Category Archives: Technology

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Technology is the best thing that has ever happened to the mortgage industry. Any industry, really. As mortgage companies consistently build and launch innovative tools and programs designed to gain momentum in market share, its clear that technology will continue to elevate the industry to new heights. From paperless mortgages to the increasing use of completely borrower-driven mortgage applications, the mortgage industry of tomorrow will be a night-and-day difference from the mortgage industry of today.

All of the tech advancements are perfect for consumers, who have shown a strong desire for the mortgage process to be made as fast, easy and streamlined as possible. Those kinds of advancements are great for the industry as a whole, but the fear is that it could one day put mortgage brokers on the outside looking in.

Were living in an era where people are using the Amazon app to shop instead of driving to the mall. The concept of working with a travel agent to plan a trip isnt nearly as popular as it used to be. And programs like TurboTax are preferred over visiting your local H&R Block. Along those lines, isnt there a real concern that the appeal of brokers could similarly fall by the wayside?

No, not at all. The concepts of working with technology and working with a mortgage broker dont need to be mutually exclusive items when it comes to buying a home. Even though technology is king across the industry, the mortgage business will always be a people business. The value of the human touch on important, high-involvement financial decisions will never wear off. The entire loan process can be automated, but there is no substitute for the sound advice a borrower can receive from a broker on the different kinds of products and pricing that different lenders can offer.

Thats why UWM brought Blink to market an all-digital, multi-functional loan portal that combines the expertise of a broker with the convenience of a mobile app. By using Blink, borrowers have the capability to start the loan application process, pull their credit, e-sign documents, verify assets, and track the status of their loans from anywhere.

It gives borrowers the option of completing the mortgage process on their own or to seek real-time assistance from their broker at any time. At any point of the process, if a borrower would feel more comfortable with the human-to-human interaction and guidance that brokers offer, they can still meet in person and complete the application online together.

Its not a matter of Brokers vs. Technology. The two go hand-in-hand and make one another stronger. Brokers are licensed gurus who singularly focus on things like rates, products and regulations on a daily basis. They are able to partner with lenders that are focused on staying in front of industry technology and new advancements. If consumers think that technology empowers them to find the best loan options for their specific situation, just imagine the high quality of products and rates could be discovered by professionals in the industry who know exactly what theyre looking for.

While an automated mortgage process is an attractive option for consumers, nothing about technology affects the pricing of a loan. Theres no question that borrowers can find the best deals by working with a broker not just because they have access to more lending options, but because they also have access to wholesale pricing that retail lenders just cant provide.

Tech-savvy borrowers interested in the simplicity that mortgage apps provide can experience the best of both worlds. They can do their own research on finding the perfect home, but let the expert find the right lender. Mortgage brokers can find the most favorable pricing and are a source of comfort for people making one of the biggest decisions of their lives.

Technology is unquestionably reshaping the way that mortgages are done making things easier, faster, hassle-free and more streamlined for borrowers to be self-sufficient. But the key to achieving the ultimate loan experience is in combining the expertise of mortgage brokers with the automation of technology.

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New mortgage technology only enhances value of brokers - HousingWire

In anticipation of the official opening of the new MIT.nano building which will house some of the worlds leading facilities supporting research in nanoscience and nanotechnology MIT last week officially launched a new center of excellence called SENSE.nano, which is dedicated to pushing the frontiers of research in sensing technologies.

Like the new building, which is slated to open a year from now, SENSE.nano is an endeavor that cuts across the divisions of departments, labs, and schools, to encompass research in areas including chemistry, physics, materials science, electronics, computer science, biology, mechanical engineering, and more. Faculty members from many of these areas spoke about their research during a daylong conference on May 25 that marked the official launch of the new center.

Introducing the event, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said that [MIT.nano] will create opportunities for research and collaboration for more than half our current faculty, and 67 percent of those recently tenured. In fact, we expect that it will serve and serve to inspire more than 2,000 people across our campus, from all five MIT schools, and many more from beyond our walls.

