MacTicker is a simple Internet application that lets you view the free stock market information provided online by financial websites around the world. You can watch any number of your stocks roll by on the ticker, or call up a detailed report for each of your favorites.
MacTicker updates this information once a minute right on your desktop. You can configure it to alert you to stocks that are doing particularly well, or warn you to sell that stinker.
MacTicker gives you all the charms of the stock market, without the traders.
What you need
To run MacTicker you need the following things:
— A PowerPC-based Macintosh computer.
— System 7.5 or better.
— 4 MB of application RAM .
— Internet Config (or the Internet control panel under Mac OS 8.5)
— An IP connection to the Internet. MacTicker supports modem or direct network connections. It does not support indirect Internet access through such online services as America Online or CompuServe.
Installing MacTicker
MacTicker comes in a single self-extracting archive containing the following things:
— An unregistered version of MacTicker configured to run in demo mode on Power Macintosh computers .
— The MacTicker user guide. To read it, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0, or later. You can download this for free from most online services or Adobe’s site on the World Wide Web.
If you downloaded MacTicker, your browser likely decompressed the archive for you and created a folder named MacTicker among your other downloads.
To decompress the archive manually, double-click on the icon and follow the instructions to choose where you want to save the MacTicker folder.
Evaluating MacTicker
When you first install MacTicker, it is configured to run in demonstration mode until you enter a valid serial number. An unregistered copy of MacTicker runs for thirty minutes before it quits, but otherwise lets you evaluate all of MacTicker’s features before you decide to purchase a serial number.
Registering MacTicker
To purchase a serial number, visit the MacTicker website at:
<http://www.galleon.com/macticker/purchase>
To register Macticker:
(1) From the Apple menu, choose Register MacTicker.
(1) The Registration dialog appears.
(2) Enter your name and a valid serial number.
(3) Click Register.
(4) Click Close.
Connecting to the Internet
Your computer may be connected to the Internet through your Local Area Network, or you might connect over the phone using a modem and point-to-point protocol (PPP). Whatever the case, MacTicker uses the connection to the Internet you already have in place. When you start MacTicker, the application connects automatically. There is nothing else for you to install.
If you are not connected to the Internet, contact a local Internet service provider for assistance. Their Technical Support department can help you configure your computer to connect to the Internet.
Note: MacTicker only supports direct IP access to the Internet. It does not support indirect Internet access through such online services as America Online or CompuServe. If you are unsure of the type of Internet service you have, contact your Internet service provider.
Where are we getting this information?
MacTicker gathers stock quotes from the following online financial sites. Each of these sites offer free delayed stock quotes, although they invite you to subscribe to their real-time service. Delayed service is best suited for the casual investor. Real-time service, on the other hand, transmits market data as it occurs and is needed by only the most committed investors looking for up-to-the-minute information.
iMoney <http://www.imoney.com> i|money is based in Toronto. From their website, they offer access to a wide variety of financial products and services along with timely and comprehensive financial news and information. Their stock quotes are provided by Reuters and are delayed by 15 minutes.
PC Quote <http://www.pcquote.com> is based in Chicago. From their website, they offer data for more than 250,000 issues on all U.S. and Canadian equities and options. Their quotes are delayed 20 minutes, unless noted.
Quote.com <http://www.quote.com> is based in Mountain View, California. From their website, they offer free delayed security quotes for securities traded on U.S. and Canadian exchanges; this includes over 12,000 stocks; 100,000 options; 300 indexes; 500 commodity futures; and 7,500 mutual funds. Quotes from the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange are delayed by at least 20 minutes. All other quotes are delayed by at least 15 minutes.
Yahoo! <http://quote.yahoo.com> is based in Santa Clara and boasts of being the world’s most popular online guide to the Internet. Their stock quotes are provided by Reuters Limited, and delayed 15 minutes for the NASDAQ exchange, 20 minutes otherwise.
Yahoo! (UK & Ireland) <http://finance.uk.yahoo.com> is based in London and provides a localized version of Yahoo’s guide to the Internet. Their stock quotes are provided by Standard & Poor´s Comstock and Fininfo España and sourced from the London Stock Exchange, Bourse de Paris, Cedborsa and Deutsche Börse AG, Oslo Børs and Stockholms Fondbörs. Quotes from the London Stock Exchange are delayed by 20 minutes, 15 minutes for Deutsche Börse AG, Cedborsa, and Oslo Børs, and 30 minutes for Bourse de Paris and Stockholms Fondbörs. Quotes from Spanish markets are provided by Sociedad de Bolsas, Bolsa de Madrid, Bolsa de Barcelona, Bolsa de Bilbao and Bolsa de Valencia. Quotes from the Continuous Market are delayed by 15 minutes. Quotes from the outcry markets are closing prices.
