Jorbb gets Jobs for You! Bringing Employers and Job Seekers updates on Singapore Employment News. Productivity related Tech Toys & Web 2.0 Sites will also be covered. Singapore's 1st freelance / casual / part time / contract job blog. Visit http://www.jorbb.com to join today!
Starbucks is hoping to harness the power of social media with a new ad campaign aimed at creating an online conversation between younger coffee drinkers.
Rolling out in newspapers, magazines and billboards in the US this week, the BBDO North America led campaign is understood to be Starbucks largest to date.
Outdoor activity encourages Starbucks' Twitter followers and Facebook fans to take pictures of the company's new billboards and be first to post them online. However, it was not revealed whether a reward would be offered.
In early 2009, H1Studio, Singapore, started research and innovation in Augmented Reality via Flash platform utilising the Flartoolkit SDK. At the same time, it is conducting R&I for AR via Mobile phones (Symbian and Windows Mobile). This is done via licensing of SDK from R&D centres in Europe and USA.
With the recent popularity of Augmented Reality applications such as Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera, GE’s SmartGrid and Mini Cooper’s Print Ad for Augmented Reality , we are now expanding our suite of services to include this, for Brands / Products / Services,
From Wikipedia - Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.
AR can be used in Advertising and Promotions / Marketing of a new product offering, allowing users to interact with the product replicated in 3D, in real-time, overlaid on the real video capture. It is a natural progression for the studio to offer such services due to experiences in 3D, interactive and mobile applications.
The Techgoondus are "a bunch of technology journalists and ex-journalists from Singapore who share a common love for all things geeky and digital, from cellphones to graphics cards to games. Together, we’ve had decades of experience covering news and reviews from the early 1990s."
This event was organised as they felt tech start-ups don’t get enough visibility through traditional channels.
They are considering running this event on a semi-regular basis so that start-ups in Singapore will have an avenue to showcase their work. For more information or to lock in your interest, email Chi-Loong at chiloong@techgoondu.com.
So last night we experienced sudden strong winds at our place in the west, and after we twittered it, @angmogirl and @benkoe also posted that they had experienced the same thing where they were.
Over Twitter, we were able to know the current conditions over other parts of Singapore, which was "real-time", compared to the bots which updated the official weather sites.
So we decided to create a PHP+CURL script which pulled weather information from Nea.gov.sg and Yahoo.com.sg and also mash up the rain locations on Singapore map + towns into 1 image via Nea's site. To reduce noise, the cron job runs hourly, just after the sites update their reports.
Will also be encouraging fellow Twitterers to add #sgweathernow when they tweet about the current conditions at their locations, e.g. Storm brewing at Tampines, very windy. #sgweathernow
Hopefully this will help you find out if the location you are heading to is sunny or pouring via Twitter search tools such as Twitterfall.com and Search.twitter.com.
Any improvements / suggestions for other mash ups we could create, please drop us a comment!
Mashable.com has gather a list of 85+ tools covering time / expenses, invoicing, stock image libaries, freelance sites and more...
"Deciding to become a freelance worker can be a scary proposition. Sure there is an allure to picking what projects you work on, but it can also be stressful not knowing where your next paycheck will come from. Luckily there are numerous resources out there that not only help you find more work, but also loads of tools to help you do your job more efficiently with a professional edge.
We’ve gathered over 85 tools and job sites for a variety of freelancers and web workers. While a lot of these items are focused on web design elements such as photography, programming and writing, we made sure to include something for everyone."
TWO friends who know first-hand what it's like to be unemployed, now want to help others in the same boat.
Mr Terence Tay, in his late 40s, has not held a full-time job since 2002.
And certified counsellor Gilbert Goh, 47, was previously unemployed for about 20 months between 2003 and 2005.
The two men have recently started a website - www.transitioning.org - to help the unemployed network, find emotional support and get work.
Said Mr Goh, now a teacher at a private school: 'The unemployment situation seems set to get worse, and there will be many people who will be hit with morale and psychological problems, on top of financial woes.
'We hope to form a support group through the site, offer online counselling to those going through difficult times, and eventually get employers to publicise job openings online.'
The site, which was started only last week, will be officially launched in late February, said Mr Goh.
It cost the two friends a few hundred dollars each to set up.
For both men, surviving unemployment had not been easy...
So it's that time of the year again and blogs / forums are posting their most plausible product launch at this year's Macworld, also known as Apple's last Macworld, also known as, No Steve Jobs Keynote Macworld.
So here's our list:
1. New Mac Mini (highly likely) 2. New Mighty Mouse (with multi touch) (unlikely) 3. iPhone Nano (likely - someone posted a case making site taking orders for Nano casing) 4. iPhone Pro (unlikely) 5. iPod Touch (up size - 7") - this we like! We reckon that this would be Apple's foray into the netbook market. (likely)
We thank you for your support over the past 4 months, since our launch in Sept 2008.
Jorbb.com has grown to almost 450 registered Jorbbees and 125 Jorbbers in this short period of time.
To build on our mantra, "Jorbb gets Jobs for you!", we will be launcing new tools in early 2009, including integration of Jorbb's job search engine with our friends at Widgeo.us so that you can search for jobs via email / msn / widgeo.us device and eventually sms. (What is Widgeo.us? Daniel from YoungUpstarts did a post on them a while back and in the words of Ridzuan, the CEO - Widgeo.us is a web-based universal cross-channel communications platform that allows application developers to create applications that work seamlessly across multiple channels such as email, instant messaging, microblogging, text messaging etc. Of course this also means that end users can have applications that “follow” them wherever they go. No more being tied down to a single software client and all.)
We will also provide widgets for you to embed your profile onto your website / blog, and in return, earn credits for doing so, to exchange for great gifts (movie tickets, food vouchers etc).
We, at Jorbb.com, wish all members a Happy and Safe New Year.
Twitter has made Dell $1 million bucks in revenue. This is such major news for 2 main reasons.
1) It proves Social media can be "cash in hand" profitable 2) It begs us to examine the "How the hell they made this happen?"
I'm sure the article from Internet news will spark a gazillion emails from CEOs and MDs down to line level digital managers telling them to get their ass on twitter. Although those may not be the exact words, i'm sure some "leverage", "explore", "forefront", " maximize" was thrown in for good measure.
So is Twitter the new revenue stream for brands to take notice of? Will tweeting about your latest product promotions ( like Dell does) bring about a new spring of cash? The answer i feel lies in Dell's background. First off, lets not just look at "Dell + Twitter = $1,000,000". The equation goes much deeper as we examine some of Dell's social media position.
Dell has been conversing with its customers ever since Michael Dell took over back in 2007. The best thing he has done is to have made customer focus his only focus. ( It stuns me everytime someone in a meeting says we need to focus on several things) By thinking about what his customers want and hearing those comments enabled sites like Ideastorm and DirectoDell to take place. In the words of the man himself " "If we don't do that at Dell.com, it's going to be on CNET or somewhere," Michael Dell says. "I'd rather have that conversation in my living room than in somebody else's."
From redefining customer service to customer driven product innovation, Dell has over the last 2 years proven to be sincere about this shift in focus. As a result, their tweets are received by a multitude of followers that resulted in this million dollar revenue opportunity.
There is no shortcut to engagement and the equation certainly isn't as clear cut as it seems. If you are suddenly thinking about getting your 15% store discount on twitter. Stop. Go back to the chalkboard and look at the origins of the equation. Yes, you can make revenue from promo tweets but the pre cursor is your followers need to be your friends and top priority.
When you are at a business / social function, you have less than 15 seconds to make that first impression.
15secondpitch.com provides a quiz which will help you craft that 15 second pitch to market yourself, in a concise and compelling way.
Some guidelines: Create a pitch — for every niche. This is very important. Develop a straight forward pitch for every industry that your focused on. If you dabble in photography but work nine to five as a caterer - you need one for each.
Use it effectively — and have a pitch prepared for every event that you attend. Be it a barbecue, fundraiser, or networking event - when you are least prepared is when you are most likely to have a random encounter opportunity.
Include a bold — compelling statement that peaks the interest of the listener and provokes them to want to know more. As Seth Godin says, “Your either remarkable or invisible.”
Thanks to this great service by Odiogo, we have now incorporated audio feeds for our blog posts so that you can listen, in the background, to the relevant employment, entrepreneur, tech and web 2.0 news in audio!
Just click on the audio icon at the beginning of each post (see top of this post) or subscribe to the podcast on the right side.
Meetings are always important in all types of businesses and companies. You might have participated in many meetings and sometimes, you may be obliged to conduct meetings. As a top performer, you have to know how to conduct meetings effectively. There are a lot of aspects that you have to consider while conducting meetings. The first thing you should consider is the necessity of the meeting. If the task can be accomplished without meetings, then you need not waste the resources. However, if meeting becomes very important, try to organize effective meetings.
Decide the start and end time of the meeting. Depending on the persons you are going to invite, you have to make this decision. You have to decide the duration of the meeting based on its purpose. If you have participants from other timezones, use World Clock Meeting planner to find a common time. Video conferencing is made easy with new web2.0 sites such as Orgoo, Vyew, Snapyap, TokBox.
Invite all the people for the meeting and communicate the timings to them. Ensure that the invitees will be present during the meeting. Try Vyew as it includes scheduling / ad hoc invites.
Use Google Docs to prepare an agenda for the meeting so that everyone can edit 1 single document online. You can also create an open agenda and stick to whiteboard. The participants can add their agenda but they should take the lead during that agenda. After getting suggestions, you decide on what is to be discussed during the meeting.
You have to take the lead during the meeting. Know about your audience and talk in their language.
Decide who is going to speak what during the meeting. This will help you in taking up the lead position and you can let the non speakers speak up during their turn.
For 1-2 hours meetings, do a time check at fixed intervals e.g. 15mins. If meeting is behind time, cover important matters first, and leave the rest to be discussed via email / next meeting. If you are arranging for longer meetings, make sure that you break the schedule for 15 minutes after 2 hours of meeting. The participants can refresh themselves during the break.
When you conduct formal meetings, the decisions should be made in the meeting with the opinions of the majority of the people. You can use online editors such as FineTuna and Skitch to allow participants to comment live on images / proposals etc. Vyew allows you to prepare and save slides for commenting before a meeting.
You must be ready for inclusions during the meeting. The participants may come up with certain new things that can be added to the discussion. You can add the program if it can be completed within the scheduled time. Otherwise, postpone it until the next discussion.
Use Google Docs or Business-in-a-Box to mantain the Minutes of Meeting live, during the meeting itself so that no additional time is needed to distribute / edit / proof the minutes.
In a time of economic crisis, web developers and freelancers everywhere have started chewing their fingernails. However, no matter how bad the economy worsens, there will always be work in certain booming fields of web development.
As the moderator of the Freelance Switch job board, there are certain types of jobs that are constantly in demand. Here are the 10 skills that are or will be in highest demand for developers. If you are proficient in these skills, you’ll be in a great position to find work and weather any economic downturn.
1. Framework knowledge
It seems that frameworks are one of the next big things. With the meteoric rise to fame of Rails, Django, and other MVC frameworks, developers have learned that they can build websites much faster with the help of these tools. Frameworks help you cut out much of the repetitive tasks that normal custom programming would require. Having knowledge of the top frameworks (Rails, Django, CakePHP, Symfony, and a few others), can give you a whole other dimension to your skill set.
2. Widget development
Widgets have changed how web development has been done in the past couple of years. With the advent of widgets, data has become more portable, interactive and most importantly, viral. It’s in almost every web startup’s business plan to include a widget or two at some point, mainly because it helps increase their audience and puts more eyeballs on their content.
Widget development requires knowing Javascript and/or flash, not to mention knowledge of the regular language that the parent site is built in.
3. Custom CMS themes
Designers and developers can always find work creating or customizing a CMS theme. As the popularity of CMS like Wordpress and Drupal have risen over the past years, so has the demand for creating themes for the software.
