iPhone optimised service launched
Posted on October 15, 2007 by Tim
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OK, you can laugh about how my <cough> ‘imported’ iPhone is a useless brick if I choose to upgrade it to Apple’s latest firmware; however early adoption does have it’s benefits.
The iPhone has two challenges currently. Whilst it displays web pages in all their glory (minimised), the pain of scrolling, zooming and accidentally clicking on wrong links due to their close proximity can get a little frustrating. Second that with the more serious dilemma of having to download fully sized webpages over GPRS (expect a 3G model in 2008) and you quickly realise that the mobile internet isn’t all it’s cracked up to be on this otherwise beautiful piece of engineering.
One evening I stumbled across http://www.digg.com/iphone , the Digg site designed specifically for the touch screen capabilities and dimensions of the device. Looks rubbish in a normal browser, so what, visit www.digg.com for the full experience next time you’re at your desk.
So, on the assumption that there’s thousands of interactive investor users who, like us, are suckers for the next best thing, we present interactive investor for the iPhone - www.iii.co.uk/iphone. Easy access to your portfolio, quotes, charts, news, latest discussion threads, editorial, and some ideas for your next credit card / loan / savings account.
Roll on the 9th November.
The name’s Terry Tibbs. Talk to me.
Posted on October 5, 2007 by Tim
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I like Fonejacker, particularly the character Terry Tibbs (catch up at Channel4 OD). A wheeler dealer of note, tells you how it is.
If only everyone operated like him, deals and decisions would get made so much quicker.
It’s not really like that though. I’m continually bombarded by software and IT solutions companies, and so are many of my colleagues. Inevitably some of their warez look interesting and we take a look. But it’s at the point of being partially interested that so many companies we deal with fall down.
I’m in italics.
“So, what’s the price?”
“Well, that depends on when you’re looking to buy and how many x of y you’re going to buy over n years”.
“Oh, but what about buying it in the way that’s relevant for my business needs?”
“OK, but when are you looking to commit?”
“Not sure, can you give me a price and I’ll work out how it might fit in to my budgets and development road map.”
“Right, no problem. The price is £x”
At that point I typically go away and digest. The price they’ve given me in my mind is what they consider to be the fair market value for their product, I always ask them for their best price. I also understand the economics of closing deals at quarter, half year or year end.
– 2 weeks or a month typically go by. I’m invariably called 20 times. Ultimately it leads to the following –
“I just wanted you to know that if you can commit by x then the price can be reduced substantially.”
“I think I asked for your best price initially?”
“Yes, but it depends on what your net value per client is”
“What has that got to do with you? Your pricing is based on no risk and now you’re trying to factor in how much money we earn from the number of x we require on your z ?”
“Yes. I didn’t mention that. It also will depend on how many modules of b you take and whether it’s hosted at r or s”
“Goodbye.”
Keep the deals simple !!!
About our Technical Insight service
Posted on October 3, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Technology, Tools of the Trade | Leave a Comment
Today we launched a new service called ‘Technical Insight’.
It can be accessed currently via the tabs at the top of any UK / US share or index page, here for example. You will need to be logged in to our site to access the new tool.
The service offers tools that allow investors and traders to perform independent research on financial instruments and sectors using technical analysis. The result is a simple-to-use tool that makes it easy to incorporate technical analysis into day-to-day decision-making, even for those who are new to this form of investment research.
There’s always been debate amongst our community as to the value of charting / TA; however we believe the service can be used to compliment existing research and investment strategies, and we hope provide a number of trading ideas. We’d welcome your feedback via this blog.
Some useful tutorials are available here :-
An intro to Technical Analysis
How to use preset searches
Web based live chat support
Posted on October 1, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Technology | 2 Comments
How many times has web based live support chat worked for me? None. It’s clearly something that’s very hard to get right and do well.
An example of my (last?) attempt today:-
tim has joined the room
Hi, I am sara. How may I assist You?
tim says: Hello. Are you human?
sarah says: yes
tim says: I have a query regarding order 12977
<software disconnects>
tim has joined the room
Hi, I am sara. How may I assist You?
tim says: yes, hello again
sara says:jumail
tim says:what happened there, I seem to have got cut off
tim says:what does jumail mean ?
tim says:anyway, I’m missing an item on order 12977
sara has left the room
—-
At that point I reach for the phone and get no response. How about Sara, she’s free surely? Oh no, she’s left the room.
Rubbish.
Quotestream upgrade
Posted on September 12, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Quotestream | Leave a Comment
The upgrade planned I highlighted earlier has now taken place. What, with holidays, it became safer to delay for a short while.
