Tag: FINANCE

Google has launched a new mobile-optimized way to display search results for stocks. This works around the inherent limitations of how much information can be shown at once on a phone's small screen by letting you swipe horizontally to navigate. When you search for your favorite stock ticker symbol on your smartphone, you'll be presented with a result page that can be seen to the left in ...

A good mobile application is a fine balance between simplicity and functionality. You're using it on the go, so you don't have a lot of time to sit there and fumble with the phone to figure it all out. But you also need it to be powerful enough to let you do whatever it is you're trying to get done. Hello Expense is one mobile app that gets it right. It's an expense tracker that lets you use ...

PayPal has (very) quietly released an application for Nokia Symbian smartphones, which is now available to download from Nokia's Ovi Store. It only seems to be downloadable if you're in the U.S. or U.K. at the moment, but support for more countries is probably on its way -- after all, the Ovi Store is perhaps the most global of all smartphone app stores. The PayPal app for Symbian is free, ...

Have you ever been part of a rental where one room is a lot smaller than the others? It's not often you come across an apartment or a house where all the bedrooms are the same size, but how do you split the rent so that it's a fair representation of the place? Split the Rent is a Web app that works out the proportion of the rent each roommate should be paying. It works by asking a series of ...

The United States Internal Revenue Service has launched a mobile application for iOS and Android, hoping to make dealing with taxes less stressful. The app is called IRS2Go and lets all taxpayers access helpful information. Entering your Social Security Number, which will be masked and encrypted by the app, along with your filing status and expected refund amount, will result in the app showing ...

With an investment of $450 million by investment bank Goldman Sachs, Facebook has just increased its valuation to $50 billion, placing it above Yahoo and eBay, but still some way off giants Google, Oracle, Apple and Microsoft. Back in November, Mark Zuckerberg dispelled claims that an IPO was in Facebook's immediate future, but these continuing, massive private investments would suggest that an ...

Dwolla (you probably have to say it out loud to get it) is a newish entrant into the online payments world. It lets you send money to your Facebook or Twitter friends, or, obviously, receive money from them. Once you connect your Dwolla account to your social networking accounts, it will automatically import your friends lists, and you can start giving -- or receiving. You can also create 'hub' ...

Visa has launched an iOS application that shows you offers based on your location. There are currently over 50 merchant offers, in areas including clothing, entertainment and dining. The app allows retailers, among which are Planet Hollywood, Holiday Inn, Hard Rock Cafe, Zales and New York & Company, to automatically deliver offers to Visa account holders based on their location. Those who ...

Joining many other print publishers, The Economist has just launched apps for iOS, PaidContent reports. There are two separate apps available, one optimized for the iPad, and one for the iPhone. Both contain all the material from the print editions, but there are no fancy UI effects here, compared to other magazines -- it's all nice and subtle touches to make the reading experience enjoyable. ...

Most carriers don't just offer one cellphone package; you usually get a wide variety of options – how many text messages per month, how much data traffic, how many minutes, etc. Up until today, I would usually lean towards the "unlimited" options, just because it made me feel safer. After all, nobody likes to find out at the end of the month that they were charged extra for going over the ...

Kapitall is one of the most impressive finance-related websites I've recently come across. The site requires registration (which is free, but you do have to opt out of their newsletter) -- but in return it provides you with an incredible amount of financial data. The experience is very visual. You get a large canvas, which they call "the Playground." You can search for companies by their stock ...

Cost of living calculations are really tricky. They require a ton of data, and the data keeps shifting and changing. So, when you're trying to figure out the relative difference in cost of living between two places, it's best to have more than one source. Some time ago, I wrote about Expatistan, and commenter Jack recommended Numbeo in reply. He says that it "seems to be a bit better," and I tend ...

Converter is an old, mature Firefox add-on that provides solid unit conversions. When I say "old," I mean that version 0.1 alpha was released in 2004 – it actually preceded Firefox v1.0. The latest version was released on December 5, 2009. I'm not sure if development is still ongoing or not, but to be honest, I am not sure what remains to be added to this Swiss Army unit conversion ...

Calcmoolator is a very neat collection of task-specific calculators, with a cute bovine mascot. The site provides an enormous number of calculators, like "Auto Lease vs. Buy", "Tip Calculator" (shown above), "Canadian Mortage", and even "Cost of a Baby" (a weird one, but it must come in handy for some people). The site looks very clean. Once you enter all of the variables and hit Calculate you ...

TradingSim is an Flash-based day trading simulator. You can practice buying and selling all sorts of securities without involving (and risking) any money. Some might say I should have put this under our "time-wasters" category, but I think it can actually be a useful tool for people who are looking into day trading (that's how I found it). The market for trading simulators (and training in ...