March 10th, 2010 Bill Winterberg
Thanks go to rileybeebs on Twitter for bringing a simple-yet-effective OCR conversion tool from WiseTREND to my attention.
WiseTREND is an organization that, according to its website:
…provides a set of specific industry-tested Solutions, as well as customizable Software applications for OCR, Document Conversion and Data Capture projects.
I’ve written on FPPad before (Improve Your Paperless Document Searches) about applying OCR to each and every document captured with a scanner. Doing so allows document management and search programs to look inside documents and match keywords entered in a search query.
Adopting intelligent search for documents means no more wasted time digging though seemingly endless trees of subfolders on a company server in an attempt to find one elusive document that ended up being misfiled when it was captured in the first place.
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February 16th, 2010 Bill Winterberg
I’m seeing two trends emerge in 2010 through the work I perform with wealth management firms.
First, firms want to implement a document management system to efficiently manage the volumes of paperwork and forms generated throughout the financial planning process. Second, advisers want to increase revenue and client service by capturing data on held-away assets through account aggregation software.
Late last week I posted commentary why document storage isn’t document management at advisors4advisors.com. On the account aggregation side, I recently learned of a webinar offered by ByAllAccounts aimed to address this opportunity.
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January 25th, 2010 Bill Winterberg
That’s right, FINRA just released guidance on the use of social media webistes!
Click here to read the release on FINRA’s website.
Here are several links to coverage, reviews, and feedback by folks I follow in the blogosphere and social media space:
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January 6th, 2010 Bill Winterberg
Here’s a quick update to share an article I recently discovered concerning security of data on iPhones.
While this article is directed to lawyers, it is directly applicable to financial advisers who use iPhones to access information about clients.
But don’t the iPhone 3G’s encryption and unlock code features protect data from nefarious characters? No they don’t, according to Sharon D. Nelson, Esq. and John W. Simek of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Click here to read their article, Why Lawyers Shouldn’t Use The iPhone: A Security Nightmare.
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December 11th, 2009 Bill Winterberg
Update 12/22/2009: I uploaded a PDF of tweets containing the #FAiC09 hashtag, as they’re no longer available on the Twitter search site. Paragraphs below were updated.
Update 12/21/2009: Here’s an article from Davis Janowski at InvestmentNews discussing online conferences; No fuss, no muss, but forget about freebies. He highlights the Forbes iConference series among other events.
I attended the Forbes Advisor iConference Building a Rebound-Ready Game Plan on Wednesday of this week. I believe this is the second 100% web-based conference put on by Forbes. Note that InvestmentNews also recently held a 100% online event covering ETFs, but I don’t currently manage investments, so I skipped the event.
If you missed the event, replays are available for 90 days after the iConference. This FPPad post has details on how FPA members can attend for free.
Here’s my feedback on the Forbes event.
Format
Attending the iConference was easy; fire up an approved web browser (Internet Explorer 6 or higher or Firefox versions prior to 3.5), log in, and the iConference was underway. There were three main areas of the iConference:
- Presentation Area
- Networking Lounge
- Exhibit Hall
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December 3rd, 2009 Bill Winterberg
I had no idea that Forbes puts on a totally web-based event they call the Advisor iConference. Forbes held an iConference in June titled Building Wealth With Innovative Ideas and Advice and the content is now available on-demand (click the link to register).
On December 9th, another iConference is being offered titled Building A Rebound-Ready Game Plan.
How did I find out about this resource? By chance, I was navigating the FPA national website looking for information related to my position as the incoming Technology Director for the FPA DFW chapter. Set over in the FPA News Brief section is a single-line link titled FPA President Part of Forbes.com Regulatory Webinar. I clicked the link and learned of the iConference.
Registration to the iConference is $75, but FPA members can attend the iConference for FREE. Here’s how.
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December 2nd, 2009 Bill Winterberg
This is my own blog, so every once in a while I get to do some shameless self-promotion.
Today, my Twitter feed @BillWinterberg is featured in FINS from The Wall Street Journal as one of the top 10 Twitter feeds for career-minded advisers to follow.
Here’s a quick snapshot of my listing (click the snapshot for the full article):
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Posted in Professional Development, Technology | 3 Comments »
November 24th, 2009 Bill Winterberg
It’s that time of year again when Financial Planning magazine publishes its annual survey of technology in use by financial planners and advisers. This is the third year for the survey, and again Joel P. Bruckenstein tallied up the responses (from over 1,500 individuals!) and reviewed the results.
Click here to view Bruckenstein’s review of Financial Planning’s 2009 Software Survey.
Just as I did last year, I’m posting my 30-second summary of the review. I’m listing each comment along side those of 2008 for easy comparison. Read the rest of this entry »
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November 18th, 2009 Bill Winterberg
Over the weekend I received an invitation to Google Wave and have finished setting up access with my account.
What’s Google Wave?
My favorite description so far of Google Wave is that it’s the Play Doh of communication: there are no obvious instructions, but you can pretty much do anything with it.
So if you’re on Google Wave, connect with me and let’s see what we can make. (Sorry, I’m out of invitations!)
My address is billwinterberg@googlewave.com.
I also created a public wave specifically for financial planning. Search for with:public “financial planning” to find it.
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November 15th, 2009 Bill Winterberg
Here’s a quick integration of Twitter and Wordle on how the services can be combined to gain insight on a topic very quickly. I’ve written about Wordle before; it’s a web-based tool to create word clouds from text.
Earlier today, technology columnist David Pogue asked the following question on Twitter:
Lots of replies came in, so it’s difficult to determine which apps are the most recommended among those that replied.
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