Risk-Based Searching-currency exchange,non-payment,partner rating,delinquency...

[Guest]

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[nuclearspike]

Fantastic app!!!

I'm particularly impressed by the lender search because I was just about to post about a suggestion for a repayment calendar type addition to the Kiva site!  It mentions on the page that the estimated amount for repayment is based on $25 loans, does that count for all data on the page?  If so, do you know if there are plans for the loan amount to be made public or is that blocked for privacy reasons?

Thanks! I'm glad you like it! The loan amounts are blocked for privacy purposes and unless Kiva ever starts allowing authenticated access to the web services, they won't be available through the web service API. I do have plans to allow you to optionally give the app your kiva login so that it can gather the actual amounts paid by processing the pages. That probably won't be for a little while though. If you haven't already, check out the Excel spreadsheets (in one of the stickies in this forum). You can paste in the exported data from Kiva and it'll generate all your repayment information (along with tons of other stuff) and it'll pull kiva data about the loans, it's pretty great stuff.

Paul / nuclearspike

[scottylend]

Well here's to hoping that loan amount data is made available!

Unfortunately I don't have excel and the spreadsheet won't work on google docs so I can't use it.  I must admit I haven't tried open office yet though.  If the full loan information is made available to the API it should make it possible to have spreadsheet functionality + more available eventually!

[David2051]

This thread is intended to let lenders know about a risk-tolerance based search app I wrote, to announce updates, and to gather suggestions, complaints, problems or comments. 

Paul, do you have a message list to notify us when new features are added, or will you post word of new versions here?   

Unfortunately I don't have excel and the spreadsheet won't work on google docs so I can't use it.  I must admit I haven't tried open office yet though. 

Scotty, I started using the spreadsheets with OpenOffice.org and the macros won't function, so I had to dig out an Excel disk and reinstall it.     Personally I don't use the FundraisingLoans much, but the Summary is great to analyze your portfolio and CommonLenders is a very fun app too. 

One thing I was missing in the spreadsheets is graphs and charts.  I love the visual design of nuclearspike!  Just waiting for the images now...   

[nuclearspike]

David: I do not have a message list, I will just post any news of updates to this thread.

[scottylend]

Hi Paul,

I've been playing around with the tool and come across a few issues and thought of some changes that might make sense:

• By clicking on a filter, then clicking another, the second becomes the active filter however the first graph does not reset (colour and clickable status).  This can be done any number of times until every segment is red.  By clicking a new segment, the original should change back unless...
• it's possible to select multiple filters i.e. all agriculture loans from AMK.
• By clicking 'Remove filter', the graph does not change back to the original colour and clickable status.
• The colour pallet available is quite small so if you have more than approx 8 entries, the colours repeat.  Any way to extend?
• Once you've selected a segment, it turns red which invalidates the legend.  Would it be better to make the segment move out of the pie instead so that it's easier to spot?
• If there are many entries, it can be really tough to see what segment represents what.  Could the hover dialogue on each segment include the name?
• Special character ó is not being interpreted properly on the tool (MFI Fundación Paraguaya).  Looking at commonly used HTML character codes, ó is more commonly used so it may be an issue with the data from Kiva - are you able to confirm?

[nuclearspike]

Hey Scotty, sorry for the delay, I was out of town on a much needed vacation.

• By clicking on a filter, then clicking another, the second becomes the active filter however the first graph does not reset (colour and clickable status).  This can be done any number of times until every segment is red.  By clicking a new segment, the original should change back unless...
• it's possible to select multiple filters i.e. all agriculture loans from AMK.
• By clicking 'Remove filter', the graph does not change back to the original colour and clickable status.
• The colour pallet available is quite small so if you have more than approx 8 entries, the colours repeat.  Any way to extend?
• Once you've selected a segment, it turns red which invalidates the legend.  Would it be better to make the segment move out of the pie instead so that it's easier to spot?
• If there are many entries, it can be really tough to see what segment represents what.  Could the hover dialogue on each segment include the name?
• Special character ó is not being interpreted properly on the tool (MFI Fundación Paraguaya).  Looking at commonly used HTML character codes, ó is more commonly used so it may be an issue with the data from Kiva - are you able to confirm?

