An exciting new social investment community with innovative analytics : Inner 8

Well, last couple of weeks, I have been in horrific shock to see all my investment going down south and loosing money value seconds by seconds. It was quick sand sinking feeling. With watery eyes, I seen my 401K going down and my kids college savings becoming nothing. During those painful moments, I keep thinking what could be the best way to get out of this. Only if I have statistical tools and right advising friends around me, I could come out of it successfully.

And then I have noticed this awesome and exciting new social investment community “Inner 8” (yes, it is inner eight). I have moved ahead and have requested for invitation to join this Beta community to experience all the cool stuff which would be available for me and to help me out of all the financial troubles. I have received an invite couple of days ago and have found time to register to the Inner8 site.

 

The front page is very simplistic but has powerful introduction about  community and its features. It has explained the reasons why to join the community. The reasons are Get Answers, Invest Wisely and Rich experience. That is what I am looking for during this crazy time of financial downturn, credit crunch and economical downturn. The registration is again simple one step process followed by an email to verify my existence in world.

 

 

 

 

After conquering my entry through the gates of Inner 8, I have logged in to system. Wow, it is a crisp, neat and user friendly UI unveiled in front of me.  On top, there are four tabs Dashboard, Markets, Community, Tools, Get Ideas. The default tab which is been presented is Markets. This page has given me entire view of today’s market. It has been consisting of Market today, Inner 8 Market Forecast, Inner 8 Index Forecast, Community Sentiment, Inner 8 Forecast,  Market Movers, Inner 8 Sector forecast. Excellent !!! all the required analysis tools to see are available in one glance at one tab. That too with faster loading graphs, sliders to experiment and values to read.

 

 

 

I clicked on Dashboard to see more of this beauty. It is consisting of my activities in network, opinion summary – top 8 and bottom 8. As I have just started obviously I have nothing to see or read there. Apart from these portlets, there are connections and leaders portlets. Inner8 is intelligent enough to put a beginner at rest quickly. They have smartly provided two buttons to match me with existing members and to Get Ideas on active investments.

I could not resist myself to move to tools section. This section is the one I have been looking for. It allowed me to choose the business sector,  choose from the stock. One interesting feature I want to mention here is finding an unexpected investment opportunity.

 

 

Here is what Inner8 says about “Finding unexpected opportunities”

“When sectors move, stocks in other sectors can be affected. The stock finder uses historical data to reveal these unintuitive sector correlations:Top-Down analysis made easy! Based on your view of the market you'll provide you the list of stocks you need to focus on. Use the sliders to provide you sector outlook and we'll do the rest.”

This will allow any investor with curious mind and open mind to experiment on various market scenarios. It does generate some surprising results.

 

   

There are lots of more goodies hidden in this Beta version. As this is beta, it could change as per feedback, market condition and new ideas which would be added from various smart investors like you and me :D).

 I have been thoroughly mesmerized with ease, elegant richness of user interface with informative, analytical tool set and educative community which is getting build around these tools and ideas.

Well, it is not just this entire website, but I have liked the name Inner8. I have found its meaning…I could not resist myself to put it in words of site originators.

“So what’s with the name?”

Inner8 refers to your inner-circle of eight investing friends and Inner8 members. We found eight is a terrific starting point for optimizing our proprietary analytics - the heart of our intelligent investing community. Just like holding eight stocks or assets in a portfolio is acknowledged as the place where diversification occurs, it just made sense to create a name that perfectly balanced a smart, inner-circle of investors.

 

 

Tips & Tricks : Improving and optimizing Windows Vista

I have been using Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate since last couple of months. I can say I am impressed by its UI, search options, enhancements to start menu and dream scene wallpapers. All of that eye candy has given enough pleasure to me. But when I am utilizing my dual core machines with 4GB RAM and 250 GB HDD, I feel slowness. Then came Vista SP1,it did bring some life and performance in system.

Also I have upgraded my graphics card to NVidia 8800 when the prices came down. That given me some relief. Occasionally I have started using freeware tools for tasks like to defragment hard drive using Defraggler, to clean internet clutter using CCleaner and to defrag windows registry using AusLogics Registry Defrag, to remove un-required unnecessary programs Revo Uninstaller, to clean spyware/malware using Spybot & ThreadFire. This do added some performance boost to Vista.

Still my family has kept complaining that our machines are slow and does not work faster. Mostly their complaining was around internet access, loading of pages, opening tabs in IE and FireFox and playing Games.

But enough about "I" and "my" words. Recently I have come across two cool tools. One from official source of Vista i.e. Microsoft. Another is from Total idea.

First one which is from Microsoft. Microsoft has Springboard - overview series under which they are releasing some cool eBooks to be downloaded. A eBook "Overview Series: Windows Vista® Performance and Tuning" which Microsoft says will help readers to improve performance Quickly and Easily.


This guide focuses on performance improvements on a single computer, but also takes a look at some of the tools used in enterprise environments to help make performance tuning manageable on a much larger scale. This eBook is available in two formats :XPS and PDF.

Here is brief overview from Microsoft Download site:

Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and responsiveness, Windows Vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the system’s usability.This guide looks at the following areas of performance improvement:

• Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you use it.
• Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
• Making configuration changes that help a computer to start faster.
• Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
• Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop problems before they get too big.

Second tool is an utility called Tweak VI. This is available as basic freeware and commercial edition. Total Idea site lists some of many features of Tweak VI utility as below:

•  Activate hundreds of hidden Windows Vista settings to get the most out of your Vista
•  Clean your registry with the integrated Registry Cleaner and Optimizer
•  Activate system and software restrictions - you decide what should be accessible or not
•  Display detailed system information on installed hardware
•  Create a 256 MB RAM drive for fastest access
•  protect your privacy and remove browsing and other usage left overs
•  Clean your hard drive and remove unneccessary files to get wasted hard drive space back
•  Manage TrueType fonts - disable unused to free up system resources
•  Improve your internet connection by a few mouse clicks
•  Repair .pst files, register your .pst files with Outlook with the included .pst file registration utility
•  Optimize your RAM with the included memory optimizer
•  Manage system updates, remove update backups
•  You can even transfer your tweaks and settings to other machines running Vista

If you have tips and tricks to improve your windows installation, please do share !!!!

Resource List:

Piriform CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! :)

Another freeware is a file defragmentation tool... Piriform Defraggler! It differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply run it, select the file and defragment in seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool!


Revo Uninstaller helps you to uninstall and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.


Enjoy !!!