DollarLink News -- October 31, 1996

Enhancements Added

Customized Dow-Jones Window

There is a small window on DollarLink's screen that is currently reserved for quotes for the Dow-Jones Industrials. In text mode this window is in the upper right hand corner; in graphics it is in the center of the bottom of the screen. The window shows the latest price, change and total volume for the NYSE. This window appears on every text and graphics page you switch to.

If you are not interested in Dow-Jones but would like to follow some other symbol in a similar fashion, then you can now tell DollarLink to put that symbol into that window. For example, commodity traders don't particularly care about Dow-Jones but would like to see a favorite commodity instead.

While in text mode, press C,S,D (Control, Setup, Dow-Jones ) and DollarLink will prompt you for the symbol to put into that window. That symbol must be in your active DollarLink portfolio. It can be a regular symbol (i.e., index, commodity, option or stock) or a custom index or a chartlink.

New Web Site and E-Mail Address

We now have a new domain name on the Internet. The new Web site address for DollarLink is

http://www.dollarlink.com/dlink.htm

and the new E-mail address is

support@dollarlink.com

The old Web and E-mail addresses (http://www.creative.net/~dollar and dollar@creative.net) will still work fine for a long time, but may eventually go away.)

Quotes via the Internet

There are numerous sites on the Web that provide some sort of stock quotes. Most of them allow you to obtain one quote of the time (sort of like calling your broker for a quote), but not too many provide continuous quotes. Among those with continuous quotes, most have delayed quotes but some vendors provide real time quotes.

Both DBC and PC Quote are right in there. They both offer real-time and delayed quotes using both the Web and their own Internet-based software that bypasses the Web for speed reasons. We are not aware of any application software that can use these services.

Hidden Cost

Although using the Internet as a transmission medium rather than their own proprietary datafeed network allows a data vendor to offer both real-time and delayed quotes at a significantly lower cost, there is a hidden cost that should be considered.

Most individual investors connect to the Web or Internet via a telephone connection. Phone companies and Internet Service Providers don't like it if you are going to be connected for six or eight hours at a time. (Many Internet Service Providers offer an unmetered connection for a typical price of $20/month. However, in their language, unmetered usually does not mean unlimited. ) They will let you do it but usually it will cost you more because you have to have a dedicated Internet account (here on the very-competitive West coast the typical cost is about $75 to $100 per month) and a dedicated phone line (another $15 to $50 per month). All of a sudden your $49.95/month Internet-based real-time quote feed is right up there costing just as much as the traditional FM/satellite/cable delivery system.

Keep this in mind next time you're surfing the Web and are lured by all those low-cost datafeed ads.

Gobble, Gobble

DollarLink will be closed Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28, and Friday, November 29.

Thanks and have a happy and healthy Turkey Day from us at DollarLink!

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