financing

In foreign exchange trading, or forex, investors prosper by guessing which nations' currencies will rise or fall in value in relation to other currencies. Online forex trading is gaining in popularity, thanks in part to software like eToro, an online forex trading platform that makes it easy for the self-directed investor to participate in the growing market for international currency trades.

Like many such services, eToro is both the software that investors use to trade online in the forex markets and the Web-based portal to the online trading service or services that you have to subscribe to in order to … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Twitter didn't rake in $100 million because it was about to run out of money, investor and board member Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital said in a panel at the 140 Conference on Tuesday morning.

There was still money left over, Sabet explained, from what the company had raised from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners in February, which followed Twitter's Series C round in the spring of 2008. Twitter, according to Sabet, raised the money from Insight Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price last month because it wanted to grow up: hire new people, launch new … Read more

This morning, Fred Wilson introduces us to one of Union Square Ventures' portfolio companies that is coming out of stealth and launching publicly. Tracked.com is a sort of re-imagining of a business information service that provides personalized information on businesses and the people associated with them.

The start-up is positioned to be a competitor to Google and Yahoo Finance, which are largely ticker-based, as well as user-driven information sites like CrunchBase, Wikipedia, and, to some extent, LinkedIn.

Conceived by Mike Yavonditte, formerly of Quigo, Tracked.com, of course, provides extensive information on ticker-based companies, including company financials, much like Google and Yahoo Finance do, but it's not just a stock service. Its strong point is that it also tracks privately held companies, gathering any available information on them. For all of these companies, Tracked shows a wealth of information and news as well as the people associated with the company, complete with fleshed out profiles on them as well.

Tracked helps you keep an eye on the companies and people that you find important in the business world. It has a completely customizable "My Tracker" section that allows you to pick what companies and people to watch. For public companies, it has more robust functionality than Google or Yahoo Finance. It even calls out a lot of interesting data like executive compensation. For example, you can view a list of the executives with the highest compensation in 2006. For private companies, Tracked might be the most extensive, publicly available database in existence (aside from Wikipedia) and it's sure to grow even more.

One thing that is notably different about Tracked as compared to Wikipedia or CrunchBase is that users cannot edit current entries or add new ones. This ensures that the data on Tracked is accurate since the team can check all of the data that comes in. The downside to this is that it cannot possibly include as much information as a user-driven site.

Overall, Tracked.com is a strong, customizable alternative that will pull some users away from Google and Yahoo Finance. It is a convenient and highly addictive way to browse through information on public and private businesses as well as people. The information is so extensive and interesting that you should plan to burn a couple of hours the first time that you check the site out.

You may notice that Tracked.com is operating a little slow right now with the surge of traffic from its launch. Hopefully, as they work out the kinks, performance will improve.

Here are some additional screenshots to give you a better idea of the site's functionality, but you should really just check it out yourself.… Read more

Adarian Money for Windows offers to keep your finances in order with a simple setup and surprising options. While it takes a lot of work, it dissects finances so well that it's well worth the effort.

The program's interface felt instantly comfortable, since its rows and columns reminded us of online banking software. Its clearly labeled commands and intuitive flow was never difficult to manage. While the program offered to handle all your financial matters, including checking, savings, cash and even investments, it was a lot of initial effort to set up. We needed to manually enter every … Read more

Hot on the heels of its appointment of a chief technology officer last week, News Corp.'s MySpace on Monday announced that Mark Rosenbaum has been hired as its chief financial officer.

Although the appointment marks the first time that the social network has had a CFO, it is Rosenbaum's second stint at News Corp. He headed up financial operations at Gemstar-TV Guide International, when it was owned by the Rupert Murdoch-helmed conglomerate. More recently, Rosenbaum served as a consultant to MGM.

In his new position, Rosenbaum report directly to Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook executive who became MySpace's CEO in April, … Read more

This week, I'm joined by CNET security expert Elinor Mills in a discussion with Mint CEO Aaron Patzer, whose personal finance site is being acquired by Intuit. We grill Patzer on why he sold the company, the future of Quicken, and the security of online financial data.

I really enjoyed recording this podcast. We had the start-up CEO of the moment in to talk about why he sold his personal finance company, Mint, to Intuit--the company he built Mint to compete with in the first place.

Also, Elinor grills Patzer on the security safeguards in his system. Patzer tells us getting access to Mint data is like initiating self-destruct on the Starship Enterprise: You need three people to give their individual passwords at the same time or no go. Play the podcast for the full content, and for our show notes, including some bonus content from a post-show discussion, keep reading. … Read more

A bank chain in California will combine PV and EV--that is, an electric-vehicle charging station equipped with solar-photovoltaic panels.

Solar installer SolarCity and Rabobank on Tuesday unveiled the charge point at a bank branch in Santa Maria, Calif.

The bank, which plans to build a network of four charging stations from Los Angeles to San Francisco, is considering putting solar panels on the buildings, according to Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity, which installs and provides financing for solar panels. The company owns the panels at the Santa Maria location and sells the electricity they generate to the bank.

Because charge … Read more

While Mint.com for iPhone won't bring you the entire range of financial information available on Mint's Web site, the updated app does come closer than its predecessor. If you sign up for Mint to send you alerts for significant financial events, such as going over your allotted budget, Mint will now push notifications to your phone. The app also opens up to viewing its recently added budgeting tools. New editing fields are the single best addition, and they turn Mint.com's iPhone app from a read-only summary of your finances into a tool that begins to … Read more

Another one from Facebook: The company announced Tuesday, just as it was about to take the stage in a "developer garage" event at the TechCrunch50 conference, that it has reached 300 million active users around the world.

Also: It's cash flow-positive.

"As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world. It's a large number, but the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone," a blog post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg read. "We're also succeeding at building Facebook in … Read more