Explaining the impetus for creating this new center, Reif said that MIT is famous for making because we have a community of makers a concentration of brilliant people who are excited to share their experience and their ideas, to teach you to use their tools and to learn what you know, too. On a much bigger scale, this is the same magic we hope for in creating SENSE.nano. As MIT.nanos first center of excellence, SENSE.nano will bring together a wide array of researchers, inventors, and entrepreneurs fascinated by the potential of sensors and sensing systems to transform our world.

The development of new kinds of connected, inexpensive, and widespread sensing devices, harnessing the power of nanoscale imaging and manufacturing systems, could impact many of the worlds most pressing problems, said Vincent Roche, president of Analog Devices, who gave the opening keynote talk. Such new technology has the potential to solve problems that have plagued humanity for millennia, including food and water security, health care, and environmental degradation.

The 200,000-square-foot facility, in addition to more than doubling the amount of clean-room imaging and fabrication space available to MIT researchers, also contains one of the quietest spaces on the eastern seaboard, said Brian Anthony, co-leader of the new center of excellence and a principal researcher in the mechanical engineering department, referring to an exceptionally vibration-free environment created on the new buildings basement level, where the most sensitive of instruments, that require a perfectly stable base, will be housed.

To show by example what some of that cross-disciplinary work will look like, several faculty members described the research they are doing now and explained how its scope and capabilities will be greatly enhanced by the new imaging and fabrication tools that will become available when MIT.nano officially opens for research.

Tim Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry, described ongoing work that he and his students have been doing on developing tiny, low-cost sensors that can be incorporated in the packaging of fruits and vegetables. The sensors could detect the buildup of gases that could lead to premature ripening or rotting, as a way to reduce the amount of food wasted during transportation and storage. Polina Anikeeva, the Class of 1942 Career Development Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, talked about developing flexible, stretchable fibers for implantation in brain and spinal cord tissues, which could ultimately lead to ways of restoring motion to those with spinal cord injuries.

Others described large-area sensing systems that could incorporate computation and logic so that only the most relevant data would need to be transmitted, helping to curb a data overload; and sensors built from nanotubes that could be bent, twisted, or stretched while still gathering data. Still others described ways of integrating electronics with photonic devices, which use light instead of electrons to carry and manipulate data. Also presented was work on using fluorescing quantum-dot particles to provide imaging of living tissues without the need for incisions, and building sensors that can continuously monitor buildings, bridges, and other structures to detect signs of likely failure long before disaster strikes.

The future will be measured in nanometers, said MIT Professor Vladimir Bulovic, in a panel discussion at the end of the conference, moderated by Tom Ashbrook, host of NPRs On Point. Bulovic, who is the faculty lead for the MIT.nano building and the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, added, We are right now at the renaissance age of nano. He noted that devices all around us and in our pockets are constantly sensing, recording, and sometimes transmitting data about our surroundings.

We can access data on how the world around us really functions, and with that data, we can take the next step of influencing the environment to improve our health, protect our natural environment, and monitor our buildings, structures, and devices to make sure they are working as they should, he said. The opportunity is vast.

In his introduction, Reif also hailed the potential of whats sometimes called ubiquitous sensing: Tomorrows optical, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and biological sensors, alone and networked together, offer a huge range of new possibilities in terms of understanding and controlling the world around us. Sensors will change how we protect our soldiers and keep our bridges safe. How we monitor the polar ice caps, and monitor how children learn. Sensors will change how we keep our water clean, our patients healthy, and our energy supply secure. In short, sensors and sensing systems will be the source of new products, new capabilities and whole new industries. And we should not be surprised if some of them are deeply disruptive.

Disruption, of course, can be a two-edged sword. So, Reif said, one of the challenges facing those who innovate in this field, as technology races to the future, is how to help society navigate its unintended impacts. If we can make this a first concern, and not an afterthought, I have no doubt that this community will continue to be a major force in making a better world.

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New center will push frontiers of sensing technology - MIT News

Wireless charging startup uBeam has had a rollercoaster existence. University of Pennsylvania student Meredith Perry founded the company in a garage in 2011 and raised $26 million in funding from investors including Marissa Mayer, Marc Andreessen, and Mark Cuban, who referred to the concept as a "zillion-dollar idea." The company's sound wave-based tech remained secretive. Several investors admitted they'd never actually seen it in action, which fueled suspicion among industry watchers that it might not live up to Perry's promises.