Many people use CMS to power their personal or business websites, so this work is always going to be around. A decent website needs a unique and usable design that reflects well on the brand behind it.
4. CMS Customizations and plugin development
CMS are great because it gives site owners with little technical know-how the ability to change aspects of their site on the fly with the help of modules. While most CMS platforms have a long list of modules to offer, many businesses and personal sites need more, and custom modules or plugins are the perfect solution.
Developers can have thriving businesses in CMS development and customization alone. Here are a few (and by no means all) of the top CMS platforms that could use plugin development and other customizations:
Another one of the more popular skills needed is converting Photoshop files (PSD) to XHTML files for template use. Because designers don’t always know how to convert Photoshop layouts into template files, a CSS and XHTML ninja can always find work. Because of the array of browsers now in common use and the niggling differences in how they render sites, you want to be a web developer who can build-out sites that display the same in any browser. This kind of design to code service is the most sought after of them all.
6. Javascript Plugin creation
Much like the rise of CMS and MVC frameworks, Javascript frameworks are just as popular. These Javascript frameworks are built with the ability to add custom functionality in the form of modules. If you’re a developer who knows how to build custom Javascript modules for frameworks like jQuery or Dojo, you’ll have plenty of work available. Here are some of the most popular Javascript frameworks you might need to get a handle on.
Facebook and MySpace have both opened up their platform to allow developers API access, and the demand for social network apps has been huge since then. A whole new industry for web development sprang up overnight, and hundreds of applications are now added on a daily basis. The social media application platform has been found to be very viral and potentially very lucrative.
Some of these applications are built to make money or drive brand awareness, but ultimately the applications can be very successful and viral if they’re done properly. A solid developer can make a decent living creating Facebook and MySpace applications.
Social networks like Facebook require that you learn their own language of syntax, like the FBML (Facebook Markup Language), so there is a small learning curve to this skill.
8. iPhone applications
Yet another platform-specific skill set, building iPhone applications can be very profitable, and much like the social media applications, a great skill for any developer to know. Making an iPhone app that is accepted into Apple’s platform has an excellent chance at making great money or receiving tons of downloads.
This is a great thing for web developers because companies are starting to see the value in developing iPhone and other mobile technologies, and consequently will be wanting more and more applications developed in the future.
9. Ecommerce integration
Business web sites are always going to need ecommerce integration. Essentially, if you can take a language or framework (PHP or Rails) and fuse it with a payment gateway (like Paypal or Authorize.net), you’ll do well for yourself. I’m predicting that we’re going to see more paid services than free, ad-supported services being developed in the near future, as less money is being doled out to startups.
As the economy turns sour and the ad industry starts to get a little tighter, websites that use a subscription-based revenue model will start to become more common. Having the knowledge to piece together integration with online banking services like Paypal and Google Checkout will be great skills to have.
Flash animation can do a lot for a website. Flash can be used to create videos, interesting navigation, fun animated sequences, widgets, and many other useful things on the Internet. The flash technology can add a very professional dimension to any website, and large websites and corporations always pay to have their sites look professional, and often commission Flash animated interfaces to showcase their products. With search engines working on ways to have Flash communicated better with them, this is a skill that’s sure to boom as the search technology advances.
Conclusions
Learning frameworks is one of the best way to increase your skill set and potential work as a freelancer. Whether it’s a Javascript framework, CMS, or MVC framework, taking the time to learn a new skill can be a huge advantage to finding work. Also, website owners pay big bucks for development that allows them to make money, because they see it not as a regrettable expense, but as an investment in future profit. Services like ecommerce integration, creating iPhone apps and flash knowledge will also be much-needed skills, and people will always pay for those skills.
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Glen Stansberry is a web developer and blogger who’s struggled more times than he’d wish to admit with CSS. You can read more tips on web development at his blog Web Jackalope.
A Practical guide to Google Docs: Learn how to do anything and everything with your online Google Office by Amit Agarwal.
Q: How do I upload all my Microsoft Office documents from the desktop on to Google Docs?
A: List Uploader is a Windows utility that enables you to bulk upload files to Google Docs via drag-n-drop or through the right click menu.
Mac OS X users can upload documents through GDocsUploader - simply drag-n-drop the document onto the uploader icon. Another option is GDocsBar – just drag your files in the Firefox sidebar and they’ll automatically get uploaded to Google Docs.
Q: How do I associate the common Office file extensions like doc/xls/ppt with Google Docs so that desktop documents open directly in the web browser?
A: Get the Google Toolbar for Firefox and select the ‘Google Docs’ checkbox from Toolbar options. This will let you open Office documents directly in the browser bypassing Microsoft Office.
Q: I am worried that someone may hack into my Google Account and delete the important files. To play safe, I want to download all documents from Google Docs locally and burn them on to a CD. Is it possible?
A: To download a copy of all your Google Docs documents on to the hard drive, get this Grease Monkey script. It will create a list of all your online documents that you can download in one step using the DownloadThemAll add-on.
Q: How can I add watermarks (like PRIVATE, CONFIDENTIAL, etc.) to my Google Documents?
A: You simply need to edit the CSS of your document – add an image with non-repeating background.
Q: Can I open Word 2007 (docx) documents in Google Docs?
A: Unlike Zoho Office, Google Docs do not support the new Office 2007 format but you may convert these docx files to the older doc format using Zamzar and them upload them to Google Docs.
Q: I was checking mails on a mobile phone and a client sent me this PowerPoint presentation as an email attachment. My phone has no Office viewer so san I still view this presentation?
A: Sure. Just forward this email (with the attachment) to your Google Docs address. You’ll soon get an email back containing the link of your uploaded presentation that can be viewed in the mobile phone browser without requiring any Office viewer.
Q: I wrote a long document in Google Docs in English but my client is insisting for a French version. Can we translate Google Docs documents online?
A: Publish your Google Docs document as a public web page (read steps) and then use the online Google Translate tool to translate this page into any other language. You may copy-paste the translated text in a new document and then turn off public sharing for the original document.
Q: I am sending a Google Docs document to a large mailing list. Is is possible to track who read the document and when?
A: Go to your Google Docs Settings page (link) and turn on the option that says "Track visits to my documents using Google Analytics".
Q: Forget the mailing list, I am just sending a document to my immediate boss so how do I if he really opened my document?
A: Just embed a secret 1×1 tracking image in the document to know when people open your Google Documents.
Q: I want to create new documents in Google Docs in one click without having to go to File –> New Document.
A: Simple, either add a bookmarklet to your browser or install desktop shortcuts – see instructions.
Q: I want to turn Google Docs into a distraction free writing tool just like Writeroom.
A: Go to Edit –> Document Styles and turn the background color to either black. Then change the font foreground color to white or green and press Ctrl+Shift+F to enter Full Screen mode. See a similar hack for Word.
Q: OK, I know you can write documents or create spreadsheets in Google Docs but what else? Tell me some more creative uses of Google Docs.
Q: Tell me about some desktop applications that work with Google Docs.
GMDesk – AIR app that makes Google Docs behave like a desktop program. Thanks Ryan.
GDocsBar – The perfect Google Docs extension for Firefox.
Send to Google Docs – Upload web documents (including PDF) directly to Google Docs.
OO Add-on – Export or import documents from OpenOffice.org or StarOffice to Google Docs.
Q: Like other Google tools, can I access my Google Docs library from the Firefox Sidebar?
A: Create a bookmark for http://docs.google.com/m and set this to open in Firefox sidebar. You can browse all documents though the sidebar but can’t create new stuff.
Q. Can I use Google Docs like Microsoft OneNote for taking notes and saving web clippings?
A: Open a new Google Document in a separate browser tab and drag the clipping from another brower tab / window into this document. That’s it. Not sure if this works with Google Chrome.
The Packagetrackr website is one of these tools that sooner or later will come in more than just handy. As you might have guessed from its name, this solution is nothing but a package tracking service – and a universal one at that.
In order to learn about the status of a package, you simply key in its tracking number and choose one of the featured carriers from the provided drop down box. These include UPS, USPS and DHL. FedEx and FedEx SmartPost are also taken into account alongside Aramex and UK City Link.
Upon submitting this information and hitting the “Track it!” button, you are presented with a comprehensive package summary which provides information such as the status of the package as regards its intended destination along with other considerations such as its weight and the pickup date. The package progress is likewise detailed, and you can inform yourself about the departure scan and arrival scan dates.
Jim Stroud posted an interesting video interview (and via web cam too) on Cloud Recruiting.
Jim Stroud is a “Searchologist” with an expertise in the full life-cycle placement of Executive and Technical personnel, Recruitment Research and Competitive Intelligence. Jim Stroud and Marie Journey interview Michael Marlatt about his "Cloud Recruiting" concept, the amazing apps on his iPhone and how he uses them in his Recruiting efforts. Cloud Recruiting redefines how employers and employees connect, communicate and "click" on work, jobs and values. It points to the realities of competing for people who are physically and virtually mobile. It's about staying ahead of the crowd.
In the last few years we’ve seen an explosion in new awesome tools for freelancers including project management apps, invoicing apps, time management apps and to-do lists. One type of app that I think is particularly awesome is the collaboration app. These services allow you to upload images, documents and in some cases videos and flash, and then you, your client and anyone else working on the project can discuss and annotate the work.
When it comes to sharing concepts, particularly for freelancers working over the web, this is literally a revolution in feedback. There are 9 apps listed below, half are extremely feature packed with a few slimmer (cheaper) options and one coming soon app.
Get feedback on documents (Word, Excel), Powerpoint, images (including Photoshop PSD files), webpages and free-form text. Backboard also features multiple versions of a project, email integration - just send an email with the file for review attached, desktop upload and SSL encryption.
Plans ranging from Free for one non-commercial account (unlimited "backboards") to $49 p/month
Feedback for images (including PSD files), vector files like EPS and PDF, video files, a raft of document types from Powerpoint to Word, and of course live web pages.
Add notes and discussion to points on the item being shared, a feature to print a summary - including the notes, a desktop uploader, custom branding for freelancers who care about their image and a customizeable interface.
There are free trials, otherwise it’s $24 - $99 p/month.
Like ConceptShare and Backboard, ProofHQ has the ability to annotate a variety of document types - PDFs, PSDs, JPGs, Word, Powerpoint - and webpages. It also includes email integration, version control and the ability to create workspaces. And like ConceptShare you can customize the look and feel to give it some branding.
Free trials are available, otherwise it’s $29 - $99 p/month
Proof-It-Online has some good features - annotate not just static files but video, flash and animation. But it’s way more expensive that the previous three options ($39 p/month up to a whopping $750 p/month) and looking a lot older and less up to date.
Cozimo is another solid looking solution with the ability to do not just the static docs but like ConceptShare to add notes to video as well. Also features SSL Security, custom branding on all but the cheapest plan, unlimited folders and a healthy dose of storage (provided you pay - otherwise it’s 10mb not really enough to do more than documents).
Priced from $29 p/month to $149 p/month with a free trial option
Review Basics processes all the usual suspects - documents, powerpoint, images - and does video as well. Notably however you can’t provide feedback on PSD files - though I suppose you can just make a JPG out of them pretty easily.
Currently the system seems to be in pretty early stage because it’s completely free with a paid plan coming later. I couldn’t find many other limitation details, so you’d have to try signing up to find out about number of projects etc.
Fine Tuna is a MUCH simpler product than those listed above and is only for adding notes to a single image. You then send it off to an email address and can go back and forth.
There’s a firefox extension and it’s quite a usable product from my brief play with it, but obviously it’s like a matchbox car compared to a real car when stacked up against the products above. You can’t do webpages, documents, videos, animations, there’s no security etc.
Fleck is similar to Fine Tuna in that it’s not really in the same category as the top apps. Unlike Fine Tuna, Fleck is for webpages. You grab a web page and add notes, then share. You can create accounts, though it appears to be totally free.
