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So what's worth more, copyright law or a unique eyeball from a search

Ah yes, Google's lawyers have to be pondering this after paying many millions for youtube.com, the anti-dcma, but "I really don't know any better or give a shit cause I have a High-speed connection" for the next generation. This is 'The first of the sites' for those, the next generation, life with a computer, having no clue what building a webpage with only notepad. or turning in an assignment without running it through a spellchecker, duh. ;-) and y'know something. I'm pretty much jealous.... here I've been trying to think of: 'the next big thing' and it's staring us right in the face. Simply put, how to capitalize on this information age... the passing of information! not how to keep it to yourself, putting up barriers to the free flow and the resulting discussion. Now if only I could figure out how to enable comments about f^%$ing time, on this particular page.

Lessee almost 6 months so I suppose better write something.... On the Hockey front my guesses rather sucked, It was a Tampa Bay, Calgary Final. Tampa Won Lord Stanley's Mug in a thrilling 7 game series. After that, Lockout. There will no pro hockey for a while I have a feeling as neither side is ready to give in. The players won't let the owners have a salary cap... and on the other side players don't believe the owners are giving them true numbers... so no season. I'll venture nothing will happen this year and a few US teams will be no more. An interesting sidenote, in the US Hockey is about as popular a television event as (Yawn) 8 ball. Hehe, good luck getting a decent tv contract.

Blogshares June rolled around and yup I did make it to $100 Billion net worth. I borrowed 1/2 trillion from Jessica and played around in the ideas market hardcore for a couple months and made it up to around 1.3 Trillion. Then my premium membership expired. Ouch.... I had forgotten just how limiting 20 transactions really is. Basically 20 transactions lasts you around 1 hour of playing time per 24 hour period. So at the moment... I don't play a whole lot. Oh and I returned the 1/2 trillion, Thanks again Jessica :)

September rolls around and Alan Dean finally got his wish, the pricing algorithm on the ideas market is changed, no more cap on idea prices, and idea amounts. My ideas suddenly skyrocket, as do everyone elses... as of this writing I'm up to around $4.5 Trillion blogdollars. I like the change! So how has this changed the idea market... You need a lot of capital/cash to play the ideas market. This isn't a problem for most players who have played for any length of time. Cash is one of the plentiful commodities on Blogshares :) For the first month every idea that was produced was bought... period. Gradually the free cash was sucked out of the market and put into ideas. This took all of about a month. Around 2 weeks ago now, a few players started dumping their lower priced ideas that produce lots of ideas on every reindex. Ideas such as Female, Male, English, Farsi, (any that Persian Blog is a member of) or any of the top 20 stock industries are getting dumped back onto the market. This has left around 50-90 idea industries with massive #'s of ideas on the market. There is basically very little hope of these ideas every climbing too much in price. The only way is buy them all, and all that are produced for more than a day or two... to make maybe 2-5% on your investment. It can be done... but tis rather difficult to buy all the ideas that any of these particular industries produce... I mean you have to sleep sometime :) and don't forget that 20 transaction limit... argh!

What else have I been up to the last few months... Diablo 2 again is sucking up massive amounts of online time. The Ladder season reset this past July after 1 year. It would seem that a ladder season is going to be around 1 year... fair enough, once the season runs out. You don't lose your characters, they simply become non ladder. It was rather humorous the first few days of the new season, join a baal run game and the entire game was filled with sorcerers... yes the sorcerer is still the best first character to make, doesn't need great armour or weapons to rock!

Sweet got me a brand new @gmail.com addy. Blogshares is once again taking up most of my online surfing... up to $100 Billion ish again. Hoping to hit the Trillion Blogdollar amount by the time June rolls around.... we shall see. I seem to be sucking badly in my 2nd round picks, Montreal is looking dead in the water, so is Colorado, ouch. Both Colorado and Montreal's goaltending is looking rather ordinary this round. Philly's doing well and Detroit vs Calgary is looking to be a long series.

Well I better get my predictions up for round 2, did ok for round 1 5 out of 8... Sigh Canucks are out. I have a feeling that some wholesale changes are probably in line for this team. Even with Bertuzzi out for the playoffs the team should have been able to beat Calgary... Defense is still a problem, goaltending is suspect, so it really doesn't matter how many goals you manage to score, if you can't keep a fewer number of them out of your own net your not going to win a lot of games... as was shown in this series. Anyhow predictions for round 2:

Eastern Conference

#1 Tampa Bay ---- #7 Montreal - I'll say Montreal in a squeaker... 7 games. Both goalies can be very good if they are on and if the Habs can shut down the top scorer in the league the way they did to Thorton in the last round... they have a very good chance of this upset happening.

