Use power of WEB 2.0

How to Use power of WEB 2.0

The 2008 edition of Web 2.0 Expo has now ended. Check out all the highlights:

• Speaker Presentation Files
• Photos
• News and Coverage
• Video of Keynote Presentations
• Blog
• Live Twittering

Attending Web 2.0 Expo? Use some of the networking tools to connect with other attendees while you are here.

Web 2.0 technologies are empowering us in ways we could only have imagined even just a few years ago. We're able to build more, connect more, have more fun, sell more stuff, share more than ever before—and do it all faster. But as the pace of change and innovation accelerates, separating signal from noise, useful from annoying, genuine from fluff becomes increasingly challenging.

What tools and applications are right for a given project? How can we provide a more meaningful experience for users and customers? How can we have a positive impact on the world we live in? What are the ways we can create more value for our businesses? How do we gather and focus datapoints to deliver relevant information? How can we increase conversation and collaboration?

The second Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco takes the pulse of the Web ecosystem and looks to its future, training a spotlight across the Web 2.0 universe to illuminate how the Internet Revolution is being created and delivered. Web 2.0 Expo is for the builders of the next generation web: designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and venture capitalists, people who have experiences to share and a passion for learning--the hot new thing, lessons from failures, innovations and inspirations, and the practical applications of all of the above.

What will you do with the power of Web 2.0?

Experience Web 2.0 Expo

A companion event to the Web 2.0 Summit, Web 2.0 Expo is an expanded, inclusive gathering for the technology and business communities through a combined conference and tradeshow. Read more about Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco happens April 22-25, 2008 at Moscone West. Whether you're new to the Web 2.0 world or an expert or in Ajax, Ruby, tagging, the social graph, user experience, meta-programming, search engine marketing, community building, web operations, user-generated content, building startups from scratch, or "Web2.0-ifying" the enterprise, come to Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco and immerse yourself in the Web 2.0 experience.

Tracks at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008:

• Strategy and Business Models
• Marketing and Community
• Design and User Experience
• Fundamentals
• Development
• Focus on Mobile Web
• Focus on Web Operations
• Focus on Social Platforms
• Sponsored Sessions

In addition to on-stage sessions, keynote presentations, workshops, panel discussions, and demos, Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco will provide ample opportunity for all participants to engage face-to-face:

• A vibrant Expo Hall bustling with essential products, tools, services, and projects at the cutting edge of technology
• Launch Pad, an opportunity to publicly unveil new companies and products
• Web2Open, a space where any participant can lead a conversation with other attendees
• Expo Booth Crawl, parties, and other fun networking events

The inaugural Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco attracted 8,500 attendees from companies and organizations like:

Adobe Systems, America Online, American Greetings Interactive, Apple, BA Venture Partners, BP, Centers for Disease Control, Discovery Health Media, Dow Jones, EMC, Experian Interactive, First Round Capital, Hitachi, Ltd., Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, IEEE, Intel, Intuit, Jet Propultion Laboratory, Labrador Ventures, MTV Networks, Magazine Publishers of America, McGill University,, Merrill Lynch, Monster, Motion Picture Association of America, Nokia, North Bridge Venture Partners, Northrop Grumman, RealNetworks, Simon & Schuster, Standard & Poor's, Sun Microsystems, The Heritage Foundation, The Wall Street Journal Online, Turner Broadcastings Systems Inc., University of Richmond, University of Southern California, Walt Disney, WhitePages.com, and many, many more.

yahoo bid microsoft Deal collapse

Yahoo bid Microsoft Deal's collapse good news for Google

Microsoft needs to rethink its strategy now that it has backed away from its $47.5 billion proposal to acquire Yahoo. Yahoo needs to show Wall Street that it is better off on its own.

Google, on the other hand, appears to have come out on top of the tussle.

The Internet giant has beaten back the biggest threat to its online advertising business, a combination of its No. 2 and No. 3 competitors. It remains No. 1 in online search and search advertising. And it may even emerge with a new advertising partnership with Yahoo.

"There was no outcome that would hurt Google," said Shar VanBoskirk, principal analyst with Forrester Research. "This outcome is good news for them. Now they have a deflated Microsoft and a repositioning Yahoo, and they're still as strong as they were before."

On Monday, Google shares climbed more than 2 percent, or $13.61 per share, to $594.90 per share.

