Archive for October, 2006

I stumbled across a post by James over at Rattazzimedia. While I disagree that perfect unity on all issues is possible this side of eternity, the idea of unity in the church is near and dear to me which is why I have long lamented the demise of the Apostle’s Creed as a succint statement that we can all agree on. I am halfway through a profound book by Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline which is essentially an extended rumination on the meaning of the Apostle’s Creed by one of the great theologians of the 20th century.

The internet continues to exhibit an untrammeled elimination of the middleman. A new company, Prosper.com, now allows direct person-to-person lending. I have set up standing orders (one of the best features of the site as it allows automatic bidding on the loan requests) and have created a loan portfolio with an even risk distribution. People submitting loan requests are graded with a risk rating from AA all the way down to HR (high risk) and NC (no credit rating). The risk ratings are based on the credit scores obtained from the credit agencies.

As of writing, Prosper has 90,000 members and has originated over $18 million in loans.

It appears that there is currently a far greater demand for loans than there is a supply of capital bidding on each loan. The implications for my risk-adjusted return are not yet clear, but I think it’s a great idea. 

I have been using Riya’s new face recognition software. The face recognition works remarkably well and will only improve with a larger dataset and more powerful processors. Unfortunately, there is still no way to export the tag information generated by the software. Without this feature it is hard to contemplate investing too much time into the software or recommending it to anyone other than the earliest adopters with an insatiable fascination with technology. Companies come and go, which is why I think it’s important to maintain ownership of any structure I add to my data.