A question for VO and KB????

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Since you two guys are the leaders of the threads going on here, would you two be willing to try trading throughout the day in Mirc? I offer to open up a room in a server created for finantial purposes and will post detailed instructions on how to install and get to the chatroom. I just want to know if you two are up to giving a try to it before I make the request for the room. I for one think it is much easier since there is a lot of flexibility in terms of how and where you chat. Plus you get every single post real time without the need of refreshing.
Who else would be interested in participating?

Thanks.

P.S: Im sure a lot of people would benefit from it real time.

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quote:
Originally posted by VOwater

My intial reaction was NOT in favor of this idea, however, that could simply be out of ignorance. I am not familar with MIRC. I as well tried when PT setup a room but was unsuccesful. Did Popstocks not post recently that you can't post charts in MIRC? Is MIRC basically like an IM? I want what is best for the community and MyPivots. With that said, my first priority is to my OWN trading. If a MIRC setup will allow me to run a more efficient and effective business I would certainly entertain the thought. I would like to hear from both DT and PT concerning this.

Yeah, it would be great if PT could give us a run down on the Pros and Cons of MIRC and if DT could offer up some alternate ideas.

I know Popstocks set up a room once for a KoolBlue training that I attended (I don't remember the name) and it seemed to work pretty well except for the issue of having to ask for the mic (that could be distracting) but maybe mic permission could be granted to selected people, I'm not sure.

I believe this tread and othres like it for the es contract works well and offers many good ideas for traders to use to make their own decisions when it comes to trading, this is a great place to be to trade and learn... just my no sense

quote:
Originally posted by VOwater

My intial reaction was NOT in favor of this idea, however, that could simply be out of ignorance. I am not familar with MIRC. I as well tried when PT setup a room but was unsuccesful. Did Popstocks not post recently that you can't post charts in MIRC? Is MIRC basically like an IM? I want what is best for the community and MyPivots. With that said, my first priority is to my OWN trading. If a MIRC setup will allow me to run a more efficient and effective business I would certainly entertain the thought. I would like to hear from both DT and PT concerning this.

Yes IRC is basically like one huge IM with sometimes 20+ people entering "LOL" or "What do you think of ..." all at once. IMO it is a terribly distracting thing for daytrading and would be a step backwards for this group.

I've been nerding around on IRC for many years....
Here are the pros/cons I can think of for IRC:

Pros:
- Ability to post comments quickly, this could result in less 'oh crap i was just typing and missed my setup' incidents.

Cons:
- People tend to post less concisely because of how easy it is to enter something on the fly, this can create a lot of confusion.
- Harder for people to get set up / acquainted with the interface.
- Netsplits, sometimes IRC servers will freak out and boot a bunch of people off from the room which creates chaos for all.
- Important posts tend to get buried in a lot of micro posts, like "I'm feeling long/short right now", "What do you guys think of the $850 support" etc... that kind of discussion serves it's purpose but it really clouds out the more lengthy and developed posts.
- Nearly impossible to reference back an important post, there is no indexing in IRC, it's not like you can bookmark something and come back to it later.
- No archive of anything. That is unless someone goes through the trouble of logging each days chat and saving it to some webpage but even then it is like a puzzle trying to read an IRC transcript from a few days ago.
- You can't upload images to an IRC chat and have everyone see it, the best you can do is link to an image somewhere, this means you end up opening 20+ browser windows throughout the day to see everyone's charting.
- If someones steps away for 20 minutes and comes back it is nearly impossible to get back up to speed with what everyone is chatting about ( I already have that problem here, but it would be much worse in a live chat where things are buried in chitchat).

Personally I have been much less active posting here lately because, 1 I am an NQ guy these days so I figure excessive NQ commentary might be a distraction others and 2 because this forum has started to become so busy that I feel like posts are getting buried here too. If I step away for an hour and come back there are often 10 pages to catch up on before I can decode what people are talking about on the present page.

In my own fantasy land I'd like to see a setup much like this site but more streamlined, basically there would be a main page for each day, this would be for outlooks / analysis / thoughtful posts, basically a message board but where threads have no page delimitation (so a whole day fits on one big easy to scroll through page), most recent posts would go to the top of the page. I'd like for charts to stay as expandable thumbnail links so they don't bloat up the main page. Replying and uploading images should also be a breeze.

