StrikeIron Blog

Data-Enabling Mindjet

Version 8 of Mindjet's new MindManager product has added the ability to consume Web services as part of its "mind mapping" capabilities. The palette of available Web services now includes StrikeIron's D&B Business Prospect with Linkage Web service. This functionality enables a company name that is part of a mind map to be drilled into, and to pull back the relevant business demographics such as number of employees, revenues, parent and child company linkages, etc.

A Mindjet "mind map" is essentially a visual diagram with a main topic in the middle with many sub-topics branching out into additional sub-topics in a tree-like representation. This visual format better represents how people think, makes information more memorable, and shows patterns and relationships that would otherwise be difficult to see in a linear document.

Now, if one of the sub-topics of a mind map is a particular business or other organization, the Mindjet and StrikeIron integration enables information about the business to be drilled into, providing more data and information for a particular mind map. Capabilities such as these help people communicate ideas and plans more effectively in a multi-dimensional space in intuitive and interactive ways.

Within the MindManager application, simply provide your StrikeIron UserID and Password that then enables the mind map to communicate with our data center and pull the desired information into the mind map. A trial of this capability is available to users of MindManager.

Self-imposed Financial Data Bailout

During challenging economic times, one thing that financial services companies can do (and other companies of course) is to look for ways to reduce costs. External data acquisition is one area where this can be achieved because of the emerging alternatives now available and in use by many forward-thinking companies.

I am often surprised by how much organizations will spend for access to financial datasets that they leverage throughout their business. In most cases, the high costs of the data itself is just the beginning. Updating and maintenance of this data, the necessary hardware, and all of the support costs can get even more expensive in a hurry.

Fortunately, these costs can be dramatically reduced by integrating into SOAP and REST-based financial data sources over the Web, where much of the same financial data is easily accessible and in a much more attractive usage-based business model. And since these financial data sources are available over the Web, there is no need for updating and maintenance of the data since all of that occurs within an external data center. For all of these same reasons, there is no need for any additional hardware. Also since it is Web-based and standards-based, the data can easily be made available enterprise-wide in many different applications.

Examples of these easy-to-integrate financial data sources from StrikeIron include:

- Real-time and delayed stock quotes and stock information for NASDAQ, NYSE, and AMEX exchanges.
- In-depth financial, analyst, and company demographics from Zack's Investment Research
- Real-time earnings information and interest rates from Wall Street Horizons
- Real-time financial news from Midnight Trader

And of course many more. Registering at www.strikeiron.com will provide free trials to check them out.

All of these Web services APIs can easily be integrated into applications, spreadsheets, and anything else that can consume a Web service.

So while this might be a tough economic period in general, these Web services are a great way to bring costs down while simultaneously innovating.