#3 Philadelphia ---- #4 Toronto - I'm not much of a Toronto fan so I"m hoping that Philly kicks some butt. 5 Games

Western Conference

#1 Detroit ---- #6 Calgary - Though I would love nothing more than to pick a good upset here ... I dunno, Detroit has a lot of firepower and I'm still not too sure of Calgary's defense. 5 Games

#2 San Jose ---- #4 Colorado - Colorado all the way... I'm sticking to this prediction. Goaltending the only possible question mark for Colorado appears to be solid. 4 Games.

Tis the season.... For the NHL playoffs to begin :) A time for the 16 qualifying teams to try to make up for a lackluster regular season peformance, or to see if they can keep up a decent peformance.

My perinnial (losing) favorites the Vancouver Canucks have made it in to this post season ranked #3 in the Western Conference. Their first round opponents, Calgary Flames riding a bit of a hot streak going in.... we shall see I suppose how it turns out. Here's how the matchups start and my predictions for the first round :)

Stay tuned....

Well seeing as I'm up to my usual tricks of not posting anything for time immemorial. I think I'll post something... as for what it should be well lesse, Blogshares is actually usable again :) Nice Work Rob. Where else have I been the last couple months...

Playing a bit of Diablo 2 LOD online the 1.10 patch has rendered most all of my 1.09 chars useless so having fun figuring out the new synergy system for spells, Druids, Necromancers, Amazons still seem to rock pretty good. Sorcerers are rather useless in hell difficulty. They just don't do enough damage unless you specialize in only 1 skill tree...

Then there's Celebdaq a british based game where you guess which celebs will have the most press coverage week to week. Tis a little hard to play from here in Canada... but C'est la vie.

Ok instead of lamenting on how poorly I predicted last weekend I'll post some last minute predictions before fridays numbers come out. Sigh too late for HSX and Ez's .... Short and Sweet Ummm what was opening oh yeah, Win a Date with Ted Hamilton $15M looks like a decent date flick and ads are not brutal... though what does that mean ;^) The Butterfly Effect starring everyones fav bad boy/tabloid fodder Ashton Kushner is also opening this weekend, I'm looking for a $14M opening. There you have it short and sweet. :) Will post rest of the predictions/actuals once I have some ZZZ's

Welcome to my world of lousy movie predictions, though I did ok on last weeks guesses. Missed out on just how poorly Chasing Liberty would open, $9M guess vs $6M actual. Other than that pretty much nailed Big Fish and My Baby's Daddy.

This weekend sees 3 new films hitting the cinema. Along Came Polly opening on 2984 screens and starring Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston along with Debra Messing looks to have the star power of all the openers. My caveat is the Televison ads. They don't look all that interesting or funny for a romantic comedy. I'll venture a $15M opening for the weekend. My surprise pick is Torque opening on 2563 screens, I'll venture this will do just as well as Along Came Polly for a neck and neck race for #1 for the weekend. My reasoning for this is because of the TV ads, they do hit the target demographic. The also ran for the weekend has got to be Disney's Teacher's Pet opening on 2027 screens this animated kids flick looks to be the dog of bunch. Woof! $6M tops :)

Movie Predictions for Jan 16-18

First off, Thank you for stopping by! The winter season starts, the Holiday bonanza is over... another poor time of the year for movie box office receipts is now upon us. I suppose we shall see... Prediction time.... Hopefully this weekend I'll do a little better than my last attempt. :) The big question for me this weekend is: Will Big Fish unseat Lord of the Rings 3 for the box office crown this weekend? Expanding from 125 screens to 2406, Big Fish the Tim Burton flick has a very good chance of dethroning the King. The expansion comes after a impressive limited run, in which last weekend it actually raised it's Per Screen Average a healthy 25%. Strong Word of Mouth indicates that the public is looking for this film. I'm not expecting the usual 80-90% drop in PSA for this expansion a more moderate 70-75% should see this movie bring in approximately $13M. There is the outside chance though it could do even better, upwards of $16M though I think that's a little optimistic.

