Edgarest Blog » edgarest

XBRL for large companies by 2009, for all companies by 2011

wmorein — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:50:02 +0000

According to this article, it sounds like the SEC is getting really serious about making XBRL finally happen. We’ve noticed more and more XBRL filings creep in to the filings of larger corporations, so this doesn’t seem to be too huge for them. It will be interesting to see what the impact on smaller companies will be.

Linking to filings using ticker symbols

wmorein — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:14:22 +0000

By default, Edgarest uses CIK numbers to identify companies. At the same time, it supports NASDAQ and NYSE stock tickers, so you can link to pages directly without looking up the CIK.

To do this, just use the following format for a url: http://edgarest.com/company/ticker/[ticker]. For example, here is the link for Procter and Gamble: http://edgarest.com/company/ticker/pg.

We’ve noticed from our server logs that at least one site (Stockalicious) does that already for financial statements.

Working with Google Chrome and the Omnibar

wmorein — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:28:01 +0000

It was nice to notice that Edgarest works with the search integration in the new Google Chrome browser. Once you’ve searched SEC filings at least once here, Edgarest automatically appears as a search option in the Chrome home page (see the red box in the screenshot above).

The other thing that Chrome does is adds Edgarest as a search provider to the Omnibar. The only issue with that is that it uses edgarest.com as the keyword, meaning that you have a lot to type once you have items in the history. To make this quicker, do the following:

Right click on the omnibar.
Select “Edit search engines…” from the menu.
In the “Search Engines” dialog, click on edgarest.com and press the “Edit” button.
In the “Edit Search Engine” dialog, change the Keyword from “edgarest.com” to “sec” or anything else short.

Once you’ve done that, just type “sec intel” in the Omnibar and you will be taken straight to the Edgarest Search page for intel (and will have all the filings you want one click away). Give it a shot.

What’s with the name?

wmorein — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:46:09 +0000

What the heck is an Edgarest, anyway?

The name started as a temporary one, but over time it just started to seem right. The basic idea is this:

Edgar… Edgarer… Edgarest

Pulling from various YC News threads and blog posts, this is the list of things to think about when coming up with a company/product name:

.com available
Not offensive in, for example, Nepali
If someone searches for your site name, they will find your site and reviews of your site without digging through too many other random things
Easy to pronounce and tell people about verbally/over the phone (see http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/27MichaelWard.html)
People are unlikely to misspell it in a url
Don’t spend too much time thinking about it (to the detriment of the product itself)

Edgarest is up and running

wmorein — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 20:58:22 +0000

This site was born out of personal frustration with what is out there today for finding annual reports and other SEC filings.

There were a few main things that we were trying to tackle with this initial version of Edgarest:

Free. No gimmicks or short term trials as a come on to a costly subscription.
Intuitive. One search box, rather than a mess of text boxes and dropdowns.
Fast. All of the existing options are painfully slow, especially at busier times.
Relevant. If you type in, for example, “citigroup” into most Edgar sites, it will bring up the slew of subsidiaries and affiliated entities (204 total as of today). Then, once you have the right company there are a mess of important and less important filings. You have to dig through all that, but don’t you really just want the most recent quarterly filing? Edgarest gets that to you right in the results page, with a direct link to the filing you want.

There is a lot more to this, but that’s the basic idea. If you find this useful or have any comments, drop us an email at info@edgarest.com.