betting

So much money has already been wagered on the World Cup finals, which started Friday in South Africa.

So few of these bettors, however, will have turned to the Institution of Engineering and Technology's magazine before risking their savings, their house, or the money they were keeping back to pay the divorce lawyer.

The magazine, you see, has helpfully published an analysis of the World Cup, written by a man for whom numbers say so much. You might experience conflict with your potato chips when I tell you that the University of Salford has an Economics of Gambling degree … Read more

Though Google CEO Eric Schmidt and seemingly everyone else is telling publishers they should place some bets on potential new business models, The Philadelphia Inquirer's new venture may not be exactly what they had in mind.

Philly.com, the online unit of the Inquirer and sister newspaper the Philadelphia Daily News, has launched a legal online betting service called Instant Fantasy Games. The papers said last week that they are the first in their industry to make a foray into online betting, according to a report in Editor & Publisher, a newspaper trade journal.

"We're trying to … Read more

Soccer betting games like Toto, Lotofoot, and TotoCalcio are played by millions around the world, but they're particularly popular in countries where soccer mania rules--which is most of the world outside of the US, where "football" means shoulder pads, not penalty kicks. TotoCalculator 2 is an easy-to-use program that improves your odds of winning association football betting games.

TotoCalculator's main interface is a plain but familiar Windows dialog box. Pop-up options dialogs handle truly copious settings. The input window features a color-coded spreadsheet format listing matches between major English and European professional soccer teams, as well … Read more

Lotto Buster 2010 provides an incredible range of tools to help you make lotto guesses. The program not only gives predictions, but also provides the statistics to help choose your own numbers.

The program's interface was an instant hit with us, since it laid out all the options clearly and was easily navigated. Some of the charts and graphs required a visit to the Help file's glossary but were intuitive more often than not. The first impressive aspect was its Lotto Buster's wide swath of lottery choices, which range from every American state's drawings to countries … Read more

The chief technology officer of Betfair, one of world's largest Internet betting exchanges, is radically overhauling its development processes so the gambling giant can pounce more quickly on new international business.

Tony McAlister joined the peer-to-peer gambling company as CTO in January and leads its 400-employee IT group. Before joining London-based Betfair, McAlister's career includes stints as CTO at Vodafone and most recently CTO at Motricity in North Carolina.

"The thing that really appealed to me about Betfair was its approach to doing business. We are turning down tremendous amounts of revenue by not running our poker … Read more

MB Chinese Pregnancy Calendar helps users get a better idea of what sex a child will be, based on a very simple premise. This is a fun option for anyone thinking about starting a family.

The program's interface could not be much simpler. First, you are directed to some pull-down menus to fill in dates. From there, the results screen is static and cannot be navigated through. This program works well by keeping its navigation as simple enough as its results. An online Help file is available, though completely unnecessary. The program functions very primitively, as you need only … Read more

Several times throughout today's show, The 404 almost causes the universe to implode. Our Earth-shaking collection of topics today include a story about Viagra missiles, iPhone flaws and young love, divinely drunk intervention, and more Ryan Gosling/Ryan Reynolds confusion...which witch is which?!

One of the more ridiculous stories on today's show is about a man that somehow managed to smuggle a fake, but extremely realistic looking missile into New York with a sticker on the side that proudly read "VIVA VIAGRA." After driving around New York, making stops at Times Square and the Trump Tower, the man ended up in front of the Pfizer corporate building where the company promptly slapped a restraining order and a cease and desist warning on his man-made missile. The craziest part about this story is the fact that one man somehow drove through the Midtown tunnel and several New York police officers with a missile attached to his truck.

Is that all it takes? The man claims that ""New York City cops are smart. They know the difference between a mock-up and the real thing," and that's all well and good, but what about scaring the sh*t out of thousands of New Yorkers? Mass chaos isn't so fun. Do you think The 404 should pull a stunt like this? Clearly it'd be pretty easy to set in motion, and you know we need the publicity! Any suggestions? Leave us a comment and and let us know!

People will bet on anything these days. Along with betting on who will win in football games and horse races, a site called Bodog.com is offering risk takers a chance to wager on which company will be the next bought by Google. The best odds, at 3 to 1, are on Facebook. There are 7-to-1 odds that it will be Associated Press and the same odds on CNET Networks, parent company of CNET News.com. So far, the loser in terms of odds is Automattic, which created blogging software WordPress. It has odds of 12 to 1.

People can … Read more

March Madness finds a way into offices, schools, and between friends faster than most of us can imagine. Nearly everybody knows someone who is either running or a part of a betting pool. Download.com has put together a handy set of March Madness software tools to help you create your own pool or keep track of all the data that will be flowing in during the coming weeks. But what about Web services that can do the same thing? We've put together a roundup of some of the handiest services to keep track of all the money you'… Read more