Yahoo! (Australia & NZ) <http://quote.yahoo.com.au> is based in Sydney, NSW and provides a localized version of Yahoo’s guide to the Internet. Quote data is provided by Bourse Data Australia and sourced from the Australian Stock Exchange. Quotes available are for previous end-of-day close only.
Error Codes
Occasionally MacTicker may encounter an error with your Internet connection or with the server to which you are attempting to connect. These errors appear in the bottom line of the full-sized stock reports.
-1 According to the domain name resolver, the server does not exist.
-2 The domain name resolver took too long to find the server and timed out.
-3 The domain name resolver could not find the server for some other reason.
-4 The server did not respond to MacTicker’s request. Connection error.
-5 The server count not send the page. (404 Page Not Found errors, for example.)
-6 The server told MacTicker to try the request again.
-7 Connection timed out communicating with the server.
-8 Another, unidentified error was returned by the server.
-9 MacTicker ran out of memory.
-10 You are not connected to the Internet.
-11 The request was cancelled.
Changes since version 1.0.1
— Added support for the Australian Stock Exchange through Yahoo Australia.
— Added the ability to disable automatic updates. To do so, choose Preferences -> Sources; for Update Quotes Every, choose Manually.
— Added the ability to manually update all stock reports, as desired. To do so, choose File -> Update All Reports.
— Added the ability to open and close the reports for all the stocks in the stock list. To open all the stock reports, choose File -> Open All Reports. To close all the reports, choose File -> Close All Reports.
— Added command key equivalents for Update All Reports (K) and Edit Stock List (E).
— Stocks with prices less than one monetary unit now display correctly.
— Fixed a bug where entering a blank company name would cause the Edit menu to dim.
— Fixed a bug that caused MacTicker to stop or quit if you weren’t connected to a network.
Changes since version 1.0
— Fixed a bug that prevented a registered copy of MacTicker from running if AppleTalk was inactive.
Known problems
— There is a problem in certain versions StuffIt Expander that can corrupt PDF files so that they cannot be opened. (Adobe Acrobat Reader asks you for a password for what is an unprotected document.) There are two ways to avoid this problem. (1) Change your Cross Platform preferences in StuffIt Expander to Never Convert Text Files to Macintosh Format. (2) When you download the MacTicker archive, choose Save Link As to prevent StuffIt Expander from automatically decompressing your downloads. (This works differently in different browsers.) Then double-click on the MacTicker archive and let the built-in decompressor do its job.
— If you choose a large font for your ticker, MacTicker may run out of memory and crash. To avoid this problem, increase the amount of memory given to MacTicker in the Finder.
— MacTicker has problems interpretting empty or blank fields in certain of the quotes it receives, most notably from PC Quote. These may appear as zeros or other values that are obviously incorrect when compared to the other information on a stock’s report. Generally, however, we have encountered no problems with the Current Price or the Change. If this problem occurs on your stocks, consider choosing another source for your quotes.
— There are a number of statistics on the stock reports that do not change throughout the day (the opening price, for instance), so MacTicker does not gather these statistics as frequently as those that do change. If you change the source for your quotes as suggested in the previous paragraph, you will not see these values change unless you click the update button.
Contacting Technical Support
As a registered purchaser of MacTicker, you are entitled to free technical support through e-mail and Galleon Software’s site on the World Wide Web. We suggest you try the website first, since that’s where you’ll find the latest update to the application and lists of frequently asked questions.
If you want to contact Galleon Software’s Technical Support department, send a message describing your problem to:
support@galleon.com
We’ll do our best to get back to you before the end of the business day. Galleon Software does not offer telephone support for MacTicker.
Galleon Software, the Galleon Software logo, MacTicker, and the MacTicker logo are trademarks of Galleon Software, Inc. America Online is a registered service mark of America Online, Inc. Macintosh, Mac, PowerBook, and Power Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Open Transport and QuickDraw are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Compuserve is a registered trademark of Compuserve, Inc. PowerPC is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. iMoney is a trademark of Imoney Corp. Nasdaq is a trademark of The Nasdaq Stock Market, Inc. PC Quote is a trademark of PC Quote, Inc. Yahoo! is a trademark of Yahoo! Inc.
