SidsAvenue

Has Outsourcing killed Employee Loyalty?

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:28:00 +0000

Outsourcing has been the industry norm for sometime now. Outsourcing is the fuel on which countries like India and China are propelling towards development. I personally have been a part of IT industry working on Outsourced projects for the past 8 years. Outsourcing is a win-win situation for both the company that outsources the work and for the company that bags the work. But ever imagined how Outsourcing has impacted the Employees and their behavior?

I am trying to do that in this article...

What happens in Outsourcing?

Not always but typically Outsourcing results in ramp down or transfer of resources I.e employees at the company that outsources . The Outsourcing Organization doesn’t need such a big workforce as the work has been outsourced and somebody else it doing now for them at a better price and with a better quality.

On the other hand, the company that bags the deal typically absorbs the transferred employees and may also ramp up its workforce.

In both the cases, there is a new fear that is born in the employees, this fear had never touched the employees earlier and this fear it not sensed by the management and remedied immediately will impact the overall Delivery of the Organization.

What is this fear?

Its the fear of losing the job, the concern about Job Security.

Irrespective of the kind of skills you poses and the productivity you bring to the table, there is a possibility that you will be given the pink slip or transferred to a company that is absorbing you just because it’s a part of the signed the Outsourcing deal. Either given a pink slip or transferred, your significance is overnight at rock bottom and you have to start the journey all over again, you have to prove your worth again. Imagine, somebody who has been with the organization for a decade is transferred to the Company that has bagged the deal. He knows nobody and nobody knows him.

So how does it impact the way the Employees think, the way the Employees behave?

This fear being in 2 changes in the way the Employee works...

Do whatever it takes to keep the Job secure

Because there is a fear about Job security, typical to all human being, the survival mode kicks-in. You start doing whatever is takes to ensure your name doesn’t appear in the list that will be awarded the pink-slip. This "Whatever it takes" is often about keeping the boss happy and sadly it doesn’t necessarily mean being productive.

Also often the situation is that the people whose job is being outsourced are not assigned any new tasks. They are merely asked to keep an eye on the people in the outsourced Organization. This often results in people suddenly becoming team less, often becoming mere co-coordinators from being an expert. This change plunges people into the Survival mode and so the priority shifts from completing the Work at hand to making sure your presence is felt, the management is realized that you are needed to keep the things running. And the result is that the end objective of OutSourcing is never achieved.

Jump the job

The characteristic highlighted in the point no 1 is mostly of the senior people who are settled and do not want to take the risk of Job change. But the younger lot, the soldiers will simply jump the jobs as they are not so matured to understand the corporate politics. Rather they say, the company doesn’t care for me so why should I? Somebody offers me a better deal, I will grab it. To hell with Loyalty…

The summary is that if the Outsourcing Project is not executed with a human spirit in place, it will hamper the employee loyalty. The juniors jumping the job is still manageable but the Seniors resorting to the option of Doing whatever it takes to secure their jobs simply kills the culture of the organization. The corporate politics starts growing bigger an bigger and reaches a stage where people are actually working to ensure that work doesn’t happen….

Think…

The Outsourcing Handbook: How to Implement a Successful Outsourcing Process

The comments section is all dedicated for your views and thoughts...

del.icio.us Tags: OutSourcing,Employee Loyalty,Impact of OutSourcing

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 08:16:00 +0000

Skimlink

Index of Jugaad - Gauge Human Potential, Gauge Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 05:38:00 +0000

The content of this post is my entry to participate in a challenge to find out an index to measure the Human Potential. The challenge was run jointly by "Innocentive" and "The Economist".

Executive Summary(What is Jugaad)

“Jugaad” is an Indian term used very frequently by people to mean “get the work done”. It signifies being resourceful rather than waiting for resources for completion of work. In simple words, jugaad represents the innovation done by people at every walk to life to keep walking, to keep going further. At times, jugaad is used for bribery also. But on a positive note, it represents sheet creativity and innovative skills of common man in solving some of the most intriguing challenges that are blocking their way to progress. Jugaad will help in realizing how people are using the available resources, know-how to evolve, get fit, get going, progress and thus survive.

Why Jugaad?

Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest” keeps on proving itself time and again. He proposed it for species, but it seems to be valid for Organizations, Nations and probably the earth as a whole. People are often forced into situations which force them to think beyond the obvious. In developing countries like India where fulfilling the basic needs of life is a challenge, these types of situations are more common. Government is not in a position to fulfil the requirements. Corruption and lack of transparency make it almost impossible for the benefits of various welfare schemes to reach the needy. That’s when people go for Jugaad. Jugaad is a outcome of Peoples desire to be fit, to evolve, to survive. It’s a proof supporting Darwin’s theory.

How to measure Jugaad?

Jugaad happens every walk of life and everywhere. Urban people are more more aware and so a website where people can submit their ideas would be the simplest way of building the database. For rural areas,to measure it, the local authorities will have to be educated to keep a watch of innovative things happening around them. The local authorities will append their jugaads list in a central database. The jugaads are ranked based on the kind of impact they have had in the place of origin. The rank would be based on the listed below formula.

Jugaad Rank = (Resources used * Impact)/Resources Saved

Resources used and Resources saved should in same unit to keep the mathematical integrity of the formula. Both the parameters should consider the tangible and intangible benefits. It is advisable to have these parameters in monetary terms to make the comparison fair and uniform.

The rank should be between 1 and 100.

Impact is an estimate of how many people would benefit from the Jugaad.

An average of all the ranks divided by 100 would give the Jugaad index ranging between 0 and 1.

Jugaad Index= (Average of all Jugaad Rank)/100

Impacts of Practicing Jugaad...

Positives

ü It will foster a culture of innovation
ü It will encourage people to think out of box
ü An innovative idea could help curb Corruption

Negatives

· Jugaad to get the things done through means of bribery is the real threat. It’s already practised and its ill impacts are clearly visible.

Can Negatives be converted into Positives

Yes, an innovative Jugaad to curb the corruption will turn the negative impacts inside out. The internet has the potential to be platform on which such Jugaad will be hosted. Corruption could be curbed by increasing transparency and an example would be this site IpaidBribe.

How can an index of Jugaad help the society

An index based on Jugaad will measure the innovative skills of a community, society and/or a nation.
A central database of such innovative skills has only sky as the limit. As obvious,
The primary use would be to use the database to replicate the jugaad elsewhere and reap the benefits. Thus help the community evolve and grow.
It would also ensure people are making the most of the available resources and thus saving the planet earth’s ecosystem.
People will get new revenue generating streams, new means of earnings by implementing the jugaad.
It would foster an environment of social innovation where ideas are constantly evolving to fit the conditions where they are applied.

External References

Wiki Page about Jugaad

How Rocky Balboa knocked down Drago?

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 19:39:00 +0000

I was on a business trip last week. Post a hectic day, I went to the Hotel room, switched ON the TV and what I see " Rocky IV" is in action. I got glued to the TV and the 1.5 hours were well spent. I got completely refreshed and I feel I became more fit to be in the ring of Life. I thought why not I share this fitness tips with you all…

For those who have not seen the movie, this is the context.

Apollo Creed who is trained by Rocky is killed in a boxing match by the Soviet Union Boxer " Drago". Rocky gets moved by the death of his student and decides to plant himself in the ring against "Drago".

For the fight, Rocky travel to Soviet Union. He is returning to professional Boxing after a gap and so he has to prepare himself for the fight. But he doesn’t have the resources(Money) and equipment. so he starts preparing by running through roads filled with knee height Ice, Cuts huge wood logs by hand. In the given below picture, you can see Rocky dragging a Cart through dense Ice cover.

Basically Rocky is doing whatever best is possible with the limited resources that he has. On the other hand, Drago has a dedicated team of trainers and a range of modern equipment to get him fit.

Still at the end Rocky manages to knock down Drago.

Learning : People who are best know how to make the best use of available resources. Cribbing about unavailability of resources will not help you except in making you frustrated.

The fight between Rocky and Drago at the climax pumps up the adrenaline in you….Rocky and Drago fight for bloody 16 rounds before Drago goes down. The interesting point to note in the fight is that in all of the rounds its Drago who dominates and keeps hitting Rocky. Still at the end Rocky Manages to knock down Drago. What Rocky simply does is, bear the hits of Drago and once Drago is all tired. Hit him hard enough to knock him down.

Learning : For success, more than power to hit, you need stamina to bear the hit. If I put this concept in the context of Business, the more important skill or power a business/person should possess is to be able to digest failure. If you are able to withstand bad times, you can always turn them inside out as Good times.

