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A recent announcement from Future Source regarding Omega's agreement to
support the FS data feed seemed to indicate that FS had agreed to a revenue
sharing agreement with Omega. This gave the appearance at least that Omega's
willingness to do a FS data feed had more to do with revenue sharing than
with the need for continued support to existing FS/TS subscribers. I had a
Telescan account long before I installed SC2x but was forced to open a
separate account and pay a "setup fee" to Telescan. When I complained loudly
enough about it, I was told that Telescan did not keep the setup fee and
that the separate account was required to track usage by Omega products. I
think if you examine Omega's financials, you will find that income from such
fees is not insignificant. I don't in any way object to a developer
recovering costs of customizing a data feed, however Omega seems to do this
in an insidious manner. By contrast, Equis includes the Reuters downloader
(Reuters owns Equis) and offers downloaders for many other services at
additional charge. Thus the customer has the choices, and Equis has revenue
to defer costs of developing other data feeds. The smaller trading software
developers seem to base data feed support entirely upon customer demand
without a cut of the data fees.
I suspect that Omega intends for its "strategic relationships" to reach into
ever more pockets via internet connections e.g. data, order entry,
advisories, etc..
Earl
-----Original Message-----
From: Eldon H Nyhart Jr <enyhart@xxxxxx>
To: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx <omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, November 04, 1998 8:40 PM
Subject: (Fwd) Unidentified subject!
From: "Eldon H Nyhart Jr" <enyhart@xxxxxx>
To: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: omega support of telescan eod data
i was disappointed recently when trying to download some
American Fund mutual fund data to find that a floating point error
occurred when eod data collected from telescan was distributing to
the datasets (4.1.3 version of the downloader). somehow fidelity mf
data
is ok.
after speaking multiple times to omega and telescan, apparently
the ver 4 data format for "certain" omega daily stored eod data will
sometimes crash the downloader during distribution. the crash is
severe
enough to leave fragments in core and require a shutdown of the
computer.
it appears to me that omega is slowly making it impossible to use
telescan
for eod data. thats unfortunate since telescan has excellent toll free
support (even on weekends and late into the night est). one can
also get
unlimited history when needed online; all for a flat $10/mo. i have
found
telescan to be responsive and very courteous to requests, and the
data of
adequate accuracy.
this is opposed to toll calls to dialdata, at least $70/mo for starters
to
data access, with 2 years historical data available (oh yes, you can
use
the cd), and long distance charges for tech ass. during business hours.
is omega slowly phasing out telescan? is it because dialdata
recently bought omega (rumor?). omega claimed that telescan has
recently "changed" some of their data by adding something to it,
which telescan denies and doesn't understand. maybe omega can
explain; or is it just an excuse? i had to ask to speak to bill cruz for
a reason as to why they are apparently dropping telescan support (i have
to presume its not important enough to continue to support one of two data
vendors automatically supported by the downloader). still waiting. does
omega really want customers to buy metastock etc just for their
downloader? why has omega not gone to internet download capability (2x
speed) via telescan as essentially all other major programs have converted
to, which telescan recommends. tech support at telescan uses omega
downloader 3.1.3 which was fine until omega "upgraded" to the ver 4
downloader and data format, which essentially embraces dialdata (cd etc)
and corrupts telescan usage. with the difference in price between
dialdata and telescan, it won't take long to make up the difference of
buying another downloader, not to mention the better customer support
afforded by telescan.
below is a message from omega. anyone else coming up with
similar experiences? comments, or suggestions would be
appreciated.
----------------------------------
Dear Dr. Nyhart,
We are aware of the problems you are having downloading Mutual
Funds fromTelescan. We have tried all the possible workarounds
up to and including installing an earlier version of the Omega
Downloader. Unfortunately, nothing worked.
There is a known problem with downloading Mutual Funds from
Telescan. We do not have a solution. There are no plans to change
the Omega Downloader. We do not recommend nor support using
Telescan as a data feed for mutual funds. The only solution is to
use Dial Data for downloading Mutual Fund data.
Sincerely,
Melody A. Blais
Omega Research, Inc.
Customer Support Supervisor
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