Chasing Liberty, the Mandy Moore chick/date flick also opens this weekend to 2400 screens. I'm not terribly fond of her nor any of her movies so based on her last one "How to Deal" which bombed to a dismal $5.8M opening on a similar number of screens, I'll give this one a slightly better opening $9M. The only competition this movie has is "Mona Lisa Smile" which is entering it's 4th weekend so that shouldn't pose too much of a threat.

My Baby's Daddy is the final flick opening on 1447 screens this weekend. The marketing campaign looks to be targeted for a family fun flick. I dunno this may be a case of trying to be too many things for too many people and not succeeding in any of them. It looks to me like a urbanized "3 Men and a Baby" I'll venture a $7M opening followed by quickly disappearing to oblivion.

Predictions for Jan 9-11

A Happy New Year to all! Oops I'm a few days late... oh well, shit happens

Seeing as there was only one movie opening wide last weekend (Calendar Girls) I never bothered to post any predictions soo I'll lament the fact that "I suck". The only good news about my December 26-28 predictions was that I picked approximately the order of finish for the weekend. So lessee Lord of the Rings 3 est $59M, actual $50M. Cheaper by the Dozen... Wow was I ever out to lunch on this one $15M predicted, $28M opening. Something's Gotta Give, strong Word of Mouth so it actually increased over the holiday weekend to a impressive $14M. Cold Mountain predicted 10M, actual $14M. My darkhorse pick of Paycheck was the only thing I was half assed close to being right on predicted $12M, vs an actual of $13M. Even Peter Pan managed $11M. I'm sure you get the idea... strong weekend for everything.

So without further ado I'll post last weekends actuals, and look for this weekends predictions as soon as Theatre counts are available (Thursday / Friday am)

Weekend of Jan 2-4 actuals

The increase in Per Seat Average for Big Fish makes this look very promising for the upcoming weekend's wide expansion. Positve WOM is having an effect.

Merry Christmas to Everyone!

Looks like my predictions were just about perfect for last week. $12M for Mona LIsa and $74 for the behemoth that is Lord of the Rings 3. Now this weekend it gets tough to pick, other than none of these openers will touch Lord of the Rings 3. 4 movies are opening this weekend vying for your coveted dollars. This in my opinion is about 1 too many... someone's gonna bomb. So we start with "Cheaper by the Dozen" the remake of the 1950 flick starring Steve Martin is opening on a massive 3297 screens. I'll venture a opening of $15M for this seeing as it has the most screens of any new release and a decent advertising campaign. "Paycheck" is my darkhorse pick for the weekend. Starring Ben Affleck and opening on 2762 screens the sci-fi actioner is directed by John Woo, soooo look for slo-mo, big explosions etc, hopefully there's enough interest for a $12M take for the weekend. "Cold Mountain" the Nicole Kidman Oscar hopeful opens this weekend on 2163 screens. This civil war epic/love story should interest someone... though not me :) $10M is my guesstimate. Finally my bomb for the weekend. "Peter Pan" opening on 2840 screens (which is good) vs another remake (bad). I dunno no buzz or hype so I'm not too hopeful for it. $6M is my depressing guess.

Predictions for weekend of Dec 26-28

Thanks for stopping by and have a safe and happy holidays :)

Weeeelll after last weekends brutal projections, we can hope to be a little more accurate this weekend. So off to the races we go... Lord of the Rings 3: Return of the King is probably "The" most anticipated movie of the year. Wednesday's stellar $34.1M opening day take was largest ever, so expect this movie to completely dominate the Box office for the weekend. I'll predict a Fri-Sun of $74M. The also ran for this weekend is Mona Lisa Smile a chick flick with osar hopes, starring Julia Roberts, hmm... $12M is my guess.

Weekend Predictions Dec 19-21

On a another topic Blogshares is back up!! cool!! Thanks to Jay for taking over the site!

should be sleeping now so plz forgive for all the typo's that no doubt will occur that I'll totally miss. :)

Last weekends guesses.... pretty coles if I do say so myself "The Last Samuai" predicted 26.1 actual $24M I'll live,will the prodcution compainies... Honey 10.7M predicted vs 12ish actual, things are looking up for this weeks "Urban Mix"

Yes I'm wayyyy to laxy to do all the calculations this week other than to say... it should be a stronger weekend than last. So without further ado here we go "Somethings Gotta Give" the new Jack Nicholsen, Diane Keaton should... I hope win this weekend's box office draw with a respectable $22M, Second I'm hoping is "Stuck On You" the Farrley Bros latest (sp) oops Starring Matt Damon and someone else playing Siamese Twins... yeash spare me. 3rd vs this shit should be last weekends anemic champ "The Last Samurai" with about a $8M slice and dice. Rounding out the top 5 should be this wieels last entry into the big time "Love Don'T Cost a Thing" a urbanized (read afro american) ie black for those a little thick. Remake of the 80's move "Money Can't Buy Me Love" It should squeak into the top 5 with a take of $10..5M ish.

