Is this VRM?

I found the Yahoo! FareChase Alerts widget the other day. It looked promising, but upon reading the comments, I didn't want to bother downloading it

If you check out the ProjectVRM website, you'll see that VRM is all about "providing customers with tools for engaging with vendors in ways that work for both parties".

Elance and Lending Tree seem to be getting this ideology correct - creating a reversal of roles where the buyer puts out their requirements and the vendor is able to respond.

TiddlyWiki provides another good example of how VRM might work - check the video at Paul Whitehouse's blog. Tiddlywiki is an Open Source project that comes out of Osmosoft (a division of BT)

The VRM wiki specifies a requirement for a Firefox plugin. With the help of Ian Bugeja and his HyperBK tool, we had a go at creating a plug-in that allowed a user to crudely specify their needs and publish those as Machine Readable APML. You'll find this at the Xpollen.org website.

Where we go from here...watch this space!