person-to-person outsourcing and India

Outsourcing of services by medium- and large-sized companies from US and Europe to low-wage countries like India, Russia, (also known as “offshoring”) has been going on for few years now. This trend is clearly helping the low wage countries to meet the demands of increasing population. The "aging" of developed countries has resulted in a lucrative market for "young" developing countries like India and China. With a large number of skilled workers available for relatively low wages the companies in US and Europe can drastically cut down their production costs. Indian companies like Infosys and Wipro are one of the leading outsourcing companies.
A new trend called person-to-person offshoring is rapidly catching up with these industry based outsourcing techniques. Person-to-Person Offshoring (PPO) consists of those services that can be offshored by entrepreneurs who are trying to bootstrap their new organization as efficiently as possible. With technology advances and the growth of the Internet, small offices, home businesses and even everyday individuals can utilize PPO services.

PPO includes

1. online tutoring
2. website development
3. graphic design
   
4. database, software(games or APIs) development
5. writing and translation services
6. accounting and tax preparation services
7. architectural, home and landscape design services
8. marketing and sales support services
9. creating drafts of legal documents
   

Different models are used for PPO.

• The “individual” client signs a contract directly with a vendor in a low-wage country, whose employees (e.g., tutors, admin) work on a full-time or a part-time basis, or as sub- contractors.The payments are usually made through credit card.

1. Indian companies like Satellier,BluentCAD, ASE Designsoft, Exceed International and DimensionICAD ,Xpitax, SurePrep, CCH, IFR, Datamatics, OPI and kpoexperts.com are rapidly making a name for themselves in this category.
   

• The vendors providing PPO services enroll in an online marketplace by paying a monthly subscription fee plus a fixed percentage of the revenue if they win the project through this marketplace.

1. Available marketplaces:

• Guru.com: Guru.com, a Pennsylvania-based company, seems to be the largest marketplace with more than 700,000 registered vendors and freelance professionals. Indians contribute a large chunk of this number.
• Elance.com: Elance.com, a California-based marketplace, is known for its outsourcing
  solutions supporting medium to large enterprises with around 125,000 registered vendors.
• GetAFreelancer.com
• RentACoder.com: The vendoes registered here accept only coding related projects.

The traditional jobs available in India are not sufficiently enough to keep rate of unemployment under control. The population is constantly increasing with a large part of it formed by youngsters with higher skills sometimes well beyond the job requirements. PPO is really helpful for these people as they can work on their own terms and that too from the comfort of their homes.From economical point of view the money these individuals get through this -the "relatively low" term notwithstanding - is really good considering Indian cost of living.The growth of PPO will help to reduce the heavy numbers choosing the traditional sectors of engineering and medical which will again help in reducing the sky high prices of enrolling in these sectors.

To SOURAV and his Knight Riders

They say when the going gets tough the tough gets going, and Sourav Ganguly has once again proved that he was and still is THE best. With KKR already out of the race for semifinal spot and people(read media and "fans") asking all the stupid questions (i think we sort of like it when Dada proves us wrong) today's match was always going to be played for pride.



Had it not been for Ganguly's presence in the middle i wouldn't have given KKR the slightest chance of winning after they managed a fine mess of 106/6 in fifteen overs with seventy needed of next five. But i knew that the Bengal tiger was playing a waiting game ready to pounce at the right moment.One could easily see the determination in his eyes but he was running out of partners at the other end. Umar Gul provided him the necessary support by hitting two consecutive sixes at the end of sixteenth over. In a space of 5 balls the duo put on a staggering 28 runs to change the whole course of match.After that it was everything Dada.By not taking a run off the last ball of nineteenth over Ganguly took it upon himself to score fifteen runs off last over. And the Prince of Kolkata did it in a style that suits him more than anybody else. Two mighty hits and the game was over with three balls still remaining.
It felt really great to see the proud(and handsome) man smiling and shaking hands all the way to dugout. I hope the so called fans who deserted their team and their very own Dada after a few failures, have learned their lesson for one last time and they wont repeat such a mistake again.