When Rocky enters the Fighting Arena, he is booed by the audience. As obvious, you cannot expect support for an American in Soviet Union. But Rocky is not moved, he is simply focused on the job at hand i.e to fight and conquer Drago. The indifference of people doesn’t affect his concentration, it doesn’t make him nervous, it doesn’t touch his confidence.

Learning : Think about the right thing to do instead of thinking about what people think about you.

Though the audience is indifferent to Rocky at the start of the fight, during the course of the fight, people start supporting Rocky. They start cheering for rocky, they rise above the concept of nationality and start supporting the better sportsman and that is Rocky. Though Drago belongs to them and they had come to see Rocky down, their notion is changed and they are enjoying what Rocky has to offer. So Rocky is their HERO now.

Learning: People will be forced to change their perception provided you produce the desired results. At times we face situations wherein we have to take non-populist decisions and the decision is criticized by people. Instead of going on a back foot because of the criticism, go ahead with the decision. At the end, the decision that was hated would become the trend.

Get your-self hooked to Rocky thrill by purchasing this collection of Rocky movies...

I hope you have enjoyed the fitness tips…As always, your comments and reactions are lifeline of SidsAvenue…Do make use of the Comments section.

“Rocky Rocks!!!”

del.icio.us Tags: Rocky,Drago,Silverster Stallone,Movie

Why you should have a Virtual bookshelf?

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:40:00 +0000

This is the second last post in this series that all dedicated to everything about books. To set the context of this series, the preface post was focused on pointing out the importance and benefits of Reading Habit and Books. In then next post, the tools that help you buy books were embossed out. In this post, I will talk about the tools will help you manage your library. The last will consists of my favorite Top 10 books and why are they my favorites.

Why you need to manage your Library

Did you ever thought how many books are published each year? Approximately 300000 books were published in year 2011.

Considering that a miniscule 0.1% of these books are relevant to you and you would want them to be in your library, you are talking about purchasing and managing 300 books. Remember this number is only for 1 year.

A few years back, we had only paper based books but now we have E-books too.

These numbers and facts give rise to 2 important questions.

1. Will I be able to purchase all the books that I liked?

Probably not. You might not have enough money to purchase all the books that you liked. So you will have to postpone your books purchase.

2. Will I be able to read all the books that I Purchased?

You might have purchased all the books but probably you will not have the time to read all the 300 publications.

So what do you do? You do not want to get boggled by these questions and give up your hobby of Reading and your aim of Building a library for yourself. Have a look at the preface post of these series that talked about “Why you should have a Library” to wade out any negative thoughts about books.

The answer lies in managing your library, your purchases, your wish list, what you have read, what you want to read next, prioritizing your reading…

Social Cataloguing tools : The answer

Thanks to Internet, there are many web based tools that are dedicated to help you with your Library Management. Following is the list of a few such services

(source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cataloging_application)

Do a Google for “Social cataloging application” and you get various posts that have compared these services.

Shelfari : The virtual Bookshelf

It’s an Amazon powered service that lets you start adding books on an e-shelf under categories like I want to read, Reading, I have read etc. You can share your bookshelf on your site, on your blog and of course with your friends. You get to know what your friends are reading, join the communities to discuss about the books, authors. You can tag the books for easy retrieval, add your comments and reviews to the books.

These days everything has got a Social angle to it, why not have a social edge to your library also. Shelfari is the service that fulfills this social hunger for a library.

I have used Google Books also but My personal favorite is “Shelfari”. The obvious reason is because its integrated with Amazon.com. I have been using it for some time now and feel its an amazing service. Have a look at my bookshelf to get a feel of the services. Lets gets connected on Shelfari, click here to access my Shelfari profile.

I hope this post has served the intended purpose and it helps you in getting hold of your Library. Do let me know your feedback about this post, your favorite social cataloging service using the comments sections…

Read this post to deep dive into these amazing World of Books that are published every year.

del.icio.us Tags: books,social,social cataloging,shelfari,library management,personal library,virtual bookshelf

Tools to help you with your book purchase

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 09:39:00 +0000

So after defining the importance of having a library in my last post, I wanted to come up with ideas to help you and of course my self to get the Library loaded up in a cost effective way. This post is aimed to serve that purpose. I will be covering the 3 best places that I use to purchase books and fill all the shelves of my Library cupboard.

To keep the post crisp and relevant, I am will concentrate only on the places where you have to shell out money to buy books. The free books avenue will be considered in the later posts.

Compare Book Prices

These days the best place to purchase a book is Internet. Its flooded with hell number of sites that are offering huge discount.

The perfect way to ensure that you get the best deal is to compare the book prices across stores. This fabulous site called ThisYaThat.com just does this. This is probably the best place to go for loading up your library. Its an awesome web service that compares the price of the title you plan to purchase across the websites so that you get the best at the best price. The following screen capture is aimed to give you a feel of the service.

Flipkart.com

The Most known Destination for books in India is of course, Flipkart.com.

I know friends who are diehard fans of Flipkart for its speed of Delivery and the collection. Get your hands dirty and give it a shot using the Search bar featuring below...

Indiaplaza.com

The next place where I personally do a lot of shopping for books is IndiaPlaza.com. I have bought books from this site at around 30% discount most of the time. The delivery is prompt. The packaging is good. You also get Loyalty points for your purchases that can be redeemed for anything on the site.

Last but not least, Amazon.com is known for the huge collection of books and the great prices.

In the next post, I will write about the Internet based Library Management services that are must use to manage your collection and also to add a social touch to your library… The best to keep posted about latest on SidsAvenue is to subscribe to the RSS feed, click here to do so.

So what are you waiting for…Make the use of these services and yes do let me know your experience. Also share your favorites destinations to purchase books. The comments section is handed Over to You.

del.icio.us Tags: flipkart.com,indiaplaza.com,books,purchase books,compare book prices,amazon.com

On Why You should have a Library…

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 18:04:00 +0000

I recently happened to attend a training program conducted by Dale Carnegie Training Institute.

The Skill cycle

The trainer talked about a Skill cycle that says Practice is what transforms knowledge into a skill...Very valid point. Follow this link to access the Presentation I am referring to.

I thought for a while and a question popped up in my mind…

Is it really possible to practice and experience everything that is needed for mastering a skill, to transform knowledge into a Skill…

I don’t think so. Nope Not possible.

The reason being ;We do not have the time, the privilege, the resources, the risk appetite to practice ourselves everything, experience everything. Give it a thought and I am sure you folks would agree with me.

The Example

To emphasis more on this point, consider a software engineer working on say Linux(For the people who are not from IT, Linux is a open Source Operating system like Windows) development and aspires to be a Leading Linux developer. To sharpen his development skills, he works on various projects.

But is it possible for him to develop everything he needs for his projects on his own? Just impossible.

For sure,

1. He will have to use tools created by others,

2. He will have to refer to the experience of others available on various online forums to see how to fix a bug,

3. He will have to refer to best practices posted by experts to architect his project,

4. He will have to use the software libraries created by others

The Summary

The gist is that we have to look for external resources to gain experience at times to achieve the level of expertise needed to carry on with a skill. We have to tap the learning's from others experiences, from others expertise to ensure

We do not repeat the mistakes of others
To fasten the entire process of completing projects

In short, we do not want to reinvent the wheel all the times. ( Please read again "All the times", as at times its needed to Reinvent the wheel, Will talk about it in some other post)

The Other Side of the Ball

I was discussing this thought with a friend of mine and he gave a very crisp example to support the concept. He said, if you hold a ball in your hand, at any point of time you could only see the front side of the ball i.e the side in front of you, the other side is always hidden. So if you want to have a look at the hidden side also, you have to use external resources.

So what are the various external resources? I would say, everything around us is eager to teach us something provided we are keen to take-in the lessons.

In one of my earlier posts, I have talked about learning from half baked burnt stories i.e learning from others experience and thus saving ourselves from the mistakes others committed.

Other than learning from others experience, one of the best ways of doing this is Reading. Yes Reading books. To concretize the point I am trying I make, I Googled and following are the quotes Google came up for my search “quotes on Reading”

A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.” - Abraham Lincoln

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read.” - Abraham Lincoln

I got these fantastic quotes about Reading from this site...

Some people right off quotes as we all are obsessed with facts and so I Googled (Again, in fact I do it through the day) to get this article published in one of the medical journals based on a research to support my notion of how reading helps...

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/223212.php

I hope you have learnt something reading this post….Why don’t you share your thoughts using the comments section so that the learning multiplies...