Vyoopoint is actually not available yet, but looks like it’s going to be promising. It includes the ability to annotate Flash files, integration with Basecamp and a few other interesting features. You can sign up to be notified on launch.
Twitter idiocy. Or Twitteriocy (I'm coining a term- run with it). It's what we are beginning to see on Twitter, and it is an easy thing to combat.
Now, while Twitter right now is the hot thing for corporations, and we have begun seeing more and more and more companies getting accounts, well, it is becoming obvious that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.
DO appear on Twitter as a real person. Be like comcastcares.
DON'T let your PR firm do the tweeting. A customer-facing employee like comcastcares is best.
Who to follow: DO follow people who follow your company's account. DO follow people who tweet about the company more than once. DO follow people who talk about the company's space.
DO reply to people who direct-message you. Be engaged and responsive. Be personable. There's nothing worse than sending someone a direct message on Twitter ... and hearing nothing back.
Social Networking sites can be much more than fun distractions and a way to keep track of your friends. Used correctly they can be very powerful List building tools.
Websites like Twitter, Stumbleupon, Hubpages, Squidoo and Facebook are excellent tools for networking with and marketing to others in your niche. They are also great ways to drive traffic to your websites. If you want to build a niche list they are an invaluable resource.
The Micro-blogging site Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to follow one another through posts of 140 characters or less. It is a great place for posting small bits of information and for directing people to blogs or squeeze pages.
Stumbleupon is a social bookmarking site that works from a tool bar downloaded to your browser. It allows users to discover and rate web pages and ultimately functions to give social validity to some sites over others. The more your site is liked the higher value it is given by search engines. Stumbleupon is also a great tool for finding others in your niche.
Social Networking sites are extremely valuable tools for building niche lists. You don’t want to send spam or blatant advertising through these sites, but you can drive prospects to your squeeze page or your website where you can give them an incentive to share their contact information with you through an opt-in box.
The goal with using any of these sites is to build up your list. If you can attract people in your niche market, drive them to your site and have them sign up for your mailings, suddenly you have a growing list of people who are interested in the products you are offering.
Experienced professionals, recent and prospective college graduates and others interested in career opportunities with the KPMG network of professional firms, providing audit, tax and advisory services, can participate in the September 24 - 26 "KPMG World Jobs Fair," a live, 48-hour global virtual recruiting fair.
The "KPMG World Jobs Fair," taking place online from 9 a.m. GMT, Wednesday, September 24, to 9 a.m. GMT, Friday, September 26, aims to provide qualified, interested candidates with information on hundreds of job opportunities, particularly in tax, advisory and specialized audit services, with KPMG member firms worldwide. More than 10,000 interested applicants have already registered for the online event through KPMG's global website at http://www.kpmg.com.
During the event, KPMG's first external virtual job fair, participants will have the opportunity to chat with KPMG recruiters and network with KPMG professionals, particularly in high growth markets where KPMG expects to substantially expand its operations over the next several years.
"As an increasing number of companies conduct business internationally, there are growing opportunities for professionals in many KPMG member firms - especially in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China," said Timothy P. Flynn, KPMG chairman. "We're also focused on adding thousands of jobs to support KPMG member firms' continued growth in developed markets such as United States and Europe, including drawing specialists from around the world experienced in IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) as the world moves to that global accounting standard."
"The KPMG World Jobs Fair reflects a remarkable transformation in how KPMG member firms are attracting talent in a global economy - and a transformation in the way that professionals are seeking employment," said Flynn. "This event allows interested job candidates to easily explore opportunities and a potential career with KPMG, and it gives us an opportunity to tap into a global workforce. We expect it will attract thousands of qualified professionals and recent graduates worldwide."
The World Jobs Fair follows the success of a similar internal online event that 12 KPMG member firms held in May for employees and partners interested in exploring international rotation opportunities. The internal event attracted nearly 5,000 KPMG employees and partners, representing 104 countries, with the highest percentage of participants from the U.K., followed by the U.S., Germany, and China. The largest groups of participants by level were associates and senior associates, at 42 percent and 34 percent, respectively.
45 Member Firms
The global, virtual event this month will include an exhibition hall that features booths covering 45 participating KPMG member firms. Job seekers will be able to learn more about available opportunities in specific countries, and information on KPMG's culture, values, corporate citizenship goals, training and development and work/life programs.
Participants will also have the opportunity to watch live webcasts, chat with KPMG audit, tax and advisory professionals about a career with KPMG and apply for positions directly from the event.
"Clients are global and they need professionals with global audit, tax and advisory skills," said Flynn. "Taking advantage of global opportunities through an event like the KPMG World Jobs Fair helps people expand their skills and cultural perspective. At the same time, it gives KPMG a chance to help our member firms better serve their clients. It's what helps make KPMG an employer of choice."
In addition to KPMG member firms in Brazil, Russia, India and China, other KPMG member firms participating in the KPMG World Jobs Fair include Albania, Australia, Bahrain, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, U.K., U.S., United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based software maker Unisfair is providing the technology KPMG is using to power its virtual career fair event.
Here's a great productivity tip. Add mtbot@hotmail.com to your MSN IM and you can translate to/from Arabic, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Translation Bot or mtbot is powered by Windows Live Translator - "Please know that I am only a robot and do not have human translation skills. However, I might be able to just help you understand what your international buddies are saying. You can also help get better translation results by using simple sentence structures and by avoiding typos."
Here's a sample screenshot. It may not be 100% accurate, but I guess it gets the message across somehow.
The Asia Pacific lags behind some European countries in recruitment-based social networking, according to a survey conducted by Aquent, the leading global staffing firm specialising in marketing, communications and creative talent.
The Aquent Orange Book 2008-2009, a salary survey and industry monitor of key Asia Pacific and European markets, revealed a minimal uptake of social networking websites in the Asia Pacific by candidates and employers for recruitment purposes.
"The contrast between its use in the Asia Pacific region and some parts of Europe is stark and cannot be ignored," said Aquent International CEO, Greg Savage.
"Europe is a highly sophisticated labour market and it's clear some employers and many job seekers have found a way to extract value from social media, which is clearly demonstrated in the latest Aquent research."
In Germany (39 percent), France (34 percent), Poland (30 percent), and the Netherlands (23 percent), candidates rated social networking sites as a preferred method of job seeking, as did 13 to 18 percent of employers as a tool for sourcing talent.
Meanwhile, no greater than nine percent of both employers and candidates across Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore utilised social networking sites as a sourcing technique.
But Savage warns that recruitment-based social networking is not without risk.
"As a new tool for talent acquisition, social media has yet to be fully tested or quantified in the Asia Pacific region - and almost all feedback is anecdotal," he said.
"For employers, it remains hugely labour intensive, can be frustrating, and poses very real risks of brand damage and internal misuse.
"Candidates, on the other hand, expose themselves to potential discrimination and can also damage their employment prospects because their online footprint may not come across very favorably at all."
However, Savage believes that despite its flaws, social media may prove helpful in the ongoing access to quality talent, a factor critical to the competitiveness of Asia Pacific companies.
"The next wave of technology that supports talent acquisition is worth exploration and investment, especially as avenues like job boards and print media are becoming less effective and more expensive," he said.
"I suspect employers, both recruiters and corporate, who can blend social networking into a fully integrated recruitment plan, will be the ultimate winners."
Gothere.sg has just integrated a "before / after" fare price into their interface.
"...you can check and find out if you are one of the lucky 43% of commuters who will see no change or a reduction in your weekly public transport expenditure, or one of the 21% who will see an average increase of 18 cents per week, or worse still, one of the unfortunate 36% who will see an average increase of 23 cents per week."
Sean (Mashable) consolidated this list of 18 sites to look for Startup jobs. Although a majority are based in US, there are opportunities for work from home / off-site / freelance work.
AsiaWired.com - Looking for startups in Asia? This may be the solution for you.
CoNotes.com - Focusing on nothing but jobs at startups, CoNotes has been around since 2007.
Dice.com - Browse jobs by city or pull up the category that applies to your skill set.
ejob.com - ejob focuses on staffing needs in and around Silicon Valley.
GoBigNetwork.com - A one-stop-shop for startups to form business plans, find funding and locate employees that can fulfill their needs.
HotStartupJobs.com - Aggregates startup listings from a multitude of sites. You can read a lengthier write up of HotStartupJobs by our own Paul Glazowski here on Mashable.
Jobs.Mashable.com - Our very own marketplace features categories for listing jobs and looking for them also.
NeoHire.com - Lets you look up jobs by category, add them to your basket as you find ones that interest you and then apply to all of the ones you’ve saved.
nPost.com - Besides offering numerous job listings at startups, they have 225+ interviews with people from some of the companies explaining what they are about and what they are looking for in an employee.
StartupAgents.com - Both startups and potential employees can set up profiles to try to find the perfect match for each other. The service is completely free to potential employees, but will cost employers to contact potential hires.
StartupJobs.biz - A small jobs board with unique listings that you can search by type of job or occupation.
Startuply.com - Covers various industries related to Web 2.0 and startups, lets you also browse by job type.
StartupZone.com - Allows you to search jobs by occupation, location or even what stage of funding they are in.
VentureLoop.com - Provides internship listings for students at certain schools and has job listings you can search by country or occupation.
If you are having trouble following all the updates at Techcrunch50, check out this site developed by Sean Percival to collect all the Twitters, FreindFeed comments, blog posts, news stories, photos, videos, Diggs,and Techmeme headlines that are tagged “techcrunch50″or “tc50.”
TechCrunch50 is an annual conference that features startups competing for the US$50,000 grand prize.
Researchers in the new media industry got an S$18 million funding boost from the government on Thursday.
Thirteen out of 85 proposals to blend real and virtual worlds, through the use of sensors and haptic devices, were selected by an international review panel to receive the funding from the Interactive Digital Media Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO), hosted by the Media Development Authority (MDA).
Into its second year now, the initiative is part of an overall S$500 million push by the government to develop the interactive and digital media as one of the economy's three key pillars.
Dr John Seely Brown, co-chairman of the international review panel, scholar and advisory to the Provost at University of Southern California, said: "I spend my life dealing with entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley (who have) the fire in the belly, the willingness to be radical and think out-of-the-box... For the first time, I am beginning to get that sense here."
The 13 projects are expected to involve 120 local researchers with international collaborators from six countries such as the United States and China.
These projects, which focus on the research theme of Co-space, are also expected to deliver some 25 patents and 200 research papers.
One of last year's winners, who found a way to cut production costs for the popular but time-consuming Japanese anime by 40 per cent, is already winning new projects. But this year's programme wants to go beyond numbers.
MDA is rallying schools, research institutions and start-ups in the digital media industry to maintain an innovative spirit.
Give limited protection to those running blogs, forums and other publicly editable content sites from defamation lawsuits to help free and responsible speech flourish online.
This is the same protection Internet service providers already get.
Such protection, said the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (Aims), will at one stroke solve two problems: unmeritorious lawsuits against content hosts who are not responsible for the defamation to begin with, and overzealous censorship by content hosts worried about such prosecution.
Thanks to the folks at E27.SG, we've just made it on their blog. We highly recommend that you RSS their blog for announcements on their many outreach programmes. In fact, we met Gothere.sg and Widgeo.us at the recent Unconference Singapore.
"Entrepreneur27 Singapore is the sister organization of the original Entrepreneur27 group founded by Noah Kagan in Silicon Valley/ San Francisco Bay Area.
The “27″ in Entrepreneur27 (E27) really means “<27″.>
Since Jan 2006, E27 Singapore has reached out to thousands of new media enthusiasts and entrepreneurs through our 4 unconferences and numerous other outreach events at polytechnics, Junior Colleges. Via our mailing lists, Facebook groups and event wikis, we seek to engage our community in a direct conversation. Our new partnership with NUS and MDA to manage a startup incubator for the Interactive Digital Media sector is going to take us in an uncharted direction for the upcoming years and we are very excited about the possibilities."
Welcome to the first post of a new section called "Jorbb Shows You How".
