March 2012
2 posts
6 tags
Gartner, What Is The Future Of IT On Wall Street?
Yesterday I attended the “Hot Technologies in 2012 Local Briefing” for the financial services industry hosted by Gartner. The venue was primarily for CIO’s of large financial firms.
They discussed a few interesting trends that I believe are very important for the street.
IT is losing control.
IT budgets are being cut or stagnated and being moved outside of the CIO’s...
5 tags
What is the Best Way to Distribute an Ad-Hoc...
Distributing ad-hoc releases of your iOS apps used to be a real pain. However, recently we’ve been using a product called TestFlight (http://testflightapp.com) that’s made it a cake walk.
Here’s how it works:
Create a team of users. All you need is a name and email address for each user. Testflight will send each member a link to the TestFlight iOS app. When the member...
October 2011
10 posts
3 tags
Online Brokers Could Learn a Few Things From 8...
At TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing today, 8 Securities showed off a financial dashboard for trading that’s different than anything that I’ve seen. Simple to use, social and very fast. Take a look.
5 tags
Why Don't Android Phones Get Updated?
This is a great post from the understatement. Check out the chart below on the fragmentation of OS’s on Android devices:
This chart represents the manufacturers support of the latest OS for each smartphone device. And it doesn’t look pretty for Android devices.
So why don’t Android devices get updated?
According to Michael Degusta, “Obviously a big part of the...
4 tags
Will the Nokia Lumia Windows Phones Go Big or...
This is what many Microsoft groupies have been waiting for. Can the Microsoft/Nokia alliance pull MSFT out of the past in the smartphone business? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Steven Overman, who heads up Nokia’s marketing strategy, said during the keynote that Nokia needs to drive demand for the product by making these consumers lust for for the Lumia devices. I’m not sure...
2 tags
Very Soon, Every Person At Facebook Is Going To Be...
The the recent Web 2.0 Summit, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor claims “A few years from now, most every single person at Facebook who works there is going to be working on mobile almost exclusively.”
Should CTO’s take note. I think yes.
It seems that VC’s are also telling portfolio companies to focus on mobile first, web second.
3 tags
Mobile Social Escalates, 40 Million Americans...
Here’s more evidence of the mobile/social revolution.
comScore estimates that nearly one-third of all U.S. mobile users are now accessing social media services, and that close to 40 million Americans are doing so on an almost daily basis.
5 tags
Mary Meeker Says iPad Growth Leaves Siblings in...
Mary Meeker made some interesting points at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday in San Francisco. One to note is outlined in the graph below.
Take a look at the acceleration of the iPad versus the iPhone and iPod, shown in shipments per quarter. Apple currently controls 74% of all tablets sold in the United States, said Tim Cook at a recent Apple Keynote.
I find this hard to believe, but facts are...
4 tags
iOS5 Twitter Integration Increased Twitter Signups...
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo yesterday at a Web 2.0 dinner stated that “the recent iOS 5 Twitter integration has notably increased signups 3x”.
This means that many of the companies that have popular iPhone apps have already implemented the iOS 5 Twitter features.
That’s what I thought at first. But after further investigation, I realized that most of these additional signups are...
4 tags
iPhone 4S Sales Top 4 Million First Weekend
I think the most impressive figure noted in this article is the fact that 25 million Apple devices are now running iOS 5.
This means 21 million people have gone through the painful task of attaching their device to a PC to update the OS.
I wonder if, like me, they were hoping for Siri as part of the upgrade.
4 tags
Android App Number to Exceed iPhone by Summer
Xyologic, a startup that searches and indexes through App Store data, recently published some interesting data regarding the App space.
According to Xyologic projections, by August 2012 there will be an equal number of apps available for the Android as there are for the iPhone, at roughly 680,000 apps available for both platforms.
Also, according to Xyologic, the total app downloads for...
5 tags
Why don't I See Siri on my iPhone 4?
I was all excited last night when I downloaded iOS 5.0 for my iPhone 4. I was really wired to use the new Siri technology, but to my dismay apparently Siri is not available for the iPhone 4, only the 4S.
I guess it makes sense for Apple to leave out this feature for “legacy” phones. Here’s a thread from the Apple support community on the topic. It makes me want to upgrade...
September 2011
5 posts
6 tags
iOS 5.0 Killer Feature is ARC
Apple finally realized that the masses of newbie iOS programmers out there, most coming from the Java world, really don’t get it.
iOS memory management is just too difficult for most of these developers that have never coded in C, C++ or Objective-C, beyond maybe a college introductory course.
According to Apple:
Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) for Objective-C makes memory ...
5 tags
UBS Problem: Access to Data?
