QuickAdvice: CNBC Real-Time For iPad Loves Anacott Steel
CNBC Real-Time (Free) by NBC Universal, Inc. is a redesigned iPhone app for the iPad, that lets you manage your personal stocks and follow other world markets. In addition NBC has streamlined much more into this app, such as the ability to read recent news and watch videos on demand.
When you first open CNBC RT, you are greeted with a real time view of the different indexes from the US, European, and Asian markets. It provides you with the last price, the most recent change with percentage and number value, a five-day return percentage, and also a day range. This is very useful for users who follow other markets around the world and not just our own. This tab is one of the four major sections of the app; within this tab there is a sublevel of tabs, which begin with the indexes. However, you can also view pre-markets, movers, commodities, currencies, bonds, DOW impact, and CNBC stocks. This is all with in the first major tab; “Markets”.
The next feature this app offers is real time news updates, covering all the most recent stories that are developing throughout the nation. The stories covered within this section of the app usually are the same stories being reported on CNBC’s TV channel.
The next tab of the main four is videos, where you will find on demand footage of some of the larger stories making the news. The footage is not live though, and is usually limited to a couple minute clips and not entire features. Though, the quality of the footage is impressive and accessibility of the built in video player is quite simple. You have the option of choosing from top videos, which is the most popular news at that time. However, you can also choose from Recent Videos, Mad Money, and Fast Money.
The final tab of the main four, probably the most used tab with in the App is “My Stocks”. Here you can add and edit an unlimited amount of stocks to a list. With in each list is a very clever user interface similar to what you see with the Indexes under the Markets tab. It is presented to you in a list form of every stock that you have within that list, each stock on the list shows you data for the last price, the change in number value and percentage, a line chart of the day range, and a 52 week High/Low chart. Very useful information for following a stock, and during the normal hours of the NYSE 8am to 4pm the information updates regularly given you have an internet connection. All the features of this app will only work properly and pull data from the servers if there is an Internet connection present.
You can click on an individual stock and it will pull up an additional window with further information on that particular stock. Such information includes anywhere from the basic key fundamentals of the stock to a company profile. Though I found it very interesting that with in this window just for one stock you can also view charts for the stock with the option of one day, week, month, year and five year. Also, you can tab over to a News and Video portion of the window where you will find specific content directly related to that stock. The app is very self-explanatory there are no complicated gestures or actions with in the app. Its sole purpose is to provide you information, in which case all you're really doing is reading and analyzing, which does not call for a complicated interface. So I think what NBC had in mind when they designed this and redesigned it for the iPad was a simple design, and they did a great job of bring just that to this app. Everything is a click away, the app even has an on going bar at the bottom exactly like the one you see on CNBC’s TV channel. Even the color scheme and shape of the boxes is very similar to what you see on TV. I think this is a great idea; it is giving the impression to users that there using something they’ve seen before, when it really might be there first time using the app.
For a free app, it is a great tool to have for users who regularly follow CNBC or stocks in general and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Stock Exchange.
