Knaddison.com

This is awesome. The Democratic National Convention Committee has announced a credentialing process for bloggers so that bloggers can cover the event with permission and access that will help them get a scoop not unlike the old-school media. That blog post makes it clear that it will be in a separate "pool" which is a slight bummer, but giving bloggers the same access as old-school media is probably just forward leaning enough to make the old-school people pout. This is a great step for citizen media and freedom of speech.

Are You Cool Enough to Blog the Denver Democratic Convention?

The requirements they have for applying seem interesting.

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WebWorkerDaily (which I read and love for the inspiration it gives to tech nomads) has an article today about how Zoho is offering an offline mode for document editing and how this is great and how it's lame that Google docs doesn't have this feature.

I started to leave a comment for them but 1) their comment system ate my comment and 2) I wanted to make a picture to explain my point which I can't insert into their comments.

Complexity of Medium and Value in Editing On The Web

This feels pretty intuitive to me, but apparently it's not that intuitive since Zoho didn't figure it out (and they're smart).

So, at the top left are situations like basic email, basic text editing. Think about your 10 year old kid writing a paper for school. If she uses Microsoft Word to do that it's a waste of time and money. No one will argue the money aspect, but online document editing will be faster in terms of his time since it is simpler to learn and do what she needs.

In the middle imagine something like a spreadsheet for keeping track of your expenses or for adding up and assigning costs on a trip among a group of friends. If you use an online spreadsheet anyone can add to it and you get the sharing benefits. However, if you're a spreadsheet jockey it's tedious to use the online editors and you are prohibited from more complex capabilities built into desktop applications (monte carlo analysis? macros?).

One of the problems I have with a lot of "green" building ideas is that the products are so specialized you have to get them from across the country. At which point it's not so green anymore...

From elephant magazine I found Sutherlands Lumber which sells all sorts of building products in Boulder and Fort Collins. Not exactly convenient to Denver, but not bad.

So, what information do you want to see in prediction markets?

Reports and Alerts for Prediction Markets

Certainly graphs that show the price history and volume with Open/High/Low/Close is mandatory. It would be nice if these graphs could be both snapshots and updating (i.e. provide links that show a period in time and links that show most recent).

For an individual they (and admins) will want to know Open Orders and Order History on a per user or a per security basis (or per user per security, perhaps).

Another graph I've heard of is the "Shape of the Book" that would show a list of all open orders with their volume on bid and ask sides. This would let a trader know how far they would need to go in price to fulfill an order of a certain size. Interestingly enough InTrade provides a small amount of this information (the first 20 records or so) while some of the others you have to sign up to get to a point where you could see so I don't know...

One of the nice things about being on a trip is that it gets you out of your normal habits and gives you more free time for things you don't prioritize at home like reading.

Nikki and I both just finished off The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It was a surprisingly good book - quite a fast read but still thought provoking. I was amazed at how often I agreed with her parents (if you haven't read the book, the central premise is that the parents are crazy). The major conclusion we both drew was, of course, that people can survive from some pretty horrible situations. Some fun sub-ideas were that American mainstream is so crazy that even some nutty individualists are right a lot of the time. And we both agreed that Jeanette Walls writing was stunning. It really puts you into the mind of a child at the age she was in the biography and makes you think of the world with wide-eyed-wonder.

It's definitely highly recommended by both of us. Thanks to Mom Kneser for the gift! We passed it on to our friend Eliana which would probably make Jeanette's mom happy by not just throwing it out ;)

I've been in Argentina for almost two months and finally found some decent beers. Quilmes and Brahma and friends are, frankly, not going to cut it for me.

Buller Brewing Company

The first place that was recommended to me was Buller Brewing Company (ratebeer review) which turned out to be pretty good. They have a selection of about 8 beers which were all decent, though none were really amazing. The dry stout was probably the best variety that they had. I went to the location near Recoleta cemetery which of course is a nice tourist area on its own.

Cossab Cerveza Artesanal

In a non touristy location is Cossab - at Carlos Calvo 4199 - which is just a standard corner bar which happens to serve hundreds of local and international beers. The international selection is dominated by Dutch/Belgian varieties and a few standards (Guinnes - duh). In addition to great beers, Cossab also has quite good food including a Wednesday Night "Pizza Libre" night where "Libre" means all you can eat instead of just "free". For 10 Pesos, it's a good deal.

Bangalore Indian Restaurant - Stone IPA (cask style)

The first order of business in any options exchange is getting options onto the market.

Issuing new Contracts

Tradesports achieves this (as far as I can tell) by allowing every member of the exchange to either buy or sell any option. Everything is done on margin until the option expires. If you "buy" a position, (i.e. there is an offer order at or below your bid) the price at which your order was bid multiplied by the number of contracts you purchased is placed into a holding status in your account. If you "sell" a position then the sale price minus the expiration value is also put into holding status in your account. When the contracts expire - "buy" accounts are given a dollar if the event occurred - "sell" holders are given a dollar if the event didn't. Frankly, that makes my head hurt