A company called Wonga.com in Great Britain uses a software algorithm to accept or reject loan applications. The program scours the internet for any information on loan applicants in order to make a decision. Like most AI, Wonga's proprietary software benefits from being cold, clean and unbiased.

This is an interesting story on two counts...first, as an example of the increasing power of software to make intelligence decisions...and second, an illustration to the vast amounts of personal information we probably all have online. 

The company is one of the first to actually use the countless streams of data available to financial institutions in real time. Potential loan applicants basically visit the Wonga site and then choose the amount they wish to borrow and for how long. The maximum borrowing period is 31 days, making these loans analogous somewhat to a credit card loan.

Wonga's loan ...

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Looking to further monetize their 500 million global users, Facebook intends to expand its Deal discount service into a full-blown rival to Groupon and Living Social. The new service will debut in Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. Adding its own twist, Facebook states that they wish to focus on activities you'll want to do with friends...or with "Friends" as the case may be.

This video showcases the original Facebook Deals service.

In response to the triple disasters in Japan (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactors), AT&T is making all calls and text messages to Japan free through the month of March.

“We want to help our customers connect with loved ones in Japan in anyway we can,” said Mark Collins, senior vice president, Voice and Data Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “Connecting with family and friends is most important at times like this— we want to make it as easy and worry free as possible for our customers.”

Still available, AT&T wireless customers can text “redcross” to 90999 to give a $10 donation to help the Red Cross with disaster support efforts in the area.  No text message fees apply.

Also, U-verse subscribers will get access to TV Japan, a 24 hour news channel free through March 17. TV Japan can be found on channel 3680

Malaysia seeks to build the world's largest refinery of strategic metals. When completed, the plant will be the first such refinery built outside of China in nearly three decades.

As the Times article states, the $230 million project is an enormous gamble because refining rare earth metals leaves behind thousands of tons of radioactive waste, and its still unsure how that reality will be dealt with. Since environmental political groups are very powerful in the West, we don't build refineries here. So up till now, the world has been content to leave the "dirty work" to China which operates many barely regulated refineries and has created vast toxic waste sites in its own territory. In return for this sacrifice, they now control around 97% of the world's supply of strategic materials crucial for almost every high-tech gadget imaginable, including smartphones, electric cars and the U.S. military ...

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The European Aerospace and Defense Group (EADS) has unveiled the world’s first “printed” bicycle using a 3D printing process. Made of nylon strong enough to replace steel, the bicycle requires no assembly or maintenance.

Technically, they call their process Additive Layer Manufacturing, but in essence is the same as the 3D printing process. Powdered metal (such as titanium, steel or aluminum) is sintered by laser, layer by layer, to form a solid mass until the product is finished.

Compared to a traditional, machined part, those produced by ALM are up to 65% lighter but still as strong…ALM also offers a glimpse of wider potential benefits. The process itself uses about one-tenth of the material required in traditional manufacturing and reduces waste. On a global scale, ALM offers potential for products to be produced quickly and cheaply on ‘printers’ located in offices, shops and houses. It would allow replacement ...

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Now that the dust has cleared from Google’s tinkering with their search engine, we can finally study the data coming out. Who won and who lost? Did their changes successfully de-rank content farms?

According to software firm Sistrix, Maholo.com, Wisegeek.com, Ezinearticles and Yahoo’s Associated Content have all lost around 75% of their web traffic. This is a devastating blow to their revenue. This has left many companies issuing immediate layoffs and scrambling to meet Google's new higher standards. In particular, Ezinearticles.com has issued a series of stricter rules for article submission.

Ironically, Demand Media, the one company often held up as the iconic example of a content farm, emerged unscathed by Google’s changes. It’s most prominent site eHow.com even grew in traffic, counterbalancing decreases in AnswerBag.com and Trails.com.

Unfortunately, “Mom and Pop” websites were smacked down hard...or helped ...

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Starting tonight, you'll be able to watch selected Warner Brothers movies on Facebook at the cost of $3 for a span of 48 hours. The first title will be THE DARK KNIGHT.

I would've been impressed if the deal was better. I doubt many would pay $3 to watch movies on their computer, its what you'd pay for a Blockbuster movie rental. Basically, it tries to turn Facebook into a Pay-Per-View channel, and I don't think Facebook carries the right "mood" for a movie watching experience. YouTube tried this too and it didn't go well. The only way I see this popular is if Facebook turned the viewings into a community online theater.