Then once that is set up i'd like for the page to house a mini chat in the bottom right of the screen. (I've seen this on other sites, know how to set it up easily). This would be there for the chitchatting small comments/ questions. This would keep the main site streamlined and allow for people to socialize or whatever.

Then what would be super duper cool is if there was a dashboard on the bottom left maybe that showed details of how people are trading. There could be an easy interface for users to enter their trade statuses and then everyone else could see this in close to realtime. IE what contract, when and at what price you went long or short, when and at what price you closed out the position. This would keep all the "just went short at 890" in one easy to view place, there would be no more "hey are you still long?" posts etc clouding up the main page.

Hmmm.. I'm getting psyched just thinking about it.. maybe I'll have to do some research see if I can't brew something like this up.

Running an IRC room is not a concern, I have ample experience in this area. I have used most of the applications mentioned above, and personally IRC is preferable because mIRC is a very lightweight client application which requires (consumes) virtually zero bandwith. The chatroom is easily controlled in a variety of ways during trading hours. The limitation of IRC is it is text only, it does not support voice or video streaming. Charts would be posted as a link in the channel, one click will pull the chart up in your browser for viewing. mIRC supports logging for archival purposes.

Another option along the lines of IRC is Ensign Chat. This is a specialized client application created for traders by the folks at Ensign Software. They have built in the capability to view charts directly in the chat window, what you do is post the link to the chart into the client application window and it is converted to the chart in the chart viewer section of the application window for other members to view. Each room member has the option to enable or disable chart viewing in their client application. (Note: the chart viewer is really just a built-in web browser.) Also, Ensign has the option to use the Ventrillo voice application so you can use voice in the chatroom if you so desire. Ensign supports logging for archival purposes.

I personally am not a fan of Paltalk. The problem with Paltalk is the client application is big, the servers tend to be unstable and the application consumes a lot of bandwidth. Paltalk has the advantage of voice. Hotcomm facilitates desktop sharing (streaming) but consumes even more bandwidth than Paltalk. These are heavyweight applications. Also keep in mind there is a cost associated with running a room on the Paltalk and Hotcomm servers. Also, there is a fee for each Hotcomm user. As far as I know it requires a third party application to record the audio for archival from Paltalk and I am not sure how that would be done in Hotcomm.

One thing folks need to consider here is what is the objective of using one of these collaboration tools (IRC, Paltalk, Hotcomm...ect), as each has its strengths and weaknesses.

Based on my experience, for real time trading I prefer using the mIRC application. This is a very stable lightweight client application with maximum flexibility and control.

For training or teaching, the educational side, IRC is not the best tool. This is why most (but not all) trading educators, and fee based trading services have long since moved off IRC and over to the more complete solutions such as PalTalk and Hotcomm. When your teaching, your not really concerned with things like resource overhead, speed or bandwidth.

Obviously this needs more looking into. I hadn't considered issues such as band width or stability, and a non voice room would defeat the purpose of making life easier on our educators.

What I am looking for is a room where the moderators can speak (and others if given permission). Where a live chart can be posted and viewers could follow along. For example: we would be able to watch VO draw his fib projections in real time and be able to listen to his rationale.

The room would also have a chat window for incoming questions and posting links to important items.

With that said, I realize I am asking for too much. I'm back to thinking Paltalk (which is free and can accommodate alot of people) for the voice portion and this forum for charts.

Just for fun, I installed the latest and greatest version of Ensign Chat and have created a new chatroom we can give a trial run with and see what we think.

The software is free to download at this link: http://www.ensignsoftware.com/downloads.php

You click on the "download" button for eChat

This will put the setup program on your desktop, you click that program and install the eChat client application.

Once the installation completes, simply click the desktop icon for eChat and it does the rest, connecting you to their server and it will put you automatically into the support room (room 0). From here you scroll down toward the bottom of the list of room names and find room number 78 named "Harmonics" and click on it. This is the room I just setup for our trial run.

All of this took me about 5 minutes of time to setup.

quote:
Originally posted by VOwater
my first priority is to my OWN trading

I agree to this.

So. How did the ensign chat work?. Is this is a permanent change?.