For those stoping in a lil earlier for predictions ooops... :) my bad, I'll try not to do that again.

Edit: Ooops $19M for "Stuck on You" and fixed a couple typos.

BlogShares - Closed Down

Dear BlogShares players,

I am sorry to announce that BlogShares will not be reopening after the current technical difficulties are resolved. Currently, the database server is dead and looks to be for the next few days.

The latest system crash has highlighted to me that deliverying a fun, useful service for the BlogShares community requires an active operator and developer. As most of you are no doubt aware I've been neither for the past couple of months. That has led to a decline of quality service, new features and ultimately income for the site and it looked likely that there wouldn't be enough to pay for next month's hosting.

It's been an interesting and very rewarding nine months bringing a bit of entertainment to bloggers (and blog lovers). I'd like to thank especially all those people who donated money or their valuable time, those who became premium subscribers, those who worked on cool toys which made use of the fledgling API and all those who could be found on the forums and IRC channel. You turned a silly fun idea of a mad monkey coder in London into something worthy of the attention by thousands of bloggers and the press.

A special mention goes to Greg, Jay, Erika, Joe, Aine, James, Ashes, Morgaine, Patrick and Rob.

My goal with the project was always to embrace the power law and to provide a new way of highlighting blogs with a little bit of fun. I've been pleasantly surprised of how well it did and stupefied it did it for so long. Now, however, it is time to move on to other things. I'm sure you'll be hearing from me in the not so distant future. You can also find me at my perpetual home: monkeyx.com.

All the best,

Seyed Razavi.

UPDATE: If you're interested in acquiring BlogShares please see here.

The above shamelessly stolen from blogshares.com

Though I hadn't been playing or admining as much as I should have it was fun. The Power law link above should really be read if you played this game at all. This explains the thought behind the game. Tis and interesting read as well as few more there. I have a few more thoughts on this but I'll keep those to myself atm. All in all it was a blast and I do hope something rises from the ashes ;) You may want to read the Aug 8 posting on "My Brief History of Blogshares"

G'day to anyone who pops in for a look see :) So the US Thanksgiving weekend has came and went with the box takes not too bad IMO. I suppose I do have to flavour my Timeline pick with something but I haven't decided what just yet. The Movie did manage $12M over the 5 day period. My other sucky pick Haunted Mansion disappointed me with a $35M 5 day opening. On the bright side Bad Santa outperformed to a respectable $16.8M vs my $15M pick and I nailed the Missing's $17M opening.

On to this week 2 new movies opening The Last Samurai, the latest effort from Tom Cruise, and Honey, starring the Dark Angel herself Jessica Alba with a plethora of cameos from current hip-hop stars. This weekend is supposedly one of the worst in the entire year for openings hmmm. So here I go predicting against the flow and Tom's star power in figuring The Last Samurai will open to a mere $26M. The oscar / epic hopeful just doesn't look that interesting to me. Seeing as Master & Commander didn't fare all that well, as my prime reason for thinking this will tank as well. I'm also going to suggest that Honey will open stronger than what is being forecast coming in with a respectable $10M. This movie looks like another flashdance, updated to current musical tastes... though not really my musical tastes. For the holdovers look for substancial drops for all other than possibly Bad Santa, strong Word of Mouth :)

Movie Predictions for the Weekend of Dec 5-7

Seeing as I can't seem to find a whole lot of upcoming predictions for this long holiday weekend (well for the US anyhow), I figured I'd take a stab at em :)

First off last weekend. I managed to be half assed close with my 34.6M guess for Cat in the Hat actually was only 38M. I'm expecting a fair dropoff this week due to poor word of mouth. Again Elf exceeded my expectations, strong WOM. Gothika I was under on as well 16.6 predicted vs 19M actual. Guess that proves thrillers etc are still in vogue.