The Time Release Concept of Enthusiasm…

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:26:00 +0000

One of the factors that stops or I should say discourages people like us from doing what we like, what we wish, what we cherish,what we dream is the fear of failure. According to Wikipedia, People develop specific fears as a result of learning.

That’s quite strange, isn't it? When we learn something ,we acquire knowledge and Knowledge is power, we all are living in the knowledge era. Then how is it possible that the power that is Enabler is also a Disabler. To know this, we shall deep dive to know what kind of learning develops fear of failure in people.

Ideas pump in Enthusiasm

People who have ideas are people who are full of enthusiasm, full of exuberance, have oozing out excitement and want to change the world.

I feel this very attitude, very attribute, very quality which differentiate them from other is the reason for their failure also. Let me explain the reasons behind my thoughts…

Once an idea clicks, the chain reaction of the idea is visualized, the air castle is ready. The adrenaline rush is so powerful that People tend to get carried away. People get on with the task and at times miss the important aspect of execution i.e of planning and evaluation.They want to do everything at the same time and unfortunately that moment never comes. That’s how the danger of failure creeps in, and the fear of failure starts rising from its grave in the persons mind. The learning that happens typically is that you shouldn’t try new things to avoid failure. The criticism awarded by people around makes the false and discouraging learning further strong. And thus the Innovator, the Rebellion, the Creative genes, the Brain scratch is made to sleep forever.

Now that the problem statement and the root cause analysis is ready, lets see how this can be fixed. I advocate the “Time Release Technology” used in Medicines.

Time release technology

In medicine, there is a concept of Time Release Technology. According to Wikipedia,

Its a mechanism used in pill tablets or capsules to dissolve slowly and release a drug over time. The advantages of sustained-release tablets or capsules are that they can often be taken less frequently than immediate-release formulations of the same drug, and that they keep steadier levels of the drug in the bloodstream.

I feel to avoid the fear of failure, one has to apply the Time Release Concept over Enthusiasm that kicks in as soon as an idea clicks. Its important to control the enthusiasm, keep the adrenaline gushing out of guts into check and get hooked to the drawing board to start the planning and the evaluation phase. The Time Release of Enthusiasm ensures that you have the optimum levels of Enthusiasm…

In a war field, a good strategy is to fire a few bullets and check the response from the other side, make a strategy based on it and then go bang on with full strength.

Similarly to execute plans, to transform ideas into reality, its important to keep the Enthusiasm levels in tact so that you do not get carried away…This will in turn downturn the probability of Failure and so will keep you safe from the Fear of Failure Syndrome. A good strategy is to have beta versions to boost the confidence and then have the Big Bang rollout. Lack of having beta versions is like eating the entire plate full of meals in one-go. It is for sure bound to cause digestion issues.

I hope I have been able to keep my Enthusiasm in tact while writing this post….Do let me know of you thoughts about my concept…

del.icio.us Tags: Enthusiasm,Time Release Technology,Time Release,Exuberance,Fear,Fear of Failure

How Twitter keeps me inspired?

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:14:00 +0000

I started using Twitter to promote my blog as its one of the mostly widely tips given by blogging experts. I discovered, apart from boosting traffic to my blog, Twitter has kept me inspired since the time I am on Twitter.. This post is all dedicated to the top 20 Inspirational tweets from my favorites. You could follow me on Twitter, my handle is @charmingsid…

Top 14 Inspirational Tweets…

@GreatestQuotes: You just can't beat the person who won't give up.
@Notebook: I am NOT shy. I just don't like to talk when I have nothing meaningful to say.
@ptarkkonen: A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
@GreatestQuotes: What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
@ptarkkonen: You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have.
@_robin_sharma: Strange how people are willing to trade their greatest dreams for an illusion called security.
@ptarkkonen: Ive failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
@FamousWomen: It pays to know the enemy - not least because at sometime you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.
@chrisguillebeau: To "get" followers, take better care of those followers you already have.
@ptarkkonen: A person who won't read has no advantage over one who cannot read.
@charmingsid:Knowing what to do is important knowing what not to do is critical
@ptarkkonen: Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.
@ptarkkonen: It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
@ptarkkonen: Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.

Subscribe to my Twitter Favorites Feed by clicking here to get inspired by the stuff that keeps me inspired…

In this post, I have put on the table what makes me think instead of the what I think stuff and so your review and feedback is critical for me. Thanks.

You could follow me on Twitter, my handle is @charmingsid…

del.icio.us Tags: twitter,inspiration,quotes,favorites

Internet is Fun, says my Grandpa…

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:45:00 +0000

For me, Technology is an Enabler. It should enable people to have a better life, enable to communicate better, enable to perform better, enable to socialize better, empower people to make this world a better place to live.

Internet is one such technology. I have experienced its power when I was abroad sometime back and now in India, I experience Internet using my Data card. But I felt Internet is fun when I saw my Grandpa smiling because of Internet.

Internet and my grandpa

My younger bro is studying abroad. My grandfather (94) is very fond of him and would miss him badly. We used to call my bro and talk to him but my grandpa would long to see him. Thanks to my 3G based Internet data card. I can bring cheer to my grandpa. I use Skype/Google Talk to have a video chat with my bro and so now, my grandpa can talk to him, see him and believe me, the kind of smile and joy it brings to my grandpa is to be seen to be believed. Obviously at 94 my grandpa’s hearing and vision are not as crisp as they are when he was 23, but thanks to the Internet speed, the picture and voice quality is flawless. He thoroughly enjoys the video chat and eagerly awaits the next encounter to experience the power of Internet.

What can be more fun than watching a 94 year old have a chat with his grandson and get cheerful, what can be more fun for people like my grandpa to be connected to their dear ones even though physically they are thousands of miles away. As I mentioned at the start of this post, technology is an enabler. From my experience, I say Internet enables people to communicate better than ever before, it strengthens the social bonds which is what makes us Humans, it brings cheer. I feel Internet is fun because it empowers us, its an enabler, it’s a technology of unlimited possibilities. As they say Internet makes me simply shout wow.

Internet empowers

Thinking on a wider tangent, I feel the Internet will play a very key and vital role in the development of India especially the rural India. The utilities are infinite. I have listed down a few of the possible use cases of Internet based approaches for development and growth.

Having video chat kiosk to help farmers,
Having Video chat facility in Govt. hospitals to provide better health facilitates,
Having Internet enabled Kiosk in villages to sell directly on the commodities market
Having virtual schools where prominent teachers deliver lectures online
Enabling government to have IT governed processes i.e e-governance which are transparent and thus reduce corruption.

Thanks to Mobile Service providers like Vodafone who have rolled out 3G enabled Internet services across India.Many of us are going to get connected to Internet using the Mobile Phones and it would be the first time they will have the privilege to experience the Internet and hopefully enter into a era that will empower all of us to make the most of now…

That’s why Internet is Fun…

To summarize, Internet has a huge potential of making difference in terms of governance, in terms of education, in terms of helping the underprivileged. In simple words, Internet connected India is synonym of empowered India. As I have been repeating, Internet is a technology of unlimited possibilities and that’s why, for me, Internet is fun because it empowers people, empowers the governments to make this world a better place to live...

Internet is fun…Enjoy it, avail it, help spread it, strengthen it and in doing so get yourself growing…

Do let me know views on how Internet is fun…

del.icio.us Tags: internet based services,internet,vodafone,indiblogger,contest

This post is my entry to the Vodafone sponsored “Internet is Fun” Content on Indiblogger.in

14 must use Internet based services

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:16:00 +0000

Internet has a whole lot of services to offer that can help us to automate, to organize, to manage, to synchronize, to backup, to share, to track things that impact us at both professional and personal levels. This post is all dedicated to find 15 such Online Services that are I feel are must for an individual. In the list, I have excluded the champions of Internet namely Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube for obvious reasons. Following is my list of Essential Internet Services.

#1 Delicious for bookmarking

Internet is flooded with Information and the chances of finding the article you read last week and "Shouted Wow" again today are doubtful. So what do you do. Typically, we save the link of the article in favorites on whatever device you are using to browse the internet at the moment. But you want to have the favorites to be synced across your Smartphone, your office laptop and the desktop at home so that you can read your article from anywhere and anytime. That’s where Delicious comes as a savior. Delicious is all about saving your favorites, sharing your favorites. You can access the favorites saved on Delicious from anywhere, anytime. You can tag the links for better search results. For businesses, Delicious plays a critical role in Building the vital element for the success of any business, the Trust. The link between Delicious and Trust is explored in detail in this blog.

#2 Shelfari for books management

A famous quite about books goes like this "A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend."

