iPad App Review: ZumoCast

Have you ever been out and about and wished you had synced that one song, file or video to your iPad? ZumoCast solves that problem. It is basically a file sharing and streaming application. It gives you access to files on multiple computers from the application on your device or on the website from any computer with an internet connection. The files can be streamed or downloaded. Say goodbye to planning ahead for your entertainment. You can have access to your entire media collection anywhere you have a network connection without syncing the files to your device. I was amazed how well the streaming works remotely. Very smooth and no noticeable buffering time. My brother uses this app for all of his listening enjoyment. He streams songs to his iPhone while in his car over AT&T's 3G network. Setup is easy also. A simple download to any computer that you want to have access to (Windows and OSX versions are available) and a short setup process to decide which files and folders you want to share and you are ready to go. I was pleased to find that there was no need for me to make changes to my firewall or router. A few other apps that I tried with similar functionality (StreamToMe, PlayOn) have required me to open ports and forward ports and they seem to work intermittently at best. ZumoCast doesn't share any of those problems. One drawback is that I was hoping to stream .wtv and .dvr-ms files from my Media Center DVR but I have been unsuccessful. Those file types seem to be unsupported. I wasn't surprised with DRM issues and very large file sizes. Another drawback is that there is no Android app currently, although one is in the works.

The user interface is clean and easy to navigate.

Music is easy to find with all the standard sorting methods.

Video stream quality is good, even over WiFi. Yes that is Vanilla Ice.

ZumoCast
Thumbs up for ease of use
Thumbs up for usefulness
Thumbs up for visual design
Thumbs up for cost: $0

If you want or need access to media and other files on the go this is an excellent solution.

Android App Review: TasKiller

With the multitasking capability on the android platform it is essential to have some way to manage apps. I have found that most apps don't have an option to shut down or close. They just run, or at least stay open, in the background until you kill them. Most apps that stay open don't seem to cause problems. They go into a low resource mode. On the other hand I have come across a few apps that seem to be resource hogs if left open in the background. I tried quite a few task killing apps, all free. All of them had the ability to close individual apps or all at once. For the most part the task killers fell into two categories. Those that would lead me to believe that an app had been killed by removing it from the list only to find that it was actually still running when the list was refreshed, and those that would redirect me to the system menu when I tried to kill an app where I would have to perform additional steps that I could do without the management app. Every one that I tried seemed to lack the permissions to actually kill the apps. Then I found TasKiller. It has some great widget options that show what is running and it actually kills apps with one touch. There are still some apps that it doesn't seem to be able to kill, mostly system stuff so it hasn't been an issue.

The bottom row is my preferred widget for this app. It shows how much memory is available, a small icon for apps that are running and the red android button kills all apps.

The red android on the second row is a simpler widget that just shows available memory and kills all apps.

When you launch the application you have the option to kill individual apps from this screen.

QR code for TasKiller

I have seen the available memory well below 100Megs and I usually get about 218Megs by using TasKiller.

TasKiller
Thumbs up for ease of use
Thumbs up for usefulness
Thumbs up for visual design
Thumbs up for cost: $0

For me this app is a must have.

Last week's trades

Hey Everyone,
A few weeks ago Liam used markers to transform himself into Spiderman (see Kim's blog at http://splitendcafe.blogspot.com/2010/07/wherein-i-fire-my-television-for-being.html for that tale). After that we thought we put all of the markers out of reach but last week he came to find me and show me his new costume. He had found a black marker and drawn Ls (for Liam) all the way up each leg and arm and on his torso and his face. Looking back it was pretty funny. At the time I was mad enough that I didn't think to take a picture. On Thursday I finally got out of that trade that I talked about last week. I took a big loss on that but not every trade can be a winner and I learned some valuable lessons. I closed out at 1.30698 and at this moment the price is 1.32203. I would be down another 150 pips if I were still holding it. I decided to document the trade and what I learned on my blog at http://bendubois.blogspot.com. I want to try and do that for some of my exceptionally good and exceptionally bad trades. That trade took me down to about 70% return on my trading which is actually excellent for six weeks. Just not as good as the 116% that I was up last week. My trading has gone very well since then and I think that I will have made up my loss by the end of this week. I will report on that next week. Our little trading group is growing. There are a few of us now that share notes at 3pm every day before we make our daily overnight trade and we haven't picked a loser yet. If you have some money to invest and you want to get in on the action let me know. I attached my trading statement through Friday.

Ben Dubois

Trading log

The big loser

Last Friday morning I was watching the market after the European bank stress test results and things had settled out after the announcement. There was a bit of a downtrend and it was supported by my indicators so I was starting to scalp short positions. This is what my charts looked like when I got in:

 The red arrow on the upper left is the 15 minute candlestick right after the stress test announcement. The red circle is where I entered my trade. The charts on the right are what my indicators looked like going into the trade. I felt comfortable short because of the recent downward trend and the formation on the tactical indicator on the 15 minute chart. I probably should have waited with the 30 minute so oversold but I thought that I could still easily get my 5 pips. I also thought that if I didn't get them right away the worst case scenario would be a retracement over the next hour and I would get out either way.

This is what I was looking at when the market closed on Friday a few hours after entering my trade. The red line and circle show my entry point. It never showed any strong signs of retracing and by market close I was down 94 pips. My longer term charts were all showing over bought so I felt confident that it would retrace at some point in the next few days.