In a nutshell, we will develop interesting "How To" posts which will cover a myriad of topics ranging from Employment tips to Tech shortcuts.
At Jorbb.com, Jorbbers and Jorbbees can upload images to their profile. Now what if you prefer not to have your photo for all to see. Create a personalised Avatar with the many Avatar Generators out there.
We are still in BETA so please bear with us if there are any issues and we appreciate your comments.
Here's the 30 seconds blurp for those who don't have time to read the entire post and a 60 seconds video which sums up most of Jorbb.com's features. For the official broadcast, please click here to download our Press Release.
1. Market is saturated with Executive Job Portals out there, focused on Employers rather than on Job Seekers.
No Non-Executive (freelance, casual, part time, contract) portal for Job Seekers to put themselves for hire. Jorbb.comTM plugs this gap.
First ad posting by Jorbbers (Employers / Agency) is FREE.Jorbbees (Job Seekers) post Resumes / Video Profiles / Portfolios for FREE.
2. Users can post Video Profiles / Slideshows of portfolio to build profile.
You can rate and provide testimonials (between Employer and Job Seeker) upon being hired. So don't slack off at work ya?
3. Search for Jobs / Employers / Job Seekers in a specific area with Maps via VISUAL SEARCH.
We also provide Bus / Train commuting directions, powered by GoThere.sg so you can find out what bus / train / cost / time it takes to travel to your potential new job place.
Sweet!
4. You can find and Tag A Friend who share common job interests. You can also tag Employers. Build your community and "follow" their latest successful job application or job posted.
5. Earn Credits for Gifts Exchange: Each time you refer a friend or post a testimonial, you earn credits which can be exchanged for gifts (movie tickets, food vouchers etc).
6. Finally, Jorbb gets Jobs for You! Upon sign up, you will be asked to fill up a survey.
If any Employer posts a job which matches your job interests, you will be notified. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds of jobs you are interested in.
That's it, 30 seconds :)
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Here's the longer format...
So what is Jorbb.comTM and why launch another job portal?One day, I chanced upon this handwritten A4 notice outside a shop, seeking part time sales staff. Further along, there was yet another sign looking for casual event promoters. How many "relevant hits" do they get?
The online job classifieds market is saturated with executive job search, but what about the part time, casual, temporary, freelance and contract job seekers - where can they make themselves available for hire?
A shop owner, new start-up, or home maker will not have the budget to post daily ads in papers, nor high profile, established executive job sites - prices there range from $35 for a 1 day classifieds ad, to $100-200 for an online posting at executive job portals!
Some examples: Tuition Teacher advertising for students, Photographer specialising in Wedding Shoots, DJ providing music at private parties, Event Organisers looking for ushers, Physical Trainer providing programmes, Home Care Provider for elderly folks, Retail Shop looking for Sales Staff, IT Show Event Promoters, the list goes on...
I designed Jorbb.comTM to plug this gap. 1st ad posting by Jorbbers (Employers / Agency) is FREE.Jorbbees (Job Seekers) post Resumes / Video Profiles / Portfolios for FREE.
What is the unique selling point about Jorbb.comTM?
The concept / design of site is distinctively different from any job portal in Singapore / the Region. Job-seekers come first. With our platform, Jorbbees can build profiles with Images / Slideshows and Video. With a single URL to Profile Pages, they can embed this in their resume / email signature.
Jorbb is the mascot and his tag line is "Jorbb Gets Jobs for You!", striving to make it easy for users to stay updated with current job offerings via various communication channels (emails / RSS feeds / widgets).
As with most freelance / casual / part time work, referrals are important in establishing the reputation and credibility of the candidate.
Hence Jorbb.comTM allows RATINGS and posting of TESTIMONIALS between Jorbbers and Jorbbees. Jorbbees can also embed Videos, Images, Slide-shows into their Profile pages as typical text resumes may not be useful when selecting candidates.
A shop may need someone eloquent & bilingual and they can narrow down on a Jorbber based on his/her video introduction profile. A freelance Graphic Web Designer can easily post a portfolio slide-show in the profile.
All Jorbbees take a survey which identifies his/her strengths & weaknesses. This helps a Jorbber screen though the type of candidate he/she prefers.
Each time a Jorbber posts an ad, for example, looking for a graphics designer, or promoter, Jorbbees tagged with these job categories will be informed. Hence, Jorbbers get better ad targeting hit to relevant Jorbbees who are looking for that position.
We also run Blog / Twitter / FriendFeed / Facebook feeds which will update users with current economic, employment, recruitment how-tos, reviews, tech and web 2.0 news.
How does Jorbb.comTM differentiate itself from other job sites?
Leveraging on location based search, all posted Jobs, registered Jobbers & Jorbbees are listed on a VISUAL SEARCH page so that it is easy to find jobs / Jorbbers / Jorbbees around your location. Travel directions (Click Bus Icon) by Bus / Train are also shown (powered by Gothere.sg).
Social networking widgets will be introduced shortly as we are bug-testing them. These tools will allow Jorbb users to find / add their friends and share job offers with each other.
We are also in discussions with other Web 2.0 start-ups to see how we can collaborate and leverage on one another's technologies.
How is Jorbb.com™ funded?
Jorbb.comTM is a subsidiary of H1Studio (http://h1studio.com), is privately held and profitable, with no debt or venture capital. So, we can focus 100% on satisfying our customers. Other H1Studio offerings include 100for100 Web Hosting (Web Hosting Services at http://100for100.com) and RPWorkshop (Rapid Prototyping and Render Farm Facility at http://rpworkshop.com).
Jorbb.comTM is only a platform for user generated content, so we would like to hear from you, to make Jorbb.comTM better. Without your inputs, we do not exist.
Thanks for reading and please email any comments / suggestions / improvements you would like to see on Jorbb.comTM.
The simple matter of an ad in a local paper, a few applicants and a handful of interviews began to get more complex 20 years ago.
Personal mobility, employees’ desires to change not just companies but countries, and employers’ tighter job specifications all led to a need for better job markets and faster information. There was another factor at work, too. Company culture became recognised as a reality. It had always existed, of course. Great patriarchal families such as Cadbury or Mars and early enlightened employers such as Marks and Spencer had attracted the cream of the available talent for generations. In Japan, the company was often an employee’s whole life, taking precedence over family and personal ambition.
Then, quite quickly, the picture changed. One cause was the recognition of the value and scarcity of real talent. The wage gap between the “average” employee and the top widened. Systematic training started, partly because of technology spreading its tentacles from factory into office and partly because employment costs demanded that every ounce of productivity had to be achieved to make a job viable.
This soon led to a recognition that the cost of an employee was not the wages and perks but the accumulated investment the company had made in his or her job and, subsequently, the maintenance of that asset in a changing technological world.
It was these influences that led to the rise of job portals and companies such as Monster and to the growing awareness that hyperbole in a CV plays a very little part in securing a job. My experience is it often turns off an employer because he has read it all before and is not prepared to do so again. Time spent reading copy-written CVs is resented, as is the carbon footprint involved in travel to interview overseas talent or the cost of bringing candidates long distances only to find out they in no way fit the bill.
So poor is the quality of many CVs that a simpler style is long overdue. At least one new service is shortly going to provide an online format for this. Meanwhile, if you are concerned about your CV and you care to send it to me, I will let you have a comment on it together with a content checklist to ensure what you are presenting is useful. I do not charge for this and all information sent to me will be held in strict confidence.
Technology now allows employee/job matching to move into a new era where “essential fact CVs” coupled with a short video provide a desktop way of searching through the credentials of many potential employees and producing a short list in a fraction of the time it used to take and at a tenth of the cost. All this can initially be done without revealing the employee’s identity until she or he is ready to do so.
New services such as SeeMeCV display enough information for an employer to make the decision to interview with twice the chance the employee might be hired than any other system provides. Candidates will still need skills in the preparation of their one-page CV and in filming their video clip. They will require excellent interview performance and all the emotional intelligence that face-to-face meetings always demand. But at least they will be reviewed faster, called to fewer wasted interviews and confronted by fewer frustrated employers wondering how to fill the half hour they know will not lead to a job offer.
The age of the useable CV has arrived. Is yours up to date and up to scratch?I suggest you review it now.
John Bittleston mentors people in business, career and their personal lives at www.TerrificMentors.com.TODAY/ra
Have you ever used Youtube videos for a presentation and wish there was a way to annotate the videos. Youtube has an annotate feature but only for owners of the videos, which means you cannot annotate someone else's video.
Summarised from Mashable - TubePopper is also limited to the videos available on YouTubejust enter the URL for the YouTube video you’d like to annotate, or perform a YouTube video search directly on TubePopper’s site.
Beyond this, TubePopper has the expected networking features: embedding options, commenting, related clips, and one-click sharing across various social networks and bookmarking sites, which is a feature powered by Gigya.
Here's a sample, does remind me of Mei Mei Watches MTV on Chinese MTV Channel.
During WWDC when Jobs launched the new iPhone 3G and everyone gasped at the "low" price, I was more interested in the Apps Store. At 5am, when I was listening to the keynote on a Qik stream, I had the "Eureka!" moment.
I used to work at a Research and Innovation Centre which did research work in Experience Design (XD) - an area of study popularised by Shedroff / Pines & Gilmore. In a nutshell, XD speaks about how every brand / product / service can be commoditized and there's a limit to profits you make from any brand / product / service.
There is more money to be made by selling the "experience cloud" around your brand / product / service especially AFTER consumers have purchased your product / service. You do this by introducing moments of engagement or touch points, so that the consumer will continually be reminded of your brand / product / service throughout their daily activities. The more "moments of truth" you can embed between your offerings and the consumer, the more successful your offering will be.
Apple are masters at doing this. Think iPod, iPhone, Macbook, iMac, iTunes Music Store, Apple TV, Apple accessories to complement your Apple products, and now Apps and MobileMe. They do this with heavy engagement between Ethnographers and Users of their products.
When I was at P&G, "Moments of Truth" are firmly etched in their brand philosophy. HP is another company to lookout for (reaching out to bloggers, marketing their PCs as a lifestyle necessity instead of a PC). Locally, I might also add that Singtel is slowly and steadily adopting this strategy.
The new iPhone 3G / iPhone 2.0 software really hit the nail. At a micro-level, how much profit can Apple make from selling an iPhone, after sharing with AT&T and overseas cellular providers?
Now fast forward to the Apps store and MobileMe. Sure, they have made a profit off you buying the device / call plan etc, but in order to generate continuous income, tadah! Apple presented the Apps store / MobileMe.
Either way, Apple earns. Selling the phones (Friggin' 1 million sold in 74 days) and selling the apps (10 million downloads) / pushing the convenience of the cloud.
Before I do the summary of TechCrunch's post, here's something you / your business should keep in mind.
Do not just sell products / services. Because products / services can be replicated, cheaper, faster, better than what you provide. There has to be an "sticky" factor for people to want to keep using your offering and more importantly, willing to pay more to enhance the initial investment they've made in the first place because they want to, not because they need to.
Back to the main reason for this post:
Development house taptaptap has just publish sale figures of their iPhone app. WhereTo retails for US$2.99 in the store and 24,094 copies were sold in the first month - netting the company just over US$50,000 in revenue after Apple took their cut (it currently ranks #69 on the top paid application list). Tipulator retails for US$0.99, and sold 3,168 copies which resulted in just over US$2,200 of revenue (it is currently unranked).
So question - If their products are ranked #69 and Unranked, how much are the top paid apps developers making? The current list can be found here.
Teens are getting more wired these days, and it seems that gossip, as a hallmark of teen social life, has also made its way online.
A Straits Times survey of 100 teens here revealed that almost all, or 94 per cent of respondents said they had a profile on at least one social networking site. Some teens have their profiles on as many as seven of these sites.
More than half the respondents said they visited Friendster or Facebook at least once a day. Some said they check their online profiles more than 10 times a day.