One cannot experience everything in life and so a wise trick is to learn from others experience. I feel books are the finest medium that help you learn this way. Books play a critical role in a shaping us all. Hence its becomes critical to manage your library, your wish list of books, what you have read, what you are reading and what you plan to read.

Now that everything has got a Social angle to it, why not have a social edge to your library also. Shelfari is the service that fulfills this social hunger for a library. It’s an Amazon powered service that lets you start adding books on an e-shelf under categories like I want to read, Reading, I have read etc. You can share your bookshelf on your site, on your blog and of course with your friends. You get to know what your friends are reading, join the communities to discuss about the books, authors. You can tag the books for easy retrieval. I have been using it for some time now and feel its an amazing service. Have a look at my bookshelf to get a feel of the services.

#3 Flickr,Pinterest for photo sharing and saving

Ok, so after spending time exploring services to manage bookmarks, to manage books, lets move on to a service that will help you manage your visual stuff i.e the pictures. There are many image based services though I use Pinterest and Flickr.

Pinterest is one of the most happening sites currently.

Flickr has been around for a while and is powered by Yahoo.

There are some basic difference in the features and the core concept of the services. Here's an article to help you understand this basic difference before you embark on your journey in exploring these services.

#4 Google docs, drop box, Skydrive for online Data storage

Apart from the Pictures, bookmarks and Bookshelf, one of the most critical and important need of ours is to have a handy backup copy of the important documents like Certificates, passport, License. The key is to be able to access these documents anytime, anywhere and from any device. That’s where storage services like Drop Box, Skydrive, Google Docs come into picture. The idea of this post to introduce these services to my readers and hence I will leave the task of deep diving in the details of the these services for future. Here's a good article featuring the comparisons of various Online File Storage Services. The core idea is to get going with Online File Storage for the backup and anytime,anywhere access features.

#5 For Password Management

This is one service which I am exploring and yet to start using it. I made a Google search and found that and Keepass are two of the most widely used Password managers. I do not own this services and this review is only for your information. So use these services/software at your own risk. I suggest you to spend sometime reading this article that explores the 5 best password managers available.

#6 Mozilla thunderbird as email client

Mozilla has been on my laptop for quite a while now. Instead of logging in into my 3 email account, I use Mozilla to access them. The best part is that my emails that have been already downloaded are accessible to me even when I don’t have an internet. The other important feature of Mozilla that I use is the ability to support HTML signatures. I use it to promote SidsAvenue. Competing with Mozilla is Windows Live Email client which I used to use earlier. But it doesn’t support HTML signatures. I feel Mozilla is a must for everybody who has an email account.

#7 Google Reader.Goodnoos for managing your Feed subscription

Ok, So you happened to visit a site accidently and really liked it. You want to be able to know whenever new content is posted on the site. To achieve this, all you have to do is to subscribe to the RSS feed of the site to be kept posted. RSS feeds

For more than 3 years, I have been using Google Reader to manage my RSS Feed subscription. Recently I have started using GoodNoos just for a change. Google Reader has the social elements embed in it which allows you to share your favorites in your social network, tag articles as Favorites, add your comments on the articles, start following new authors etc. I have made my RSS subscription public so that my readers can subscribe to it. Browse to this page for details of my RSS feeds.

#8 Blogger,Wordpress to maintain your personal diary or blog

One of the buzziest word we hear these days is blogging. There are quite a few bloggers out there. Of course I am one of them. So how do you this Internet based platform and why should it feature on this list of must have Services. I say Sky is the only limit. Use it as your personal diary, use it as a medium to express your thoughts, use it as a medium to share your knowledge and expertise with the world. You are free to do whatever you want to do with it. To emphasis more on this point, I Googled to find articles to know how writing helps us and found this awesome article that clarifies how maintaining a diary keeps you happy.

So if you cannot think of any other use, use Blog platform as your diary. Yes, the blogger platforms have the option of making the blog private. So your privacy concerns should be addressed. Follow the link given below to know how to make your blog Private in Blogger.com

Apart from diary keeping, having good writing skills will for sure give you an edge in your career, as we all have to do writing time and again in our jobs. Blogging is the platform that helps you to refine this skills of yours. When you are thinking of a new product or a service, your mind is clouded with thoughts. Writing will help you organize and clean the clutter of the random thoughts. Spend sometime on this post to know how writing helps your brain

#9 Simplenote, Evernote, Onenote for note taking

They say Ideas are like lightning, they can stuck you anywhere, anytime. If ideas are to be executed, Its critical to note them down for further analysis. Traditionally we have been using pen and paper. In this e-age, we have virtual notepads to take down notes. Thanks to services like SimpleNote, Evernote , MS OneNote. My favorite is MS one Note and I have been using it for quite sometime. I have found an interesting article that dives deeper into the Note taking service providers with a comparison.

#10 Slideshare to enhance your Personal Brand

Last but not the least, its Slideshare that has made to my list of 15 must online services for everybody. Slideshare adds the social touch to the presentation and thus lets you upload and share your presentations, access presentations made by others. I feel this services is a must to use as it helps you give a boost to your brand value. An individual can use it as a platform to showcase his talent and connect with potential job providers. For business, it is a platform to connect with users, to share details of the products and services, acquire new customers. As I keep saying, sky is the only limit. Spending sometime on the Wiki page about Slideshare is worthy.

#11 Re.vu for Web 2.0 based Resume

When every thing around us is going digital, web based and interactive, why not your CV. Re.vu is one such amazing online service to build a visually appealing and interactive Resume. Re.vu collects data from your LinkedIn profile, additionally you can add inputs directly using the Re.vu interface. I personally use it and found it outstanding. So go get going with re.vu and your personal brand a new avataar…

#12 Add life to your presentation using Prezi

Prezi is a service that pumps in life into the presentations we all are used to. It’s a cloud based service that allows you to create presentation that are dynamic in nature. I recommend watching this Introductory video about Prezi.

#13 Put the internet work for you using ifttt

Ifttt . This is an acronym for IfThisThenThat. This is again an amazing service to smartly manage your Internet based mundane and repetitive tasks and presence by automation . In nutshell, this service lets you create triggers based on a state change in your social account. E.g You can set a trigger to pin the photo to your Flickr Account as soon as you post in in your facebook account.

#14 Knowledge Management using Spicynodes

Spicynodes is a great service that lets you draw interactive and rich flowcharts, diagrams, organizational charts, navigation of your site, your own career plan. Actually, the limitation is only your imagination. I say use Spicynodes as a tool for Knowledge management.

Do share your experience of using these services…You are welcome to share your own list of Internet services that you feel should make to this list. I will be more than happy to if the list gets extended and everybody of us gets to make the most of the Internet.

Quote Courtesy : http://www.quotegarden.com/books.html

image courtesy :

http://www.stephenyears.com/wp-content/uploads/revu_logo.png

http://pushingsocial.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/ifttt-e1328826665504.jpg

del.icio.us Tags: internet based services,web 2.0,photo sharing,online photo sharing,online resume,resume builder,note taking app,online apps,knowledge management,spicynodes,re.vu,slideshare,google reader,RSS feed,RSS aggregator,RSS manager

10 Lines that will make you Think…I bet

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 07:25:00 +0000

1. Knowing what to do is important, knowing what not to do is critical – Its my belief

2. Don’t expect a lion not to eat you because you are a vegetarian –unknown

3. We are creators of emotions and not logic –unknown

4. Brevity is the soul of wit –unknown

5. Be a visionary and also a fire-fighter- Ratan Tata

6. The best way to kill competition is to partner it – Its my belief

7. Practice transforms a skill into an art – Its my belief

8. A good question beats a good answer – Alan Webber, Fast Company co-founder

9. Help others think instead of thinking for others – unknown

10. People who are intent on proving they are right are usually the same people that are not particular curious – Fast Company

I would be more than happy to take this list beyond 10 lined so be generous in contributing to the list by using the comments section. Lets target a 100% thinking world…

del.icio.us Tags: leadership,quotes,self-help,great quotes,self-improvement

Are you aware of the theory of Traffic and Trust

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 20:51:00 +0000

I have been blogging for around 2 years now and like every blogger, often Google to find out ways to increase traffic on my blog. The ideas were very common like Comment on others articles in your niche, build a strong social network, write guest post etc.

These techniques works pretty well. Still it was not good enough and I was looking for something else. I thought there is something missing, there is something else which I need to do. Something which is bigger than all the recommended tips. As usual, I started scratching my head, got my brains to work and the result is this post.

