Bloomberg for iPad is a great way for casual traders and investors to interact with their stocks and stay up to date with the news they care about the most.

The App Store is chock full of applications to help investors and traders manage their portfolios directly from their iPad. While some applications provide a wealth of information and are geared towards brokers and users with extensive portfolios, most users just don't need a $100 application to check in on their stocks. I've found Bloomberg for iPad to be a good compromise between usability and information overload.

Whether you need to casually monitor stocks on your iPad or just find the urge to check out financial news, Bloomberg provides the best of both worlds combined with an easy to use interface. I've found that some of the applications in the App Store are quite hard to navigate and may be confusing for many users to figure out. Sometimes too many charts and graphs can be overwhelming. Bloomberg gives you what you want to know right up front.

Navigation

The main page of Bloomberg for iPad provides a quick overview of news, currencies, stocks, and equity indices.

Upon first launching Bloomberg for iPad, you'll be presented with a home page that shows top news stories, some stock information, and a menu along the bottom that allows you to delve deeper into different categories of information.

This is where you can go to customize your experience. Say you don't have bonds but own stocks. You can choose the stocks section and add stocks you own to the app. You'll then see that information populate in the home screen. The real time tickers will continuously update for you on the home page as long as you've got an active internet connection.

Stock info

Tap into any stock you'd like to view more information about its position in text and graphical format. You can also read more information about that company.

You can tap into any news story or stock directly from the main page. Tapping into a stock will present you with a large well laid-out graph showing a 1 year overview of that stock's position. You'll also be given some general summary information along the bottom about that particular stock and the company itself. On the right hand side you'll see some broken down time period graphs. You can tap these to enlarge them further.

Supported exchanges

Bloomberg supports many different exchanges and allows you to view overall postion for each one.

Bloomberg provides information for all major stock exchanges and several smaller exchanges. Some of the most popular ones supported are -

• Dow Jones
• NASDAQ
• S&P 500
• BE 500
• FTSE 100
• TSX

There are many more supported exchanges too. You can also view futures for all exchanges as well. Tapping into any exchange will provide you the same history information that tapping into an individual stock would provide.

Stocks

Add any stocks you'd like to monitor and they'll aggregate into the My Stocks page. You can also enter your position and price to view a summary of your position on each exchange via the My Stocks Summary feature.

Bloomberg allows you to customize your own stocks within the application. Just tap the My Stocks icon from the main page. Tapping the edit button in the upper right hand corner brings up a list of stocks you've added. You can add stocks as well as put in your position and price.

The term position in this instance means the quantity of securities you own. For example, if you own 200 shares of Apple stock, 200 would be your postion. Then you would input the price you paid per share. For in depth investors who trade regularly, they may need a more powerful tool that breaks out information better.

On the main My Stocks page you can tap the bottom My Stock Summary tab to bring up a summary of your current position given the information you input. It will break it out by exchange and give you an overall position. It will show you an overview of how many securities you own, the net change, overall change, what your securities are currently valued at, and your total profit and loss.

Currency Exchange

View currency exchange rates live and set your native currency by dragging it into the top position under the edit menu.

Bloomberg supports and updates live currency values within the app as well. You can set your default currency and it will then show you how your native dollar compares to monetary amounts around the rest of the world. To do so, just drag your home currency to the top of the list when in edit mode. This information will also populate within the main page as well for a quick view.

Just like stocks and other sections of the app, you can edit the currency order. Just move them up and down with the vertical stacked bars.

News

The built-in news section provides up to date world and financial news that you can edit and customize to view what interests you the most.

While the main page shows top news, you can also tap into the news category and view a breakdown of news by section. This is also customizable. Tapping the edit button in the top right will let you move the sections you care about most towards the top and the ones you don't really have an interest in towards the bottom. This makes it a bit easier to find stories you want to read.

The Good

• For a free app, Bloomberg provides enough information for most users
• Provides lots of customization options so you can make the app your own
• Stock summary is a nice way to quickly view overall position if you hold securities
• Graphs are easy to read and follow
• Summarized information provides a nice overview that may help potential investors make an informed decision about what direction a company is heading and whether it's a good time to invest

The Bad

• Users with extensive portfolios will probably need more information than what Bloomberg provides
• The ability to hide news sections you don't care for would be a nice addition instead of just having to move them to the bottom of the feed

The Conclusion

Bloomberg for iPad is a great way for casual traders and investors to interact with their stocks and stay up to date with the news they care about the most. While it may not be perfect for everyone, it provides a wealth of information that will suit mainstream users just fine.

If you're more interested in world and financial news than you are stocks, Bloomberg doubles up as a great resource for such information. It ties news and the stock market together in a fluid way that users will appreciate.

