Laliwala IT services offers 35+ enterprise open source online Training and Website Development Services. We offer various Training from popular open source stack like JBoss SOA Training, Alfresco Training, JBoss JBPM Training, Mule ESB Training, Activiti BPM Training, Apache Solr Training, Spring Training Course, Cloud Computing AWS Training, Apache Camel Training, Jboss ESB Training and many more.....(Call Now +91 9904245322)
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
IT Looking for New Jobs ?
A new survey by Jobvite, a recruiting platform for the social web, found that unemployed Americans aren’t the only ones looking for jobs. Sixty-nine percent of employed respondents are considered job seekers—meaning they’re actively seeking a new job or open to the idea, and it turns out they’re using social media to do it.
“Inside every employed worker is a job seeker,” says Dan Finnigan, president and chief executive of Jobvite. “Because of pent-up demand now that the economy is growing, those workers are looking for the next step in their career.” According to the 2012 Social Job Seeker Survey, which asked 2,100 people about their current employment status and the role of social networks in their job search, 52% of all job seekers (employed and unemployed) have used Facebook to look for work, 38% have used LinkedIn, and 34% have used Twitter. One in six employed respondents credit social media for their current job.
When asked about how they’ve used Facebook to find work, 25% of respondents said they updated their profile and added professional information; 17% provided their Facebook profile information on a job application or during an interview; 15% modified privacy settings with work in mind; 14% used the site to search for jobs; 9% used it to research a potential employer; 8% connected with a potential employer on the site; and 6% communicated with a recruiter on the site. Almost half (49%) said they’ve used their Facebook contacts for “career gain.”
Finnigan says, “It is extremely important to be a well-rounded job hunter, and that absolutely includes maintaining your professional presence on the three most-used social networks for recruiting: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. For many professional and managerial careers, that begins with LinkedIn, as it is the leading social network geared toward people in professional occupations.”
In Pictures: 7 Tips For Landing A Job Using Social Media
Twenty-six percent of surveyed job seekers said they’ve updated their LinkedIn profile with professional information; 11% used the site to search for job opportunities; 9% provided their LinkedIn profile information on a job application or during an interview; 7% modified privacy settings with work in mind; 7% connected with a potential employer; 6% used the site to research a potential employer; and 4% communicated with a recruiter through the site. Thirty-eight percent said they’ve used LinkedIn contacts for career gain.
“Job seekers have become increasingly frustrated at searching for jobs online and getting no response, and they intuitively know that the best opportunities are found through people, not search engines,” Finnigan says. “As social networking has become a core part of our cultural dynamic, we are continuing to see more and more job hunters taking advantage of a vertical they are comfortable with in order to find work. We anticipated growth last year and the numbers do show that job hunters are expanding their presence on social sites. Simply put, social networks provide a way for job seekers to tap into a large pool of job opportunities easily.”
However, he cautions job seekers against spending too much time online because the interaction that comes from an in-person meeting with the employees and potential colleagues at the company you’re interested in can never be replaced by a computer screen, he says.
“For active job seekers, spending an hour or two a day on social media, with the professional mindset of connecting with employers and looking for job listings, can pay off,” Finnigan says. For those who aren’t actively looking but are open to new opportunities, it’s important to make sure your profiles are current and the content is professional and appropriate.
Previous research from Jobvite found that 86% of recruiters are likely to look at social profiles for candidates, with 48% reporting they always do so. If you’re looking to clean up your profile, consider including content about participation in professional organizations. Why? Eighty percent of recruiters said they like to see that on social profiles; but just 1 in 5 job seekers have posted that information.
“My advice to employers is to use the standard employee background check initially and use social media for reference checks rather than prying too deeply into a candidate’s social media background,” Finnigan says. “Regardless, job seekers should know employers are looking at these and should be aware of the content they are putting out there.”
Read More
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
5 Best Cloud Storage
It's cloud storage week, with Dropbox rolling out an update that
improves how its users can share things, Microsoft's SkyDrive getting
dedicated desktop apps and a revamped feature set, and Google Drive
finally making its long-awaited debut. The market suddenly got much more
competitive perhaps even before we all realized it was necessary.
Although there are many more options out there, some serving specific niches, we've hand-picked what arguably are the most high-profile and consumer-friendly cloud storage services currently out. We took them for a spin to see how well they stack against each other, first with a brief overview on the table below and later in better detail, with impressions and commentary to give you a better idea of which one may fit your needs best.
Performance-wise Dropbox offers more flexibility than most competing services. You can tweak how fast it uploads and downloads files, which is great if you don't want it to steal bandwidth from other important things, and if two devices are on the same network they will sync much faster over LAN.
The Dropbox client works the same on every major platform -- Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry -- and you can also access your files through its clean and capable web interface on any device with a browser. Another key strength is that its popularity has led a lot of third-party developers to integrate Dropbox synchronization functionality into their apps and services using the public API.
Its main drawback? Dropbox offers just 2GB of storage for free, which compares unfavorably to rivals, but you can bump that up to 18GB without spending a dime by referring new users (at 500MB bonus space apiece). Paid storage is also expensive: 50GB or 100GB of extra storage costs $9.99 or $19.99 a month.
Sharing capabilities are also present, but as far as I can tell you can't set permissions from the desktop client, so you'll need to go to the web app and click through a few options depending if you want to send by email, share with other users, or make a file public. You can set files as view-only or make them editable.
Search is also a big part of Google Drive -- again, from the web interface -- allowing you to search by document type, owner, and other advanced filters. There's even OCR capabilities built into the service so Google will scan any images on your Drive account for text and make them searchable, or if Google can decipher the contents of your pictures (a landmark, for example), you can just search by subject and it will come up in the results. That's a neat feature indeed, although it might turn off more privacy conscious users -- especially after checking the TOS.