This is crazy. The latest news is that the CEO resigned over the weekend and the CIO takes over as interim CEO.
The straw that broke the camels back? The $2.3 billion loss last week by rogue trader.
I don’t have all the inner details of what went on here, but there is one common theme I’ve seen over the years of working with IT for financial firms. The real issue is that many of...
2 tags
Tumblr Rocks, but $800m Valuation?
I use Tumblr all the time, in fact this blog runs on Tumblr. WSJ reported an $85 million investment from a series of investors including Sir Richard Branson. According to insiders, this puts the value of the company around $800 million.
Apparently there are 30 million blogs on Tumblr now, an impressive number. No wonder my blog slows down at times during the day, especially in the evening.
3 tags
General Assembly, Good Stuff!
I just attended my first General Assembly presentation tonight in NYC and I was truly impressed. If all of the presentations are this good, I’ll be attending more in the future.
Tonight, the topic was “The Business of Big Data” by Brad Gillespie, Ben Siscovick (IA Ventures). How do companies harness and leverage the massive amounts of data being produced via the Internet and...
5 tags
Our Latest App. Finster, A Social Check-In App for...
This project was a lot more work than we had originally anticipated, especially on a part-time basis. Many thanks to all to all that participated!
Check out the quick 2 minute video below.
So why a check-in app for stocks? I believe the concept of sharing stock picks and market ideas with followers via a social network is very cool.
Using Finster you can quickly express your views on a...
August 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Almost Free, HP TouchPad Dropped to $99
I wrote an article a few weeks ago entitled “Message to HP CEO: Give Away the TouchPad or Lose”.
I’m not sure why anyone would buy one, even at $99, now that HP has declared they are basically getting out of the business. I suppose people are assuming that someone will buy the beleaguered division and all will be fine.
If they continue at $99 or less, maybe it will.
5 tags
GOOD, Replacing Blackberry Devices on Wall Street
There’s a trend going on right now that doesn’t help RIM with their cherished Wall Street clients. I’m seeing this all over the place. People are tired of carrying two mobile devices, a corporate Blackberry and a personal Android or iPhone. Many IT departments on Wall Street are incorporating technology from GOOD to solve this problem. And saving big $$$ for the company. If you...
3 tags
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital
I just finished this book by Carlota Perez, written in 2002, and I highly recommend it to anyone that is interested in how technological revolutions play out over time.
A couple of months ago Fred Wilson mentioned it on his blog and it was out of print. I had to buy it used. But probably due to his recommendation it’s now available new on Amazon.
The book seems to be accurate and...
4 tags
HP Permanently Drops TouchPad Price
If you haven’t been following this, HP dropped their price last weekend by $100 per unit, to $399. And now they are making the price permanent.
Are they crazy! I’m still convinced that HP should give this device away. I wrote an article about it a few weeks ago. They need market share and to hell with the price. Here’s a strategy: gain market share by giving it away, and...
July 2011
1 post
6 tags
Message to HP CEO: Give Away the TouchPad or Lose
Let’s analyze the space for a moment. Apple has sold over 25 million iPads, has over 90,000 iPad apps and another 300,000 iPhone apps that will run on the iPad. They invented this market and totally dominate it at this time. HP today introduced its competitor, the TouchPad, at the same price as the iPad ($499) with roughly 300 apps in the store. So I’m a consumer walking into Best Buy, which...
June 2011
1 post
4 tags
Announcement, but no App? State Street "Launches"...
Wall Street firms must be getting mighty desparate to release iPad and iPhone apps. Tuesday, State Street issued a press release about it’s up and coming iPad app, not to be released until fall.
Knowing what it takes to get an iOS app built, approved and released by a Wall Street firm (legal approvals, compliance approvals, IT security blessings, etc), I hope they can live up to the...
May 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Morgan Stanley Brokers Will Use Twitter & LinkedIn...
This is huge for a wall street firm. As reported by Mashable:
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney’s financial advisers have gotten the go ahead to market themselves on Twitter and LinkedIn, marking the first time a major wealth manager was able to employ social media for that use.
This is in reference to self-promotion using social media. But, perhaps the wall in general is starting to come down.
...
3 tags
More Disruption from Square - Cash Register Shall...
This is disruption at it’s finest. Square introduced their Register product on Monday, rendering the cash register obsolete, or at least unnecessary for many merchants.
Square has already shipped over 500,000 Square credit card readers consumers. Why would a small retailer buy a new cash register when a $500 iPad will do the same, and much more?
The full article on Wired.com.
3 tags
Tablet Owners Use Desktop Less or Not At All
I know this is “spot on” in my case. Since I bought my iPad last year, I find myself using my desktop and laptop less and many times not a all.