These teens spend hours online finding out the latest about their friends, chatting, sharing photos and updating their profiles with details of their lives - where they hang out, what they eat and whom they are dating.
"It's an addictive habit," Secondary 3 student Sofia Akram told The Straits Times. She also told the English daily that users on such social neteworking sites can add people they don't know, and that others can add them likewise. "As long as they look interesting, I want to find out more about them."
The Straits Times reported that studies confirm that this rapid and widespread adoption of profiles on social networking sites is a worldwide trend.
Experts say teens who use such social networking sites usually fall into two groups, according to The Straits Times.
The first group are the "deep" users whose lives exist largely online through chat applications, forums and blogs. They usually create well-designed profiles that prominently showcase their "friends", who can number in the hundreds or thousands.
Their profiles are also heavy on content, with details such as the user's preference for flowers and so on.
On the other hand, "shallow" users have profiles that are light on content. They only spend a few minutes updating their profiles and do so only two or three times a week.
In Singapore, teens usually fall into the first category, The Straits Times reported.
Mr Alan Rambam, a senior vice-president at Fleishman-Hillard, told The Straits Times, "In Singapore, both parents tend to be working. These kids may be the loneliest generation ever. Naturally, they will reach out for friends at every opportunity."
Dr Chung Wai Kung, a professor of sociology at the Singapore Management University also told the English daily that popularity of social networking sites may be because of the accessibility of technology here.
Parents have a right to be worried, as social networking sites can invite unwanted attention, The Straits Times reported. Drawing data from its survey, the newspaper said that 84 per cent of respondents said they received messages from strangers, of which 34 per cent wanted to meet in person.
Techcrunch posted a posting from Jason's mailing list (CEO Mahalo.com) who has sat through 200 company demos in 10 days. Great advice / tips on how to deliver a killer pitch / demo. Thanks Jason.
"For the past 10 days I’ve sat through 200 company demos for the TechCrunch50 conference. These demos are mostly done over the phone for 10 minutes using the phone and web conferencing software like WebEx or Adobe’s wonderful new “Connect” service.
After doing 2,500 minutes of demos (40 hours) this year and many more last year for the conference, I’ve learned a lot about what makes for a great demo and what makes for a horrible demo. Since demoing your idea is a key to your success as an entrepreneur, I thought I would share everything I know in a few simple bullet points.
These tips are applicable to presenting in front of an investor, a partner as well as a demo style conference. Of course, every situation is different so consider these loose guidelines.
Background: The TechCrunch50 conference is taking places on September 8-10th in San Francisco and you can find more information here: www.techcrunch50.com. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.com and I started the event last year as a place where fifty startup companies could launch their products without having to pay a fee (i.e. the incumbent conference called DEMO charges $18,500 to launch a startup company–that’s really low/abusive in my book). Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Sequoia Capital and a bunch of other fine partners have joined us in hosting the event.
1. Show your product within the first 60 seconds ——————————————- Most folks start their presentations with information like the size of the market they are tackling (tens of billions, we only need 1%!), their inflated corporate bios, the philosophical approach they’re taking, and boring Powerpoint graphics explaining some convoluted workflow of their product.
The longer it takes for you to show your product, the worse your product is. Folks who have a kick-ass product don’t spend five or ten minutes “setting the stage” or “giving the background.” Folks with killer products CAN’T WAIT to show you their product. Their demos start with their homepage and quickly jump into the users experience. If a picture tells a thousand stories, then a product demo tells a million.
Show your product immediately, and if you don’t have a product to show don’t take the meeting.
2. The best products take less than five minutes to demo ——————————————- The greatest tech products over the past 10 years would take no more than five minutes each to demo. For example:
a) Larry and Sergey could demo Google search in less than five minutes. Here’s a box, type something in and you get a huge reward.
b) Steve Jobs could demo the iPod in less than five minutes. Plug it in, put in your CDs and it syncs your music. Turn it on and use the wheel to select what songs you want to listen to.
c) Chris DeWolfe could demo MySpace in less than five minutes. Sign up, fill out your profile, and add your friends. For bonus points add some widgets to your page.
I think you get the idea: the better the product the LESS time it takes to demo. If your product demo takes more than five minutes to demo, it probably sucks. All the tiny little features that matter to you are of course important–God is in the details–however, when presenting your company, you don’t have to show them. Larry and Sergey wouldn’t open up the advanced search tab and the list of operators you can use in Google during a demo.
Steve Jobs does take the demo details to a fairly detailed level, but you and I are not Steve Jobs. There is only one Steve Jobs and there is only one Apple. You’re never going to build something as cool as Steve, and as such there is no need for you to talk about your product for five or ten minutes.
3. Leave people wanting more. ——————————————- If you take my advice in point two, then folks should be either blown away or intrigued by your core product. If they are not somewhere in that spectrum, you need to rebuild your core product.
When I pitched Mahalo to investors, I had five sheets of paper with different search results on each. I put them on a table and said which one is the best. Obviously I knew my result was the best, and that simple demonstration lead to MASSIVE discussion: how was the page built? how long did it take to build? what would it cost to make that page? how often do you need to update it? how can you scale that business? how many pages can you create before it breaks even?
It’s best for folks to discover the merits of your product for themselves, and it’s up to you to make such a compelling core product that they are intrigued enough to explore it.
4. Talk about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do. ——————————————- Weak startups and their leaders seem to immediately start talk about “what’s next,” as opposed to focusing on the core product. Anyone can say we’re going to add: a mobile version, collaborative filtering, an advertising network, visualizations, a marketplace, a browser plugin, a browser and a social network to their product. In fact, given the amount of open source and off the shelf software out there, combined with the large number of developers in the world, anyone can bolt these things on to their service in a week or three.
Who cares what you’re going to bolt on to your startup? What really matters is the core functionality of your startup.
Steve Jobs has become at once the world’s greatest salesman and product developer because he only announces Apple’s achievements. He doesn’t waste time on what Apple’s going to do: he talks about the here and now. Microsoft’s old strategy was to talk about products that were coming and that put them in the horrible position of having to backpedal when they changed their mind about a product.
5. Understand your competitive landscape–current and historical. ——————————————- This year I’ve had three companies show me group SMS messaging products, and most of them did not know what UPOC.com was (Gordon Gould’s group SMS messaging service that was five years ahead of its time). I’ve had three or four companies over the past two years of TechCrunch50 conferences pitch me on Third Voice–the controversial “web annotation” service from Web 1.0. [Side note: I loved the concept of Third Voice so much I considered starting a company like it and even bought the domain name annotated.com.]
When I pitched the idea for Weblogs, Inc. to Mark Cuban, Yossi Vardi and Jeff Bezos, I understood all the niche email marketing and newsletter companies from the early and mid-nineties cold. I researched why they worked and why they failed, and I knew which ones were sold and bought and by whom. When I pitched Mahalo to Sequoia Capital, I knew the history of human-powered search and directories from DMOZ to Yahoo Directory to LookSmart.
If you don’t know the competitive landscape, and the shoulder’s you’re standing on, folks are not going to be comfortable giving you their money, time or attention.
6. Short answers are best. ——————————————- When taking questions about your product answer questions shortly. This is a very challenging thing for many people–including myself–to do. If you’re like me, you’ve probably thought out your startup’s issues a thousand different ways. When I sit at the poker table I play a game where I think out every possible scenario for not only my hands, but the hands of my opponents (this is fairly standard among advanced poker players from what I understand).
Say I have Ace King and I raised out of position and the button called my raise pre-flop. Then they re-raised me on the flop, which had an Ace. What does that tell me? They could have an ace, they could have two aces and have slow played me, they could have a medium pocket pair and they want to see if I have an ace, maybe they are on a flush or straight draw or maybe they suck at poker. Who the hell knows?!?! You can go insane trying to figure all these things out–that’s why poker becomes very addictive.
The point is all that inner thinking is chaos when you try to explain it to another person. It’s pure madness after 60 seconds of talking. The best thing to do is answer the question with the most concise answer. For example, when asked “what happens if Google enters your market?” answer quickly and with confidence:
a) Google has entered many markets, but they are only #1 in search and search advertising. They trail in social networking to MySpace and Facebook, in classifieds to Craigslist, in news to Yahoo and AOL, in email to Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo, and in instant messaging to Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo.
b) We’re not sure if Google will enter our market, but hopefully we’ll have developed our product enough that it will be a real sustainable business by that time.
c) We think Google might enter our market at some point, and if they do they and their competitors will certainly consider buying us–creating a bidding war for our entrenched position.
d) Google is a very big company right now with a very big cash machine that they have to focus on and protect–they will never do our business with our level of focus. We will out execute them on all fronts.
These are all amazing answers (I did, after all, come up with them), and you can say them in around a minute. However, if you cram all four of these sentences together you’ve spoken for five minutes.
7. PowerPoint bullet slides are death ——————————————- Do not make slide after slide explaining your business in bullet points, because it’s really, really boring. Powerpoint/Keynote slides that are not boring include charts, product shots, feature set tables and the like. Things that explain big concepts with ease and grace are great, but bullet points of obvious facts show that:
a) you don’t have the ability to create a compelling story with data
b) you don’t think that much of the person being presented the information
I’m not a huge fan of “funny slides” or lots of graphics for graphics sake. You’re not pitching your company to get laughs–unless you’re on stage–you’re doing it to raise capital, close a partnership or get on stage at a conference. Keep it focused and to the point.
8. How to use this new device called the phone. ——————————————- When presenting over the phone use a handset and a land-line… only!
It’s amazing to me that any person doing a business call would conduct it on their mobile phone. Mobile phones sound horrible 95% of the time, and they frequently cut out. If you are presenting your company take it seriously and get yourself to a landline. You have limited time and don’t want folks to miss a single word.
Speakerphones are horrible, and putting the person receiving the demo on speaker phone during a demo is just disrespectful. You can hear all the rustling, side conversations and horrible echos when you’re on speaker phone. When doing a demo pick up the handset and speak. If you go to a Q&A session then use speaker phone. That’s why it exists.
Only use a headset if it is very, very high-fidelity and you have the microphone right up to your mouth. Also, don’t eat, drink or breath heavy into the microphone or you run the risk of sounding like an animal. I use an amazing Plantronics headset, and I like me some Green Matcha tea, but I hit the mute key when I sip!
I know it sounds crazy to have a discussion about how to use the phone, but the majority of these young people actually think it’s acceptable to have two or three drop offs in a call–it’s not. Grow up and get a land line.
9. How to handle questions you don’t know the answer to ——————————————- After you do your concise presentation you’re hopefully going to get a lot of questions. Here are some important tips to consider when you don’t know the answer cold:
a) take a moment to think about the question. You can even say “Hmmm… that’s a good question. Let me think about that for a second.” Folks appreciate a little consideration when someone takes a question.
b) if you don’t have an answer be honest and say you don’t. There are many ways to say this including: “I’m not really sure, I’m going to have to think about that for a bit and get back to you,” or “I’m not sure to be honest. What do you think?”
c) feel free to think out loud and brainstorm with the person. You can do this by saying “I’ve never really considered that. Perhaps you can expand the question a little and we can explore it right now.”
d) if you’re not sure of the answer you can always say you’ll cross that bridge when you come to it. “I’m not sure how we would deal with a sudden spike in the cost of bandwidth, we would have to collect more information and answer that question down the road. It is a manageable risk factor I suppose. ”
The worst thing to do when you don’t have an answer is b.s. the person. No one has an answer for everything, except a b.s. artists. So, feel free to say you don’t know–folks find it refreshingly humble and honest.
10. Always confirm the time of your meeting/call, and always be 15 minutes early. ——————————————- People are really busy and meetings get mixed up. Every meeting or phone call I do is confirmed twice: once by email, and once on the day before the meeting. Reconfirming meetings makes you look like a true player and it costs you nothing. You do this by sending a simple email saying “Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow at your offices at 123 Main Street at 3pm. If anything changes you can reach me on my mobile at 310-555-1212.”
