Rich? Yes. Smart? Maybe… Internet speed record… More WiFi hotspots… Video on demand, in demand…

Rich? Yes. Smart? Not necessarily…

Researchers at Ohio State University in the US have found there is no link between high IQ and wealth, The Australian reports.

The study found that although intelligent people tend to have high incomes, the very richest entrepreneurs and business leaders recorded IQ scores all over the chart.

The study also found that people with very high IQs were more likely to have had financial difficulties than those with slightly above-average intelligence, although people with low IQ were the most likely to find themselves in trouble.

“People don’t become rich just because they are smart,” says Dr Jay Zagorsky, the leader of the study. “Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth. And being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty.”

Internet speed record

Breaking a world speed record sounds exciting and dangerous and conjures up visions of fast cars and planes. This century the picture is different. A group of researchers led by the University of Tokyo have broken the internet speed records – twice in two days, reports the Australian Financial Review.

High speed network Internet2 researchers sent data at 7.67 gigabits a second, using standard communications protocols on December 30 last year. The next day they used modified protocols to break the record again by sending data over the same 20,000-mile path at 9.08 Gbps. That probably represents the current network’s final record.

To put this into perspective, the records were hundreds of times faster than Australia’s high-speed broadband, ADSL2+, which runs at up to 20Mbps.

More WiFi hotspots

There will be a nearly 25% jump in hotspots where internet users can get wireless access worldwide this year to 179,500 according to ABI Research.

Growth in China has been much slower than originally anticipated. But the Asia-Pacific region will come close to matching the number of North American hotspots by 2012.

Europe remains the market leader with more than 70,000 hotspots. One major driver of Wi-Fi hot spots is retail establishments. McDonald’s is making rapid progress in turning its 4000 European locations into hotspots.

Video in demand

New figures from online intelligence service Hitwise, show that Australian internet users are ready for getting movies, TV shows, music videos and games online, instead of from bricks and mortar rental stores. The new video-on-demand service from Anytime and Fairfax Digital, Anytime on VOLT, which was launched on April 17, debuted in fifth position within the Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds, video and games industry, making up 4.09% market share for the week ending April 21, 2007.

Anytime on VOLT ranked ahead of existing video-on-demand providers, Big Pond Movies at seventh, and Reeltime at 81st. Mail-order service, EzyDVD was the leader in the Shopping & Classifieds, video and games category, with 10.55% share, and has been the number one website based on monthly visits for the past 24 months.

BitTorrent.com, software that allows high-speed content delivery through peer-to-peer networks, received the highest volume of searches on the term “bittorrent” and ranked at 1095 in Hitwise, all categories, compared to 386 for EzyDvd. Joost, which similarly offers interactive software for distributing television and video content online, has started to pick up traction among Australian internet users, increasing its ranking in the computers & internet – software category from 1061 for the week ending February 3, 2007, to 532 for the week ending April 21.

More than a third of visitors to the shopping & classifieds – video & games category were aged 18–24, and numbers were evenly divided between males and females.