A New York start-up company, Instant Information, recently released a screen-based information & analytics tool (TouchPoint) for Wall Street traders and other financial markets professionals that acts in many ways like a Bloomberg terminal, but apparenly runs on any PC with off-the-shelf software (including Microsoft Office). There's a bit of a pedigree here, too: the company's founders include a number of principals from MULTEX.com. Not surprisingly, the company has already raised a round of early-stage venture capital from interested investors.

Instant Information is calling TouchPoint "an innovative approach to connecting financial professionals to the ideas, information, analytics, and individuals they depend on to do their jobs effectively and efficiently." Here's a quick blurb about TouchPoint from the company's Web site:

"TouchPoint supports the informal, dynamic and organic way ideas are created and shared without introducing artificial and time consuming workflows. TouchPoint is the single place where you can bring together relevant, specific items of content that are delivered from multiple sources (web, Outlook, IM, internal and vendor applications). As you find content on the web, in e-mail, or from other applications, it can be added to any of your TouchPoint folders with one click. When content is delivered via subscription, it can be added to folders automatically using detailed filtering. You decide how the content should be organized and shared.

TouchPoint enables you to discuss ideas and have the people, content and tools used in a discussion tightly bound in a shared “Workbook” that is automatically updated for all existing and new participants. The Workbook becomes the dynamic, historical view into all of the informal content sources that support a formal investment process.

TouchPoint works with the information sources you use today (including the Microsoft Office suite) allowing you to leverage your existing technology investment. TouchPoint is open and extensible. New data sources can be added on-the-fly without any additional development work."