For this week I'm predicting Haunted Mansion to Rule the Box office opening on 3122 screens should scare up enough fans to net a $42M take for Wed-Sun. I'm figuring Cat will drop to #2 maybe $25M, Ron Howard's The Missing opens on 2756 screens, I'm a little hesitant on this one seeing as it's a western eww... and no really big name stars. My guess is for a shooting start of $17M, though it could open a lot lower if it isn't that good. Elf should come in 4th with around $16M. 5th place is my darkhorse guesstimate of $15M for Bad Santa the black comedy starring Billy Bob Thorton opening on 2005 screens. Reviews have been strong for this comedy and it's my kind of movie so... :P Lastly we have Timeline, hmm... no buzz, no hype, no ads = no box office, in my humble opinion. $7M tops, I may have to eat my words but, such is life, at least they are mine to flavour with.... Till next time :)

Movie Predictions for the weekend of Nov 28-30. (NOTE: This is the weekend estimate not including Wed, Thurs)

Well the new Movie predictions for last weekend turned out to be fairly close, though I missed badly on just how strong Elf turned out to be *shrugs*. Master & Commander with a $8096 Per Screen Avg vs my $8000 predicted. Probably not anywhere near the #'s that the studios were hoping for as this Movie cost more than $150M to make... ouch can you say Waterworld. Looney Tunes $3209 actual vs $4000 predicted, yeash even worse than my low prediction. I Guess the Toons just aren't popular anymore. Oh well on to this weeks... Cat in the Hat, Huge, Huge marketing campaign um Mike Myers as the Cat... He doesn't appeal to me in much of anything Wayne's world was about the only thing I've ever liked him in. All the Austin Powers movies I passed on... So I'm not your typical moviegoer I guess. I'm guessing a moderate $34M opening with the possiblity of it being a $45M opening, hows that for some hedging. I can't seem to get a read on this movie at all. Gothika, Thriller starring Halle Berry yummy my guess $15-17M. Horror/thrillers have done extremely well this year so no reason for it to stop now :)

Movie Predictions for the weekend of Nov 21-23.

Last weekends predictions were so-so, over on Matrix Revolutions by some $18M bad, bad Word of Mouth. Seems I'm not the only one disappointed by the "final" installment. Elf surprised me a bit with a strong $31M opening. The rest of the field posted stronger #'s than predicted... I wonder if that was due to changing movie viewing decision at the last minute from Matrix Revolutions to something else.

For this weeks movies the question is how big will Master & Commander actually be? I've seen predictions a fair bit higher than mine. How much will Matrix Revolutions drop off this weekend, my hunch is substancially. Is there any demand out there for the Looney Tunes franchise? Will the Adults be dragging their kids out to this or something more like Elf? The weeks final new Movie Tupac Resurrection looks... well... It's not my cup of tea, supposedly a new song from it which should probably help it out. Its going to need all the help it can get.

Movie Predictions for the weekend of Nov 14-16.

Bought the Widescreen DVD today of Matrix Reloaded and watched it twice today... so far ;)

Ok I better preface this I'm a fan of the first one and SPOILERS!

I so wanted to absolutely love this movie and actually I will give it a B+ not the A+ of the original but much better than Empire strikes back C- I felt so ripped off when I saw that. OK I'm dating myself but so what... the worst part of movie is without a doubt the rave-scene party / sex scene. I kinda dozed off during my second back to back viewing during that bit. That should have been a deleted scene IMO. Now for the parts I really liked. 1. the wraith Twins - "now were getting aggrivated" I chuckled there, the CG and Costumes, hair for them were absolutely great. 2. the execution of "backdoors", programs in "exile" "deletion" I enjoyed the evolution analogy this time from a machine perspective rather than the human perspective of the first movie. 3. Cause & Effect - Choice & Power MMMM I just ate that up. So a fair bit of foreshadowing that Merrill Lingi (sp) is one of the prior "the Ones" who possibly chose love as well? How this will play out in the final episode will be a treat I'm sure. 4. The kiss - the quick cut scene to Carrie gulping, trite but it works. (more foreshadowing of "prior the ones") 5. Well what can you say if a fair bit was good more is supposed to be better. The kung-fu fight action sequences were definately more... 6. I guess a fair bit of the budget must have been used on the freeway sequence that was over the top! So all in all to summarize I'll be one of the first to see the final installment.:) I'm most definately driving the 100 miles to go see this in the theatre!

ashes Beginning Strategy Guide to the Hollywood Stock Exchange

Ashes being a relative newcomer to the HSX world. This is how I've been playing the game. Feel free to comment, razz or whatever :)

Ok you've registered and are now in control of $2M hollywood dollars. Now before you go and spend it all on the next big blockbuster coming out 2-3 years from now there are a few things you should know.

