Entries from March 2008 ↓

eLab eXchange members were pretty accurate in their prediction of how much World of Warcraft would grow from 2006 to 2007 in terms of subscribers.

Members predicted that the wildly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game would grow 27% in 2007, compared to 2006. According to Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft reached 10 million members worldwide at the end of 2007.

At the end of 2006, WoW had 8 million members. This amounts to a 25% increase: pretty close to the eLab eXchange prediction of 27%.

Congratulations to eLab eXchange members for once again proving they have a darn good crystal ball!

Speeding from "linked to prostitution ring" to "resignation" in a mere 48 hours is a stunning (de)feat no matter how it's chronicled.  Has ever the mighty fallen so fast? So I can't help wondering about the role the Internet played in this sorry spectacle.  

On Monday afternoon, I scratched my head when my handheld displayed a New York Times alert that Spitzer was linked to a prostitution ring.  My immediate reaction was that he had somehow been caught up in some kind of money laundering or corruption scandal.  Or maybe he was a kingpin behind the ring's operations. Still, this was hard to fathom given the Eliot Ness white knight persona he had so carefully crafted, especially in his days as New York AG.  And when I clicked on the link, I thought surely I was reading it wrong when the story said he'd been captured in a Federal wiretap and identified as "Client 9."  Imagine that!  The prostitution ring linkage wasn't nearly as interesting as Spitzer turning out to be some kind of corrupt white-collar criminal.  If only.  Instead, The Honorable Elliot "Ness" Spitzer was just a john!

Within hours,

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Riddle me this:  how is it that three Southern California tract home model matches built within a year of each other and located within yards of each other (on three separate but very close cul-de-sacs) in the same neighbordhood could have such ridiculously different zestimates?  (Model matched homes are tract houses with identical floor plans.)

Since Zillow has no way of knowing what these houses look like inside, nor which house has the nicer view, or the prettier street, or the best "upgrades," it just makes no sense whatsoever that the zestimates would range from, wait for it, $736,000 to $1,032,000! 

That's right!  Zillow's algorithm computes a difference of nearly

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