To start with , I asked my self, Whatever I am writing, discussing, blogging about is not always something out of this world, its not something like Newton discovering the Laws of Gravity. And even if it is, for people to read it, they have to visit my blog and so the question is How will people come to my blog?

Fine, I have marketed my blog well, used the recommended SEO techniques and so people know my blog now. But still why should they believe me? Why should people be interested in what I write? what I blog about? what should be worried about the opinions and thoughts I have?

Yes. You guessed it right. People don’t believe me because they don’t know me, Simple. So what do I do?

For people to believe me, discuss what I right, share my links, I have to build my reputation, build the trust among people. In plain English, People should either hate my post or love my post. They should not ignore it.

This post is all dedicated to exploring the avenues to build reputation, build the trust…and thus answer the question that is not often answered.

Share knowledge

Surfing net is for sure a key activity we all do these days. Typically, the things we like and want it to be available for reference in future is saved in the Favorites of the browser. The first step to build reputation is to expand the horizon from Browser based Favorites to social bookmarking service like Delicious. This is how it will help you build your reputation

The bookmarks you save can made public and thus rest of world knows what interests you, what's going on in your mind, you are up to these days.
You get to know strangers sharing the same interests/links and thus build a social network beyond friends and family.
People you get to know this way are not totally strangers.

Its no rocket science to realize that the better links you share, the better is your social network. Mention you website/blog link in the profile and give the people a chance to know more about you, your work, your passion. Now and then, you could share the link your site, your blog and en-cash the reputation. Have a look at my Delicious Feed by clicking here

Share pictures

A site, a blog is incomplete without pictures. Science very clearly states that we are good at visual stimulus. Moreover, there is so much to do online that the attention span of people is very less. Thus using relevant pictures strategically is a good way to connect with the audience. The idea is to save the pictures you use for your site, articles on Social photo sharing sites like Flickr, Shutterstock. The key is to name, to tag, to categorize the picture rightly.

By doing this, you are opening another channel of audience which is more interested in pictures. Have an embedded link back to your site in the picture and you know what will happen. Another chunk of additional traffic that trusts you. Thanks to the pictures you shared with them.

Participate in Conversation

I am present on Twitter( @charmingsid is my handle). I simply used to share links to my site and that’s it. As obvious, I was not getting much of a traffic. There are millions of links of tweets and so why should somebody view the link I shared. Fair enough. So I started interacting with people , started having conversation, share my opinions and ideas with people. This way I built a network of again strangers on one of the most happening social platform Twitter. I am sure you guys understood that the probability of people visiting my site is increased as there is some level of trust on me. I en-cashed my reputation by occasionally sharing links to my site, sharing links to products I like, requesting feedback and suggestions on my articles.

Be Active in Forums

This is one of the oldest and well written technique. You are supposed to join forums that interests you, that are relevant to your site and start contributing. The idea here again is to have a network of people beyond friends and family members. Build reputation, gain peoples trust and then en-cash it strategically.

For that matter, Trust is the vital ingredient for any work you take up. The techniques could vary but then the mantra remains the same. Do genuinely good to others and they will be ready to trust you, give you the kick that will take you to Cloud number 9. I call it making to Shout Wow.

All said, its vital to understand that building trust will take time, will need efforts and it could be damn easily broken if you start spamming people. Just remember the story of The Goose that laid the golden eggs before en-cashing your newly built reputation.

del.icio.us Tags: trust,web traffic,blogger,blogging,traffic,shutterstock,flickr

3 Ideas about Monetization through Affiliation

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:55:00 +0000

Liked a product, grab it and Share it

Online shopping is an integral part of lives these days. The shopping sites wants to make use of the social media to accelerate there sales. And so they have Affiliate programs. As a part of the program, you are paid a part of the sales revenue generated by you as a commission. All you have to do is, share the product you purchased, share the service you liked, share the deal that made you shout wow, share the book that made your day and you are on for a few bucks as a commission. I have done practiced ( See I practice what I preach ) this approach in my post Make the most of now

Have a website, join Affiliate program

Do you have a personal blog, a website, a forum. Great, you have got a medium that can be monetized. Simply enroll yourself for the Affiliate programs from the likes of Google,

Viglinketc. Post enrolment, you will receive ad requests for your blog, site or forum and you are paid by the merchant a part of the sales generated by you as a commission.

Do you use/share pictures, monetize it

Well explained ideas, creative thoughts, interesting blogs, beautiful websites have one thing in common. They make extensive use of relevant images, use of images to reach the audience, use images to covey the ultimate message, use images to transform complex stuff into simple, appealing and . Do you use pictures for your website, your blog, your forum? Use sites like Shutterstock as the source of pictures with a backlink to the site. The backlink is the unique link provided to you on joining the Affiliate program of Shutterstock. The images on SidsAvenue are affiliated to ShutterStock. You get paid the referral bonus when people you referred make purchases on ShutterStock.

There is another fantastic Image bank offering monetization opportunity through ads embedded in the images, its called Kiosked. The publisher is paid when the user hovers around the image and performs an action on the Kiosk displayed.

So get on and get your affiliate network healthy guys…

These are the techniques which I use personally to monetize SidsAvenue.

Do let me know your review on this post, any other way of affiliation you are using etc in the comments section…

By the way, this post was in continuation to the series aimed at exploring alternate avenues as a second source of income. Following are the earlier posts of these series…

Solve Challenges and Earn Money

Earn for consolidating your expertise

Earning while Learning, The innovative break

4 unconventional ways of making money

del.icio.us Tags: shutterstock,viglink,google,affiliate,affiliate network,make money online,earn money online,second income,alternate income,image bank,daily deals

Solve Challenges and Earn money

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:31:00 +0000

So, till now the options explored were Fun oriented. Here, in this post, we will get into a more serious mode. We will explore the option that should will excite the people who like to put their brains to work, people who like challenges, people having loads and loads of creative juices.

I am going to touch upon the Crowdsourcing element from the list of avenues that could become your second source of income. Read the original post Unconventional ways of making money online for the entire list.

What is Crowdsourcing?

Firstly lets understand what is Crowdsourcing...

Wikipedia defines Crowdsourcing as,

Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.

Typically the call is made by the organizations looking to tap the talent outside of their organization, looking to get different views for a challenges. The reason for such initiative could be anything.

For example, P&G invites its customer to give their inputs regarding their products and services. P&G makes the customer a part of the product development and hence increase the traction with the customer resulting in customer loyalty and of course sales. The initiative is called Connect + Develop.

From the definition of Crowdsourcing, its clear that participating in Crowdsourcing for people like you and me means taking the call, accepting the challenge and completing the task. The tasks are challenges and the call to solve the challenge is linked to Incentives.

So why should you take the challenge?

The trigger to participate in the challenge could be the sheer thrill of solving the challenge, it could be the incentives associated with it, it could be the fame of being a winner, it could be to get in touch with like minded people, it could be to explore job opportunities. As I said, the reason to take the challenge is very personal.

Without anymore delay, I would introduce to you all, the well known Crowdsourcing platform called Innocentive.

What is Innocentive?

InnoCentive is the open innovation and crowdsourcing pioneer that enables organizations to solve their key problems by connecting them to diverse sources of innovation including employees, customers, partners, and the world’s largest problem solving marketplace.

Basically, Innocentive is a platform that connect the organizations with the creative people like you. It acts as the medium between the Organization and the Creative brains. Innocentive enables the marriage of the challenge with the right skills.

I have been using Innocentive for more than an year now. I participated in one of the challenges from "The Economist" to invent a new index to gauge the human potential. My entry could be downloaded from here.

Leading commercial, government, and nonprofit organizations such as Booz Allen Hamilton, Eli Lilly, Life Technologies, NASA, nature.com, Popular Science, Procter & Gamble, Roche, Rockefeller Foundation, and The Economist partner with InnoCentive to solve problems and innovate faster and more cost effectively than ever before. (Source : Innocentive inc)

Facts and Figures

Since 2001, InnoCentive has been making a profound impact on the world, one organization and one Challenge at a time. Take a look at some of our numbers. (Current as of January 2012)

Total Registered Solvers: More than 250,000 from nearly 200 countries
Total Solver Reach: 12+ million through our strategic partners (e.g., EDF, nature.com, Popular Science, The Economist)
Total Challenges Posted: 1,370+ public Challenges to InnoCentive.com & thousands of internal employee-focused Challenges
Project Rooms Opened to Date: 392,000+
Total Solution Submissions: 28,500+
Total Awards Given: 1,050+
Total Award Dollars Posted: $34+ million
Range of awards: $5,000 to $1 million based on the complexity of the problem

Average Success Rate: 50%+

(Source : Innocentive inc)

How Innocentive Operates

Innocentive employs a

Challenge Driven Innovation methodology to connect the organizations with the people interested in solving the challenges.

