Time was when using a mobile to help you with your stock portfolio consisted mainly of yelling “Sell, sell, SELL!” into a handset the size of a small family car while ignoring the disparaging looks from fellow train passengers.
Today, keeping track of share prices is a far more sedate affair, thanks to the combo of an S60 phone, My Portfolio and Google Finance.
Google Finance is yet another of Google’s online services - this time focused on tracking stock market indexes and share performance. It’s a free signup (if you use GMail, etc you already have a login) and you can use it to create and monitor a personal portfolio of share prices.
My Portfolio is a freeware app for Symbian S60 3rd Edition from SymbianGuru that connects to a Google Finance account and downloads regular updates on how well the listed companies are performing.
The app also lists the share history and an overview about each company.
There is no guarantee that this will stop you losing a fortune, but at least the app itself is free.
It looks like the rumors about Motorola throwing in the towel that have been doing the rounds lately are true. The handset manufacturer has just issued a press release stating that it is
…exploring the structural and strategic realignment of its businesses to better equip its Mobile Devices business to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value. The company’s alternatives may include the separation of Mobile Devices from its other businesses in order to permit each business to grow and better serve its customers.
Sounds like corporate speak for dumping an under performing division and putting it out to tender for the highest bidder. What is interesting is that usually when this sort of thing happens, who has bought the company is usually the first thing that the public gets to hear. Just to follow our wild speculation through to its conclusion you might forgive us for assuming that perhaps there have already been negotiations about a sale but without an agreement on price, prompting Motorola’s announcement.
Either way the brand will no doubt be snapped up sooner or later and in the meantime it looks like it is time to shed a tear for the RAZR, a phone that once looked like it was the start of a bright future for Motorola. It’s a funny old world innit…
(Via Unwired View)
You know when you have found a good mobile app when you start wishing it was part of a phone’s standard user interface.
TextQuick, an S60 app from Mind Flip software is such a simple, useful idea that I’m amazed that Nokia hasn’t incorporated it into the S60 Contacts function as an alternate view.
The app lists all your contacts in text-frequency order - those you text most frequently at the top, the people you never text at the bottom.
Creating a new message (or placing a call) is as simple as highlighting a name and pressing the D-pad - no more typing the first couple of letters of people’s names or making contacts called ‘001 Mum’, etc.
TextQuick can take a second or so to start so the latest release has the option keep the program running in the background for faster activation.
TextQuick costs $9.99 from Handango, with a one-month free trial.
Well, they would do, given that Apple’s handset could make them even more squillions of dollars of revenue in the coming years. But Google’s top execs have been speaking out about their love for the iPhone anyway, with co-president Sergey Brin waxing lyrical about the new My Location feature on Google Maps.
“I was at a conference in Switzerland. I was able to find a really small hotel, then switch over to the satellite view on my phone to figure out I needed to take a funicular to get up there. It was a really amazing experience.”
Meanwhile, chief executive Eric Schmidt had more business issues behind his praise of the handset (although he is on Apple’s board of directors, it’s worth noting). “The iPhone is the first of a whole generation of products that will be much more search intensive. With those search opportunities comes ad monetization.”
Will Google be so keen to talk up the iPhone when the first handsets based on its own Android mobile platform appear later this year though?
(via New York Times)
Regular readers may remember my review of the PimpMyNews iPhone web app, which reads out text stories from a host of blogs and online news sites. I thought it could be a hit if the app got the same personalisation features as the main PimpMyNews site, and now the company behind it has been in touch to say that they’ve done just that.
You can now access your PimpMyNews Favorites Playlist on the iPhone version, allowing you to set up a custom feed of your favourite sources and have them read out to you on the go. It’s a great inclusion, and shows that the iPhone site is developing at a swift pace.
Oh, and Pocket Picks can now be found in the Technology>Apple category. Which is a bonus!
PimpMyNews for iPhone link