You raise all valid points and things that I have on my list to fix or work around. I'm headed in a different direction with the filtering which will be easier and eliminate the issues that you refer to. The graph components made by Microsoft are very early releases and missing some of the polish from a mature product. That accounts for a few of the issues you raise (colors being reused, selected slice doesn't match the legend anymore, can't select from legend, hover-over doesn't show the info that makes the most sense).

As for the special characters, I haven't done a full investigation, but one post I've found is that Kiva had changed something and stated that the characters are a bug with the output from their API combined with more partner names being recently corrected for accents so that it ended up exposing the issues. I will probably want to decode the results to hide that.

I appreciate your feedback and suggestions, thanks!
Paul

[nuclearspike]

I've released an update for my app. The update includes:

1) Added search option to indicate less-than or more-than for the $ amount left (user request for people who like to find ones where they can help finish off the loan)
2) Pictures. I will eventually make it so you can click the pic to see a larger version, but for now it just uses the 200x200 image.
3) "Add to Bundle" and "Replace Kiva basket with loans in Bundle" buttons. I wanted to keep the terminology separate and not call mine a basket to remove confusion.
4) I updated the query so that it would include the newly added "none" option for currency exchange loss, meaning that the loan is in USD so there is no chance for currency exchange loss (it had been limiting only to "partner" when the option was checked before, so for about a month it was weeding out some loans unnecessarily).
5) The dates listed on the Loan results listing were not being localized by regional settings, they are now.

Enjoy!

[JoanW]

I really love this app. It made finding a few loans today much easier. I hope you continue to develop it.

Some additional search criteria:

• Animal loans - or specifically no animal loans
• Keyword search - there are too many variables to list, but many people look for certain key words - school, disability, single parent, etc
• Countries/MFIs to exclude - I try to balance out loans and not get too many in one place or with one MFI.

Other suggestions -

• It would be great if the loan description could be added in the side window.
• Hover on first page - "partner delinquency" for example - does not word wrap, so extends off the page and can't read but about half of it.

[nuclearspike]

Joan,

Thanks for the feedback. I'm planning an upgrade to the app and have added these suggestions to the new criteria options. I have big plans for the app's engine that will take it far beyond what it currently is.

I'm glad you find it useful and appreciate you letting me know.

Paul

I really love this app. It made finding a few loans today much easier. I hope you continue to develop it.

Some additional search criteria:

• Animal loans - or specifically no animal loans
• Keyword search - there are too many variables to list, but many people look for certain key words - school, disability, single parent, etc
• Countries/MFIs to exclude - I try to balance out loans and not get too many in one place or with one MFI.

Other suggestions -

• It would be great if the loan description could be added in the side window.
• Hover on first page - "partner delinquency" for example - does not word wrap, so extends off the page and can't read but about half of it.

[nuclearspike]

Maybe I am missing it - there is certainly a lot to look at and I just took a quick look....but is there something (or could there be something) to select for repayment length? Depending on a lot of personal variables, there are times when I only want to see very short term loans.

JoanW: This raises an interesting point. As others have said, it shows the full repayment date. Full repayment date may have no direct relationship to the loan length. For example, look at http://www.kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&showRepaymentDetails=yes&id=131973&action=about#payments

This loan (at the time of writing) has not been fully funded by kiva lenders yet, but has already been dispersed (back in July, 3 months ago) to the entrepreneur and they have already been making repayments on it for a couple months. The loan length shows as 7 months, but it will be fully repaid by Feb 2010, which is only 4 months away. My app is more from the lender perspective and I am sorting by how fast the money is back in your account, rather than how long the actual loan was to the entrepreneur since many times those do not match up.

What I could show is a month count until full repayment but it may be confusing because it would not always match up with the number listed on the entrepreneur's page. I may also add a new search option of "fully repaid within x months." Until then, (as others stated) the loans at the top of the results are the shortest length and get longer as you go down the list.