Web Biz

Google has released the beta of it’s very own finance portal.  Although this beta was released on March 21, I am just starting to take note of the advanced feature set and user interaction that, perhaps, makes this finance portal better than that offered by rival Yahoo!  The service provides detailed information, links to news, and some great new features (according to the google blog):

But perhaps Google Finance’s most important innovations take place after you’ve found the company in question. You’ll find interactive charts that enable you to zoom through different time periods, headlines mapped right on the charts and are based on Google News, which means you’re seeing unbiased and relevant results from more than 4,500 English-language news sources. And you’ll get insightful comments from bloggers about public and private companies, plus Discussion Groups moderated by enthusiastic community advocates, which should foster some quality exchanges about the companies you care about.

I think that this is a move in the right directions, and the financial community has been begging for this.  I am sure that some paid services currently provide these additional features and capabilities, but like I said, the problem is you have to pay for them.  I hope this will force other free financial data providers into revamping their finance portals to meet the demand of more interactive and rich user interfaces, that often utilize the technologies of AJAX and Flash (or now, Flex).

Furthermore, Google Finance also provides insight into some private companies and as well as Funds in addition to public corporations.

Three years ago JavaScript libraries were almost unheard of, and only last year did the common libraries of today begin to truly formulate.  Now, dynamicdrive.com has extended the concept into the world of CSS (or Cascading StyleSheets), with it’s very own CSS library.  This library provide you with instructions, examples, code, and even the graphics (when applicable) to develop your own UI elements.  Some of these include: vertical and horizontal menus, navigation, image gallery, etc… 

Vonage will have it’s highly anticipated Initial Public Offering tomorrow (Wednesday, May 24). The initial price will be $17. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Vonage is offering a 20% stake in the IPO, which values the whole company at roughly $2.6 billion. That is in the same realm eBay Inc. paid last year for Internet-calling company Skype Technologies Inc.

Vonage was unsuccessful in the past year in finding another company willing to buy it for more than $2 billion. While some institutional investors have expressed skepticism about the IPO, it is expected to attract individual investors, many of whom are familiar with Vonage’s heavily advertised brand. The company took the unusual step of setting aside 13.5% of the offering for customers to purchase.