Wednesday, April 26, 2006

SUGGESTION: Yahoo Finance -- Earnings Calendars

I use Yahoo Finance all the time.

Very useful, but could be made enormously valuable -- just with few minor changes.

How about:
  1. Adding a "sort by", for each column. I really want to know which ones of these are EPS positive, which announcements are being made Before Market Opens or After Market Closes or Time unknown.
  2. Adding custom columns, for additional data? For example, market capitilization; Price (Hi-Lo); Current Price; etc. Can we use some AJAX programming, please?
  3. Exporting to excel.
  4. I like the fact that you can add these events to Yahoo Calendars. Proof that there is interaction between the Calendar team and the Finance team. How about providing the option to exporting to iCal format or other calendar formats?
The product teams at Google Finance should take note too.

Thoughts?

Monday, April 24, 2006

Online Calendars

Are you into online calendars? I'm not. I think my life is reasonably organized -- and I have an office calendar I manage rigorously.

However,
I would like for automagic organization of key events.
Google, does my need ring a note?

I am eagerly waiting for the product managers of Yahoo Calendar and Google Calendar, to walk over to their counterparts managing Yahoo Finance and Google Finance respectively. Some thoughts:

  1. I have a portfolio of stocks I track on Yahoo Finance. Can my calendar automatically set alarms and events for the earnings calls for these companies?
  2. I would like to import US Earnings Calendars, as they are confirmed, into my Yahoo or Google Calendars. A little bit of AJAX programming, and I should be able to remove the companies I am not interested in. I know that Yahoo Finance offers the option for me to manually select and "Add to Calendar" based on the earnings call. That's one click at a time. Not good.
  3. I would like to set up a stock screen based on certain performance criteria -- and the calendar will provide me BUY / SELL suggestions, based on these criteria?
  4. I would like to import local TV channel schedules, to my online calendar.
  5. I would like to export my calendars my iPOD or to my Blackberry.
If there is a way to do these today, could you please let me know?

Saturday, April 22, 2006

There's a 24x7 Walgreen's Near You? Well...


A couple of days ago, on my drive back home -- I listened to Walgreen's radio spot.

"There is a 24 hour Walgreens near your home. If the one closed to your home is not 24 hour, the next one is". I thought to myself, "Really, Hmmm. I haven't seen one".

So, I did some research. I used the Store Locator function on Walgreen's website. I was right. There wasn't a Walgreens near my home. Nevermind 24 hour. Actually, there wasn't a Walgreens within a 25 mile radius.

More research. As of March 31, 2006 -- Walgreens had 5,193 stores in 45 states. That's quite some coverage. Just that they didn't have stores in my area. Indeed, they intend to operate more than 7000 stores in the year 2010. I am hopeful the expansion plan includes where I live.

Be that as it may, could a radio spot: "Walgreens is coming to your area!" have been a better choice, for now? Even then, wouldn't Walgreen's ad dollars have been better spent in areas where they have stores? How much would the spot I listened to have costed?

In Walgreen's defense (more specifically in the defense of the radio operator), there is probably no way to air specific advertisements based on location. That's why it is called "radio broadcasting". The fact is: in its current state, unless you are universally marketable and universally available, radio advertising can sometimes prove inefficient from an advertiser's viewpoint.

Well, there is hope. In January 2006, Google acquired dMarc Broadcasting Inc.

I can see the connection and the potential possibilities.