A spokesman for Google declined to comment. But early on, Google made clear its perspective on Microsoft's unsolicited bid: "Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions," said David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer in a blog.

And, in the end, Google came through as the spoiler of Microsoft's ambitious unsolicited bid. Last month, Google tested a potential advertising partnership with Yahoo, with Yahoo outsourcing its search advertising business to Google. That, in turn, became one of the key reasons for Microsoft's retreat.

In Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's letter to Yahoo announcing the dropping of the bid, Ballmer said that the possibility of Yahoo and Google going ahead with such a partnership was a particular concern.

Among the issues, Ballmer said he felt Yahoo's agreement with Google could undermine Yahoo's advertising business, raise regulatory concerns, spur Yahoo engineers to leave the company and give Google too much control over prices.

"Our discussions with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps that would make Yahoo undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft," Ballmer said.

The future of the Yahoo and Google partnership isn't clear, now that Microsoft has withdrawn its bid. But in the end, experts said, Microsoft became a catalyst for Yahoo even to consider such a deal.

Google has been striking similar advertising agreements with other sites, such as MySpace and - though some also believe such a deal was just as helpful to Yahoo to fend off Microsoft - stood to benefit from making similar arrangements with Yahoo. "They've probably been lobbying for this for years," said David Liu, co-head of the Internet and digital media group at Jefferies & Co.

The only downside for Google? That the Microsoft-Yahoo battle didn't draw out longer.

If Microsoft had proceeded with a hostile takeover bid, as many had expected, the move would have distracted Google's top two rivals for some time, allowing Google to pull ahead even more. It would also give Google time to digest its recent acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.

Instead, now Yahoo and Microsoft have something to prove, and will likely soon start trying to demonstrate that they're capable of competing against Google.

"That's going to be more of an acute challenge to Google," said Andrew Frank, a research vice president with Gartner.

Google dominates the online advertising business with more than 57 percent of the market, according to eMarketer, followed by Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. EMarketer estimates that marketers will spend some $25.9 billion this year in online advertising.

"It's great news for Google," said Randy Skoglund, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, a Washington, D.C., group of technology professionals. "A Yahoo-Microsoft combination could have emerged as real competition for Google. This ensures they don't have a real competitor in the market."

Lintas Pinstorm tieup digital advertising

Lintas and Pinstorm tie up for digital advertising

Lintas Media Group and Pinstorm announce a Rs100 crore Performance Alliance that will boost their offline and online offerings

Mumbai: Pinstorm and Lintas Media Group have announced a significant non-equity partnership. Designed to push clients to performance-driven media choices, the alliance between the two leading firms in the offline and online worlds will put further pressure on traditional agencies and media houses. This move is being seen in media circles as a positive step towards a more evolved phase in digital advertising.

Lynn de Souza of the Rs1,800 crore Lintas Media Group said, “We don’t think that just buying a digital agency will contribute to our client’s success. What attracted us to Pinstorm was their pure adherence to pay-for-performance – a vastly different model to the commission and retainer structures that Indian clients are used to. We think this model can go a long way in bringing accountability and transparency to investments in advertising.”

The pay-for-performance model was pioneered by Google and Yahoo, and has been pushed further by Pinstorm, India’s only MNC digital ad firm, where the agency pays for the media and the creative – and the advertisers just pays for results.

Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm said, “around the world, media costs are going up and clients are cutting commissions and retainers because they are unable to see how advertising is performing. At Pinstorm, we simply ask the client to pay for the prospects or results we deliver. Our alliance with Lintas comes from our joint belief that the Rs16,000 crore Indian advertising industry needs a new model. By working together, pay-for-performance advertising can be brought into the mainstream of advertiser choices.”

The alliance estimates that they will be able to drive an incremental Rs100 crore of advertising to move over from traditional models to a performance-driven model in the next 12 months. “Digital advertising accounted for just 4% of spend in India last year. With this alliance and other efforts, investments in digital advertising will cross the Rs1,000 crore mark, almost 100% growth over last year” said Murthy.

“An industry only grows when there is pay-for-performance. For too long have clients worried that their agencies and publishers are simply recommending higher media spends because that’s how they earn more. That era will soon end. Our work with Pinstorm is to collaborate on clients to give performance-driven options initially across digital media - but we hope over time to grow the same basis to traditional media like broadcast, print and outdoor too” added de Souza.