Free - Download Now

Facebook, the massive social network that counts one of the most popular iPhone apps of all time in their portfolio, is rumored to be readying a $5 billion IPO (initial public offering). Yes, Zuckerberg and co. might finally be ready to hit the stock market. The New York Times reports:

The Internet giant plans to list a preliminary fund-raising goal of about $5 billion, one of these people said. Another cautioned that any such number was largely a placeholder for determining filing fees, and that the final amount could differ significantly. And the company could still decide to delay its filing.

While huge, it narrowly misses out on being the biggest tech IPO ever -- that distinction belongs to Infineon. That is, of course, unless Facebook raises the stakes to $10 billion, then they'll own all the records. And the money.

Facebook has enjoyed enormous growth but not without growing pains, including and especially in regards to user privacy and transparency. Along with Google and Twitter -- the former public, the latter still private -- Facebook faces Federal privacy oversight for the foreseeable future.

Still, if Facebook does pull the trigger on this IPO, will that change anything? If any of us could buy stock and become a shareholder, does that make trusting our data to Facebook any easier, or any more difficult?

Source: New York Times

Curious how to setup notifications in iOS 5? With all the various banners and popups, badges and sounds, widgets and lock screen options, it can be a little tricky for first-time users, but worry not -- we have you covered! First up, here's how the new Weather and Stock widgets work!

Stock widget

The Stock widget pulls stock information directly from the native Stocks app in iOS 5. By turning the Stock widget to 'On' you'll see a scrolling ticker displaying your favorite stocks. If you want to change the stocks that are displayed in the Stock widget, just follow these quick steps:

1. Open the Stocks app from the iPhone home screen, or tap the Stock widget in Notification Center.
2. Tap the 'i' information button in the lower right-hand corner.
3. Tap the + button in the upper left-hand corner to add a new stock. You can search for stocks by stock ticker or company name.
4. Tap Done to finish.

Now, the stock that you've just added to the Stocks app will show up in the scrolling Stock widget within Notification Center!

Weather widget

Apple also included a weather widget that displays current weather information as well as a full five-day forecast. Just swipe to the left or right to reveal the five-day forecast. The weather widget pulls information from Yahoo! Weather locations stored in the native Weather app in iOS 5. In order to add or change weather locations, follow these steps:

1. Open the Weather app from the iPhone home screen, or tap the Weather widget in Notification Center.
2. Tap the 'i' information button in the lower right-hand corner.
3. From here, you have the option to either use Local Weather (pulled from location services) or add a location manually. For instructions sake, we'll add a new location. To add a new location, tap the + button in the upper left-hand corner.
4. Search by City, State or ZIP and input your preferred location.

Now the location you've manually setup will be displayed in the Weather widget. If you have more than one location in the Weather app, the Weather widget will only display the 1st location. If you have no manual locations set and have the Local Weather feature on, you'll only see the temperature relative to your geographic location (make sure you have Location Services turned on!)

There you have it, how to configure your Notification Center widgets. We'll cover the other elements, like Mail and Messages notifications, Lock Screen info, etc. next time. Meanwhile, if you have any favorite Notification Center tips, let us know in comments!

Daily Tips range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

How do you keep track of stocks on your iPhone? A Stocks app/widget was one of the original apps introduced for the iPhone 2G in 2007 and with a small upgrade in iPhone OS 3.0 last year, it still has a place on almost every iPhone home screen (even if only because Apple won't let non stockies delete it). But if you are a hardcore market watcher, a bear or a bull, a buyer or seller, is the built in Stocks app enough to get you through a trade?

There are a variety of 3rd party stock apps in the iTunes app store that aim to do the job better, or at least more seriously. Do you use any of them? Which ones and why?

From the intense day trader to the casual yearly investor, having a device that's always on the internet, and always on you seems like a natural fit for the dynamic world of stock trading.

I know next to nothing about it -- other than Apple and Google are doing pretty well these days -- so if you have any recommendations, any tricks on how to better use your iPhone in todays hectic (and hellacious) markets, let us know in comments!

Unlike the iPhone 3GS, the iPad doesn't have built-in stocks, weather, voice memo, clock, calculator, or compass apps. It does, however, have the brand new iPad App Store, and yeah... there are apps for all that!

Check out our picks after the break!

Bloomberg for iPad [Free - iTunes link] offers not just stocks but news, company info, price charts, trends, analysis and... you get the idea. It could just be information overload on a 9.7" screen, but that's likely just what you stockies want!

Weather Channel Max [Free - iTunes link] costs nothing (thanks to Toyota) but packs in the weathery-goodness. Full screen, customizable maps, in-motion radar, local, regional, and national video, and more make it not so much of a replacement as a escalation.

Voice memos for iPad [Free - iTunes link] is the "I can't believe it's not butter" of replacement apps. It looks similar to Apple's iPhone Voice Memo app, but it's scaled up to iPad size. Unlimited recording, tagging, pause, levels, timer, and email options make it a great fill in option.