Netflix's basic rental deal is far better, offering unlimited streaming videos plus rentals for ~$9 a month. This aspiring YouTuber gives a run-down how the Facebook movies will work.

The New York Times has a great article summarizing current trends in AI spreading throughout the economy. Computer AI has become so advanced that it's now starting to replace and automate higher-level jobs. Case in point, back in 1978 a lawsuit against CBS forced the company to spend $2.2 million to hire a team of lawyers and paralegals to sift through 6 million documents for several months.

Fast-forward to today.  In January 2011, a company called Blackstone Discovery in Palo Alto, helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000 and, of course, taking FAR less time.

Some law bloggers have noted the difficulty for recent law graduates to find jobs, noting that perhaps the trend is due to the bursting of a higher education bubble combined with the current economy. That probably is also the case, but this truly cost-cutting technology probably foreshadows that those ...

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Latest statistics show that Facebook now boasts more than 30 million users from the United Kingdom, roughly half the entire population. The societal penetration would probably be even more incredible when you factor out very young children and the elderly.  

Here are some incredible statistics.  In January 2009, Facebook boasted 150 million users.  This number has more than tripled in 2 short years, with 500 million users...100 million of them signed up in the last 5 months. 

In other news, Facebook just bought Beluga, an upcoming mobile group messaging company, probably to gain access to a team of former Google employees. Logic-Cool noted in January that Facebook vs. Google will likely be the next great corporate rivalry.

A million here, a million there...pretty soon you might be talking about some serious amounts of people.  Here's Zuckerberg noting the 500 million milestone back in 2010. Watching this video ...

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Tired of dealing with China, Google seeks to expand its Latin American staff by 50% after a whopping 80% boost in revenues from South American countries over the previous year. The Spanish-speaking Internet in the Western hemisphere boasts over 650 million users, many coming online for the first time.

 

Engineering teams at Infinera Corp. in California have created a PIC (photonic integrated circuit) capable of processing 1 terabit/sec. Infinera is one of those companies that the overall public rarely hears about, but their work is important to the vitality of the Internet. Infinera's chips are already widely used around the world in the 100 gigabit/sec range.

Certain critical junctures of the world wide web must be able to carry the bulk of all worldwide internet traffic. For example, intercontinental fiber optic cables or fiber optic links between cities carry an extremely heavy burden of data. The new PIC's will allow enormous upgrades in capability of these junctures without having to upgrade the underlying infrastructure.

Consider that worldwide Internet traffic is increasing 50% a year (doubling ~18 months), in roughly 15 years the amount of data being moved will be a 1,000 times greater than ...

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Google penalized Overstock in its search rankings after discovering the company had encouraged backlinks from colleges and universities by offering the students/faculties discounts. Previously, Overstock had ranked #1 in many generic product terms such as "laptop computer" or "vacuum cleaner". Now they've dropped to #40 to #70 according to the WSJ.

One of Google's criteria in ranking any website is to look at how many times other people link to it. In particular .edu websites rarely link to commercial products and Google tends to weigh their links higher. Previously in the case of JC Penny, Google discovered thousands of inactive websites linking back to the retailer's website.  

Here with Overstock, the attempts to increase page ranking were more honest and open, but Google didn't like it anyway. The company prefers rankings to be based on organic traffic and linkage, and paying others (in effect) to ...

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A little known Google startup called Transphorm has come out of hiding to announce the invention of a module that can reduce by up to 90% any electricity lost during power conversions. Power conversion is a necessary process in the use of many electronics, ranging from laptops, hybrid cars, mainframes and so on.  

If you remember from high school science courses, there exist two types of electricity AC and DC, and many devices require the conversion of one type to another. Also, when traveling to Europe, visitors often need a module to convert European power frequencies to one usable by American electronics that they happen to bring along. 

According to national statistics cited by Transphorm, the amount of energy the U.S. loses to conversion equals roughly 318 coal-fired power plants per year.  The company plans to unveil its first module in March. If their claims pan out, we could ...

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South Korea aims to have 1 gigabyte/second nationwide internet by the end of 2012.   South Korea currently ranks #1 in internet speeds ahead of Hong Kong and Japan.  Gigabyte service is available here in the U.S. for the whopping price $350 per month...in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Google is opening up other experimental locations around the U.S.