Neilson Report - When asked whether they used other connected devices more often or less often since purchasing a tablet, 35 percent of tablet owners who also owned a desktop computer reported using their desktop less often or not at...
April 2011
8 posts
5 tags
I Take Credit Cards on my iPhone
I’ve been using this product for about 9 months now and it rocks! With your iPhone you can take credit card payments from anyone, anytime.
Your friend owes you $50, “yes I take credit cards Mark”.
Now Apple has fully embraced the product by putting it into the Apple store last week. They are most likely taking a cut of the transaction fee, but for Twitter founder Jack...
5 tags
How to Stream Video to an iPhone or iPad
This might seem like a simple process, and it really is, after you scour the web looking for the right documentation and bug fix workarounds from other developers.
This article covers the simple technical details of streaming a single video from a web server on an iOS device.
Our requirements were simple. Take a simple video, in MP4 format (or .MOV or something similar), and stream this video...
3 tags
Interactive Brokers Quietly Introduces mobileTWS...
I couldn’t find a formal press release on this product, but last week I received an email from IB announcing a version of their mobileTWS product for the iPhone.
I think IB is one of the best online brokers out there.
You can check out the app details in the iTunes store.
5 tags
TD Ameritrade Announces an iPad App for Investment...
The institutional app space seems to be heating up. TD Ameritrade announces VEO Mobile for iPAD.
JERSEY CITY, N.J.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Advisors that custody with TD Ameritrade Institutional can now access critical market and client account information on the go with the new Veo Mobile App for iPad. TD Ameritrade Institutional, a division of TD Ameritrade, Inc., a...
5 tags
Online Broker Thinks by 2013 App Access will...
I just took a quick gander at this video released from TD Ameritrade where they are claiming that they will see more mobile app based access to their systems than PC based access by 2013.
With traders increasingly looking for customized mobile solutions, TD Ameritrade recently rolled out apps for the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows phone and Android, and has seen its mobile trading...
4 tags
Barclays Capital Launches Research For iPad
A longtime friend of mine wanted to get my company involved in this project but it never panned out.
I heard that Barclay’s hired a 3rd party to build this iPad app on the cheap. The 3rd party gets to keep the IP and sell it to other wall street firms.
Not a bad deal for the 3rd party. It also might not be a bad deal for Barclay’s depending on the quality of the app. I...
3 tags
iPhone 5 Won't Support Contactless Payments
This makes sense. I saw this article from Penny Crosman at Banktech.com this morning.
Apple has a way of doing things their own way and I think in this case they are going to attempt to push the old infrastructure aside, in the same way they dictated their own terms with the initial launch of the iPhone.
Why should Apple give the carriers or the credit card companies the opportunity to profit...
8 tags
Security for iPhone/iPad Banking Apps
Apparently, according to a recent survey, 54% of Bankers Call Creating Mobile Corporate Banking Services A High Priority.
Yet their primary concern is mobile device security. Asked about the biggest barriers to growth in mobile corporate banking, 77% cited fraud and security concerns.
Having designed and led a team to build an iPhone/iPad app for a major wall street bank, I know first hand...
March 2011
3 posts
8 tags
RIM In Trouble
Everyone knows RIM is in trouble. Last Friday RIM shares lost 10% of their value based upon poor earnings (Reuters).
Some believe that RIM can reverse its fortunes with the introduction of the QNX operating system, which will make its debut on the PlayBook.
I personally think that RIM is too far behind the iPad. Apple has almost an 2 year advantage with the iPad, over 65,000 apps written...
8 tags
Google Mobile Payments
This is going to be huge. Moving your credit cards to your mobile phone means that my real-life wallet will shrink by about 90%.
Google announced a deal today (Wall Street Journal) with MasterCard and Citigroup for it’s Android platform. Verifone, the manufacturer of most of the retail credit card terminals is also invovled.
The tech used is called Near Field Communication (NFC). ...
3 tags
The iPad Invades Wall Street
This was posted on AdvancedTrading.com a couple of weeks ago. An interview with Kevin McPartland, from Tabb Group, written by Justin Grant about hedge funds use of the iPad. I agree that the iPad is primarily going to be used by hedge fund managers to review portfolio exposure, watching returns and monitoring risk. Not for trading.
Article Excerpt: Compliance departments across Wall Street...
January 2011
1 post
5 tags
April 2010
1 post
3 tags
E-Commerce is Dead
Let me rephrase this, e-commerce is dead for companies that don’t have a unique product. So if you’re not an Amazon or an Overstock, and you’re trying to sell a tangible product than anyone can sell, forget it. That game is over.
Roughly seven or eight years ago, you had a chance. Around the fall of 2003, a good friend of mine and I embarked on an effort to get into the...