Over the last year I've seen HitWise play with financial forecasting on their blog – now it's Compete.com's turn and they seem to be able to get decent results with it.

Hopefully, Compete will open up more of it's platform.  I think the quality of forecasting depends on the answers your seeking from Web Analytics.

"… don’t know if it’s a cause or an effect, but it sure seems like there’s a high correlation between unique visits to TheStreet.com and the value of the S&P 500. I think this one might require some further analysis. If it turns out that the results are predictive, maybe I’ll be able to alter my investment strategy. Booyah indeed.

Get SnapShots of sites mentioned in this post:

• thestreet.com to use.

This is pretty cool, and it's free.

Now that I got done with AlwaysON NYC - while blogging at a Brooklyn Cafe near my studio, I came across Jason Calacanis's post about the TechCrunch 20 conference he's helping to put together with TechCrunch. 

I began to wonder if the companies featured at AlwaysON, esp the new companies, had to pay in order to present at the conference:

"….It's wrong on so many levels (as a lot of folks have pointed out).

First, the best companies would never be able to afford that fee. This means the most promising companies who need the exposure the most–and who the audience would most want to see–never make it to the stage. When Kevin Rose started digg he was broke–he could NEVER have afforded demo. When I started Weblogs, Inc. with Brian we were really broke (in fact Brian had taken a second mortgage to build the company!)–we could never have afforded demo. I suspect that most of the great and up-and-coming Web 2.0 companies wouldn't have been able to cut that $20,000 check (or $12,000 as the case may be). I don't think a YouTube, TechMeme, Blogger, StumbleUpon, or CastFire could afford the ticket when they were starting up.

Second, even the good companies that make it to the stage have to spend around $20,000 to pay for their six minutes! What a rip-off."

Until I read Jason's post I had not even given it a thought – but maybe companies that are presenting at a conference need to pay for that.

Anyway, TechCrunch also announced the TechCrunch 20 Conference tonight - wish they were doing it in NYC (maybe they will down the line); seems there are several comments already.

One of the commenters said: "…The startups that are likely to be picked will probably be those of the well-connected entrepreneurs who know you or Jason personally (oh, wait, you call it a “committee”). So don’t make it sound like you are catering to the little guy in the garage ".

So, there's a concern the selection process will be biased.

I'm glad I went to AlwaysON, and that I got a press pass to cover it.

Webanalyticsbook made it in to the Jimmy Whales event that I got locked out of because I was 15 minutes late and the guard downstairs would not let me go in.

I wasn't there, so I can't tell you how it went, but, judging from Webanalyticsbook's account – I should have been there.  Oh well – read Webanalyticsbook to get the gist – and by the way, I like his blog too.

"…After listening to him, I was surprised about his knowledge. He is really smart and has deep knowledge of what is going on in the internet world. Still I believe his search engine will never take off and compete seriously with Google or other major engines."

Well…. I don't think Wikia is built yet – it's blueprint right now (I was on the message board for a while but unsubscribed because I was getting a ton of emails from everyone replying on the list and I did not have time to read them all).   But if Jimmy Whales is a dreamer -  Wikia is his dream.

Maybe it's ok to have a dream – you never know – it might take on a life of it's own.

Ok, from the sounds of it (and I hope Jimmy Whales asks me to interview him – hopefully in person – if he ever reads this) what will make Wikia succeed is, more or less, what made Google succeed – a very easy way to get (and enter) information – in other words – an INTERFACE.  

He needs the right interface for Wikia to succeed – to make it easy for the collaboration he envisions to make Wikia work.  He also needs for his servers to be FAST – Google understood that – people have very low attention span now – it must be SIMPLE and it must be FAST and it must be EASY and RELIABLE.  If he has those 4 things – and enough buzz, and some MONEY ….he may succeed.

But getting to that is going to be hard – but not impossible.  After all, dreams are the fuel of great art, and I think, of great search engines.

And let's not forget that Google's simple interface, was rumored to come out of the creator's lack of knowledge or interest in HTML – in other words, the design "happened" because it seemed like the most logical, simple way to create an uncluttered Search Interface (that was darn FAST and GOOD for it's time).

So, if Wikia copied that – but 10 years later – why not?  Go for it.

Sorry I missed the Jimmy Whales talk but Webanalyticsbook has it covered – read his blog.