The engineer overseeing the South Korean expansion Choi Gwang-gi stated that the intention was to build the South Korean internet with all future technology projections in mind, including 3D TV, ultra HD video streaming, HD teleconferencing and cloud computing.

The U.S. currently lags behind Latvia and Romania in average internet speed. The United States usually ranks in the Top 10 or a bit below it.  

And here I thought my 100mb speed was good...

"One of the customers already connected to Mr. Choi’s pilot program is Moon Ki-soo, 42 ...

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Amazon released a new Movie/TV streaming service which will be completely free to customers who already pay $79 dollars a year for free 2-day shipping. To everyone else, that's the price to subscribe.  Customers can choose between 5,000 TV shows and movies.  This increases the number of serious Netflix competitors to 4...Apple, Google, Microsoft and now Amazon.

You may see the announcement on the Amazon homepage. Amazon's service can be run on a computer or on the Roku, which is a device that costs ~$199.

Netflix still ranks as number 1 though, offering access to 20,000 TV shows and movies for 7.99 a month, $5 more than Amazon's per year price. For now, the Amazon deal seems mostly a nice reinforcement for those already paying the free shipping charges.

I honestly don't see Netflix winning in the long run here. The ...

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The Speculist, a longstanding blog dedicated to Futurism, posted an excellent article today about IBM's supercomputer Watson and what it means for employment and jobs.

IBM has already declared their intention to move Watson into helping doctors diagnose disease and then into customer service.  However, Watson's exorbitant price tag of $100 million dollars means he's isn't a very profitable investment for businesses right now.

However, the cost of computing halves every 18 months.  This means in a decade, Watson will cost only ~$780,000.  In 15 years, he'll cost less than $100,000.  

Basically in little over 10 years, if you run a business and you replace 20 workers who make $40,000 dollars/year, not only will you get their labor value, but as Speculist writer Stephen Gordon comments, Watson never sleeps, can work 24/7 (triple the shift work of each human), never ...

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Chicago-based Groupon appears to be preparing to open a Chinese subsidiary.  While there haven't been any formal press announcements, Internet watchers have spotted a spike in "Help Wanted" ads in China on behalf of Groupon. China remains home to the world's largest market of Internet users, boasting over 450 million citizens online.

Now that the mild-toned Watson has demonstrated his dominance of Jeopardy, what comes next? IBM executives have entered discussions with major corporations to answer that exact question. In the near future, when you call in for technical support, the "person" you hear might be Watson instead of a worker in India.  I bet when many readers were watching Watson pwn on Jeopardy they didn't think his story would have much relevance to them.  Think again.  You might just run into Watson in some unexpected places. 

Watson's very first assignment will be to help doctors diagnose patients. The skills displayed on Jeopardy are actually highly transferable to a medical setting.  Doctors need to collect a list of symptoms and then come up with a possible diagnosis.  Now, Watson will help them.

The A.I. will next appear at help desks in stores or on the phone at technical support ...

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Ars Technica published an interesting article wherein writer Ben Kuchera relates a conversation with iconic game developer Richard Garriott about what modern games could learn from his classic Ultima Online.

What Ultima Online did very well, and what I think has never been recaptured, is allow you to become a citizen of that world in a very personal and relevant way that is unique to you and not like anyone else...As brilliant as World of WarCraft is—of course it's an astonishingly well-done product—but everyone is pretty much a fighter. Your life is, you're a fighter...That kind of diversity of life has still never been recaptured in any game since, and it's something I hope to recapture in my next work."

I agree. Every massive multi-player online game since Everquest featured "fight, kill and collect." The only way to make an honest living in ...

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In a bid to undercut Apple's digital distribution of subscription newspapers and magazines, Google has launched One Pass. The service will allow publishers to sell content that consumers can view on apps designed for smartphones and tablet PC's.  

Google will allow content creators to keep a whopping 90% of the revenue gained from One Pass, a direct counter blow to Apple's 70%. In another contrast, this time in Apple's favor, Google will allow publishers to demand personal data from subscribers. Apple places this choice in the hands of the customers.

Even so, it's hard to argue whose services will be more popular when your goal isn't to make money. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt commented in Berlin:

"Our intention is to make no money on it...We want the publishers to make all the money."