Improving your pagerank and site visibility

As we all know Google accounts for 68% of all searches every year. So you dont really need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that to be successful online you need blessings of mother google.Here i have listed few important tips for a wannabe webmaster.

1. Link building is important:

WHY? read this.
Google considers a link to a particular site from another site as a vote given in favor of that site. So you should try to build more and more links pointing towards your site.One way is to be friendly with other bloggers and ask them for link exchange while other is by writing good content that others may find useful.

2. Link credibility:

As votes from superdelegates are considered more important same is valid for links. A link from pagerank 5 site carries more weight than 10 from some good-for-nothing sites.
Google also considers link relevance. In simple words it means that if you write about computers and get a link from a site thats all about cooking then it will count for almost nothing.

3. External links to internal pages:

Dont concentrate only on your homepage.Try to get as many links pointing to individual articles as possible.For this post exchange program for Smorty is really good.

4. Dont be a copy-paster:

Though there are millions of sites out there and hardly few subjects are left untouched (like Paris Hilton's day to day life) it is not advisable to just copy-paste the content from some other site. Google maintains a copy of each and every indexed page in its cache to provide faster searching.This also means that google is capable of detecting duplicate content.

5. Optimize your web page:

You should try to provide your visitors as much interactive interface as possible. This is the only key along with good content to built visitor loyalty. You can use google's website optimizer
for this.

6. Manage your Keywords :

It's important to choose the right keywords for search engine optimization. Use keyword tracking tools to find high ranking keywords and try to use those without crossing a certain limit. You should use keyword density checker tools to find if you are using your keywords in right proportions.

A random tip:
Use google webmaster tools to improve your site's performance. These tools are free and extremely easy to use. Keep in mind that SEO is a process which takes long time to show results.

Tips for Office 2007

Microsoft Office Word:

• Change the Microsoft Office Word Smart Quote Auto-correct Setting->

By default, Word replaces straight quotes with smart quotes. To change this setting:
1. Click the Office button.
2. Click Word Options.
3. Click Proofing, and then click AutoCorrect Options.
4. Click the AutoFormat tab.
5. Clear the Straight quotes with smart quotes check box.
6. Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
7. Clear the Straight quotes with smart quotes check box.
8. Click OK twice.

• Editing in Print Preview

After you have worked on a document in Microsoft Office Word, click the Office button, point to Print, and then click Print Preview.
You can still edit in print preview mode:
Disable the magnifier by clearing the Magnifier check box on the Preview tab, and edit the document as you want.

• Line Breaks Without Bullets

When you're creating a bulleted or numbered list in Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office PowerPoint, you might want an item to appear in the list without a bullet or without incrementing the number. You can start a new line without a bullet by pressing SHIFT+ENTER. The next time you press the ENTER key, the new line will continue the bulleted or numbered list.

EXCEL:

• Copy Data from a Table in a Web Page to Excel->

If you see a data table on a Web page and you want to import it into Microsoft Office Excel:
1. Copy the URL (address) of the page.
2. In Excel, on the Data tab, in the Get External Data section, click From Web.
3. In the New Web Query dialog box, paste the URL into the Address box.
4. Select the table that contains the data that you want to work with, and then click Import.
5. In the Import Data dialog box, indicate where you want the data to appear, and then click OK.

• Move the Cursor in Any Direction During Data Entry->

By default, the cell pointer in Microsoft Office Excel moves down when you press ENTER after entering data in a cell. You can, however, change the direction in which the cell pointer moves.
1. Click the Office button, click Excel Options, and then click Advanced.
2. Select the After pressing Enter, move selection check box if it isn't already selected, and then on the Direction menu, click the direction in which you want the pointer to move.

Also, when working in a document, you can make the pointer move in the opposite direction from the one you've chosen by holding down the SHIFT key while you press ENTER.

• Showing Formulas in Microsoft Office Excel Instead of Their Results->

Sometimes you want to display formulas in an Excel worksheet instead of their results. Here’s how:
1. Click the Office button, and then click Excel Options at the bottom of the menu.
2. Click Advanced, click Display options for this worksheet, click Show formulas in cells instead of their calculated results, and then click OK.

For more tips and tricks read this article.