Yahoo! Finance has a feature that allows you to retrieve
data from Yahoo and display it on your own web page. They
call it a "Finance Badge". It's described at:
http://finance.yahoo.com/badges
This lets you display quotes & news for a particular stock
or stocks, like the ones in your club's portfolio.

But there's a technical requirement, stated in the Help:
"You can post a badge on any web server or blog platform
that accepts IFRAME." -- IFRAME is an HTML construct that's
usually supported by blog platforms, I guess, but not by all
web servers. The free Yahoo web pages available at
geocities.com don't seem to accept IFRAME.

I experimented with a finance badge on my club site at
bivio, and it doesn't seem to work, so I guess the bivio web
server does not support IFRAME. But maybe I'm just doing
something wrong. Has anyone else tried this?

Mike Carroll
Oro Valley, AZ

Never mind, I got it to work, it just took some more
tinkering. Sample at:
http://www.bivio.com/vistosovip/files/public/oraclebadge.htm

Note that this method of retrieving data from Yahoo Finance
has their approval. I think it opens up a lot of
possibilities.

Mike Carroll

Hi Mike,

I for one am very interested in what you uploaded to your site, but I think
you forgot to make the page "public" because it won't let me view it.
Please check it and let us know.

Thanks,

Lynn Ostrem, President
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Lynn,

Sorry about that. My first attempt at making something
public & I didn't get it right. I believe it's fixed now.

Love your Crow River Club site, by the way.

Mike Carroll

> Lynn,
>
> Sorry about that. My first attempt at making something
> public & I didn't get it right. I believe it's fixed now.
>
> Love your Crow River Club site, by the way.

Thank you for your kind words. I took a look at the badge you posted on the
site. Would you have to do one for every company your club owns?
Personally, I love new "web toys"! Just look at my site! But in this case
I have to ask: How does this differ from the Yahoo link on the Investments
page? Is there a reason we would want or need both?

I'm asked myself the same question about our Manifest dashboard. We have a
direct link to it on our homepage, but now bivio has given us a direct link
on our Investments page, too. For now, my answer is yes--we need to keep
both. The reasons are (a) because we can manipulate our dashboard on MI so
it sorts by PAR, and (b) that also allows us to add our cash balances. So
what about the badge? Do you see something unique there?

Thanks for posting this. I love new stuff!

Lynn Ostrem, President
garbagecop@earthlink.net
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Lynn,

Without the badge, in the context of the bivio club pages,
you have two main choices. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) You
have static HTML, and links. The static HTML says something
like "Our club owns 100 shares of Oracle." The link takes
you to a different web site, like Yahoo Finance, where you
find up-to-date info like Oracle's current price and recent
news headlines related to the stock. (That page isn't yours,
so doesn't tell you anything about how many shares your club
bought, or the purchase price(s), etc.)

The finance badge does not fall into either of those
categories. That's what's unique about it. It displays info
on the same web page as your static HTML, but the info it
displays is up-to-date. (What the IFRAME does, I believe, is
tell your browser to fetch data from Yahoo Finance, and
display it as part of the page.)

Is this a BIG difference? Maybe not. If we already had a
club web site, I might not redesign it to use badges. But
since I'm starting from scratch, I'll probably make use of
them.

Mike

> (That page isn't yours, so doesn't tell you anything about how many
> shares your club bought, or the purchase price(s), etc.)

Yes, but I didn't notice that the badge did, either. That's why I was
asking. Still, it's a nice little tool, and I can see how it may be
preferable over the current choice. Thanks so much for sharing.

Lynn O.