1. ROI - Return on Investment: Which would you say is the better investment? (a) $5/share in 2 days or (b) $60/share in 15 days? Answer: (a) The reasoning behind this is quite simple in example (a) your money is available quicker to invest in something else. Let's show how example (a) is much better than (b) Buying 100 shares of each priced at $10.00 sample (b) will be worth $70/share in 15 days or $7000.(a) 100 shares which in 2 days are worth $15.00 /share then are sold, net $1500. Now if you do the same thing again you can now buy 150 shares @ $10.00 then in 2 days sell for $15.00 /share net $2250 ... 6 days net $3375, 8 days net $5062.50, 10 days $7590.00 ... As you can see (although this doesn't take the dreaded 1% commission into account) the power of having your money to work for you in the short term is much better than tying it up in long term investments. So this is why (Rule 1) you should never play any stock that is more than 2 weeks away from its opening weekend.

2. Read the Glossary, read the fansites, read the strategy guides within those sites that have already been written. Honest this is what I did before spending anything... I thought I had it all figured out bet all my money on a opener and guessed wrong :/ ouch... lost $250,000 in my opening weekend. There is a nice feature to reset your account back to $2M, but only once per season (hehe I did just that). That experience led me to my other rule... never bet more than 1/2 your net worth on the openers.

3. Starbonds - This is where the other half of the portfolio is invested. Starbonds adjust on Tuesday for movies that were cashed out on Monday. Read up on TAG (Trailing Average Gross) in the glossary, proceed to hsj and hsbr for their starbond charts. Keep in mind the ROI principle... don't tie up your money for long periods of time... 1-3 weeks Maximum.

4. Options - I usually buy options Thursday just after they are unfrozen in price. If the option is rising in price I buy it, if the option is falling in price I short it. At reset (12:30am EST) or sometime within an hr or two before I reverse postions... If I'm holding it long (a buy), I’ll sell it and then short the option. If I'm holding it short I cover then buy the option. Repeat daily, then sell them on the Friday before they halt for some extra money to play the openers. This strategy seems to work quite well UNLESS the option's strike price is out of line. for example a $30 strike price and the movie stock is not priced anywhere near $80-100 /share, this is when you have to watch out... one of the options will skyrocket to well over $5.00 /share and the other one will plumment to $0.50-$1.00 though you can make a nice profit if you see it coming ;-)

5. Openers - Movie stocks of movies opening in wide release (more than 650 theatres) halt the day they open at 9pm EST. Usually Fridays, though some movies open on different days. The stock is then halted till Sunday afternoon at which time it is "adjusted" to a new price based on the weekend box office. For a typical Friday opening movie the formula is 2.9 * (Fri-Sun Gross) you may wonder how a movie can adjust before its Sunday results are in... well the studio's make a estimate and release that. ERC, Box Office Mojo, Yahoo movies, The Numbers, Lee's Movie info, Box Office Prophets are all resources for this info and should be bookmarked.

6. Penny stocks - HSBR has a great page for finding these penny stocks. What I search for is any stocks priced less than $0.14, ie the lowest possible price on the exchange... these stocks have nowhere to go but up in value :) take a flyer if it goes up 1/8 you make $6500.00 not too shabby at all.

My My, I'm back to my old habits over 1 month since I've posted anything. Lessee anything interesting... what's going on in the life of ashes, other than my usual haunts of DJ, fixing broken computers, and playing around on the net with my latest addiction, Hollywood Stock Exchange, not a damn thing :) Winter's coming, golf is over and the leaves are falling. Time for a haircut too hehe.

Amazing I'm still #53 on the richest list in Blogshares with my sum of $13.7 Billion. I would have figured more people would have passed me by now... but nope.