The Lintas-Pinstorm alliance will first come into effect on Lintas’ roster of clients and soon expand to other businesses. Lintas Media Group is among the largest media agencies in India, managing a spend of over Rs1,300 crore on broadcast, print, outdoor and other media for clients like Idea, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Suzuki, ITC, Sony, UTI and Naukri.

Pinstorm is the largest independent digital advertising firm in South East Asia, with offices in Bombay, Delhi, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing and Santa Clara in Silicon Valley. It uses proprietary technologies across search engine marketing (SEM) search optimization (SEO), email, SMS advertising, online display advertising, online community creation and blog management to handle the performance advertising needs of Yatra, Jet Airways, Taj Hotels, Share khan and HSBC in India.

The alliance is effective immediately and in place across all advertisers in India.

Google Code Blog: Introducing the Google Visualization API

We spend a fair amount of time on data display and visualization projects at Google, and we have found that the "last mile" of these projects tend to become full projects in and of themselves.

Thus when we acquired Gapminder last year, we were excited by the opportunity to use Gapminder's powerful visualization techniques to bring new life and usefulness to Google datasets. And we were not alone -- the web is home to a vibrant community of developers who build amazing visualization applications.

With the community in mind, we're please to introduce the Google Visualization API, which is designed to make it easier for a wide audience to make use of advanced visualization technology, and do so in a way that makes it quick and easy to integrate with new visualizations.

There are a two key elements here: simplicity and ubiquity. We hope we nailed the first, but of course we want to hear your feedback on that. The second will take more time, but we hope we're on the right path. We're releasing this API at an early stage so we can get continuous feedback and be sure we're building it the right way.

This launch is in tandem and in cooperation with the Google Docs team, who just announced support for gadgets and the Visualization API in spreadsheets. This includes a set of gadgets created by Google and several other companies, including some that add pivoting, grouping, and other new functionality to your spreadsheets. You can see all of those in our 'featured' list within the visualization gallery, which includes the Gapminder Motion Chart that has proven especially popular among within Google.

We hope you're as excited about the Google Visualization API as we are -- please be sure to tell us what you think. We'll also be at Google I/O on May 28-29 for deeper discussions about the API or visualization techniques in general.

Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta Download

Yahoo Messenger 9.0 Beta Download

Your friends come first

Enjoy a fun new look, with more room for friends' images, info, updates.

Express your true self

Add your personality with new Emoticons, plus new skins.

Share your passions

Use Flickr to swap photos (and always keep all your friends in the picture).

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta Download

How Useful Are DNS Block Lists

DNS block lists can be a nice way to reduce the amount of email spam received by a mail server. They are usually cheap, easy to install and resource-friendly. As the name implies they work with the help of domain name servers. If a mail server uses DNS block lists it queries a name server for the address of a name built from the hostname or IP address of the sending mail server and the name of the block list. Depending on the result of the query the mail message gets accepted or rejected.

Probably the first DNS block list was the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL) started by MAPS (Mail Abuse Prevention System). It is now a service you have to pay for but the majority of DNS block lists is still available for free.

It is easy to include DNS block lists in the configuration of the most common mail servers (sendmail, postfix, exim, ...). The block lists are integrated on the server side and you save bandwidth because you don't need to receive the spam mails. The connections are rejected in the SMTP dialog between the sending and the receiving mail server. DNS block lists use a very low amount of resources from your mail server compared to spam or virus filters that have to analyse the contents of your mail messages.

Of course there are disadvantages also. Probably the most important disadvantage is that you are outsourcing the decision whether you accept or reject mails from a certain source. If the sending mail server is listed in one of the blocklists you are using you will reject every mail from this server. Usually you will not know the administrator of the blocklist but you have to trust him that he adheres to the policy of the blocklist. Even if the admin is trustworthy sometimes there will be mail servers listed that should not be on the blocklist. Imagine an ISP who has a lot of good customers but one customer who is a spammer. If the spammer sends out spam over the mail server of the ISP, the mail server may get listed on a blocklist. It will need some time until the ISP solves the problem with his bad customer and gets his mail server off the blocklist. In the meantime you will not receive mail from the good customers of this ISP. Another problem is that DNS blocklists don't live forever. If a blocklist is abandoned and your mail server still tries to query it, you may block mails that you wanted to receive.

