TradeOffNews Blog

Go grab the update in the App Store.

The next version of StockAdvisor is being reviewed by Apple as we speak. Notable changes will include:

- Improved OS 3.0 compatibility for web browser
- New Setting allowing you to control default landing tab
- Refresh button allowing manual update of portfolio prices
- Minor UI improvements
- Fixed issues related to Graph UI and device rotation
- Fixed rare crash issue related to memory management during synchronized updates and user scrolling

Thanks to all our customers.

1.1.1 is live. Grab it now from the App Store.

As all of you know, the method of reviewing application on the iTunes store is poor at best. Coming from software development backgrounds whereby the customer feedback process ties heavily into the development loop, the current implementation of the review system on the App store is weak. Many other developers share similar comments. The good thing is that many people actually take the time to research the vendor (via a website or review sites) before they make a purchase - bottom line reviews on the app store are just one data point. This is good for those that research but leaves us as developers at a disadvantage for those that look to the app store reviews as the “master” data point.

Case and point, lets talk about one of the current reviews that was just put up:

“Update.ok fine. The developers have added support for TSX. The problem is last-trade prices are completely inaccurate. For example agnico mines, where the last trade was between 54 and 55. StockAdvisor showed 46. A huge 10 dollar difference. So before submitting any update, I believe the developers should check the accuracy of the update.Do remember that this is not a game application. It’s a real world finance world- application……………It doesn’t show anything for Techcominco….Goodness. Many other tickers are also don’t show up in this application….furthermore not TSX support….!!!! And I paid 20$ for this….Developers must fix this….!!!” - 1 star

Ok so a couple points. Firstly, let me tell you that this person spent about 1 minute checking the app to make these  assertions. The last trade prices are accurate, they are real time feeds and looking at his specific example, they fail to note that they added the NYSE Agnico mines and started ranting on about its inaccuracy as it related to the TSX price. If you look at Agnico mines on both exchanges and see the price in StockAdvisor, everything is dead on. Next he claims there is no TSX support, when there is.

Next few by others:

“wait for update” - 1 star

“not very usefull at all” - 1 star

Being in the linguistic analytical business, common Apple lets mandate some kind of objective opinion in the review. Was it bad, was it good, why?

Case and point, there is 0 quality control on the customer feedback plane. A two year old can post a random rant and the developer doesn’t even get notification! We have to check manually. We hope that our customer base takes the time to look at other data points when making purchasing decisions, not just taking rants like the aforementioned to heart. Until a major overhaul of this process comes out (maybe SDK 3.0), this is how it is. Lets not even get started about the piracy issue and Apple’s inability to provide basic data to its developers…

1.1.0 is out. This revision includes support for Canadian exchanges and ETF’s across all supported exchanges.

1.1.0 has just been released to Apple for review. This is our first minor release. It includes thousands of database changes and improvements to both server and client.

Thank you for your support of StockAdvisor. Stay tuned for some exciting announcements rolling out in the next few months.

Feel free to post your reviews of StockAdvisor on iTunes. Help spread the word!

We are preparing to rolling out a major release of StockAdvisor by months end. Namely it will include the long awaited TSX, TSX-V exchanges as well as support for ETF’s across NYSE, NASDAQ and TSX alike. Additionally, thousands of changes have occurred on the American exchanges in the past few months and our database will reflect that as well.

Due to the nature and complexity of our systems, changes of companies on exchanges (listings, tickers, etc) have to be done one at a time and approved by a human to ensure low false-positives as they relate to opportunities. We believe this is our differentiation from other applications, we have yet to see an application on iTunes that is backed by a firm that works 5 days a weeks on maintenance and improvements - both client and server side. Again, our background in the software industry has something to do with that.

~ Looking forward to delivering more goodies to our customers.

Over the past few months we have been running deep data mining operations on our server clusters. As a result, today, we have added additional tweaks and improvements to the the server side databases and back-end to give you more accurate results.

Recently we have come see high levels of user on our servers that do not line up with official purchases from the Apple Store. This could cut directly into our ability to host and serve real customers. This server operation requires cash every day.

For those who did purchase the application legitimately, Thank you. For those that did not please consider purchasing a legitimate copy. Software piracy can’t be justified no matter how hard you try.

You don’t have to be an expert to see that markets are pretty unpredictable these days. We think this reflects a more general trend where markets, and as a result individual companies, are affected not only by economy fundamentals but also investor psychology and/or sentiment. These factors are difficult to quantify and as such difficult to predict their impact on markets.  But what is clear is that news is influencing investors and indirectly the markets. For example, the headline today is “White House Rejects GM, Chrysler Plans; Moves to Reshape Auto Industry”. Markets going down hard. We see the same pattern over and over again. Obviously this is an opportunity for savvy investors and traders to make some money and we are working hard to give you best possible tools so you can identify these potential opportunities and profit from them.