It's a shame blogger doesn't have a comment system, as I'm too lazy to go find another one. There is one here over there --> though it's pretty lame. Trillionaires have arrived on the blogshares scene. Seems another new change to the system... no cap on Idea pricing for the top blogs. $5M + per idea is a little insane, and has created a few trillionaires and soon to be Quadrillionaires, yeash. I decided to check see just what you could make on a raid blog... hehe 500 ideas * 5,700,000 = $2.8 Billion. I easily doubled my $7B to 14 in 3 raids. Oh and I decided to go admin, and retire other than testing from the game.

A brief history of Blogshares...

Seeing as the game is all of 4 months old now I suppose someone should write a blurb on what has basically happened in these intervening months.

March sometime Seyed concieves a new baby, Blogshares is born and is unleashed to the public in beta form on April 1st. A novel approach to weblog linking and the inherent value of a weblog. A weblog is valued upon its incoming links.

Now the first couple weeks I missed out on. I managed to find my way there April 18. I had already missed out on the IPO of Moveable Type, Mena Trott (owner) being the richest player / non player on the system. There were no premium players. All of us were playing the game with a 20 transactions per day limit. Most of the top 10 blogs where already completely owned and discussions carried on about what to do to promote wider ownership, or more stock movement. The exchange order system is implemented to help make it easier to buy/sell blogs and it is hoped to create a little more fluidity in what is starting to become a stagnant market.

There were a few interesting bugs in the game: sell > buy 0 mins. The lucky few players holding MT or Blogger made many Millions, when Millions where very hard to come by. The reason for this was, Max pe in buying from the public was 3.5-3.7, and the reindexing of blogs was completely random. A reindex of MT was a event as the outgoing link stocks were snapped up... oh there was no cap on outgoing link values ;) so a $50,000 incoming link was pretty nice to see.

Sometime before the site went live Index funds were introduced, these promised a place for the richer players to place some of their monies rather than tying up all the top shares... of course this didn't quite happen as players simply bought the index funds as they could afford them and still held on tightly to their shares of the top blogs.

The couple days leading up to site going live, the forums were abuzz with the doom and gloom predictions about everyone selling out and crashing the market. Seyed replied with a Buy order on every blog at the current market price... still doomsayers moaned, however it was a fair bit more muted. Everyone who played in Beta was to be allowed to keep their cash on hand but all shares owned would be lost, When the site goes live. I left beta with $248,000 in 48th place, not bad I figured for 12 days.

The site leaves the Beta Testing period and goes Live May 1st. Premium memberships are available for the bargin basement price of $15, this will give you unlimited transactions and a few other goodies, unlimited searches etc. Many a player camped out on their computers waiting for the site to go live... the Beta banner to disappear...

<Morgaine> I stayed up throughout the night, working with Matthew on the design of the BSJ. As the site could go live somewhere in the morning (local time) and it was already around 6 am, I decided to stay awake. I figured, the site might go live around 11 am or so. 11 am came but the Beta banner was still there. I figured that if I went to sleep the site might get live the next minute, so I decided to stay awake... trying to keep my eyes open. It finally went live around 5:30 pm and when it did.... oh boy, you would want to buy stock, you hit the buy button.... only to get the message there wern't that many shares available *grin*</Morgaine>

There was a posting on the forums saying when site goes live only 5 transactions per player in the first 12 hrs, there was another bit which most myself included overlooked (no 25% cap on those purchases). Anyhow the mad rush happens and most of the top 50 is owned within 20 minutes of the site going live. I still had about $200,000 and nowhere to put it, my 5 transactions used up... so Buy index funds. Within about 2 hrs of doing that Index funds had more than doubled (BS100). Fortunes were made.

I was still losing ground on the top players as they all had premium accounts. May 2 I made the decision to buy premium, and promptly tripled my worth in 12 hrs. It was about this time Seyed finally fixed the Sell > Buy, 0 mins bug. I wonder if had something to do with my doing that on Monkeyx.com hehe.

On the forums there is a interesting posting from Protect and Gamble... "Since where into giveaways... $114M giveaway." It turns out he sells the account for $100 real money to angrycoder, there was also a rather largish $15M acct sold on EBay! for $25.

There is a interesting forum posting mentioning a IRC Channel. I go have a look see, first few days are rather quiet Ronin, mouse, RoUS, Aine, Jonathan, and myself are about it. Jonathan & I go on a recruiting campaign via email, IM, blog comments and soon we have most of the top 10 ish richest players in the channel... cool. Even Seyed pops in once in a while to get our views on game ideas or just to shoot the breeze.

