Our Blog is Moving

Marian just finished developing our own blogging software and page.

Originally, we decided to blog in order to put a face on iBanknet. Our blogs have featured little tidbits of who we are and what we are doing.

We decided we wanted to repatriate our blog from Blogger to iBanknet.com. This is a first in a series of steps. Ultimately we will integrate our financial publisher, docKinetics AI, in the process. This will allow us to integrate financial statements, market data, and news in our blog. Way Cool!!!

So our new blog is at:

http://www.ibanknet.com/scripts/blog/viewblog.aspx

Enjoy, Chris

Odds and Ends

This post is a collection of odds and ends.

The Housing Finance and Capital Markets was on CSPAN today, the topic was the subprime situation. Mr. Seidman, a former Chairman of the FDIC gave a short speech and provided this nugget of wisdom; something that went like "Bankers should know who they lend money to and what they are lending money for" (a very common sense statement).

Q3 2007 Credit Union reports have been published. I expect the Banks, Thrifts and Bank Holding Company reports will be published within the next 2 weeks.

This quarter we will be adding coverage of New Jersey.

Chairman Reich of the OTS has sent out a letter for comments concerning Thrifts switching from Thrift Financial Reports to Call Report format. From an analysis point of view, this is good news, however there are some things I really like about Thrift Financial Reports that I will be sad to see disappear.

The FFIEC has extended the Web Service Pilot to the end of 2008. We will probably be adjusting our workflow to bring you more current information.

We will soon be moving off Blogger to our own blogging platform. Marian started work on this today and we will probably be using it later this week.

Have a great week, Chris

Widgets, Gadgets and iBanknet

Our new iBanknet widget - a subject so exciting for me, that I decided to write my first contribution to our blog!

I've developed our own iBanknet widget which provides a simple interface for finding financial institutions on iBanknet.com from your Google Personalized Homepage or, using a Syndicated Gadget, most any web page or blog.

Other widget platforms had restrictions and did not allow us to include more extensive functionality, so we decided to build our own.

Our iBanknet widget currently searches through our growing inventory of over 2,000 U.S. financial institutions, where users can click to view the financial details of any searched institution. The exciting part is that we have SO many ideas of new features that can be added to it that I'm looking forward to adding some more cool stuff to the widget!

As a widget is part of the web 2.0 social networking toolset, we've provided links to some of the social networking websites and personal homepages that allow you to add the iBanknet widget.

Hope you find it useful and have a great weekend!

Marian

Launch of Summary of Deposits Section

Halloween is over, the leaves are beginning to drop and the ocean is starting to get "that" color.



What a great way to start November with the launch of our Summary of Deposits section. We had a lot of fun putting it together. Of course, it is completely RSS based with feeds that you can add to your blogs, personalized web pages and feed readers.



Starting with the National Summary, you can sort by state, number of institutions, number of offices, and total deposits. Click on a state and you will get a list of all the institutions in the state, their number of offices, their total deposits in that state, and percentage of deposits in the state. Click on a hyperlinked institution, and you will get detailed financials of that institution.



That took Marian a day and a half from whiteboard to publishing. Shows what a great techie-business owner can do.



We've got our eyes on a couple of XML based products, one is a flash map based product and the other is dashboard software. Once we save our pennies, iBanknet.com will take on a totally different dimension.



We are looking forward to providing you with a positive internet experience and thank-you for visiting iBanknet.com. Remember feedback is always welcome.



Chris

Autumn in New England

Well our boat "OFFLINE" is now truly offline. We had a great sail from Salem Harbor to Marblehead Harbor where the boat is now in storage for the winter.

Boating season is over, now on to hiking. Franconia notch is a short 2.5 hour drive north of Marblehead. Hiking is very relaxing, a real great way to lose a few pounds and gets you totally grounded. We did a short hike to the top of Indian Head, had a relaxing lunch and then I took a few photos.

The FDIC is conducting a web services pilot for data distribution, so Marian has been testing their prototype to see how it will improve our work flow. Pretty awesome stuff from a publishing perspective. I sure hope the SEC does something similar for distribution of their content. This is truly one of those paradigm shifts.

I've been catching up on some of the XBRL specs and requirements. The Dimensions Spec is interesting reading, addresses some issues we have, and seems straightforward to implement.

This week, we refocus on iBanknet. We've been doing "cold calls" and are pleased with the results. I want to apologize for interrupting all you busy people and thank-you for your words of encouragement. It's pretty amazing when you actually talk to people that have visited our site.

Maybe the telephone is the best social networking tool of all.

New York - Nostalgic Publishing

This weekend we increased our coverage to include New York State.

As I was reviewing the banks and credit unions, I reflected on how much New York had touched my life and in such a positive way. As a youth in my "Family Vacation", visiting Frontier Town, Ausable Chasm and Fort Ticonderoga. As a college student hiking between 10 to 15 peaks in the Adirondacks (Mount Marcy, Giant Mountain, etc.). As my career in banking started, living near Buffalo and enjoying the Bills and frequent visits to Niagara Falls. And then, as my career evolved, being re-located to Battery Park City and working at the Chase Plaza. And then spending many fall and winter evenings reading Gotham by Burrows and Wallace.

It was a quite a nostalgic experience clicking on the state map and checking results. New York State is the first in what I consider to be a "jumbo" banking states(over 700 Banks/Holding companies and Credit Unions) on iBanknet.com. We certainly hope you are finding iBanknet a useful resource on the Internet and don't hesitate to drop us a line with suggestions for improvement.

Thanks and have a nice week,
Chris

TD to Acquire Commerce Bancorp Inc.

We covered the TD/Commerce Bancorp merger yesterday and posted a balance sheet and income statement comparison at the following web address(in excel, rtf, pdf and html):

http://www.ibanknet.com/spotlight/institutionspotlight2007100201.shtml

We normally make this content available, since most financial portals(the free ones) try to shoe horn banks into corporate and industrial financial statements. Many times you only end up with a few items in their statements.

It's very interesting to see TD's expansion, now includes census bureau Division 1 and Division 2, thus having a strong presence in Region 1(Northeast). Meanwhile BMO expanded into Region 2(Midwest) and RBC in Region 3(South). I don't think any Canadian Banks have moved into Region 4(West). Yet.

We seem to be following TD ... we have finished publishing Division 1 - New England, and we will soon start publishing content in Division 2 - Middle Atlantic later this month. Our new infrastructure, designed and developed by Marian Albert, is performing exceptionally well.

Have a great day!! Chris