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Even though this keeps coming up and people from time to time want to
contribute time/machines/money to the effort, I don't think it will
ever work because it's like backing up one's own machines: people
don't always do that regularly until they have a crash and then they
wish they'd been doing it all along. I think a data company would be
the best solution to this problem, possibly an existing one that could
be encouraged to support the OMZ/XPO formats.
This leads me to an idea I had about a week ago and have kind of been
chewing on since: a website to allow traders to speak as a group to
the vendors.
Most vendors don't maintain good communication with us, their
customers. This isn't always out of a desire to intentionally ignore
us. In many cases, they just don't know how to establish and maintain
good communication. Or perhaps they don't know how it would benefit
them. Companies that become detached from their customers begin to
drift away and only realize their problem when their customers start
to desert them.
The exceptions are notable:
AmiBroker (www.amibroker.com) - On the home page of their website,
there are links under Wish List which display their current "ToDo
list" and allow you to suggest a feature. By all accounts, they pay
attention.
Interactive Brokers (www.interactivebrokers.com) - On their home page,
they have a link to their "trader community", which supports a
discussion board, a trader poll for new features, and suggestions to
management.
Quote.com BEFORE it got sold to Lycos - The Quote.com developers hung
out on the Yahoo email list and responded to users concerns and
answered questions.
...and there are others.
If the vendors could be told what we want and could be shown what
their competition has in a clear and concise manner, it seems that we
could benefit from more responsive vendors, atleast those vendors who
listen. What would make them listen? 1) Numbers, lots of traders.
2) Simple, effective communication.
I think there are 2 key things such a website would need:
1. A grid comparing vendors and important features of their products.
For example, data vendors. What are the important features?
Performance (low lag, no disconnects), amount of historical data
available, provision of an SDK, cost, available formats of data,
symbol/bandwidth limits, etc. I wonder how many employees from
Quote.com go to the eSignal website and look this stuff up (much less
actually get a subscription to their competitors products) and vice
versa.
2. A way for traders to vote on how important these features are to
them. This way if a company doesn't have some features that another
company has, traders can indicate to them which features are most
important. This mechanism could also be used to request new
features.
Traders could vote quarterly or semi-annually and results could be
posted on the website and sent to decision makers at the vendors in
question.
There could be a problem with legal issues if companies did not want
to be named on the site. And the biggest problem with
establishing and maintaining such a website is the same one that
exists in establishing these data repositories: it's not in a single
person's financial interest to do the work on a continuing basis.
This leaves it up to the companies themselves to do the work of
maintaining contact with the users and keeping an eye on the
competition. Inevitably, the small ones that do a good job at this,
get big, and forget their roots. This is what makes room for the new
competition. In the meantime, we get the short end of the stick.
Kent
Saturday, September 28, 2002, 3:03:46 PM, you wrote:
> Hello Jim,
JJ>> I like the idea of a data coop, building perhaps on the one ztrader
> i can donate all the bandwidth and storage for the data as well as ftp
> service. i would also donate cash, if we could get a professional
> programmer "preferably a company" - specify the project details on
> elance.com or something comparable. i do not belive that any in the
> trade related programmers would want to do this project especially if
> they offered products for sale now. maybe i'm wrong - it of course
> seems logical that they would be able to accomplish the task, but they
> "any that i know" like tssupport traders-soft or dynastore have tried
> to offer a real solution. it's just not economically or maybe
> technically within their capabilities. i don't know - i do know we
> are all suffering and need a solution.
JJ>> Just a thought.
> --
> Have a Great Day, Mark
> http://www.markbrown.com
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