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A couple of new features

Posted on April 17, 2008 by Tim
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We’ve released a couple of usability enhancements :-

1. All users can now benefit from the ‘Ignore User’ feature on our bulletin boards.  This was previously only available to subscribers but we felt it should be available to all due to the increasing levels of postings on our boards.

2.  Logged in portfolio users can now jump between share information pages linked to their watchlist / portfolio using a convenient drop down at the top of all company charts, discussion , news pages etc.

I’m suddenly scared of dogs.

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Tim
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Even if Robocop was a favourite movie during my teens…..this US defence funded robot is just a little spooky.

An experiment with Google Maps.

Posted on March 11, 2008 by Tim
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Our main site has a very active stock bulletin board - Desire Petroleum - where the same old questions have kept cropping up over the last few years:  When is drilling going to commence? What is the price likely to be when drilling commences? And, what are the chances of of finding a commercially viable source of oil?

Everyone has their opinion,  so whilst playing around with the cool Google Maps API, I thought it would be a good way to allow investors to express theirs  whilst also highlighting on the map where exactly they thought the rig would drill first. 

The result is at : http://www.shareprice.co.uk/findtheoil/

‘Pick of the week’ launched on Facebook

Posted on March 3, 2008 by Tim
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The importance of internet based media companies such as ours embracing the social networking phenomenon and engaging with new (and existing) users on sites other than their own has been well documented.  

Facebook is one such site and for us offers a way to introduce a fun, yet competitive, game to a potential audience of millions.  In doing so we hope to extend our brand and service to a new audience whilst also offering our existing users a new point of interaction with us and fellow users.

The game is simple:-

So, if you have a Facebook profile you can add the application via :

 http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6765868926

Please help us by spreading the word to your (many) Facebook friends!

Commencing 10th March, the winner each week will receive a £100 cash prize.  This weekly prize will run for 5 weeks at which point we’ll review usage and prizes.  

‘Ask’ launched

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Tim
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Interactive Investor is one of the largest community of financially savvy individuals in the UK.  Regardless of how clued up someone is, there’s always a time when posing a question to others is useful.  The answer/s may not necessarily be right, but often raise interesting pointers to help you reach a decision.

‘Ask’ - http://www.iii.co.uk/ask/ aims to put members of the interactive investor community in touch with one another for this purpose.  It’s not a substitute for the share specific bulletin boards available and widely used on our site; but an area where broader questions about investing, money, or personal finance issues can be raised.

Whether you choose to Ask and/or answer other questions, we hope you enjoy this service.  Thank you to those involved in the beta test last year.

Feedback is welcomed via this blog.

We’re hiring.

Posted on February 12, 2008 by Tim
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Interactive Investor is looking to expand its technology group during an exciting period of growth and planned website enhancements.

Candidates should be experienced in the creation of PHP driven websites, ideally using frameworks such as PRADO or Zend.  We’re looking for people who are passionate about the code they cut and want to help us take an award winning website to the next level. 

We’re not a startup - your skills will help to benefit hundreds of thousands of savvy web users who use our site daily.

If you’re reading this then you’re probably one of them,  recruiting from our userbase is what we’d prefer - an interest in the financial markets is a plus.

Interested in having a chat?  Email me: tim[at]iii.co.uk

Survival of the ‘fittest’ ?

Posted on January 29, 2008 by Tim
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Good to see video based stock market commentary in the web2.0 world seems to have a common theme.

Today saw the official launch of ‘Stock Rockets’, hosted by Barbie Hargrave. Check her qualities out on MySpace; or I guess just watch the show.

What, with our own Susan Hickey, Wallstrip’s Julie Alexandria, MobLogic’s Lindsay Campbell : surely the average investor will struggle to consume so much information from such a bevy of fine presenters. It will be a war I tell you.

Handbags at dawn infact.

Dow Jones…where are you ?

Posted on January 25, 2008 by Tim
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As hysteria gripped the markets this week, I thought it was about time we got the Dow Jones price and graph sorted - a challenge we’ve been having with our data provider for some time now.  There was also the fact that my Uncle mentioned he had to go to the BBC website to get that price which means lots of others aren’t relying on us for index data either.

So, we tried an alternative partner.  On day two we’ve rolled back.  Gremlins in the system. Computer says “no”, all that kind of stuff.

Rest assured we’re working hard to fix this whilst introducing a number of improvements with regards to our price and fundamental data over the coming weeks and months.

Thank you for your patience.

