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This week’s Bits and Bytes provides tips on how you can ditch your antiquated fax machine, become a top performer, and identify the best financial planning software on the market.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Five Best Fax Services from Lifehacker.com

Despite the overall decrease in the popularity of fax machines, faxing is still a common practice in many industries. Here’s a look at five of the most popular services for sending and receiving faxes from a computer—without the clunky hardware.

Secrets of the top performers: The top firms and technology from InvestmentNews.com

What separates the top firms from the rest of the advisory industry? The way they utilize technology, for one. Watch this 3 minute video with Pershing’s Mark Tibergien and InvestmentNews’ Kelli Cruz who reveal insight from the latest Moss Adams/InvestmentNews Financial Performance Study of Advisory Firms.

Naviplan, Money Guide Pro and Advisor Vision Top List of Best Financial Advisor Software from Financial-Planning.com

Naviplan, Money Guide Pro and Advisor Vision are the best products in an increasingly crowded financial-planning software market, according to a new analysis by Aite Group in Boston.

And one story from the previous week that slipped through my filters: As Black Diamond deal starts to click, small custodian gets another hot partner from RIABiz.com

One of the smallest RIA custodians, Shareholders Service Group, has made its third big-league move in a little over a year by signing a deal with Envestnet Inc.

As today wraps up a Labor Day-shortened week, Bits and Bytes is brief, meaning you can get through the material much faster!

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

RedBlack’s Peter Giza gives RIABiz a look under the hood of its Rebalance Express software from RIABiz.com

RedBlack, based in Bedford, N.H., entered the rebalancing technology market in 2006 to challenge two established companies: iRebal and Tamarac.

ByAllAccounts Receives $5 Million to Fuel New Growth from Marketwatch.com

ByAllAccounts, Inc., the financial advisors’ choice for account aggregation, today announced that it has received $5 million in Series B funding, led by Castile Ventures, to expand in the advisory market and increase its presence in the institutional market.

Prominent Financial Planning Program at Texas Tech to Offer Laserfiche Certification Training at Laserfiche.com

Laserfiche today announced that it has partnered with Texas Tech University, one of only 200 schools across the nation with a financial planning program that is registered by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP), to provide training and certification for students enrolled in the Professional Technology in Personal Financial Planning course.

CashEdge’s AllData Aggregation Enables ‘My Money’: Bundle’s Powerful New Budgeting and Spend-Tracking Toolset at PRWeb.com

CashEdge Inc. (www.cashedge.com), provider of AllData, the only premium account aggregation service, today announced that it will offer its industry-leading aggregation service to power exciting new features in Bundle’s My Money toolset. My Money adds personal financial management tools complementing Bundle’s groundbreaking comparison tool, Everybody’s Money, the most comprehensive collection of free spending and savings data on the web.

And finally, a moment of shameless self-promotion: When Disaster Strikes, my latest column for Morningstar Advisor.

With a hat tip to Doug Cornelius and his Compliance Building blog, we want to provide a short summary of interesting stories (mostly) in the financial planning technology arena, but the links don’t necessarily warrant a post on their own.

We hope Bits and Bytes will become a regular fixture on FPPad. If you find the information useful, or you’re tired of this kind of junk in your RSS reader and/or inbox, please leave a comment or contact me.

So here are this week’s stories of interest:

Gmail Priority Inbox Finds & Sorts Important Messages Automatically from Lifehacker.com

Google’s new Priority Inbox feature not only sorts your inbox, but it also figures out what’s important based on what messages you reply to and read.

LIMRA And Smarsh Join Forces to Provide Members Email, Text And IM Archiving from BusinessWire.com

Smarsh®, the managed service leader in innovative, secure and reliable email archiving and compliance solutions, and LIMRA, which provides research, consulting, and other services to insurance and financial services companies worldwide, today announced a strategic partnership. The companies will work together to help LIMRA member firms meet their electronic message archiving and compliance needs.

Fidelity wins converts to WealthCentral, but most of its advisors have yet to make the switch from RIABiz.com

After getting off to a slow start in the market, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services’ technology platform is beginning to catch on with advisory firms.

Introducing the free Fidelity Mobile App for iPad(TM) from Fidelity.com

Fidelity Mobile – our mobile platform to your iPhone®, BlackBerry®, web-enabled phone or other PDA – keeps you in the market and in full control of your trading day. Now available for iPad(TM).

Legent Clearing Selects Black Diamond as Portfolio Management and Performance Reporting Platform from PRNewswire.com

Black Diamond Performance Reporting™ and Legent Clearing announced today a joint program to provide Black Diamond’s industry leading, web-based portfolio management and reporting platform to Legent’s growing list of institutional and retail brokerage firms.