All the while, Perry stood by her invention. "We've proved out the technology," she said at a conference in May 2016, "and we are on our way to deploying the product to the world."

Then, the company's former VP of engineering wrote a series of blog posts accusing the company, essentially, of being a fraud. Paul Reynolds, who has 20 years of experience with ultrasound, wrote last year that the company had overstated its technology's capabilities and wasn't close to delivering a working prototype.

This week, uBeam finally unveiled its technology. The company demonstrated its device for USA Today, according to a report published Thursday, and it worked almost as advertised. With no cables, the company's transmitter was able to charge a phone in a reporter's hand about four feet away.

The transmitter, a large white box that sits in the middle of a room or can be mounted on the ceiling, emits high frequency sound waves that aren't detectable to the human ear. Those waves are converted into power once they reach a phone, tablet, or other device enclosed in a uBeam case.

There are currently major limitations, though: The device must be held in the direct path of the sonic beam or it won't charge, and the waves can't pass through walls, people, or other objects, like a pair of jeans. The goal is to eventually be able to charge a phone while it sits in a person's pocket.

The company has created a second transmitter that uses optical lasers and can charge up to five phones at once, so long as they're held at a 45-degree angle. With both transmitters, the device to be charged must be within about 10 feet.

In February, Perry showed off the tech's charging capabilities at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles, though from a distance. This time around, she gave a hands-on demonstration--and beforehand, took the reporter to a T-Mobile store to buy a new phone to prove it wasn't rigged.

While uBeam still has a lot of development work before it can produce a marketable product, the demo may help the startup get past the intense skepticism it faced just a year ago. Perry wouldn't make any predictions about when it might commercialize its technology, but USA Today reports that it's still at least a year away.

Perry was frank about how the criticism has affected her. "As a first-time founder and as a scientist, to have people question your integrity is horrible," she told the publication. "It was extremely painful."

"In that same week that all that stuff was being said about me, that I was a fraud, we had these big technological breakthroughs," she said. "So I just tried to focus on my team, to keep them going. So we could prove everybody wrong."

The Santa Monica-based company currently has 30 employees. There's a lot at stake: According to Allied Market Research, the market for wireless charging will be $37.2 billion by 2022.

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Mark Cuban-Backed 'Zillion-Dollar' Startup uBeam Finally Unveils Its Technology - Inc.com

Heres the big question for Andy Rubin, widely known as the father of Android: whats next? The answer, in part, is that his new company is announcing an entire ecosystem of products that will work together: an intelligent assistant device for you home, a 360 camera, and (of course) a phone. That last one runs Android, which is what youd expect from any new phone maker.

The company he started to make all this is called Essential. In a blog post explaining why it exists, Rubin tells a typical founder story: going out for the night with a friend, talking about the state of technology and how to fix it. Funny thing, though, is that one of the problems he sees with the state of tech today involves the OS he helped create, Android:

For all the good Android has done to help bring technology to nearly everyone it has also helped create this weird new world where people are forced to fight with the very technology that was supposed to simplify their lives. Was this what we had intended? Was this the best we could do?

Rubins new phone, the Essential Phone, is, of course, based on that very operating system. But its probably safe to assume that it will either try to simplify Android somehow or that its just a stopgap until its viable for Essential to ship a phone running its other system, Ambient OS. Or maybe both or neither! Rubins statement seems to serve both as a mea culpa and as a platform to launch something better.

We dont know yet whether the Essential phone or Ambient OS will mean less fighting with technology or whether Rubin is planning on building more on top of Android or supplanting it. Presumably some of those questions will be answered today as he speaks at the Code conference.

What we can say is this: Rubin has some core principles for his company that would make the two-billion-device Android ecosystem a lot better. Here are a few of his bullet points that seem relevant:

Devices are your personal property. We wont force you to have anything on them you dont want to have.

We will always play well with others. Closed ecosystems are divisive and outdated.

Devices shouldnt become outdated every year. They should evolve with you.

Those principles all make sense, but theyve also been damnably hard to live up to in a world where carriers not only hold back updates, but also enmesh themselves into the very operating systems of the phones they sell. Even powerhouses like Samsung struggle to ship their phones without carrier software loaded on them. Plenty of Android makers have shipped clean, unlocked phones without extra crapware on them, promising prompt updates. Most of them have languished in obscurity.