A belated Happy New Year

Posted on January 10, 2008 by Tim
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So, after a bit of a frantic December we’ve launched the new moneywise website -  www.moneywise.co.uk.  Technically quite interesting in that it’s allowed us to explore a number of new things without the same legacy restrictions and considerations we have with interactive investor, namely:-

 1. Drupal. 

The obvious content management system / site framework for a site such as Moneywise.   That said, it’s got quite a few quirks and there have been a few challenges to customise in areas.  Other options were looked at, but only Drupal seemed to have momentum and an active developer community of any reasonable size.

2. OpenAds.  

I introduced a friend to this opensource adserver a few years back and have followed it since.  It’s a fantastic product already and having met some of the team, many of whom have experience of working on competing products (DoubleClick etc), they have a very bright future in my opinion. 

3. Google Analytics.  

For free, I don’t think anything beats it for tracking site usage and key metrics.   Interactive Investor uses HBX which is more complex and comes with a price tag.  We’ll know whether that price tag is justified having given Google Analytics a good run out.

 4. Campaign Commander (by Email Vision).  

We’ve looked at a number of outsourced email send / reporting / software companies.   Managing deliverability, ISP sender reputation, new SMTP authentication technologies, increased demands on reporting and of course the ongoing overhead of list cleansing is quite a challenge for a small IT group.   

Most companies we saw were selling vapourware or run by a bunch of crack heads;  which left…..a French company.   These chaps claim to send more email, on behalf of their clients, than anyone else in Europe.  That of course could be a bad thing.  In terms of ISP relationships and being forced to manage those extremely proactively- it’s probably a great thing.  

Anyway, we’re giving their service a trial for Moneywise newsletters prior to considering moving interactive investor’s newsletter send requirements on to them.   

5.  Since this is my geekiest post for a while, I might aswell mention other stuff we’ve used and can recommend:-

PostCode Anywhere  - a great suite of web services for address completion and user demographic data. 

Blip.TV - OK , we’re already using them for iBall ; but this is a great video publishing platform - now used for the Moneywise videos too.

Crysis - Not project related but it’s often easy to forget just what PCs are capable of when working on websites. It’s all a bit static and text based really, for an obvious reason.  The gaming industry is one I admire greatly and this release pushes the boundaries in terms of visuals and gameplay to a completely new level.   It’s games like this that stop me from having those ‘what the hell am I working for at this time of…..

<LAUNCHING>>>>>>>>

Aunty loves GAP.

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Tim
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It wasn’t long ago that email systems administrators would be kindly advising their colleagues not to simply forward on the latest virus warning to thousands of their contacts in the hope of being their saviour, certainly without validating it first.

Most of course were a hoax, typically triggered by some bored kid wanting to make an impact on global bandwidth and disk space rather than consume more porn.

Then, the marketing departments caught wind of the viral email effect and have very sucessfully tapped in to the high number of ’suckers’ (I’ll refrain myself here) who forward on leaked offers to their thousand of mates - a percentage of whom are also suckers. Accidental discounts; bugs in websites; secret logins : all of which usually mean vastly discounted products for sale….in theory.

Now then, that’s not to say it never happens.  E-commerce systems go wrong frequently and there are of course genuine discount offers out there; but the merchant is rarely in a legal position where they have to honour the thousands of orders for plasma screens priced at 2p.  Of course not, the Sales of Goods Act or whatever legislation ‘common sense’ hides behind covers them more than adequately.

Which is why it’s disappointing when major brands continue to pull this stunt and the media promote it further without thinking it through.  Not for the first time,  GAP has ‘leaked’ out an offer to the internet - this time apparantly offering 60% discount if a user presents a print out of the PDF attachment at the till.  The story goes that it was created by a disgruntled employee.  Yeah, sure. 

GAP of course then become the hero by stating that they’ll provide a (reduced) discount anyway to anyone who presents the voucher.  Seemingly the marketing department weren’t satisfied with the uptake of the 30% offer they had authorised so they thought they’d spin it.  More people in store = more purchases that perhaps would never have happened = more money.

All very clever perhaps, however it really didn’t need to be item number four in this morning’s Breakfast News on BBC stating how GAP had been the victim, did it ?  How much more exposure can one viral campaign need, without the leading morning news TV channel covering the story ?

Of course, within a year we’ll all be getting so many offers that most will be ignored, legit or not, thankfully like those virus hoax emails.   Plus of course the follow-on brands (with second rate marketing departments?) will try the same stunt, so we’ll be getting 500 Creme Eggs for the price of 10 at Woolworth offers…or something.    

Next viral idea anyone ?

keep looking »