows users to make predictions on the outcomes of news events and to challenge their friends in fantasy league style competitions. Unlike other news sites, Hubdub only tracks news that users think is worth creating a question on, such as “Will Obama be the next President of the United States?“, “Will Microsoft successfully acquire Yahoo?” or “Will Trace Adkins win Celebrity Apprentice?“.

“Hubdubbers”, as Hubdub users have started to call themselves, can not only create such news-related questions and stake Hubdub dollars on them, but they can also set up their own personalised leaderboard to compete against their friends. Co-founder, Nigel Eccles explains, “We’re bringing the thrill of fantasy sports to politics, entertainment and general news junkies”.

Being chosen for Web Mission is an exciting opportunity for the young company, founded in Edinburgh in November 2007. It will give them access to a vast font of Silicon Valley knowledge, from investors to other start ups, journalists to high growth success stories.

Eccles is thrilled, “We launched Hubdub at DEMO 08 in Palm Springs just six weeks ago, so this really is a golden opportunity for us to return to the States to show what we’ve achieved since the launch, and to pick the brains of some very impressive people. I’m delighted to be part of it.”

Since launching at DEMO 08, Hubdub has garnered a substantial and loyal following, with around 50,000 unique visitors to date. Some users are spending several hours a day on the site, with many of them confessing to a definite Hubdub “addiction” on the site’s forum.

“We’ve been blown away by the response from our members”, admits Eccles. “We’ve had more visitors than we could have possibly hoped for, and the quality of the debates they’re having is staggering. People are so competitive on the site - I’ve even had some members email me asking me to close their account because it is too addictive!”

Hubdub is mainly focused on the US market for now, although it has strong regional categories covering news and predictions from the UK, Europe and further afield.

About Hubdub
Founded in November 2007 by Nigel Eccles, Tom Griffiths, Rob Jones and Chris Stafford, Hubdub is headquartered in Edinburgh, UK. For more information, visit http://www.hubdub.com.

About Web Mission 2008
Runs from 19-25th April 2008, in San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.webmission08.com

Popularity: 8% [?]