Last night we rolled out charts for the predictions.  The charts show the price history, or the community consensus, across a horizontal timescale.  The graphs default to the monthly view, but may be rebuilt using different time ranges.  If you run your mouse across the blue line in the chart, you'll see the price reflected for that time period.

There is a known bug in Firefox 3 on Macs (only) that causes the chart to display incorrectly when it first loads.  Upon refresh, the chart repairs itself.  After much research, it appears to be a defect found in the Flash plugin for FF3/Mac users.  There is no known fix that we're aware of, so hopefully a future Flash update will rectify the issue.

September's prize winner for having the top % gain month/month is Chris Sternal-Johnson.  Below is a breakdown of the top ten performers for the month.

Congratulations, Chris!  We hope you enjoy your Dash Express GPS Navigator.  You'll be eligible to win another prize in three months.

While we prep the site for a major site update tonight, let me tell you all ahead of time that October's prize will the sweet Logitech Squeezebox Boom.  Here's a review.

Today we rolled out a new E-mail alert so that when a prediction is judged on the site, players that had open bets with the prediction that was judged will be notified. 

For example, let's say I had bet S$10,000 on the Dow Jones Index prediction.   Then, something occurred in the market that triggered an early judgment, but I was away from the site that day.  I would then receive an E-mail within a ten minute timeframe of the judgment letting me know that the prediction had been decided.  If I'm curious as to how I performed, I can go to the site to learn the results by clicking a handy link in the E-mail.

If, for some reason, I didn't want this type of E-mail alert, I could always go to my notifications screen and disable the service.  We plan on making a mobile version of the same alert in the very near future.

The August 2008 winner of The Standard's prediction market prize is Kevin Railsback.  He made one all-or-nothing bet on the 3G jailbroken iPhone prediction, while others exercised caution.  Kevin's big gamble proved to be fruitful.

"I could have either been in the top few, or the bottom few, depending on how that went," Kevin told me earlier today after learning of August's outcome.  "I would have had -49995 if I lost that [bet]."

Until we have a leaderboard on-site that shows everyone's percentage gain day-to-day, I'll be posting the top-ten gainers here at the end of each month.  

Here's how August fared:

David Kuan was not eligible to win the August prize according to the rules of the game (David won in June, so he has to wait 3 months before he can be eligible to win again).  You'll probably notice that I'm on the list, too, but I'm also not eligible to win any prizes for obvious reasons.

Congrats, Kevin, and congrats to David and everyone else on this list on your really outstanding performance!