The State Of The Art Of Version 1.0 iPad Apps

Users who download asset manager iPad apps also download apps like CNBC Realtime and Bloomberg, according to Apple’s App store. Gulp. That sets the bar fairly high for a Version 1.0 app from a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) company.

Three asset manager iPad apps have launched in the last few weeks. Since it’s been almost a year since I blogged about an iPad app (PIMCO’s), I thought I’d take a look at how the state of the art has evolved, as demonstrated by the apps from OppenheimerFunds, Franklin Templeton Investments and RidgeWorth Investments.

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Evolving Away From Site Tours And Toward ‘Likeable Objects’

What are you doing to prepare for changes taking place online today that affect Web content?

Despite the fact that content is the value underlying much of the social media phenomenon, the discussion about social media has largely dealt with other issues—the practices, the practitioners, the policies, the enabling technologies. Content is my first love and I’m guilty, too, for having given it short-shrift in recent posts.

The sharing of Web content has sweeping implications for the development, delivery and analytic resources you invest in your firm’s content portfolio—Marketing and non-Marketing text, images and especially charts and graphs, video, audio. And it has direct bearing on how you build out your Web site, especially those of you who are working on redesigns.

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Blue, Blue, Our World Is (Mostly) Blue: Recent Asset Manager Website Redesigns

  July brought new looks (and some information re-design) to several asset management Web sites, including:

• Alger
• Calamos Investments
• Eaton Vance
• Mainstay Investments
• RidgeWorth Funds

Besides a fondness for blue (good for you, RidgeWorth, for daring to use a red!), the publicly accessible areas of the new sites have some features in common—multiple searches/sorts, quick links, RSS subscriptions. With their Most Popular capabilities, MainStay and RidgeWorth take navigation a bit further by offering visitors the benefit of what previous visitors valued. You’ll want to check each site out yourself.

Just for fun, below we show screenshots of relatively recent previous versions of the sites, courtesy of the Wayback Machine. The screenshots we show of the new sites are of the individual investor pages. Click on the images of the new sites to go to them.

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