Stocks Tip: built-in currency rate updating in iPhone

(I’ve known this trick for some time and have actually been teaching it to friends ever since, but it never occurred to me to post the darn thing. Taught it to Game Magazine editor Howard Paw the other day and realized I haven’t even mentioned it here. Well, better late than never.)

Apple has left out cartloads of basic features, apps and utilities that should be no-brainers to add. Even worse, they even forget to mention things that are actually already there for you to use right out of the box.

One of the things they forgot is how to find out currency rates in real-time over the net, quickly and easily without going to websites when all you want to do find out what the rate today is. Don’t worry, there’s no specific icon for it; you didn’t miss anything. It’s built into the Stocks widget that comes with the iPhone.

Updating the rates of currency worldwide is done through Yahoo online. All you need do is run the widget and add the “stock” of your selected currency manually, and every time you update it’ll check the current conversation rate for your preferred coin. Finally, a use for Stocks that those of use who don’t dabble in the market will find way useful. (Remember, it’s not a currency conversion calculator, mind you - someone else can invent one; this just gives you the current conversion rate. You can use the built-in Calculator to find out how much you’ve made or lost, which is now a snap because you know the current rate.)

Run the widget, then tap on the “i” icon on the lower right corner.

Then tap on the “+” or add button on the upper left corner, which is supposed to let you add stocks you wish to monitor.

In the text window, type the currency equation in this format: yyyzzz=x, where yyy is currency you’re asking about and zzz is your home currency.

Thus, to use an example, to find out how many Philippine Pesos (PHP) one US dollar (USD) can buy, you type USDPHP=X.

The proper abbreviations for currencies that the widget understands can be found on the Yahoo!Finance Currency Converter page (where you can actually do this and calculate specific amounts - which is better, really - but that’s not the point of this tip.)

Once you type in the argument, the iPhone will locate the proper “stock” and show it in the window below. Tap on it and it will add the “stock” to your list of monitored stocks.

Tap on “Done” and you’re all set. Every time you run the widget, it’ll consult Yahoo!Finance and give you the real-time exchange rate of the currencies you’ve selected.

You can add as many as you want (and while you’re at it, you can remove the pre-installed stocks Apple put in to save on screen real estate - me, I left Apple on to see how Steve and the gang are doing, just out of curiosity.)

So there.

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