Also, be early. Come on. If you’re doing a meeting with someone who might invest in your company, do a business deal with you, etc., you can show a lot of respect by being in their lobby or on hold on the conference call five to 15 minutes ahead of time. Don’t show up more than 15 minutes ahead of time or you’ll look like a stalker. If you get to your meeting 45 minutes ahead of time go to the Starbucks and buy yourself a treat for being so on top of things.
What are your best tips for giving a proper demo of your company on the phone or in person?
In your mind, what are the worst things folks have done during a presentation?"
Mashable has come up with a list of 5 books that can help improve your thinking about the value of social media to the enterprise.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now.
When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
"How do trends emerge and opinions form? The answer used to be something vague about word of mouth, but now it's a highly measurable science, and nobody understands it better than Clay Shirky. In this delightfully readable book, practically every page has an insight that will change the way you think about the new era of social media. Highly recommended." -Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail
Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this step-by-step guide shows you how to implement a successful Web analytics strategy. Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his thought-provoking style, debunks leading myths and leads you on a path to gaining actionable insights from your analytics efforts. Discover how to move beyond clickstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company’s bottom line.
The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media
"As word of mouth loses opinion-forming power to word of blog, companies are faced with a revolution in how their brands and corporate image will be shaped in the future. Paul Gillin provides a very insightful and well-written guide on how to effectively benefit from these dramatic changes. A must read!" --Patrick J. McGovern, founder and chairman, International Data Group (IDG)
The Art of Strategic Listening
Listening To Your Customers’ Conversations Can Provide Big Dividends
Do you know what your customers or bloggers are saying about your company and your products? Marketers used to be able to assess the perception of their company or their products by simply monitoring the media and reading any letters of complaint that came by mail, but that was pre-internet and social networking.
Now there are more than 80 million blogs, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, video aggregators like YouTube and EveryZing and thousands of other social media sites on the web where customers talk with each other and make all kinds of comments, good and bad about your firm, your competitors, and your industry.
Jim Stroud has a 2 parts article on how to "mine" resumes from Scribd.com, the User Generated Content - Online document repository site.
Scribd is like a YouTube for documents. on any given month, 17 million people research Scribd for documents of all types. Since Scribd launched in March 2007, it has become one of the top 300 websites on the Internet, receiving over 20 million monthly visitors. It has also accumulated over 17 billion words in its library, making it five times the size of Wikipedia!!!
CurdBee is a safe and secure web-based billing application from Vesess. Use it to send clients invoices and then collect payments via PayPal or Google Checkout, billing them easily in the currency you choose.
It's no longer just real estate, even virtual estate can be undervalued. NYTimes article reported that Dave Hermansen did not own a bird or a cage when he bought bird-cage.com, an online store, for $1,800 three years ago. He simply saw a Web site that was “very, very poorly done,” and begged the owners to sell it to him. He then redesigned the site, added advertising and drove up traffic. Last December, he sold it for $173,000.
Mr. Hermansen, 30, is among the latest wave of entrepreneurs who, like the day traders and real estate investors before them, are looking to make a lot of money without much effort.
They use little more than home computers and free software to buy Web sites that appeal to a small and specific niche. Then they fix up the sites with hopes of reselling them for far more than they paid.
The changing economics of the Web have made it easier to find and exploit niche communities on the Internet. The Internet boom of the 1990s spawned companies like Pets.com that were Web versions of brick-and-mortar stores. They required stockpiling products and shipping them to customers. But that model came crashing down with the Web bust of 2000.
Since then, building niche Web sites and small-scale online stores has become cheap and easy. Free software, advertising systems like Google’s, and “drop shipping” services that allow Web site owners to handle products through a third-party supplier, have lowered the cost of doing business.
Instead of selling goods and services, analysts said most flippers are looking into the easiest way to make a quick buck, by tapping into specialized advertising.
Cuil has just been unleashed and it has been getting so much attention that their servers crashed on the first day. NY Times reported that Cuil is a search engine that the founders promise will be more comprehensive than Google’s and that they hope will give its users more relevant results.
Ms. Patterson left Google in 2006 to found Cuil. The new company has other prominent ex-Google employees, including Russell Power, who worked with Ms. Patterson on the large Google index, and Louis Monier, a former chief technology officer at AltaVista, a pioneering search engine. Cuil, which has about 30 employees and is in Menlo Park, Calif., has raised $33 million from venture investors.
Mr. Costello, a former researcher at Stanford, said that with 120 billion Web pages, Cuil’s search index is larger than any other. The company uses a form of data mining to group Web pages by content, which makes the search engine more efficient, he said. Instead of showing results as short snippets of text and images with links, it displays longer entries and uses more pictures. It also provides tools to help users further refine their queries.
FastCompany has a slideshow about 10 things you can do with Twitter.
We feel that one power feature of Twitter is the "track" command which is used in this way - "track singapore", "track jorbb", "track grand prix".
Anytime someone twitters about "singapore", "grand prix" or "jorbb", you will be notified via IM / SMS.
This helps you with environmental scanning of what's being said about your brand, or to keep up to date with latest news e.g. who just won the Grand Prix.
As part of being an E-biz Exhibition sponsor, which is happening at SMU today / tomorrow, 100for100 Web Hosting will offer its $100/yr for 100mb plan (Free .com .net .org) at only$50 for 1st year (subsequent years at $100/yr), that's a 50% discount! The account will have unlimited features such as unlimited email addresses, unlimited databases etc.
Visit this link for more information on the package and http://quiz.100for100.com to redeem the promo (500 new accounts available only).
100for100 Web Hosting, a TrustSg certified web hosting provider, is proud to be a sponsor for the event. We have been providing hosting services for online shops, start-ups, blogs, hobbyists with the popular $100/yr for 100mb package which comes with FREE domain name (.com .net .org). This Linux based package also comes with 1 FREE professional Flash template from a choice of 10 and unlimited email accounts, MySQL databases, and much more. With one-click installation, scripts such as shopping carts, blog scripts can be easily added to your website.
Come down to The E-biz Exhibition (TEE) - the FIRST exclusive e-commerce bazaar that will allow online entrepreneurs to showcase and sell their products! Grab amazing bargains from nearly 40 different booths - we'll have gorgeous accessories, handpainted shoes, global fashion imports, personalized gifts, perfumes and more. At the same time, you'll get to learn all about online shopping, selling and entrepreneurship through a series of talks from our invited guest speakers!
Date/Time: 25 and 26 July 2008, 12pm - 10pm Venue: SMU School of Economics and Social Sciences Ground Floor
Mashable posted a great article summarising 35+ examples of a wide variety of businesses, industries and social media tools. As you can see, engagement takes many forms. Some are likely to generate more discussions with the company while others might result better connections between customers. Some will fade away over the next 6-12 months while others will continue to grow and evolve.
The list includes Blendtec (Will It Blend fame), Dell, Coke, Nike, MacDonalds etc.
There are no rules to what form your engagement has to take. Look at your company, identify its strengths, what types of conversations energize employees and determine how you can best grow/shape/build/join your own community.
You And Me Online or Youmeo is the newest solid social networking website. The founder Calum Brannan started it all at his bedroom when he was 15 years old. The website was named pplparty.com before and just recently changed into Youmeo. Since pplparty.com launched in 2005, they currently now have 400,000 members.
Now at 19, with his 10 man team in his London office, Calum has achieved many in such a short period of time. But what’s the difference between Youmeo and other social networking site? They actually encourage you to import, update and organize all of your social networks and photo gallery websites into just one site.
Update: MoFuse has stopped charging for Pro account so all accounts now get these features - Use a custom domain name for your mobile site Use your logo in your SMS widget Create up to 5 mobile sites (increased from 3) Receive 50 free SMS messages a month to promote your mobile site (increased from 10) - HOORAY!
Point your phone browser to http://m.jorbb.com and you can see that we've just enabled a mobile / iPhone version of Jorbb.com/blog.
This was done with a superb service MoFuse. As Mashable described, moFuse is an interface that’s designed rapidly deploy existing web apps as mobile applications. It will take your RSS feeds and compose it into a mobile / iPhone friendly layout.
It only took us 5 mins to get our mobile version up and running, try it on your own blog. They also have methods to monetize your mobile blog and they'll take 50% cut from your revenue.
Give our mobile blog and try and let us know what you think.
If you have an iPhone, send us a photo on how our site turned up on it.
In case you still have not registered, Unconference Singapore 2008 is on this Saturday at Biopolis, 1130am to 6pm. "Look out for cool new start-ups at the expo area, pitching sessions, an awesome keynote by Microsoft, break-out sessions and of course excessive networking!".
Here's the cool part - "A common event Tee unites the attendees; shows that you been to the event, with the coolness factor of the event tagged to the shirt itself.
This time we decided to take it up a notch, throw in that special personalized factor to the Tee, something that is “Un”common, probably done before but not during a Conference-styled event. We wanted to insert the “user generated” factor into every aspect of the unconference - from the breakout sessions all the way down to the freebie Tee-shirt you get! The post it you see on the back is basically your canvas. Feel free to vandalise. :)
It will be a blast seeing people actually using the Tee the way they should, and even more fascinating to see people doing it the way they shouldn’t! So come early, the Amazing Unconference Tee is not stocked in Amazing numbers!"
See you there. I'll be marking Jorbb.com on my Tshirt :p
App Store has just launched at around 6pm SG Time.
Steve Jobs told USA Today that the Apple App Store will launch with "more than 500" applications Thursday night for the iPhone and iPod touch. Of these, 25% will be free and 90% (of those for sale) will cost $9.99 or less. "This is the biggest launch of my career," said Jobs.
Analyst Tim Bajarin at Creative Strategies said, "When IBM introduced the PC, it was good, but it didn't take off until people started discovering the software." It's these apps then, he adds, that will "dramatically differentiates the iPhone" from Treos and BlackBerrys.
Indeed, while consumers are focused on the launch of the iPhone 3G device, it's the App Store which has analysts in such a tizzy.
@BrainOpera summarises - More than 500 iPhone applications at launch. 34% games (~160), 25% applications (~125) will be free, while 90% apps at $9.99 or less.
SimplyNoise's website is so easy to use yet does wonders if you are trying to work / sleep / study / read in an environment that is noisy. Block out surrounding sounds like construction sites, kids playing, busy road just by adjusting the dial until you cannot hear them.
It may sound distracting at first, but your brain will soon adjust the white noise and you'll not notice it at all.
Microsoft, the world's largest multinational computer technology corporation, announced that they already bought Powerset, a search engine that allows people to use phrases, questions rather than keywords in order to get the best result for their web search. How did they do that? It’s because Powerset uses a "natural language processing" or NLP technology in a software platform to better match what the user is really looking for. Basically, it's better than other search engines that find and matches every word you type in the search box.
Powerset recently used their NLP technology in today’s leading website encyclopedia, Wikipedia. By using Powerset's technology; it can essentially enhance the free Live Search service of Microsoft, which is in 3rd place behind Google and Yahoo’s.
Microsoft keeps the acquisition price of Powerset confidential and was not disclosed. We just all hope that they will continue to provide users better search results and eventually beat the reigning Internet search and advertising engine, Google.
They said education should not be restrained within the 4 corners of the classroom. Thus, with the rapid increase of distant learning today, online education became more popular and is one of the many growing industry in the internet today. Online education is very popular especially in developing countries like Asia, wherein students who cannot afford to study abroad, can just go to Internet café's and get a first class education via e-learning.
However, there are a lot of ups and downs like in any other businesses. In late 1990's, they thought online education will be the next big thing, but it failed since a lot of students prefer going to big universities and on a real campus. Today, analysts predict that the global market for online education will rise from $8 billion last 2007, to $26 billion by the year 2010. Currently in the United States, 65 percent of graduate schools offer "distance" learning that can be accessed through the internet by any student anywhere in the world. Recently, U21 Global an online education provider based in Singapore teamed up with Pakistan's government to launch an advertisement campaign endorsing higher education to rural youth.