This morning your browser may warn about insecure content within a secure environment. You are safe to proceed by accepting this content, at which point the Java applet will appear. If you originally said ‘No’ to the warning then reload the Quotestream launch page. We will correct this asap today.
Please let us have your feedback via the comments feature of this blog.
When the ‘good times’ get tough
Posted on September 11, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
The level of UK consumer debt seems to be raising a few eyebrows. Finally.
May I suggest the following sketch forms the backbone of school children’s personal finance education, recently introduced in to the national curriculum. Now excuse me whilst I go and find a better rate for my credit card.
Flash! Ahhhh-ahhh!
Posted on September 5, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Technology | 3 Comments
Message to all those creative types producing banner ads:-
INTRUSIVE ADS ARE DAMAGING TO YOUR CLIENT’S BRAND!! That’s what I hear from our users anyway. Specifically :-
- Expandable ads that take over the page without a mouseover (should be a mouseclick ideally, but I’ll let you off that one)
- Sound effects that play without prompting. WTF!! Sure, if I’ve chosen to view your streaming ad then no doubt it’s part of a very compelling experience; but I don’t want to hear a rocket ship, chicken, car starting up, crying baby, etc. at 40db over the top of my latest (legal) MP3 download thanks. It’s like those cheesy webpages from the 1990’s that play a midi file on entry…because umm they can.
- Ads that looks so sweet that someone forgets to check the click through URL is correct
- And yes, pop ups and pop unders.
No decent company wishing to respect its customers and prospective customers should entertain any of the above. It’s times the agencies preached the same rather than allowing the ‘flash guy’ to run riot.
The answer to higher click-through’s is surely relevance, positioning and a good product / service experience.
Accuracy of data
Posted on August 31, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Project Ninja | Leave a Comment
We’ve had a few users complain about the accuracy of our equity data over the last few months and we’re aware of intermittent issues around closing price and the Dow Jones in particular.
Needless to say, this is a very important part of our service and we’re working furiously to swap out the data feed at the same time as introduce a number of site enhancements - particularly around the portfolio tool.
Please bear with us, this work is phase one of a number of improvements to the core interactive investor proposition - the portfolio, market data and community tools.
If you wish to be a beta tester of our forthcoming new services then do please drop me an email: tim ‘at’ iii.co.uk (replace ‘at’ with @).
Lost in hyperspace
Posted on August 14, 2007 by Richard
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- A little less funny, and…
- A lot less technological, while at the same time…
- Pointing out that for all their hacking and weaving, the iPhone wielding architects of the Internet age still can’t do a tenth of what us ‘users’ want.
I was reminded of this watching Matt Mullenweg on Wallstrip. Mullenweg is the baby-faced brain behind Wordpress, the software powering the Interactive Investor blogs and a gazillion others. Here’s the video:
There’s a bit in it where Matt says:
When Wordpress got started in 2003, people said it was too late. Blogging was done, all the software that needed to be there, was there. The market was saturated. Obviously that turned out not to be true.
I’ve got news for you Matt, you haven’t finished yet (I hope). Much as I admire your software and blogs in general, they’re rubbish at talking to each other. I’m talking about comments and trackbacks. Trackbacks differ from comments in that they are responses written on other blogs, excerpted and jumbled up with regular comments on the blog they reference.
I don’t know about you, but it’s hard sometimes to figure out what exactly the trackbacks and comments are referring to, out of context, lined up like bunch of miss-fits in an identity parade at the end of a blog post. Wouldn’t it be great if you could highlight a bit of text on a Web page and comment then and there, or include a paragraph from one blog directly in another?
It turned out would-be users figured this out, years ago. As long ago as sixty-two years ago, but it’s taking the technologists a while to implement it. They’re probably busy fiddling with their iPhones 
First iphone’s in the city?
Posted on August 13, 2007 by Tim
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I doubt it. But having burnt our credit cards in San Francisco, broken the AT&T activation (in the name of research & development) , and signed up for City wide wi-fi access via the Cloud - we’re probably the first able to frequent the local bars in the evening whilst staying in touch with our email on the world’s coolest mobile device.
Nothing like whopping out an iphone for maximum impact.
Back to the R&D part, our site looks fine on it - which is to be expected really…the iphone packs a full version of Safari - the popular browser for OS X. No “Flash” as yet, but it will probably come in future updates.
The Stock Widget (Yahoo) also works nicely. Unfortunately there’s no sign of any access to the widget environment or development documentation as yet; so whilst we plan to launch a Mac OS X desktop widget for portfolio and quotes shortly it’s unlikely to reach the iphone any time soon. Certainly something we’ll be keeping an eye on.
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