But just because a problem is hard doesnt mean its impossible. Well be watching to see how Essential tackles it.

Andy Rubin will be onstage tonight at Code. You can watch it live starting at 6PM PT / 9PM ET.

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The father of Android says it has 'forced us to fight' with technology - The Verge

This article first appeared in Term Sheet, Fortunes newsletter on deals and dealmakers. Sign up here.

Access Technology Ventures is not a household name in Silicon Valley. But in just two years, the New York-based firm has quietly managed to get a piece of numerous hot pre-IPO unicorn startups. Now the firm is taking steps to formalize its previously ad-hoc investing strategy and speaking publicly about it for the first time to Fortune .

Access Technology Ventures is the venture capital investing arm of billionaire industrialist Leonard Blavatnik. The firm is lean, with 12 investment professionals managing $20 billion of Blavatniks money. Until 2015, any startup investing was done randomly, based on Blavatniks connections and investment ideas. He backed Facebook, Square, Snap, Yelp and Alibaba before their IPOs, as well as current IPO candidates like Spotify. The firm even managed to earn a return on its investment in Zynga.

Managing Director Pueo Keffer joined Access Technology Ventures in 2015 from Redpoint Ventures with a mandate to formalize Access startup investing activities. Len has an amazing nose for investments, Keffer says. Historically thats served us really well. My job has been to institutionalize that and add a layer that takes advantage of Lens connections and also define a strategy.

The first step was to spin out the venture arm into a discreet fund with $2.5 billion under management. Access Technology Ventures now makes $200 million to $500 million worth of investments each year, depending on the opportunities. The fund is structured more like a hedge fund with permanent capital than a traditional ten-year venture fund. That allows it to take a long view of investing, and to write large checks from $30 million to $100 million, all the way up to $1 billion (though Keffers portfolio has not yet done any deals of that size). Unlike most traditional venture investors, Access holds its investments in companies for around five years after they go public. The firm exited its Facebook ( fb ) holdings in late 2015, but it remains an investor in Snap, Square, Yelp, 58.com, Alibaba and Rocket Internet.

Keffer says Access is looking for foundational companies that scale. Filtering opportunities by the size, combined with a strong team, strong market, strong unit economics and strong early traction has been uniquely liberating and challenging approach, Keffer says. Notable deals include an $83 million Series B investment in DigitalOcean, a New York City-based cloud company, and $80 million for OpenDoor, a buzzy real estate startup that buys and sells houses. The firm prefers to make primary investments in companies with at least 100% year over year revenue growth.

Access has been taking a more active role in its deals, sitting on occasional board seats and calling portfolio company executives every quarter to be strategically helpful, Keffer says. We view it as a partnership regardless of whether its private or public. Access has passed on deals that were only about money, with no relationship, he says.

One recent example of the firms more active role: OpenDoors business of buying and selling houses means it needs access to capital. When Access invested, OpenDoors capital markets team was nascent, and the firm helped the company build it out, thanks to connections from the firms multi-billion real estate group. If theyre having a hard time with a discussion with a Wells Fargo or a Goldman or a Deutsche Bank, we can call the right person and help facilitate that dialogue, Keffer says. We have billions of dollars of outstanding leverage with these institutions, he says. A normal venture firm wouldnt have [that].

So with no brand and little PR, how does Access get access to deals? It helps to be one of the few places writing checks of that size, especially as mutual funds like Fidelity and T. Rowe Price and hedge funds like Tiger Global slowed their pace of late stage startup investing. (Now the late-stage competition comes from sovereign wealth funds and SoftBanks giant Vision Fund.) Access touts its hybrid approach: We can write big checks, and we are active investors, too.

The firm has also worked Blavatniks connections, particularly in the music industry. (An affiliate of his acquired Warner Music in 2011.) Access since backed Beats, Spotify and Deezer.

Blavatnik, who is 59, is not planning to retire anytime soon, Keffer says. But this move of hiring someone to formalize a strategy around a key person is a tricky challenge faced by all firms led by visionary investors. SoftBanks attempt to institutionalize Masayoshi Sons investment instincts didnt go as planned , for example. Keffer says his role is Less of trying to build something that recreates Len and moreso us trying to recreate a vision that aligns well with his fundamentals.