One weekend May 10, Seyed tweaks the Market order system, suddenly any sell or buy via a market order at any given price moves a stock to that price. blogshares.com stock is the subject of massive stock price swings. One minute it's trading at $.50 /share, someone buys some shares from a market order at $1 /share, now the price is $1.00 /share, market orders are placed for some pretty outrageous prices... the stock seems to follow along... Millions upon Millions is made by players seeing this... Monday comes, The first round of suspensions are handed out... penalties, huge fines are paid. The Market order system is changed back.

Now an interesting thing happens when a group of people start communicating ideas back and forth... stock manipulations previously unthinkable when your working by yourself become incredibly easy with 2-4 players. Suspensions also tend to happen :( The note on the news page regarding group play and ethics plays out on IRC in Johnathan, myself, Louis and Aine forming "The Cartel". Seyed listens to Michelle's Idea in IRC and sets in motion the forming of the BSEC, a board to govern ethics in playing the game. Another very good idea is acted upon and the formation of a test group to test new changes to the system is introduced.

Edmundas in the forums posts "There is no spoon", a look at how index funds are being manipulated and fortunes are being made, also a hint that bots may take over the market. Seyed takes action in removing index funds from the game but allowing all players to sell their funds at their discretion.

May 21 a major change is introduced to the game which Seyed hopes will suck up some of excess capital, a 100x share issuance on MT. The Max P/E limit is changed from 3.5 ish in buying/selling to the public to 250. This works quite well until most everything is bought... 55% shares in public hands May 21, %5 May 26. The bots have arrived as well, and billionaires are now in the game.

Now for those players that decided to wait a few days to sell their index funds the P/E change meant those funds were now worth about 80 times as much as they were a scant few days earlier. Now you want to hear an uproar... how about adjusting the indicies back to pre P/E 250 levels... This is just what happened to the dismay of more than a few players.

Louis buys a domain and sets up www.bscartel.com, Aine & Louis start writing of a 30's - 40's gangland style tongue in cheek look at blogshares. It soon has it's own following and players writing themselves into the story.

June rolls around and the BSEC is voted in Morgaine, Christine, Daphne, Jonathan, RoUS, and Frenetic Papa are the inagural board members. They have a few things on their palatte right of the bat besides figuring out how to communicate and stay in touch with each other. There is the appeal of Index funds, and figuring out just what is and isn't allowed in the game.

The end of june approaches... Ideas and Artefacts are placed on the test site (June 25th) the forums are a buzz again with ppl wanting to test them out, the test group grows significantly in numbers. The BSEC rules on Botting and Index funds, and player accounts.

July 1 possibly the biggest change to blogshares, designed again to suck up that ever increasing wealth. Ideas and Artefacts go live. A fundamental shift in the market occurs with artefacts as any blog can now be taken over with the shares being purchased at 3 times the market price. Now it is no longer possible to sit on any given blog (unless it's yours). This shift upsets alot of players as the top blogs can no longer be held for certain. The other half of the equation, Ideas generate massive fortunes for those that got in early and waited for the inevitable increase in price per idea.

July also sees the start of a new contest to run for 3 months with cash prizes being offered for top play during the month.

Oh my Chris has gone on Hiatus, Bearman is also MIA :( Blogshares is still going, though server slowdowns plague the system. I've reached $100 Billion in Blogdollars Net worth. (with a little help $37 B, from my friends). Jonathan asked Seyed if there was anything He & I could do to help out with the day to day running of Blogshares and lo and behold were both admins :) ask and ye shall recieve.

Found yet another Stock market type game to play... The Hollywood Stock Exchange. Tis pretty cool Apparently it's been around since 1998-9 though I've just found it... July 10. You start with $2 Million and invest in movies, and the actors/actresses/directors in them. I took a beating the first weekend. Lost !/4 of my wealth but there is a nice feature which lets you reset your account once per season. So I decided to take advantage of that. I'm up to almost $4M now. Oh and if you want to use me as a referer the username is: "Ashes". I could always use some extra holly dollars ;)

Yay, no more messing with <table>, <tr>, <td> tags etc. Cascading Style Sheets (css) rock my world :) Gracias to Owen Briggs, glish.com, brainjar.com, tantek.com, alistapart.com and of course www.w3.org for making it all make sense.

Comments? Please :)