But how can providers encourage students to enroll and assure them that it would not be boring? Before, its just recorded lectures and notes, but now, providers offer live professors in chat rooms, lecture notes in power-point, and lectures formatted for iPods. Most importantly, gaining friends all over the world is the key to a fun learning experience.
Text 100, a global public relations consultancy, has just completed an extensive survey of bloggers in the Asian Pacific region and ended up with some unexpected findings. 153 bloggers who target technology, business and news audiences were polled on a variety of topics including how they view PR firms, how they communicate, how much time is spent blogging and more.
A surprising find is that bloggers welcome contact from PR firms or the clients they represent, as long as the contact is content appropriate. Bloggers prefer, not surprisingly, online communication, generally email. Bloggers offered additional input including that PR firms should:
send an introductory email before trying to engage in business with the blogger
know the content of the blog they are referring to
attend blogging events and understand the community
be sensitive to the fact that not everyone blogs professionally and know when to contact the writer
avoid mass-mailing
PR firms and bloggers agree that it is imperative that corporations utilize blogs as part of their media outreach, and thus, become more familiar with the genre and the individuals writing for said Web logs.
Thanks for all the emails, requesting information on what Jorbb.com will be all about.
At the moment, we are finalising some bugs on the site and hope to launch mid July.
In the mean time, we have opened our landing page and would like you to submit your emails so that we can inform you when we have launched. We will be giving away 5 iPod Shuffles.
On launch day, we will be also giving some prizes away for those who sign up on that day so stay tuned (hint - it'll be small, shiny, portable and so so useful).
Oh, we are also testing Zopim on our landing page, so don't be surprised if Jorbb sends you a chat request!
Julian Low from Zopim kindly granted us a beta test account. "Zopim is a company incubating under Garag3 from NUS that helps improve your visitors' experience on your website. Their product enables your visitors and clients to stay in touch with you through your website, using the most convenient form of communication, instant messages." - SgEntrepreneurs
A local blogger has started an online survey using Google Docs Forms function, to gather Singapore ISPsubscribers.
Jorbb recently cancelled a 3 year long broadband account and moved to another ISP. Although the advertised speed was the same, the actual surfing (browsing / download / youtubing) experience was a huge improvement, at a lower price (promotion).
It will be interesting to see the results of this survey so submit your speed test results at the jump.
An Australian-based social networking site for business owners and professionals has just been launched.
"Our aim is empower businesses, employees and self-employed to reach their full potential through a business network which is Australian based", said Michael Brecht, the founder, "whether you are looking for a job, an investment opportunity, a business partner or a new employee."
ZaaBiz is free to sign up, but they also have a membership scheme. TechNation Australia has a summary of features:
- Skype Integration - can show Skype status in your profile
- Shows connections from many degrees away (LinkedIn limits to 3 degrees by default)
- You list your "Haves" and "Wants" in your profile - could a matching engine be added for connecting businesses in a barter-like ecosystem?
- Business Groups (like Facebook / LinkedIn) - where like-minded members can connect and create and post to forums. Michael noted a lot of offline/online activity happening in the Groups.
"The focus on business owners and developing presence where LinkedIn and Xing haven't yet developed strong footprints is great. Could they become one of the "big three" professional social networks? LinkedIn - North America, Xing - Europe, ZaaBiz - Asia? With Xing and LinkedIn battling each other head-to-head, they may just have a shot.
If you (and your friends, family and colleagues) are all over the Internet on social networking sites like Facebook and twitter, photo sites like flickr or SmugMug, music sites like LastFM, or they blog on Blogger, or have their favorite books listed on GoodReads...how the heck do you keep up with them?
Enter FriendFeed: nearly a perfect solution. In 5 easy minutes you can register, link all of your own stuff together (the above PLUS Amazon.com wish lists, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, digg, LibraryThing, Linkedin, YouTube and much more) and invite friends from Facebook and your email accounts. Now, when someone signs in to your profile on FriendFeed they see all of your updates on one page: new photos, new songs, new twitter posts. It's fantastic!
There's a lot of muscle behind FriendFeed: folks who helped develop Google Maps and Gmail. Co-founder Bret Taylor, in an interview on Fast Company magazine's site, says they developed FriendFeed to be something other than a social networking site. "We come at it from the approach of solving an information problem, as opposed to creating a social network and solving people’s social problems." And, they seem to have succeeded.
If you've longed for a way to combine your friends' social sites into one easy to read, entertaining feed, it appears you've found it.
Recruiters love social network sites and so do candidates. A recent article on Fast Company magazine's Web site indicates it may be a way for employees to build a safety net for tough economic times and National Public Radio's site quotes recruiter Maureen Crawford-Hentz as saying "Social networking technology is absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting -- ever."
Of course, there is reason for concern when mixing your professional and personal life. Singapore Today ran an article titled The Boss Wants to be Your Online Buddy, which begs the question...should you let her? Things as innocent as your screen name can raise an eyebrow when seen by recruiters or upper management where you work. Dr. Jennifer Jarman, assistant professor of Sociology, National University of Singapore, warns "if people put information about themselves up on social networking sites, then they can expect all manner of people to look at it, so they should consider carefully what they reveal before they publish."
Regardless, recruiting for niche jobs is easier when working with sites like LinkedIn which has 20 million users or Facebook. By entering keywords you can find members who perhaps work or have worked in the field you are recruiting for. This helps recruiters find the "passive candidate", those potential employees who are not actively looking for a new position. Non-traditional sourcing techniques are becoming commonplace, according to John Challenger, the CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. in Chicago.
Candidates get the opportunity to expand their network for future opportunities by getting in touch with "a friend of a friend" or requesting online introductions. In addition, you can join online communities based around your career field (OpenReq for recruiters is one on LinkedIn) or personal interests. This allows you to build your personal brand online, making you more memorable when a recruiter has a need. Follow Jorbb on Twitter and Facebook.
Google "how to look busy at work" (without really working) and the number and variety of hits will surprise you, or maybe not. It's no secret to a lot of corporate employees that they really don't have enough to keep them truly busy and engaged during the work day.
Visit the site Read At Work, you'll find a faux Microsoft desktop and books, short stories, articles, presented in PowerPoint presentations so you can read on the job. Funny? Funnier still is that it's presented by the New Zealand Book Council, not some work hack who is spreading the word to other slackers.
Parkinson's Law states that the "work expands to fill the time available for its completion", meaning that if you have a project and you are given five days to complete it, it will take those five days. But if you are given only 24 hours, you will likely get it done in that time frame. Thus, we probably are working at our cubicle jobs, but not as effectively as possible.
In step Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, HR consultants and the authors of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix it. Former Best Buy consultants, they've developed an organizational style called ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) which is used successfully at Best Buy's corporate offices. Cali and Jody contend that the workplace is broken, that we are wasting much of our time (and, thus, our lives) sitting in an office place for a predetermined 8+ hours daily.
Instead they propose, like Daniel H. Pink (Free Agent Nation), that you don't owe your employer your time, you owe them results. At Best Buy, ROWE employees have no fixed schedules, are only in the office when they have to be or want to be and are reviewed based on work results and not how busy they look or late they stay. Essentially, you are a corporate "free-agent" with full benefits and predictable pay.
Best Buy reports that productivity has risen approximately 35 per cent and voluntary turnover has dropped by as much as 90 per cent in certain divisions. They are poised to try ROWE at the retail level next. In a recent teleseminar, Cali and Jody acknowledge that this is Phase 1 of ROWE and Phase 2 will investigate how ALL workers including front-desk receptionists, human resources generalists and other direct service positions can benefit from ROWE. In the meantime, the concept has taken the business world by storm.
With fuel costs prodding businesses to consider more work place flexibility, this could be a prime moment for ROWE type thinking to infiltrate the old school way of thinking about work. Jody Thompson sums it up this way: "Basically, we're rewiring people's brains, getting rid of an old belief system from the 1950s that is no longer relevant to the technologically advanced business world we have now. We want people to stop thinking of work as someplace you go to, five days a week from 8 to 5, and start thinking of work as something you do."
8GB iPhone started at $599, went to $399, and now is going to sell at $199. (Steve makes a BOOM sound not with his mouth, but with the video). The 8GB model is going to be $199, 16GB will be $299. There’s also going to be a white model.
In my own opinion, this is a great move. Sell the iPhones cheap so that more people (56% said cost was a factor in not buying) can buy (sold 6 million sets so far in 7 countries officially- to reach 70 countries this year), and rake in profits from iTunes and Apps Store.
On the productivity front - MobileMe at Me.com will be "Exchange" for the rest of us. Everything stays in sync between iPhone, Mac, and PC. Data gets synced automatically both ways. A web 2.0 site will synchronise Mail, iCal, and Address Book on Mac and with Outlook on Windows. Email received on your iPhone will also appear in your Mac / Desktop. A photo taken on iPhone will be synced to your Me.com account immediately. A meeting added to your desktop, will be updated to your iPhone. All for US$99 a year with 20GB of space.
With iPhone SDK released, Apps store will allow developers to put their apps for sale. They set their own price and take 70%, with 30% going to Apple. No other extra charges.
TVC Screenshots:
More details / pics after the jump - Macrumours Images - Macrumours and Gizmodo
Want to broadcast your event / meeting / discussion live? With a webcam / pc / good internet connection, Ustream lets you broadcast LIVE to anyone with an internet connection for FREE!
Apple products do change the way we do things, from home entertainment to office productivity. Every time Steve Jobs launches new products, the public often does not know until the minute he stands on the stage and unveils the product/s. In this day and age of emails / sms / blogging, it is an industry mystery how Apple keep things under wrap.
World Wide Developers Conference 2008 in San Francisco, will kick off in less than 12 hours so if you want to be one of the millions tuning in to Steve Jobs' keynote (and new product announcements) bookmark these blog sites with live updates: (direct WWDC links) Engadget, Gizmodo, Macworld, TechCrunch. Engadget has an RSS and Twitter feed as well (I wouldn't recommend Twitter since it has been having performance issues lately).
For those with FireFox, download RELOAD EVERY add-on, and auto-refresh your pages at preset intervals. Saves you having to click REFRESH every few seconds.Follow Jorbb on Twitter and Facebook.
Luckily, there are legitimate ways to make extra money working from home or from a college dorm.
Students who are proficient in using a computer can make extra money several ways. Many small businesses or independent professionals need assistance but not a full time employee. Therefore they will hire virtual assistants for a few administrative jobs or for ongoing support. Students who can create webpages can help people gettheir business online. Alternately, students can create their own websites and earn money through affiliate marketing programs. All in all there are quite a few ways that students can make money using their computer.
Finding opportunities is easier than ever now when using the internet. There are many job boards that can provide information such as careerbuilder.com or elance.com.
Students maybe able to findodd jobs around their campus or city. Mystery shopping is one fun way that students can earn extra money by dining out or shopping. More information on mystery shopping can be found atvolition.com. Students should always check the job boards on campus as they will often have temporary job opportunities posted.
Whether college students make extra money from their home, on campus or off, it can be a big help to a student who is in need of just a little extra cash. Students who are creative and resourceful will find the extra income that they need.
It'll be a lot easier to explain if you clicked on the video below (it has to popup to Youtube's site) and try it yourself. It's an interactive video "guessing game".
Playing an embedded video won't work (Beta version for now).
From Youtube's site - Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos! Use them to:
* Add background information about the video. * Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene) * Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video * All of the above!
You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear.
This will be a cool feature for adding subtitles / tips to your videos, or doing product placement with Youtube videos.
If you have not been following the issue, a Singapore registered company, Vuestar, has a patent which has been blogged about in many sites / forums. Activist website - RefuteVueStarPatent.biz reports that "Vuestar owns the patent to the technology that enables “Internet searching via visual images”, and has sent out notification letters to several companies demanding to be paid licensing fees."
IPOS has responded to the issue and here is the response to an email, which was sent via an MP to IPOS.