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Meet the $2.5 Billion Venture Firm You've Never Heard Of - Fortune

Econsultancy (blog)

Three digital challenges facing technology organisations Econsultancy (blog) Based on a sample of over 900 respondents working in the technology sector, the report investigates how committed tech organisations are to digital transformation, as well as how this impacts their wider customer experience strategy. Despite a digital ... and more »

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Three digital challenges facing technology organisations - Econsultancy (blog)

3 Higher Ed Lessons from the British Airways Technology Meltdown Inside Higher Ed (blog) It will be fascinating to learn what really happened at British Airways that caused its technology to fail - and how this failure grounded almost all operations. The CEO, Alex Cruz, has blamed the outage on a power surge. Critics of Cruz point out ... and more »

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3 Higher Ed Lessons from the British Airways Technology Meltdown - Inside Higher Ed (blog)

Forbes

Technology Poised To Help Store Associates, Not Replace Them Forbes Reports of robots taking over retail jobs have been greatly exaggerated. I'm talking about a recent report by Cornerstone Capital Group claiming that some 7 million retail jobs could be at risk from the threat of automation. Myself and fellow Forbes ...

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Technology Poised To Help Store Associates, Not Replace Them - Forbes

Charlotte Observer

Technology in schools: Too much of a good thing? Charlotte Observer There's no question that technology has transformed education, making it possible for students and teachers to learn in ways we couldn't have imagined even a decade ago. Students can research any subject without leaving their seats and peer edit ...

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Technology in schools: Too much of a good thing? - Charlotte Observer

MUMBAI: With advancements in the field of biometric technology, India has topped globally in adoption of biometrics techniques, says a report.

"On an average, people in India (9 per cent) are three times more likely than any other country (3 per cent) surveyed to have used 'iris recognition' to identify themselves," said the HSBC's recent 'Trust in Technology' report.

It said people in Asia and the Middle East are ahead of the West when it comes to the adoption of new technologies due to greater understanding and optimism leading to more trust.

The report was compiled from research representing views of 12,019 people from 11 countries and territories --- Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, UK and the USA.

The trust in technology and its adoption are driven not only by consumer trends, but can be encouraged by wider governmental support, it said.

The Indian government first launched the Aadhaar Project, a biometrics programme, in 2009, creating the world's largest biometric data set, said the report.

The accelerated adoption of fingerprint recognition in the East, a widespread consumer technology, highlights the contrasting perspectives, it added.

People in China (40 per cent) are the highest adopters of fingerprint technology, followed by India (31 per cent) and the UAE (25 per cent) among the countries surveyed.

On the other hand, just 9 per cent of people in France and Germany, and 14 per cent in Canada have used fingerprint technology to identify themselves, the report noted.

"Consumers living in countries in the East seem to have a better understanding and greater trust of emerging technology, and how it can benefit their lives. The speed of change and the insatiable rate of adoption put the likes of India, China and the UAE leaps ahead of most Western markets," HSBC India Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management Ramakrishnan S told PTI here.

In the case of India, a national mind set of openness coupled with government support for the roll out and promotion of new technology has had a transformative effect on the nation, he said.

The regular use of traditional technology like using password feature is most common in West, it said.

When it comes to money management, people in India (50 per cent) and China (48 per cent) agreed that computers can provide more accurate advice than humans, while it was just 18 per cent in Canada, and 21 per cent in the UK, it said.

Further, it revealed that Germany has the lowest adoption of smartphone or tablet banking with only 4 per cent claiming that phone banking is their preferred way of banking as compared to 9 per cent in Hong Kong and 15 per cent in the UAE.

However, the report said while there are clear reasons to be optimistic about the adoption and attitude of countries in the East to new technology, this is not the full story.

About 50 per cent of people in China own a fax machine and 39 per cent of people in India own a pager, the highest percentages of those countries surveyed.

While the East has overtaken the West in attitudes and adoption today, data, however, suggested that progress across the region is hugely uneven with the differences most likely between the rural and urban areas.

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India leads globally in adoption of biometric technology: Report - Economic Times