What it means is basically that all the tasks are put up by the participating Organizations in the form of a challenge Using the Innocentive platform. The registered users of Innocentive can then look for challenges that interests them and get on with solving it.

There is a fixed deadline for each challenge. The incentives associated with the challenge are clearly stated. Terms and conditions for Intellectual property(IP) transfer for each challenge are there for the Solver to understand and decide if he wants to opt for.

Details of the format that has to be used to present the solution, any special consideration, exclusions are clearly stated with the challenge.

In summary, you being a solver get all the inputs needed to make the decision of solving the challenge and to solve the challenge.

Features

Form a team

The challenges can be quite tricky and so you might want to form a team to solve it. Innocentive allows you to do so.

There is a dedicated section to help Solvers. It included interview of the Challenges winner, the dos and don'ts when presenting the solution.

Refer Case studies

Browse through the case studies to trigger yourself to get on with the Challenges. The case studies quite inspiring as it reveals how the challenges have impacted the organizations.

SO what you are waiting for…Gift Innocentive a place in your weekend calendar and gift yourself the adventure of solving real life challenges. The icing on the cake is the Incentives you received on coming up with the Winning Solution.

Want more…check out this post that talks more about Crowdsourcing and the other platforms available to you…

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/what-is-crowdsourcing/

del.icio.us Tags: crowdsourcing,innocentive,challenges,make money online,solve challenges,creativity networks

Earn revenue for consolidating your expertise

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 17:55:00 +0000

The Internet age which we all are living very aptly epitomizes the old and known saying "Knowledge is power". We all need to have some kind of expertise. The expertise to be excellent at the job, the Expertise to carry out the business activities, Expertise to make a great leader, Expertise to be a better home maker, expertise to be a better dad, a better husband!!

The expertise could be in any avenue, it could be add an edge to your professional life, it could useful in Personal life. The expertise could be anything and everything.

But nobody is born with an expertise and so it has to be learnt, it has to be developed, it has to be practiced to be an expert. The Social network plays a key role in making us an expert as the knowledge, the expertise, the information, the know-how is shared, is available for everybody who wants to use it, gain it, practice it and most importantly take it forward and help it grow.

This post is meant to introduce you all once such social media platform. This post is in continuation to the series that is aimed at exploring avenues to that lets you have an alternate source of income.Coming back to the Social platform I was referring to, Its called Squidoo. It’s a platform that lets you share your expertise by creating something called as Lens.

What is Squidoo?

It’s a platform for user-generated content. It enables the users to build a page that features the best of what you know about a topic. The page you create is knows as a Lens. Its your lens, your take on the topic. You can have multiple pages to address multiple topics. The best part is its free.

What does a Squidoo page contain?

You could add the RSS feed if the articles you are reading on the topic, the RSS feed of the articles you liked about a topic
Add pictures
Add products for review
You can have polls
Ask the audience of your lens to comment
Add your own content.

A lens on London, for example, could include links to five restaurants, with a quick paragraph on each one. The lens could include a description of a favorite hotel, with a link to the hotel’s page about a specific suite. The lens might feature three or four guidebooks for sale on Amazon, some tourist memorabilia on auction at eBay, and pointers to Flickr postings of great sites to visit.

Squidoo attracts traffic from across the Web—people find a lens they are interested in, and it leads them to another lens, or to a product or a service they didn’t know about. The person coming to a lens is exploring—looking for new ideas and solutions—which is exactly where you want to be.

Squidoo pages form a social database—a human index of the best stuff on a given topic.

How Revenue is generated?

Every lens earns a royalty for a charity or its creator. The royalties come from a share of the ads that run on the site, as well as from directly earned affiliate revenue. An example? If a movie lover builds a site that refers to Netflix, and Netflix records a new member as a result, the person who built the site—the lensmaster—earns as much as $10. Build enough lenses and drive enough traffic, and it can add up.

How is it different from other Social Media?

The biggest difference between Squidoo and the other social services is that Squidoo adds value by juxtaposing ideas so they coalesce into useful meaning. A Flickr picture becomes popular because it’s clever or funny. A blog posting gains an audience when other bloggers decide it’s useful enough to refer to on their blogs. But a Squidoo lens works when it presents important information as part of a whole—when it’s a piece of the big picture of meaning.

A few ideas on Lenses…

A more sophisticated example: a lens presenting links to six technical articles on data security and cryptology, written by senior IBM researchers. Those articles have been on IBM’s Web site all along, but only by presenting them together, along with a narrative that makes it all clear, can the lensmaster offer a page that’s worth looking at.

Here are a few example of using Squidoo to give your fans a megaphone:

A software developer builds a lens on the Project he is working on. Shares an RSS feed of the links that he refers for the project. A poll on the architecture of the project design. A discussion on the technology he is using. The developer gets to showcase his skills, meet fellow developers working on similar project or technology. The lens becomes his CV.
A company asks every employee to build a lens about the business or about a favorite product the company offers. The lens would include new ways to look at the item, or dream about it, or use it. The lens could point to blogs or news clips or photos.

The best way to know the power of Squidoo, realize what it has to offer and yes earn extra bucks is to of course, use it. Get on with you exploration project on Squidoo by clicking on the logo.

You are welcome to share your thoughts on this series and share any other platform that could add some muscle to the alternate source of income.

del.icio.us Tags: social network,social media,squidoo,lens,web 2.0,expertise,revenue,earn money online,make money online

Earning while learning : The Innovative break

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:10:00 +0000

This post is in continuation to my last post where I listed down 4 unconventional ways of making money online. In this post, I will discuss about a Innovation platform that lets you earn and learn.

Got bored from work…take a break…how if you could earn a few bucks and learn during the break…sounds interesting!!! . Try Brand and Me.

Its an innovative online platform aimed to connect users with the brands, products and services. The platform is innovative as the user is connected to the brand by participating in rewarding, playful ways . The best part is that it takes hardly 5 minutes to earn the rewards. That’s why I call it Innovative Break. Lets dive deeper and see what Brand and Me has to offer.

The details of the various options a user has to connect with the brand are following.

Take The Quiz

The quiz consists of 4 questions similar to we used to have in English exam in school. You have to read a paragraph, look at a pic at times, a short video occasionally and answer the questions. It doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to complete the quiz. For each question, you get 7 Points.

Play The Brand Jig

The Brand Jig is where you have to dig out the name of a brand or personality from the scrambled world. To ease the job, there is always a hint.

You could also submit your own brand jig. If approved, if you be credited bonus points.

Play The Brand Hour

The brand hour is like Fill in the Blanks. Based on the question and the hint, you have to name the brand or the personality.

Here too, you can submit your own questions and earn extra reward points.

Submit Product Reviews

Liked a product? Have your recommendation to a friend? Why not add it on Brand and Me and let a bigger audience be benefited. Moreover, if the product review is approved by the team, as obvious, you get reward points.

Submit Brand trivia

If you know something trivial about a brand, product or personality, great. Submit it on Brand and Me and en-cash the trivia for reward points.

Refer Friends

This is common with all online platforms these days. Get as many as friends as possible engaged with Brand and Me and you get reward points for that too.

So what are you waiting for. Make creative and rewarding use of your break. Get to learn and get to earn. Thanks to Brand and Me. The reward points can be redeemed gifts, cash, mobile recharge and gift vouchers. I have been learning and earning through Brand and Me for more than 6 months now and have got a eBay voucher and a t-shirt for redeeming my points.

All geared up to join Brand and Me. Click here and you are good to go.

Have a great rewarding experience…

del.icio.us Tags: brand,marketing,connect with brand,marketingplatform,innovation,business,brand and me,make money online,online rewards,product reviews,brand trivia

4 Unconventional ways of making Money online

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:40:00 +0000

"In times of recession, apart from cutting on costs, think of new revenue stream". This is a tag line I read somewhere, sometime back. Typically most us are employed and the source of income is the monthly salary. Earlier, a job was considered to be the safest avenue of regular income. But with economy being volatile and job cuts being the routine, the scene has changed dramatically. Hence to take care of such volatility, its always good to have alternate revenue streams. I have bucketed the streams into 4 chunks. These series of posts is dedicated to finding such alternate revenue stream. In this post, we will look upon the 4 avenues and then explore the products, platforms, services in each of these avenues in the subsequent posts. So fasten your belts and get going with the journey.