"3. Whilst the proprietor of a patent can consider using licensing of his patent rights to secure income, this is subject to entering into license agreements with parties who may be interested in using the invention, and is not done arbitrarily. A proprietor usually demands payment from companies on the basis that the companies ought to have entered into licensing agreements with it in the first place."
So has anyone asked you what's the point of Twitter and why does he/she need to know what you are doing every 5 mins (I'm heading to the office. Watching IRON MAN. Thanks for the invite @Jorbb).
Here's a superb video by Common Craft. Their "product is explanation". Common Craft uses video and paper to make complex ideas easy to understand.
With hand drawn cartoon paper cut-outs (which they coin Paperworks), they present subjects "in plain English" using short, unique and understandable videos.
We are great fans of Firefox and if you still have not heard, Firefox 3 will be released very very soon and the folks at Mozilla are banking that Firefox 3 will clock the most number of downloads in a single day - hence DOWNLOAD DAY 2008.
Firefox 3 will have a "snazzy design update and stability improvements to smart folders and bookmark tagging, you won't be disappointed with what you're getting. The most notable updates to Firefox in version 3 include the snazzy new Places Organizer, where you can do traditional bookmark organization as well as create saved searches. Beyond that, the idea of bookmarks as starred favorites works its way into your address bar and tagging has found its way to your traditional bookmarking. Sounds interesting?" - Lifehacker.
There are about 2900 submissions from Singapore so pledge your download, and be part of the Guinness Record, by submitting your email at the jump.
The global economy and Internet communities are evolving so quickly that current language has to evolve with them. "Crowdsourcing" is a new social phenomenon where tasks that were generally performed in-house or contracted out are now being offered up to the public, in an open call forum. These types of tasks can be scientific, technological, creative, political or retail oriented but don't stop there. An example that doesn't fit the above categories is the State of Texas which is installing cameras along the Texas/Mexico border and allowing anyone with an Internet connection to monitor the border and report possible immigrants to agents. Wikipedia offers numerous examples of crowdsourcing here.
Crowdsourcing is similar in some ways to "open source" (which Wikipedia itself is) which is defined here as "the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content". It takes it to the next, more human level. Crowdsourcing allows the task managers to tap into an endless pool of human intelligence and creativity, but it isn't without it's controversy. The projects, due to size, can become unwieldy and more expensive than expected, OR crowdsourced volunteers may not be compensated at all. There are no contracts, thus expectations that volunteers follow through or won't share information with competitors should be kept to a minimum.
Crowdfunding is what it sounds like. A project is funded, through relatively small donations, by a large group of like-minded individuals. My Football Club, is 50,000 football fans who are purchasing a football club and will give "owners" input into the management of the team via democratic process. Or, take another example, Beer Bankroll which explains their idea like this:
"We've become fascinated with the concept of crowd funding. The idea that people can come together in a community based format and create a company sounded like an exciting concept. We also enjoy beer, so the choice was clear...we've decided to create an online community for beer lovers to share their ideas and at the same time create a brewing company.
How do we start on this journey you may ask? Well, the first step is to raise enough capital to start a brewing company. We are not looking to become huge right away or even within several years. The smart way to attack a project like this is to start relatively small and build into something special. Within a few years, with the power of people like you backing our company, we want to compete with breweries like Dogfish Head Brewery and Pyramid Brewery among others. Eventually, down the road, we hope to become a brewery with a name that is recognized worldwide."
Both crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are spin-offs of the huge social networking advances that have take hold of the Internet and will likely morph into something completely different and unexpected in the next few years.
Ah. A tool for those of us who are a bit of everywhere in the social networking world. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, various IM sites and more can be managed with a new Firefox add-on called Yoono. Similar to Flock, but requiring less hard drive space, Yoono allows you to manage your relationships in a left-hand widget on your browser. It's free, with drag and drop capabilities and offers suggestions of your friends' photos, music and sites...plus it has a very slick design.
Sadly, Yoono is in private beta mode but you can sign up for the announcement of when it is available for everyone. Follow Jorbb on Twitter and Facebook.
A Singaporean named Kien has developed a new Facebook application, "MySingapore", with features that include discussion boards, quizzes, movie ratings, videos, various tools (like maps and slideshows), and the group shout feature. Checking the MySingapore community of 595 members today turns up Singapore Grand Prix event information, Singapore campaign videos, the ability to rate current features like Sex and the City and Kung Fu Panda (both currently receiving 8 out of 10 points) and various service offerings.
The application is fun and friendly. Check it out!
Mikogo.com is a free screen sharing site that allows your invitees to see your screen. You simply set up a meeting, invite up to 10 attendees, they log in with a unique meeting number and instantly they can see your computer screen, allowing you to make free presentations to visitors globally on any topic. You can pass on to another presenter (show someone else's screen), you can pause (cease allowing others to see your screen as you browse through confidential or non-relevant files), and you can allow someone else to take control of YOUR screen, perhaps pointing out a particular item that they have a question about or are an expert on.
The site is fun and easy to use, the download software is free, the interface is intuitive. Mikogo is a great new free business tool site! Follow Jorbb on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you on a budget and cannot afford customised services? BrandDoozie has launched a Flash-based tool for SMEs / Startups that want to create marketing materials without hiring a designer. The tool’s 3-step process leads to branded sales sheets, postcards, business cards, and letterheads that can be downloaded in PDF format, and there are heaps of templates to choose from.
The Singapore blogosphere and forums have reported that a local company has been invoicing companies for infringing their patent which implies that "clicking, scrolling or streaming over a visual image to connect with a website or Web page is an infringement", as reported by the Straits Times.
Watch out Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Orkut, Twitter, and every other website (with a href'ed images) in the entire WWW.
A SINGAPORE firm has threatened to sue websites that use pictures or graphics to link to another page, claiming it owns the patent for a technology used by millions around the world.
In a move that has come under fire from the online community, VueStar Technologies has sent ‘invoices’ to local website operators asking for thousands of dollars in licensing fees.
The company, which said ‘virtually all websites’ are infringing on its patent, is also planning to take on giants like Mircosoft and Google.
It is a battle that could, at least in theory, upend the Internet, though intellectual property experts have some doubts that VueStar can actually enforce its claims.
The company said it has been awarded a patent here and in several other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the United States, for the method of ‘locating Web pages by utilising visual images’.
In other words, clicking, scrolling or streaming over a visual image to connect with a website or Web page is an infringement, the company claims on its website.
The technique is the de facto method used to connect websites across the globe, from personal blogs to the biggest search engines.
VueStar managing director Paul Smith said if sites want to keep using images as links, they will have to pay his company - located in a single-unit office at The Adelphi off Coleman Street - between ‘$200′ and ‘millions’ annually.
It is a claim, however, that has its doubters.
Technology and intellectual property lawyer Bryan Tan of Keystone Law Corporation said that while VueStar has been granted a patent, it is an extremely wide one.
In fact, ‘if the patent is allowed to stand, it will probably bring the (Internet) industry to its knees’. And VueStar’s patent may be contested and overturned in court, he said.
The firm has been sending out invoices to Singapore companies since last week asking them to pay up, said Mr Smith. He declined to say how many have gone out, but there have been ‘enough to keep my phone busy’.
Those who do not pay up, warned Mr Smith, face legal action, and his company is ‘highly confident that (a court decision) will be in our favour’.
Mr Alvin Koh, who runs the non-profit Arrowana fish website arofanatics.com, received one of VueStar’s invoices last week for $5,350. He does not intend to pay up and said: ‘I would rather close down the site’.
Mr Smith recognises that Mr Koh’s stand will likely be a popular one, and his firm is already girding up for a public backlash.
‘Website owners are just upset because they never had to pay for it before,’ said Mr Smith.
VueStar will begin enforcing its patent claims in Australia and the US ’soon’, he said, and the firm is also working on invoices for Internet heavyweights like Google and Microsoft.
While governments and charities will need a licence, VueStar will not be asking for payment from these parties, he said.
Mr Tan urged companies to contact their lawyers before ‘paying VueStar anything’.
Backboard is a new Web 2.0 utility that allows a user to get feedback on whatever project they might be working on. Managers can get input on product plans, Web designers can get input on their proposal, students can get feedback on their class projects...
Backboard is a free online tool that allows feedback solicitation on the most common office documents, images, web pages, URL's and free-form text. Once you've loaded your project, a form pops up to invite users to review and provide input, or you can invite them through your own email to your Backboard URL.
At this time, you cannot edit the project in Backboard. If edits are required, you simply upload the newest draft and resolicit input.
A great time saver for reviewing documents, reports etc but I feel that it could do some with markup tools which allow WYSIWYG editing.
UnBlockAll.net allows you to enter any website and bypass your networks' firewall / filter to access your favourite websites. "Simply type the address of the web site which you want to open in the field above and hit GO. This will automatically lead you to the destination page. With our service you are guaranteed to be able to login and operatate normally."
Social network security is of current concern to parents and educators and new information from a Singapore poll is adding to the reasons why. "Almost half of the students between the ages of 17 to 25 polled in Singapore are revealing their full contact details" on social networking sites and "30% were adding people they do not know as 'friends'."
Norton Symantec and Hewlett Packard conducted the online poll of 120 students which revealed, among other things, that students are spending approximately 6 hours a day on the Internet and 92% have registered on at least one social networking site (such as MySpace or Facebook).
Phishing attacks are common via the Web and social networking sites make it easier to lure private information from younger users, making such attacks (involving fraud and identify theft) more common. It is important to educate young people on the risks to both their technology, financial and educational information utilizing a security software, but also the risks to their physical selves when revealing their location or contact information.
TrackMyPeople is a great new Web 2.0 tool that allows you to track your employees' time, or your own, for free. It is Web-based, easy to use and provides accurate reporting on project work making it ideal for consultancies and freelancers. It provides graphical reports, automatic backups, is compatible with Windows and Linux (Macintosh is in the works) and has an easy-to-install widget for your desktop.
Easily set up projects and people in the system and produce beautiful productivity reports.
Do you face the problem of having clients / friends / family members using different Instant Messengers?
Check out Instan-T, an ALL-IN-ONE client like Adium for Macs. Combine your MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL into 1 client and it even allows Video chats between the different clients. There's also a web-based version for those of you with strict Corporate firewalls which block IM ports. By the way, it's FREE!
With more than 4500 words "bought" - the creators of The Big Word Project, Paddy Donnelly and Lee Munroe, want to revamp the way we define words. The Big Word Project lists over two thousand different words (the list is continuously growing) and for the price of one dollar you can associate that specific word with your website or blog. The two creators were interested in different interpretations of words by different individuals, and so the website was created in part to explore and play with the definitions of words. For example, Jorbb has bought some words related to Jorbb.com. With nearly all 291,500 Oxford English Dictionary entries in inventory — plus verb forms, plural nouns, comparatives, superlatives, and American spellings — Donnelly and Munroe could be millionaires very soon.
Powerset unveiled tools for searching Wikipedia that use conversational phrasing instead of keywords, marking the first step of its challenge to established Web search services such as Google. Powerset also has features that help you locate facts within articles "Explore Facts"; used to extract, navigate and explore.
I took part in Jason Calacanis' (CEO of Mahalo and owner of a Tesla Roadster) video-cast on the effectiveness of Powerset and he invited us to carry out our own searches and post the results for a Mahalo mug!
Comparisons on 3 search fields: where is singapore, how tall is singapore flyer and is there a grand prix night race.
where is singapore: powerset got it loads of unrelated hits on singapore (film festivals etc) but google got it spot on.
how tall is singapore flyer: powerset did pretty well.
is there a grand prix night race was interesting. powerset failed. google and yahoo did pretty well. In Yahoo, it showed a Wikipedia listing of Singapore Grand Prix which states that it is the first night race. So wonder why Powerset didn't show that result.
Starbucks is hoping to harness the power of social media with a new ad campaign aimed at creating an online conversation between younger coffee drinkers.
is there a grand prix night race.
