StockCharts.com - Blogs

I've just gotten a flurry of letters from the good folks at Interactive Data (our data vendor) about the steps they are taking to mitigate the effects of Hurricane Irene (which, for those of you who haven't been watching television lately, is forecast to hit the New York City area on Sunday).  Interactive Data is implementing all kinds of contingency plans and disaster preparation plans right now in order to handle whatever might occur.

Given all that uncertainty, I wanted to let you know what _might_ happen on Sunday and Monday with respect to our website.

1.) We, the StockCharts employees and the StockCharts servers, are located in the Seattle area on the west coast of the US.  We are not in any direct danger from this storm - thankfully.

2.) John Murphy does live and work in New Jersey and probably will be impacted by the storm.  John assures us that he will be fine however his access to the Internet may be disrupted and so he may not be able to post updates for awhile.

3.) We are praying that all of our users and their families who live in the path of this storm will be safe.

4.) If Interactive Data's operations are affected beyond their ability to cope, then our charts may lose data.  That's the nature of our business model.  Again, IDC is telling me that they are doing everything possible to make sure that our data feed continues to work correctly but clearly there is a possibilty that things may be broken on Monday.  Please be prepared for that possibility.

Hopefully, Irene will turn out to be a big non-event however given that all the current computer models show Irene going directly over NYC, I though I should tell everyone to be prepared for an "interesting" Monday.

Again, we hope that all of our East Coast users and their families stay safe while this thing passes.

- Chip

Run, don't crawl, to read this article from the good folks at Lifehacker.  Great stuff that all StockCharts users should know:

http://lifehacker.com/5833074/how-do-i-stop-my-browser-from-slowing-to-a-crawl

- Chip

P.S. Don't be scared off by the word "hacker" in their name - it's a site dedicated to the good kind of improvements ("hacks") you can make to all sorts of things in your life.

I'm thrilled to annouce the launch of s.c.a.n. - the StockCharts Answer Network - a brand new free website where StockCharts users can ask questions that other StockCharts users can answer.

While our Customer Support team will continue to be there to answer any questions that you have for us, this new website gives you another way to get the answers you need - possibly faster - from other real-world users.

Anyone can browse the questions and answers on the s.c.a.n. website without any restrictions.

To ask a question, simple go over to the s.c.a.n. website at http://scan.stockcharts.com and type it in.  You will need to register in order to post your question (registration is free and our hard-core privacy policy applies to s.c.a.n. also).  Registration prevents scan from filling up with spam and noise.

After you've asked your question, other s.c.a.n. members will probably scramble to help you quickly - why?  Because the s.c.a.n. website rewards members with "karma points" and "badges" that increases their status within the s.c.a.n. system granting them new capabilities.

We've added much more details in the FAQ page on the s.c.a.n. server - click here to see it.

I hope you find the StockCharts Answer Network helpful, useful and fun.  I encourage you to visit it often and pitch in with answers whenever you can.  It will be very interesting to see how this new resource grows and evolves over time.

Enjoy!

- Chip

P.S. We'll add links to the s.c.a.n. website throughout the StockCharts website soon - making it much easier to access.

P.P.S. I just posted a bunch of "seed" questions for others (you?) to answer.  They are just waiting there for you to come and answer which will earn you a bunch of karma points!