PAUL Wants to Pre-Load Your YouTube Videos

The award for clever app name of the year goes to PAUL, an app named for the octopus who correctly predicted the outcome of Germany’s 7 matches in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The Android app, created by inmobly, uses a predictive cache/download algorithm to provide videos that match your preferences, even without a data connection, based on videos you have watched in the past.  The service currently uses five major video sharing services – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, CNN, and ESPN ScoreCenter, with plenty of room for expansion in the future.  The service dramatically reduces network strain, but is also exciting for its potential to collect a gold mine of preference information.