1. Crowd Sourcing

Crowd sourcing has been making the buzz since quite sometime now. In nutshell, crowd sourcing is all about throwing open certain challenges to public and have a prize associated with it. The challenges could be from organization or from individuals. Wikipedia defines it as “the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community (crowd) through an open call”. Crowdsourcing opens new doors to grab the prize money by putting your brains to work. I will talk about a few platforms falling in this segment in the subsequent posts.

2. Grab the Deals

The idea here is to save money by making the most of now i.e. by grabbing the deals from the various daily deal sites. I am sure most of you are already of the hundreds of sites available. I had a written an article reviewing a few of the sites sometime back. The article is here

3. Become Affiliates

Its all about sharing these days, people share status, their photos, bookmarks and blah..blah..blah. How about making some money by sharing? There are many sites online that pay you commission for the sales generated because of you. This is the phenomenon in case if daily deal sites. The sites want you share the deal which you liked or bought to your friends. If they make a purchase on the site, you get some referral bonus. I am composing the list of such sites and will make it available on SidsAvenue in upcoming posts.

4. Support Innovation

People around us are pretty innovative and they have come up with innovative ideas that can be used to make a few bucks during the lazy weekend afternoon. Take surveys, write product reviews, get engaged with brands and hell lot of other things. Support this innovation and you could end up making a few more bucks for yourself.

In the next post, I will talk about one such platform that lets you earn for getting engaged with brands. So keep looking at this space…

del.icio.us Tags: dailydeals,make money online,earnmoney,innovation,crowdsourcing,ways to make money online

The mystery of Crossroads

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

One of the SMS that I received read "Life is a hard teacher, it takes the test first and then teaches the lesson".

I am currently going through a phase where I am learning something new everyday. The learning is not necessarily from my personal experience but also from others for the reasons I talked in the post Half Burnt Bread stories.

Recently I have learnt a new lesson. The lesson is about how you perceive a situation, how you react to a situation in life, how you take the result of a situation in your stride in keep moving.

The Mystery

I realized, every situation is like being on the crossroads. And you know what, there are 2 paths, 2 ways of reacting to a situation, 2 ways to handle the situ

ation.

The First Path

The first is the easiest and most common method wherein you blame others for the situation like our politicians do. Whatever happens they say, it’s a game to harm them by the opposition party or its an act of foreign enemies. And we all know how true is this statement. Everybody knows the truth, but they keep on fooling around people.If you are following this path, its like your keeping your wound open to and inviting others to finger in. Politicians fool others but we fool ourselves following this path. We are breaking the feedback loop that helps us grow, helps us learn, makes us ready for the next crossroads and eventually helps us to keep walking.

The other Path

The other one, often rarely used and often difficult to adapt is of being honest to ourselves, taking ourselves back to the drawing table and evaluating oneself, taking the feedback though negative as the corrective agent that will reduce the gap between what you want to be and what you are. I feel Walking the second path is difficult to do as it requires us to keep aside the ego; accept that we can be wrong, do wrong; understand that we too have weakness, have deficiencies and this is as difficult as trekking Himalayas.

For one to walk this path, he has to be like a Negative Feedback amplifier. Folks from Physics background must have started recalling the chapter on Amplifiers. For others, I am sure you have used a Sound system, one of the components of the system is an amplifier that amplifies the sound signals. Read this wiki to know how Negative Feedback makes the amplifier good enough to be used practically.

So what have you have to say about the crossroads? Which path would you take. I am trying to be a Negative Feedback amplifier and you could use the comments section to pass on the feedback to me gang…

del.icio.us Tags: Crossroads,negative feedback amplifier,amplifier,feedback amplifier,trekking,himalayas

Is your Financial Portfolio Complete?

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:40:00 +0000

John is a young engineer working with an MNC. He comes from a humble family background. As soon as he started earning, he realized that no matter how much you earn, if you don’t manage your money, you will always be short of money in times of need. He pondered upon the various avenues to manage his finances.

He started by covering himself from uncertain situations through Term plan, the cheapest form of life insurance. He then invested a few bucks in Mutual Funds to take care of the higher education costs that he plans to go for after a few years. Stocks and Gold also formed a part of his portfolio. John had a well planned, well organized and well managed portfolio to take care his financial needs.

John was on a vacation with his friends when suddenly the unfortunate thing happened. John was capturing a funny moment of his friend when he slipped off the mountain cliff and slipped into the deep valley. John suffered severe injuries and eventually succumbed to the fatal injuries.

His family was in shock and deep grief. Their bright son was a history now. John was the only source of income for his family and so the grief deepened even further. John never discussed about his investments, his policies, his stock holdings to his family. Obviously, neither John nor his family would have imagined in their wildest dreams of such a tragedy.

Typically, dear family doesn’t like to discuss about death and so the discussion about financial security of the family post death of John was obviously a forbidden topic. Though John had thought of this event and had ensured that his family doesn’t have to suffer, they had to experience the cash crunch as they were unaware of Johns investment.

The learning from Johns story is simple. There is no meaning to investments if the nominee doesn't know about it. "Sharing the details of investments with dear ones is as important as Investing".

There are 2 parts to a well managed portfolio. One is choosing the right product and the other is informing about it to the nominee at least.

How many of us share the details of our financial portfolio with the nominees? I am sure, the answer is very few. I was intrigued with the same questions and that’s when I created this FinHealthMonitor utility. I use it to track my investments, liabilities and have shared a copy of it with my family. Thus completing my portfolio.

Why don’t you guys give it a try and share your feedback about the utility…The utility is available here.

Technorati Tags: personal finance,portfolio manager,inform nominee

How to see the hidden part of the ball?

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:28:00 +0000

Skill Life Cycle

I recently happened to attend a training program conducted by Dale Carnegie Training Institute. The trainer talked about a Skill cycle (shown in the pic )that says Practice is what makes knowledge into a skill.

Very valid point. I thought for a while and a question popped up in my mind.

The Question?

Is it possible to practice and experience everything that is needed for a skill?

I don’t think so. We do not have the time, the privilege, the resources, the risk appetite to practice ourselves everything, experience everything aspect. Give it a thought and I am sure you folks with agree with me.

To emphasis more on this point, consider a software engineer working on Linux development wants to be an expert Linux developer, is it possible for him to develop everything needs for his projects on his own. Just impossible. For sure, he will have to use tools created by others, he will have to refer to the experience of others available on various online forums to see how to fix a bug, he will have to refer to best practices posted by experts to architect his project.

The gist is that we have to look for external resources to gain experience at times to achieve the level of expertise needed to carry on with a skill. This logic is not limited to professional life, it does apply to personal life also.

The Hidden side

I was discussing this concept with a friend of mine and he gave a very crisp example to support the concept. He said, if you hold a ball in your hand, at any point of time you could only see the front side of the ball, the other side is always hidden. So if you want to have a look at the hidden side also, use external resources.

In one of my earlier posts, I have talked about learning from half baked burnt stories, learning from others experience, saving ourselves from the mistakes other committed.

The Solution

There are many ways to learn from other experiences, learn from external resources. One of them is to read books. I am sure everybody of you are aware of this and so sighed knowing what makes you see the hidden part of the ball.

So where do you purchase books. Obviously @ www.printsasia.com. that currently offers books from 15,000 publishers from across the globe and have around 2 millions titles available. The prices are pretty competitive and only new books are shipped. Books available from U.S.A, South Asian Countries and Europe are shipped worldwide. Why not give the site a visit and see if it can help in our mission to unwrap the hidden part of the ball.

P.S: I am also exploring the site and this is not a paid review.

Technorati Tags: Dale Carnegie,Skill Life Cycle,Printasia.com,Book,Half burnt bread,Linux developer,Skill,Experience,Hidden part,Ball,priviledge

Unwrapping the opportunity wrapped in crisis

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Go to any leadership, self-help training and they crisis are opportunities…people should embrace them instead of fearing them. I thought why not put my mind to job and logically check if what the gurus preach is relevant…this post is all about unwrapping the opportunity wrapped in crisis…

What is Crisis?

To start with, lets see what is a crisis….crisis is something which is not routine…For police, riots is a crisis. For a software developer, a severity 1 bug is a crisis, for a economist a not so good performing economy is a crisis…this are just a few example to set the context.

What happens in Crisis?

So what happens when somebody is put to handle the crisis…the first and foremost thing to happen is that everybody's focus in suddenly on you.

You are the savior, people expect a quick solution to end the crisis. People might be shouting on you, they might be pleading you…it depends on the situation and position you are in. In simple words, a virtual world that is rotating around you is created.

