IPOscan 2.0, Shareware, fully functional 30 day trial
Investment Software by Anthony S. Napier
April 2000, asnapier@juno.com


About
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This program will be of interest to: Account holders using WWW.ETRADE.COM with a desire to gain entry to the lucrative IPO market.

IPOscan monitors the ETRADE "IPO - Current Offerings" page.  Users can be automatically notified of any new IPOs added to the web page via an audible alarm, email or pager.  

Email may be sent via SMTP (Internet Mail) or Microsoft MAPI (Microsoft Exchange-Mail).  Users who do not have this type of email system can use the audible alarm feature, which uses the PC speakers.


Installation
-------------------
- Minimum hardware requirements: 56K connection, 1024x768 display, Pentium class processor.
- Runs on Win9x, NT 4.0, Windows 2000 (RTM)  platforms.
- Uninstall:  Use standard Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs

Since many archives on the Internet do not allow inclusion of Visual Basic runtime libraries (to avoid duplication and unneccessary use of storage) the installation is a two-part process.

PART ONE
- Download the Visual Basic 6 runtime libraries from 
http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/dll/simvb6-5.zip
The easiest way to do this is to click on the shortcut/url included with the IPOscan download.
- Unzip the files.
- Run the setup and follow the prompts, it may require a reboot of your system.

PART TWO
- Unzip IPOscan.
- Run setup.exe and follow the prompts.
- Connect to the Internet.
- Click on your start menu to locate and run IPOscan.exe




User Interface
-------------------
Click START to initiate polling of the web site.  Once completed, the program will go into wait mode until the interval setting (default 15 minutes) determines it is time to run the next poll.  Using this program, you will have an automated watchdog to alert you of changes to the web page.


COLOR CODES
-----------
GREEN: Normal.   Compared to the last polling cycle, no changes found.

BLUE: Working.  Give me a minute, the poll is running against the web site.

RED: Hits found.  Alarm will trigger.

ORANGE: Some type of error, eg. Web timeout, email logon error, cannot sound alarm.  The program will continue to re-try the poll based on the interval setting.



Settings
--------
START: Begin polling of website, when done, wait for next cycle.

STOP:  Freezes countdown to next polling cycle.

CURRENT TICKER LIST:  Displays tickers found in the last polling cycle.

EMAIL ON/OFF:  Clicking on this button will open up another window
where you can select your type of email, and configure email notification.  
Also allows you to test your audible alarm.

ALARM ON/OFF: Toggles the audible alarm through your PC speakers.

BROWSER ON/OFF:  Toggles the display of the browser window.  The browser will refresh when you click START or a polling cycle automatically runs.

POLLING INTERVAL:  Time to wait between polling cycles.  IPO windows at ETRADE are 2 hours in length, the default 15 minute interval should allow  more than sufficient notification time.
At this time, it is *not* a first-come, first-served allocation.  Applying anytime in the 2 hour window will be OK.

EXCLUDE IPOs THAT ARE CLOSED or REMOVED:  If checked (default), you will not receive notification when an IPO is closed after the 2 hour window or when an IPO is removed from the page.
If not checked, you will receive notification on *all changes* including when IPOs are closed or removed from the page.  Tip on Graphical Interface: After scrolling up or down to view an interval number, *click* on the number to select it.

ACTION LOG: Displays all activity for this run of the program.  See the menu setting EDIT > VIEW IPO LOG - this log is a text file that accumulates all activity history - spanning iterations of the program.


Please Register the Program
----------------------------
See the menu setting HELP > REGISTER PROGRAM
The 30-day-trial is fully functional.  Purchase of the registration
key will remove the 30-day-trial restriction.  

Using this program as a monitoring/notification tool, the author has received IPO shares from ETRADE.





