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Umoo is a virtual stock-trading platform that is, admittedly, a little late to the market. There are several virtual stock-trading games, including a prominent app from Marketwatch called the Virtual Stock Exchange. Realizing that, I wasn't sure if there was any more room for a game like Umoo.

I'm still not entirely sure.

Umoo (pronounced You-Moo) was originally started in Israel, but it has quickly made its way to the United States. In fact, the game originally only allowed gamers to trade on U.S. markets. But after building a small following, the company realized that it wasn't maximizing its monetization potential, so it opened it up to global markets to attract English-speaking gamers around the world. And that's where it finds itself today.

The premise Umoo is a virtual stock-trading game. But it does it a little differently than most of its competitors. Rather than ask you to invest in a handful of companies and see how you did after the market closes, Umoo tries to replicate a real stock-trading environment by providing real-time trades. So, if your portfolio includes Best Buy and its share price is tanking for some reason, you can dump the stock and buy something new. It makes Umoo more realistic.

Winning some cash Although you're given 100,000 virtual points to trade with in free games, Umoo's real appeal is in its cash games. Those games, which are created by Umoo employees, require all players to pay an entry fee before they can join the game. After investing the cash, each player is given the same amount of money to invest with during the timed game. The players with the highest returns on investment win cash prizes. Paid games run "24/5", since global markets aren't open on weekends.

I was a little disappointed with Umoo's profit-sharing plan. Games can be played for as little as $1, but some go up to $100. In either case, Umoo is taking the lion's share of the cash. For example, one $5 game that's currently available in the app, awards the winner $11.96 for achieving the highest return on their investment. Umoo has, so far, collected $65. An Umoo representative told me that the percentages it takes from each game decline as the cash pool increases, but I noticed a sizable discrepancy in every game between the amount of cash available and what the person actually wins. If the company wants to attract more users, it needs to pay more cash.

During my meeting with Umoo, the company was also quick to remind me that it is legal to play. Even though cash does exchange hands, the company said Umoo is a game of skill, rather than chance, making it legal across the globe.… Read more

Have a bunch of boxes that need to be shipped on pallets but aren't sure how many will fit or what size shipping containers or pallets to use? This program will help you make all of those calculations.

Quick Pallet Maker would be easier to use for those familiar with shipping than those who are not. At first glance, the program and all of its menus and options might appear daunting to users who are unfamiliar with the world of shipping. When we opened the program, it told us what option to select to begin usage. We tried out … Read more

As transactional data volumes increase, system architecture must stay flexible and be able to scale in accordance.

Back in September, the London Stock Exchange experienced a significant interruption when a proprietary system built on Microsoft technology went offline. Few details were shared, but I eventually cobbled together a rough explanation of what happened.

The stock exchange's system hung due to a "coincidence" (whatever that means) that stopped data from processing. What appears to have happened is several Windows processes, including message processing, crashed at the same time due to a configuration glitch. Because the applications were so directly tied in to Windows, the impact affected everything instead of just one component.

I spoke on the phone with Craig Hayman, vice president of IBM's WebSphere, discussing how open standards and design principles allow for more robust system architecture. Craig explained that the stock exchange incident was likely a result of being too dependent on a myopic structure rather than relying on a three-tier architecture that's been proven to scale.

It feels a bit old-school to talk about three-tier architectures in this day of Ruby apps built in 15 minutes, but the fact is you need separation and best-of-breed components when you are dealing with large transaction volumes and varietal peaks. … Read more

Facebook employees and investors can now sell some of their stock to Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment firm that infused $200 million into the social network this spring.

Part of the deal at the time of the investment would be that Digital Sky Technologies would buy back up to $100 million in common stock from shareholders whose shares have vested.

Now, Digital Sky Technologies is purchasing stock at $14.77 per share, which assumes a valuation of about $6.5 billion for Facebook, according to Brad Stone of The New York Times, who first reported the news. That's … Read more

Y'know, I dig cars and car racing. But I also appreciate motorcycles and bike racing as well. And I think I'm long overdue to show a little love for motorcycle racing. And to keep with this week's salute to the women of motorsport racing, I have selected a hot vid of Pro Stock Motorcycle superstar Angelle Sampey.

Besides her status as a female in a male dominated sport, Angelle Sampey is a rare breed in the bike racing world. She owns a record of consecutive qualifying races starting with her debut in 1996, leaving her previous career … Read more

It's a safe assumption that women could have a hard time being taken seriously as competitors in the professional auto racing world. If you factor in being on the younger side of the age spectrum, getting respect is probably that much tougher. Well, in today's blog post in this week's salute to women drivers in the car racing world, we take a look at young Erica Enders and her rise to prominence in the auto racing world.

Erica Enders was born in 1983 and began drag racing at the tender age of 8. Erica chalked up 37 … Read more

Stock Ticker Application Bar does exactly what it sets out to do: it adds a running stock ticker to the top of your screen. It wasn't the most attractively designed program we've seen, but the no-frills approach makes it easy to operate and use.

As soon as you click on the program's desktop icon, a ticker-style bar is added to the top of your window. The attractive ticker is colorful without being garish, and it quickly displayed the most current stock information. It offers backward and forward navigational buttons so that you can easily find specific stock … Read more

Stock Chart Wizard is aptly named--with this tool you can create, tweak, analyze, and export a range of graphical stock charts. Stock Chart Wizard lets you build watch lists of your favorite stocks, and see the ups and downs of your stocks over time by downloading two years' worth of freely available historical data into your charts. Another real plus with Stock Chart Wizard is the capability to export charts into Excel and other formats for presentations.

Stock Chart Wizard's interface is all business. Here you will find no amusing skins, cheerful paperclips asking to help, or holiday-themed graphics. … Read more

Apple CEO Steve Jobs maintained that he was unaware of the accounting implications of stock-option backdating during his deposition last year with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a transcript of the interview.

Forbes managed to obtain the document after a Freedom of Information Act ruling in its favor, and has published a story examining the transcript. Apple and Jobs were the subject of an investigation after the company determined that two stock-option awards given to Jobs and other Apple executives were improperly backdated, and that minutes of a meeting were falsified by Nancy Heinen, Apple's general counsel … Read more