So how useful are DNS block lists after evaluating the pros and cons? They can be very useful to lower the overall CPU usage of your anti spam strategy. It is advisable to use a small number of carefully chosen blocklists. If you are using a block list, subscribe to the mailing list or newsletter of the organisation who runs the block list. That way you will take note of any problems that the block list may have and you will be informed if it gets shut down. DNS blocklists should never be your only strategy against spam. They should be combined with other mechanisms to help keeping spam out of your inbox.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andreas_Stiasny

FTE Outsourcing Offshore story

The way we do business has rapidly changed in the last few years, technologies of telecommunication, information technology and media have of course been a major catalyst. The most recent and in some sense the oldest trend has been outsourcing and contract based work-FTE. Though both ideas have been here since the industrial revolution, their combination and organization plus the new technologies has led to a revolution in the way work is done.

To increase their flexibility, economy and creativity, many large and small companies have developed a strategy of focusing on their core business, and offshore outsourcing or work or FTE hiring.

Frequently, work is offshored in order to reduce labor expenses, to enter new markets, to tap talent currently unavailable domestically or to overcome regulations that prevent specific activities domestically as well.

Outsourcing Vs Offshoring

Outsourcing is the practice of using outside firms to handle work normally performed within the company. Offshoring is also a type of outsourcing; it involves having the outsourced business functions of the company done in another country.

Offshoring is sometimes contrasted with outsourcing.

• Companies subcontracting in the same country would be outsourcing, but not offshoring.

• On the other hand a company moving an internal business unit from one country to another would be offshoring, but not outsourcing.

• A company subcontracting business to a different company in another country would be both outsourcing and offshoring.

Offshoring Vs Full Time Equivalent

FTEhiring is a system which hires employees who work on a contract basis, Having FTE of 1.0 means that the person is equivalent to a full-time worker; while an FTE of 0.5 signals that the worker is only half-time.

Again when FTE is combined with outsourcing or offshoring it simply means that using the FTE standards you are subcontracting business to a different company in another country

Reasons & Benefits

There are many numerous reasons why Offshoring -FTE & outsourcing are considered

Control capital costs- Cost-cutting may not be the only reason to outsource, but it's certainly a major factor. Offshoring releases capital for investment elsewhere in your business, and allows you to avoid large expenditures in the early stages of your business.

Increase efficiency- Companies that do everything themselves have much higher research, development, marketing, and distribution expenses, An outside provider's cost structure and economy of scale can give your firm a boost and advantage.

Reduce labor costs-This is another big incentive as hiring or training staff for short-term or peripheral projects can be very expensive. Offshoring enables you to hire expert and trained employees at the fraction of the cost.

Take new projects quickly- An offshoring firm has the resources to start a project right away. Handling the same project in-house might involve months to hire people, train them, and provide the support they need. And if a project requires major capital investments the startup process can be even more complicated.

Focus on your core business-Offshoring can help your business to shift its focus from peripheral activities toward work that serves the customer, and it can help managers set their priorities more clearly.

Give you competitive edge-Outsourcing can help small firms by giving them access to the same economies of scale, efficiency, and expertise that large companies enjoy.

Reduce risk- Outsourcing providers assume and manage this risk for you, and they generally are much better at deciding how to avoid risk in their areas of expertise

Not many businesses really understand the benefits of outsourcing. It's true that outsourcing can save money, but that's not the only reason to do it.

• Staffing flexibility
• Acceleration of projects and quicker time to market
• High caliber professionals
• Ability to tap into best practices
• Knowledge transfer to permanent staff
• Cost-effective and predictable expenditures
• Access to the flexibility and creativity of experienced problem solvers
• Resource and core competency focus
• Reduce overheads, free up resources
• Avoid capital expenditure
• Offload non-core functions
• Enhance tactical and strategic advantages
• Spread your risks
• Focus scarce resources on time-critical projects

Finale

Offshoring can not only reduce costs but can also make you a global player in a very short time and within limited resources. There is almost a never ending list of services and tasks that could be Offshored, some are fairly rare, but others, such as IT and Human Resources, are becoming very common indeed.