“RIXML.org welcomes Markit as an associate member,” said Jack Roehrig, Executive Director, RIXML.org. “They bring a great deal of expertise to our organization and have established themselves as a significant player in the Fixed Income Research delivery space.”

As an Associate Member, Markit will add much value through direct participation in RIXML Technology working groups, with their fellow associate and steering members, to help develop future releases of the schema.

Interested in joining RIXML.org? Call our Program Office at 212-655-2945 or email us at rixml@jandj.com for additional information.

Work is underway to review sample instance documents which should serve as the basis for a representative set of schema version 2.3 samples. Once that review is completed and member feedback is incorporated we will proceed with plans to produce derived samples.

We wish to acknowledge the contributions of Alan Francis and Associate Member FactSet toward this effort.

RIXML.org, is a Direct Association member of XBRL.org. We continue to partner at the working group level to identify potential applications which will integrate the tagging standards within research publisher workflow. The company filings progress outlined as follows will serve to hasten that effort. We welcome participation from our members in our working group. Please contact Sara Noble at snoble@bloomberg.net for details.

Most Companies Actively Preparing for XBRL, Survey Shows

By Alexandra DeFelice, Journal of Accountancy, Jan 14, 2010

A majority of U.S. public companies that plan to file their financial statements in XBRL are actively preparing to do so and have at least a basic knowledge of the extensible business reporting language, according to a survey by the AICPA and XBRL US.

The “XBRL Preparedness Survey,” conducted online in November found that 93% of the 215 respondents (90% of whom work for U.S. public companies), had at least a basic knowledge and 73% have begun preparation.

That is good news, especially given that many of the companies represented in the survey are not yet required to file in XBRL under the SEC’s mandate, according to Ami Beers, Business Reporting, Assurance & Advisory Services and XBRL manager at the AICPA.

“People are starting to learn about XBRL and not waiting until the 11th hour,” she said. “They’re getting ready. They know it will take time.”

It’s not unusual to see companies take 120 hours or more to get up to speed for their first submission, but that time is greatly reduced on the second round of filing, Beers said.

Of the 25% of survey respondents who had already submitted XBRL-formatted financial statements to the SEC, 57% said it took their organizations more than 120 hours to prepare for XBRL adoption for the first time, including getting educated about XBRL in general and the SEC mandate specifically, choosing a vendor for instance creation software for in-house preparation, including software training, or choosing a third-party service provider.

Raymond James 31st Annual Institutional Investor Conference

Our organization thanks Steering Member Raymond James & Associates for including us as an exhibitor at their 31st Annual Institutional Investor Conference on March 8th, in Orlando, Florida. Jack Roehrig was on hand to discuss RIXML.org’s objectives and initiatives for 2010.

This was an excellent opportunity for our organization to get exposure to a large audience of institutional buy-side firms. We always welcome and appreciate participation at member sponsored events.

As we build out our conference and events schedule for 2010, we do want to hear from our members on opportunities and also encourage member representatives to participate in speaking engagements, as panel representatives or moderators.

PLEASE NOTE: This viewpoint is entirely my own and neither the official viewpoint of RIXML.org nor the viewpoint of any of its member organizations.

Here an App, there an App, everywhere an App App

Software? That’s so 70s. Computer Applications? That’s so 80s. API? That’s so 90s. Bots? That’s so.......whatever....

There was an excellent article recently published in February 1st edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer, entitled “A bonanza for app developers”, written by Carolyn Davis. The article describes, in this fast-moving world of mobile computing, that apps for Blackberrys, iPhones/iPods, Droids, et al, are the new “sultans of software.” App lingo is in vogue...App discussion is cool....Apps are so cool, they are hot...enough already.

The article mentions that App stores had more than $4.2 billion in revenue last year, according to Gartner, Inc., and analysts expect that to increase to over $29 billion by 2013. This month, Apple announced that 3 billion apps had been downloaded from among more than 100,000 titles. Blackberry App World has 4,000 titles and Google’s Android market has 20,000. The University of Pennsylvania and other colleges, including Temple University and NJIT teach students how to create apps on Apple’s and Google’s platform.

It seems to me, the impact of Apps on the Research business is inevitable. These ubiquitous devices are used, by rote, among the up and coming buy-side research consumers, i.e., analysts and portfolio managers. It could well have a place in their day-to-day workflow regiment.

The article also quotes Lisa Allen, a board director of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic. “Today’s mobile phones are as powerful as many desktop PCs—more so, if you consider that they are also location aware and have a built-in billing and payment system.

As these apps proliferate, the need to ensure content is packaged up and structured (tagged) correctly will only intensify....a good thing for RIXML.org.

Far fetched, you may ask? Back in the day (2006?), remember when we used phones for phone calls?

“Not to decide is to decide.”

— Harvey Cox