This is what I saw Thursday morning. The red circle lower and left is my entry and the the circle near the top is where I decided to take my loss. You can see that once it crossed 1.2980 it kept trying to break back through to lower levels and it was never able to do so and finally broke upward. I believe that it could still retrace in the near future but I am glad to be out. While I was watching this trade on Thursday morning I was re-watching some training videos and the presenter was talking about the opportunity cost of being in a bad trade and how sometimes it is better to take your loss and start fresh rather than spend a lot of time trying to get out even. Hearing that again in this context definitely influenced my decision to take my loss. I had been able to make some trades while I was in this trade because I am always careful to not over leverage but I could only trade in one direction and I was trading scared. I would compare it to being in a fight with one arm tied behind my back.

I still have a lot to learn about trading and I learn far more from bad trades than good ones. When my trading has gone so well it is good to have a reality check. Not every trade has to be, or can be, a winner and sometimes it will be better to take a loss and free up my account and my mind and continue trading rather than wait it out and miss out on other opportunities to profit.

Last week's trades

Hey everyone,

We went up to Oakley over the weekend and we stopped on a dirt road next to some sheep to show the kids. Liam was watching a movie so when I asked him if he knew what kind of animal's those were he looked up for a second and said, "Oh yeah, those are elephants." Then he went right back to his movie. I guess his movie was better than seeing some silly elephants. I attached a screen shot of what I look at when I trade. The image is wide because I have two screens. I keep my indicators up on my right screen and I usually keep my Metatrader 4 platform and dailyfx.com's live news feed up on my left screen. On the Metatrader 4 window I expanded the trade log so you could see all of the trades that I made last week. As of Friday my account is up 116% since I started live trading five weeks ago. Over that period I have averaged $232 and about 2 hours of trading per day. I did get a little greedy and got into a bad trade Friday afternoon. I am still in the trade and my indicators are still looking good for a retracement. I am looking for 1.2815 on the EUR/USD pair. I will let you know how that goes next week. There are a few of us that are starting to communicate on a regular basis about our trading, especially the trade we make every day at 3pm. If you are interested in getting in on the action we are always looking for more people. The idea is that together we are greater than the sum of our parts.

Until next week,
Ben

Last week's trades

Hey everyone,

Last week we spent a night at the Homestead in Midway. In the morning I turned on the TV for Liam and as soon as we found a cartoon he said, "Dad, start it over." We have had a DVR his whole life and he has never really watched live television. A few minutes later he came over to where I was sitting and said, "Dad, I can't find the pause button on the remote. Can you pause the movie so I can go potty?" I guess we are both pretty spoiled by our DVR.

I have attached a list of all of the trades that I made last week. A few of them were also on the last email. My net profit for the trades opened between Sunday, 7/11, and Thursday, 7/15, was $904. My account is now up 92% in four weeks of trading. Not too shabby for a couple of hours a day at most. I didn't make any trades on Friday because I was impatient on Thursday and got into a bad short that just closed at 5:45 this morning. I made the mistake of thinking that I knew better than my indicators and I ended up picking the bottom for the day with my short position. Fortunately the indicators also showed me that the probability was very high that the price would dip back to my exit in the near future and it did just that this morning. Even with swap fees my bad trade turned into a net gain of $170.92 with a little patience. If you have some money to trade this program is worth checking out. A few people have shown interest in starting a trading pit with me but I think it is a case of the more the merrier. If you are interested in joining our group drop me a line. Until next time.

Ben

Trading log

The latest news

Hey everyone,

I wanted to say hi and let everyone know what I am up to. Kim and I cut Liam's hair yesterday and we decided that it was time for his first mohawk. He wasn't too thrilled about and he said, "I look like the top of a dinosaur." So I said,"Isn't that what you want to look like?" Liam said, "No, I want to look handsome!" It gave us a good laugh. I also have recently completed a sophisticated day trading course and have begun trading a system that I am seeing great results on a daily basis. I included a screen shot of my results for today just so you could see. My best day so far was $430 in just a few hours of trading. My account is up 78% since I started trading just over 3 weeks ago. I don't know how long this will last but I wanted to make sure that if you had some money to trade that you checked this program out. I know of a couple groups that are doing trading pits and I would like to get something like that together with people I know so we could all help each other out. Until next time.

Ben

Cheapening the Office

It looks like this has been beat to death in various news outlets but I would like to put in my two cents. Soon after his election I began to see that Barack Obama was cheapening the office of the President of the United States through various actions. I feel that in order to maintain the respect that the office should have certain things should be avoided, i.e. appearing on a late night talk show. This week I heard about a new low for President and the administration. Joe Biden said, to Barack Obama, that health reform is a big f****** deal on live television. Here is a link to video of his statement. He obviously didn't intend for it to be heard on the mic but I don't believe that excuses him. This behavior is not unexpected for Joe Biden. In fact you could say that it is expected. The action that cheapens the office is the fact that there is a t-shirt now available for purchase on Barack Obama's official website celebrating Joe Biden's statement. Rather than distancing himself from this profane statement Barack has chosen to embrace and promote it. I can't say that I am surprised but it is disappointing.