How Crisis is an Opportunity

This means that you have been given an opportunity to perform, you have been given a stage to put up a great show. Don’t you think getting opportunities in this such a competitive world is for sure a blessing, something nobody would like to miss…

If we go even further, people are expecting results from you which implies that they are ready to trust you provided you fulfill the expectation. Look around you and you will find many people who have delivered but people don’t trust them. So

I consider these expectations from people as an opportunity to gain peoples trust. I don’t need to reiterate how far peoples trust can take you…and the trust gained by performing in crisis is for sure pretty strong and sturdy.

What you folks have to say about this unwrapping…Comments section is open for all.

Technorati Tags: Crisis,Crisis Management,Crisis Expectation,Crisis Communication,Leadership,Opportunity,Delivery

Celebrate Festivals, Spice up Economy

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:47:00 +0000

Festivals are an integral part of our lives. They provide us the much needed escape from the boredom of routine and indulge in celebration.

The trigger

Typically, the festivals are governed by the traditions and rituals. For example, On Dusshera also known as VijayaDashami, the day on which Lord Rama killed Ravana, which I believe is a festival to celebrate respect, the Guajarati community enjoys loads and loads of Fafda (A snack made from gram flour) and Jalebi (A sweet dish). For most of us, festival is all about celebrations, holidays, having a good time with family and friends.

But I was forced to think about the deep rooted economic sense in Festivals after reading this article...

The Facts

The articles states that 25 crores worth of Fafda, Jalebi were consumed during Dusshera this year(2011). I was amazed at knowing this fact and curiosity forced me to surfed the net for more such fascinating facts about Festivals. I found another interesting fact about the Kite festival. The festival is now a industry worth over 400 crores. Read this article.

Another search and I hit upon these facts about Gold sales during Akshya Tritiya. Noteworthy point is that the gold was trading at 25k levels at this time this year...

The Gist

These are all example of spends incurred to carry on with the tradition of the festival. Look around and you will see the retail market is spiced up with delicious deals offering huge discounts and free gifts.The economic activity shoots up during the festivals period as people are in mood to celebrate and so less reluctant to spend money. The money flows across hands and everybody gets to get their hands wet. The gist is that festivals are not mere traditions and rituals. They are very strategic means of stirring up economics, spicing up the market.What could be a better means of empowering various strata of society to get into business and make a living. Festival is an innovation meant to address the income disparity of the society.

We will continue to look into the economic sense of Festivals in the next post by exploring how festivals let the money be distributed among the society.

Your views, comments and feedback keep SidsAvenue going…So be generous in pouring them in the comments section.

Technorati Tags: Festivals,Dusshera,Diwali,VijayaDashami,Jalebi,Fafda,Income Disparity,Innovation,Celebrations,Gold Sales,Economic activity,Market

The Last Mile…

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Today is John's last session with his Leadership coach. His recent failure to deliver the projects forced him to seek the guidance of a professional. John is a project manager in an MNC. Thanks to his technical skills, his leadership skills, he has moved the corporate ladder pretty fast. In short, you name a quality and he has proved that he possesses it. The management didn’t have any option but to promote him as the Project Manager.

But since then, the days have not been the same for John. His projects are either delayed or are not up to the mark and at times both. Nobody can believe a person like John can go wrong in delivering projects.

Thanks to the sessions he is going through. Things have changed a lot. A recent project has been delivered on time. John seems to be back in groove. He seems to be getting things on track, getting his edge back. Wondering what did the coach teach him? Lets explore it.

Who is John

John is a very accomplished professional possessing all right technical and leadership qualities. He would start the projects with great enthusiasm, get the team motivated, everything would be executed according to the plan. Till the final stage, the project would be on track. As the project reaches the finish and John is able to visualize a successfully delivered project, he becomes complacent, the grip on the project timelines, on the deliverables and the team is relaxed and that’s it, the project starts falling apart, things start to get off the track. A project that was sure shot success suddenly becomes a disaster. Everybody banking on John and the success of the project is disappointed. The last mile is missed and so the journey is not complete.

The Syndrome

Isn't this the case with most of us? Isn't this the case with many other things? Didn't you feel at times this is the story of one of our projects?

A good movie becomes a disaster just because the last 30 minutes climax was not up to the mark. Nervous 90s is a very well known syndrome which makes the batsman lose wicket being just 10 or less runs short of a century. Its like a pilot at the time of landing getting out of cockpit to have a coffee with the air hostess as soon as the runway is visible. The criticality of the landing is very well known to all of us.

People get overwhelmed and start loosing focus when the goal is visible. This results in failure despite having all the qualities and skills, despite using all the knowledge and the techniques, despite putting in so much of effort. Such failures become difficult to digest as the pre-requisites were very much in place.

We are landing now…

The gist is for everybody of us, for leaders, its absolute necessity to have the focus, the enthusiasm, the energy and everything that is needed for a project to be delivered are in place till the actual end of the project. When I say project, it need not be building a rocket. It could be as small as writing an email.

The smart thing to do after such an experience is to shake up your self and do what John did. Get back to the drawing board and starting getting the drawings right, get into learning phase. Get in touch with people who had similar experience and analyze what they did to get the things right like I mentioned in my post Half Bread Burnt Stories.

The inspiration for this post is the saying in Gujrati, “Kinare aavine vaahan dubyu”…meaning “To sink the ship at the shore”…

I have tried to keep my focus till the end of this post…Do let me know what you guys think using the comments section…

Technorati Tags: Landing,Project manager,Focus,Leadership,Projects,Management,nervous nineties,Film climax,The Last Mile,Cockpit,Pilot,Plane landing

Use Google Plus to reach customers more accurately

noreply@blogger.com (siddharatha joshi) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:17:00 +0000

Now that Google Plus is in Open to All mode, I decided to analyze it and see how it can be used for Business.

I have started using Google Plus sometime back, thanks to my friend for sending me the invite.

The one feature that forces me to keep using G+ is the concept of circles. Social networking is more or less a virtual world trying to give the same experience as the real world. And in real world, we have all our own logical circles based on the various parameters. We have school friends and then there are colleagues who are friends. Then there are people whom we just know. There are people who are not friends as such but important for professional growth. You have a 3 am friends who are probably more than friends. But as the recent Airtel ad says "Har ek Friend Jaroori Hota hai" meaning (For non Hindi Reader) "Every friend is needed".

Many a times, one would want the information to be shared only to a confined group of people, only to a select few. This purpose of virtual circles is very well imitated by G+ circles.

Organization have been using Social networking for quite sometime now in full throttle mode. I have seen many ads where the Facebook fan page and Twitter handle has replaced the web URL. So how could Organization benefit from this unique feature of Google Plus.

What Business wants?

Anybody who has attended a marketing presentation would be aware of the concept of segmentation. For the newbies, segmentation is all about categorizing the customers based on certain parameters so that organization can customize its products and services to cater to a particular segment. E.g banks issuing Gold, Platinum and Silver credit cards based on certain criteria.

There could be multiple functions within an organization using the concept of segmentation to achieve their goals and targets. Obviously the parameters and the criteria used by each function for segmentation could vary.

Yes you got it right….The idea is to use Google Plus circles to imitate the segmentation.

How Google Plus fits in?

Yes, the strategy is simple. Use the Google Plus circles to imitate segmentation and interact with the segment specific customers in a more customized, specialized approach. The goal is to use the strategy to increase the stickiness, to increase the customer loyalty, to improve the customer engagement with the brand, with the product and services.

ROI of the strategy

1. The offers and discounts on services and products are better targeted.

2. The customer service team could focus on the premier customers in a much better they as they have a dedicated circle. This will ensure the business reached the target customer much much more accurately.

Challenges

To ensure this Innovative approach fulfills its target of making customers more loyal and sticky to, effective communication would be the key. Check out this post of mine to appreciate the importance of Effective communication, lack of which could kill the Innovation.

Icing on Cake...

Google could win the social networking war if it integrates a Social network analysis tool, something similar to Google Analytics, in Google Plus. The idea is to enable Organizations manage their circles more dynamically based on the inputs from the customer social engagement with the brand, products and services. This will in turn empower the Organizations to reach to its customers in more accurate and effective way and are using Google Plus. Isn't it what Google wants too?

Let your Creative juices flow in the Comments section folks…

Technorati Tags: Google Plus,Innovation,Airtel,Google circles,Facebook,Twitter handle,Social network,effective Communication,customer loyalty,organization,customer segment,segmentation,target customer,google analytics

Image Courtesy : http://themyndset.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Google_plus_Circles.jpg