Betting on Weather
There was the Amazon Developer Conference last 2 days (Jan 16th and 17th ‘ 2008) – it’s yearly event… Among others was Tim O’Reilly presenting “The O’Reilly Radar” – basically talking about the new things in the internet/tech space!!!
I hope to write more about it and the other talks… but before that I have to tell you about this idea that I loved a lot: www.weatherbill.com
This thing startled me… It’s like an insurance on weather… on top of that… you can bet on the weather and if you win they pay you!!! Go to the site and try the quoting thing. You put a condition (like I am saying it’s going to snow above 5 inches each day between 1/27 and 1/29 at Zip Code 07310 – if that happens you pay me $10 a day!!!)
Now it takes your details and uses its own weather predicting algorithm (at the minimum I would assume it to be very very complicated) and gives you a quote – you buy that quote and if it really snows above 5 inches each day in that period you get paid)… I am sure you got the analogy – it’s like an Option – but on weather!!!
That and much more – go to the site and read blogs about it!!!
BTW: Started by an ex-google guy…
More to come – watch this space…