I always appreciate it when people take the time to write to offer their feedback on Portfolio Charts.  The thanks keep me going through the occasional drudgery, the corrections keep me honest, and the suggestions keep the entire exercise fresh and relevant.  The combination of all that feedback with my constant creative processing makes the site a personal passion of mine that I hope you enjoy reading and using just as much as I do writing and creating.  I’ve long felt like I owe you all a reward of some sort for your great ideas, and today I’m here to deliver.

Since I started Portfolio Charts several years ago, by far the most common request I’ve received is the ability to enter data in one place and have it carry over into each calculator.  I just want you to know that I listened.  While it took a long time to try lots of different ideas and fail plenty of times along the way, you asked the right guy with the right mix of creativity and pure stubbornness to power through the problem.  So while you may notice lots of things have changed on the site recently, let’s cut to the chase and get to the really cool part — the My Portfolio tool.

Designers who work in new product development tend to think a little differently than others.  The truly innovative ones have no professional fear.  In fact, there’s a common saying in the industry that one should “fail early and often” and rapid iteration where you improve things in stages is generally prized over slowly working out the perfect product up-front.  Machines like 3D printers are some of the most indispensable tools in the industry today to help develop ideas, and for every finished product you see on a store shelf there are probably hundreds of printed prototypes sitting on an engineer’s desk somewhere.  That may sound wasteful on the surface, but every single prototype represents a new idea or a lesson learned that ultimately led to the final product you know and love.

Today is one of those days when you’ll notice that product design mindset in my own work here, as I just overhauled every single calculator on the site.  Even though I released another major update not too long ago, I learned a lot (both good and bad) from that version and was inspired to improve the experience even more.  There’s a lot going on, so let’s get down to business and talk about the changes.

You’ve probably seen me mention a few times that I’m always on the lookout for good data.  Usually that means an occasional few extra years of a certain asset or perhaps a nice alternative source, and I do my best to accumulate the trickle of new information as it comes in.  Well the stars must have aligned somehow as recently I was inundated with a waterfall of data from several new sources.  It took a little while to figure out how to handle so much information, but today I’m happy to announce one of the largest updates ever to the site and fellow fans of good portfolio data are in for a real treat.

I don’t know about you but I’m pretty excited about the warming weather.  As the dark and cold fades away, I even sorta enjoy the bit of cleanup work that normally comes with spring.  From trimming the shrubs that are now starting to grow like crazy to washing the winter grime off the car, spring cleaning has a way of creating a sense of newness that breathes new life into lots of old things.

And the same mindset extends to the virtual world as well — at least when you have your own website to maintain.  So after picking up around the house I also just completed a few important data updates that you may not have noticed but will certainly appreciate.