Clock... We haven't found a good replacement for Clock yet. If you know of one that matches the functionality and the grace of the iPhone Clock app, let us know in the comments. And developers -- make a good one, with a great icon. Seriously.

PCalc Lite [Free - iTunes] or PCalc [$9.99 - iTunes link] make the iPhone calculator look anemic by comparison. It includes an optional RPN mode, multiple undo and redo, unit conversions and constants, a couple of themes, and much more in the paid version.

Compass HD + Vector Magnetometer / Gravitometer [Free for now - iTunes link] is an app that, frankly, we may not be smart enough to properly describe. It has absolute mode, north mode, declination mode, and relative modes, and a bunch of different display modes for acceleration visualization. Get it while it's free!

So there you have it, App Store to the rescue! Did we miss any (other than clocks!)? Are there alternatives your like better? Let us know in the comments!

Why are there no Clock, Calculator, Voice Memo, Weather, or Stocks apps on the iPad? Because Steve Jobs didn't think they worked on the larger iPad screen, according to Daring Fireball's John Gruber.

It’s not that Apple couldn’t just create bigger versions of these apps and have them run on the iPad. It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem. There were, internally to Apple (of course), versions of these apps (or at least some of them) with upscaled iPad-sized graphics, but otherwise the same UI and layout as the iPhone versions. Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated. So they were scrapped by you-know-who.

Gruber was responding to theories that these apps would instead be offered as App Store downloads, or could be part of some secret widget dashboard implementation. In other words, that it's a design issue, not a technical issue.

However, new UI that would make the iPad an amazing bedside clock (how's that for a Lock Screen), or show Stocks with a variety of graphs and related news and data, or weather for several days and cities at once, certainly seems possible for Apple's UI wizards. Perhaps they simply lacked time to re-do the apps for the already extended April 3 release date?

Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps. At least that’s the story I’ve heard from a few well-informed little birdies.

Speaking of which, any little birdies hear anything about an iPhone 4.0 sneak preview event yet? Or is everyone just focused on getting the iPad out right now?

Source: Daring Fireball

CNNMoney.com News, Stocks, and Video [free - iTunes link] for iPhone (and iPod touch) is the latest big name entrant into the App Store financial news and media space. Leveraging their brand and resources, it looks like CNNMoney.com's mobile site while working like an iPhone app. iPhone-likeness aficionados may take a few blinking moments to adjust, but it's a deliberate design decision that will no doubt appeal to the massive user-base of CNN.com's existing web services.

TiPb had a chance to test drive CNNMoney, and from a pure content standpoint it's impressive. When you first launch, you're greeted with the News dashboard. At the very top is a rotating stock-ticker, then a sampling of latest news, stocks, videos, etc. Users can easily check or uncheck specific content options, and drag them around to re-sequence them in whatever order they prefer. (I immediately put technology news at the top).

The content itself isn't merely a feed. In an effort to give mobile users the best experience possible, both statistical measures like popularity and hand-picked curation on the part of CNN Money's editors determine which stories and in what order they're made available to the iPhone app. Also, stories loaded into the app are cached locally in case you need to go offline (i.e. on an airplane).

The free app is supported by advertising, but when there is no appropriate or available ad, rather than filler or "house ads", CNN Money cuts users a much-appreciated break and removes the ad space completely.

My Stocks is pre-populated with a few high profile favorites but can be easily customized. Tapping a stock brings up a details and graph view. As is typical with online stock reporting, quotes are delayed roughly 15 min. Once you've viewed a stock quote, a new section pops up on your dashboard News tab called Last 3 Quotes, and as the title indicates, it keeps track of your most recently views stocks.

Videos shows thumbnails and a brief description of the story. CNN Money typically produces over a dozen unique video segments a day, and they load quickly and look good on the iPhone.

The Add/Remove tab lets you do the content re-arrangement mentioned previously.

It should be noted that while CNN Money is compatible with iPhone 3.0, and the system-wide Copy functionality works fine, it doesn't yet support push notification alerts, or automatic HTTP video stream optimization. Hopefully we'll see these in an update. Along with a good James Earl Jones rendition of "This is CNN".

Screenshots after the break...

Stocks, the widget-like application that's been unchanged since the original iPhone 1.0 release is finally getting some refresh love from Apple in iPhone 3.0. While the top part, or actual stock info, remains the same, the old version's graph along the bottom has been replaced with news results. Still want the graph? No problem, turn to landscape view and you get it bright and bigger than before. Also new, if you tap on the graph line, you get the stock price that day and if you tap at a second location as well, you get the delta (change in value) between those two points.

A small update, long in coming, but likely appreciated by many who are more than ever checking it daily, if not hourly, if not by the minute...