If you do any sort of investing and take the time to do your own research, at some point in your decision-making process you probably look at a technical chart. In the last couple years there have been some major advances in the information and tools made freely available to the public. Thanks to companies like Yahoo and Google, the personal investor has access to aggregated information that previously would have taken infinitely longer to compile, or would have been available only as a paid-service.

When Google came onto the scene, they pushed the envelope with their use of AJAX and syndication – really bringing a Web2.0 element to the whole user experience of analyzing a stock. Google Finance offered a slick interface that provided software-like interaction on the web.

Yahoo Finance is now in beta with a new finance tool and I’d say they’ve probably one-upped Google if not two or three-upped them, largely in terms of the ease-of-use in customizing the chart view. (Note: the beta has been in release for a few months now, but you can only access it through Yahoo Finance.com and not Yahoo Finance.ca)

Of note to web developers, Yahoo has followed suit with Google in opting for an interface that is a mix of AJAX and Flash – which could have some significance on the RIA landscape.

Using Flash as a rich-internet application isn’t a new paradigm. Back near the height of the dotcom boom there were folks building some pretty slick applications that tied Flash into a back-end database to facilitate an online interaction without a page refresh – one of the primary, if not the most noticeable, characteristics of an AJAX-driven user experience.

Amid objections that Flash was a proprietary format that wasn’t natively supported by the standard web browser, Flash as the primary platform for a website or web application never quite caught on. This sentiment has slowly changed as Flash started to come pre-installed in Internet Explorer, and recent statistics suggest over 99% of all web browsers now have a Flash plugin installed.

Much like Google Finance, what Yahoo has brought to the table is an RIA that elegantly integrates AJAX with Flash to take advantage of what the two platforms have to offer: the use of AJAX brings very scalable methods for dealing with XML data in a software-like interaction, while Flash offers a development environment ideal for designing interfaces that rely heavily on graphics.

Considering the size of their audience, with Yahoo breaking further ground here in their integration of AJAX and Flash in Yahoo Finance, web developers will take notice and I wouldn’t be surprised if a slew of new applications come to the scene following a similar model.