Google Drive is also available on Android and the iOS client is supposedly on the way. It comes with 5GB of free storage (Google Docs files don't count towards that limit), and offers upgrade options like $2.49/month for 25GB of extra storage, $4.99/month for 100GB of storage, and 200GB for $9.99/month.
If you are into the Apple ecosystem this one is a no-brainer. It's virtually transparent to the user and can keep your mail, contacts, calendar, documents, backups, and more, synchronized and stored in the cloud. Apple's iWork suite as well as various third-party OS X and iOS apps come with iCloud sync capabilities built in, but aside from those you won't be able to just throw any type of file into your account. It's definitely a more streamlined yet closed way to manage your stuff in the cloud.
Your music, movies, apps, books, and TV shows purchased from iTunes are saved to the cloud but don't count against your free storage, and you'll be able to stream that content to your iPhone and iPad. Pay an extra $25 a year for iTunes Match and you'll be able to store and stream music obtained from other sources, too.
The web interface is more limited compared to other cloud services but it's there in case you need to quickly check up on you mail, contacts or iWork documents from a browser, or to use the handy "Find My Phone" feature. Otherwise it's available on Mac, Windows and iOS and comes with 5GB of storage for free.
Like Google Drive, SkyDrive's web interface lets you create and edit documents within the browser for Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, and everything is searchable powered by Bing. You can also share files and folders with groups or via public links and set them as view-only or allow edits.
Overall SkyDrive is a very well-rounded cloud storage solution. It comes with 7GB of space, which is already enough to beat the other contenders in this round-up, and if you signed up before April 22 you can bump that to 25GB. Extra storage is also the cheapest all around at $10, $25 and $50 per year for 20GB, 50GB or 100GB.
That extra flexibility brings some added complexity that might turn off novice users -- it's not rocket science but it is a bit more work to manage compared to services like Dropbox that require almost no user intervention.
Other features include uploading via email (with Outlook integration), no file size limits, media streaming to mobile devices, and the ability to share files and folders with specific users or publicly, with the option to password-protect said files. There's also version tracking but versions are only saved for 5 days versus 25-30 on all others.
SugarSync is available on Windows and OS X desktops and just about every mobile platform. You get 5GB of free storage out of the box, while additional storage can be had for a monthly fee of $4.99 (30GB), $9.99 (60GB), $14.99 (100GB), $24.99 (250GB), or $39.99 (500GB).
The great thing about having many free cloud storage options is that we don't really need to pick one single winner. Rather, you should pick whatever meets your needs and has the stronger support for the platforms you use. If you are running low on space you could even combine two or three while sticking in the free tier.
In my case, combining iCloud and Dropbox works just fine. The first because I already have a couple of iDevices and using the cloud to backup my data is as simple as flipping a switch. The second because I've been using it for years to store my day-to-day work files and other important stuff I may need access to while on the go. A service like SkyDrive could replace Dropbox for me, but for now at least, since I'm not running low on space, not even the free 25GB are enough incentive to switch.
If I were to pick some winners, however, I'd go for something like this:
Although there are many more options out there, some serving specific niches, we've hand-picked what arguably are the most high-profile and consumer-friendly cloud storage services currently out. We took them for a spin to see how well they stack against each other, first with a brief overview on the table below and later in better detail, with impressions and commentary to give you a better idea of which one may fit your needs best.
Dropbox | Google Drive | iCloud | SkyDrive | SugarSync | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Free storage | 2GB | 5GB | 5GB | 7GB (25GB limited time offer) |
5GB |
Additional storage (price per year) | 50GB ($99); 100GB ($199) |
25GB ($30); 100GB ($60) |
10GB ($20); 20GB ($40); 50GB ($100) |
20GB ($10); 50GB ($25); 100GB ($50) |
30GB ($50); 60GB ($100); 100GB ($150) |
File size limit | 300MB via browser, unlimited from desktop | 10GB | 25MB free accounts, 250MB paid users | 2GB | |
Desktop apps | Windows, OS X, Linux | Windows, OS X | Windows, OS X | Windows, OS X | Windows, OS X |
Mobile apps | iOS, Android, BlackBerry | Android, iOS | iOS | Windows Phone, iOS | iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone |
Web interface | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Version tracking | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Multiple folder sync | No | No | No | Sort of | Yes |
Sync over LAN | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
Stream to mobile | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Public sharing | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
File/folder collaboration | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Password protect file sharing | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Dropbox
Dropbox wasn't
the first cloud-based storage service in the market, but it certainly
was the one that pioneered the seamless one-folder synchronization
approach that everyone is following now: toss any file into a preset
folder and it automatically appears in any other device connected to
your account. Make an edit and everything synchronizes instantaneously.
Famous for its simplicity and ease of use, Dropbox doesn't fall behind
when it comes to features either, with a version tracking system, easy
sharing, collaboration options, and more.Performance-wise Dropbox offers more flexibility than most competing services. You can tweak how fast it uploads and downloads files, which is great if you don't want it to steal bandwidth from other important things, and if two devices are on the same network they will sync much faster over LAN.
The Dropbox client works the same on every major platform -- Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry -- and you can also access your files through its clean and capable web interface on any device with a browser. Another key strength is that its popularity has led a lot of third-party developers to integrate Dropbox synchronization functionality into their apps and services using the public API.
Its main drawback? Dropbox offers just 2GB of storage for free, which compares unfavorably to rivals, but you can bump that up to 18GB without spending a dime by referring new users (at 500MB bonus space apiece). Paid storage is also expensive: 50GB or 100GB of extra storage costs $9.99 or $19.99 a month.
Google Drive
The debutant Google Drive
offers the same drag-and-drop synchronization capabilities as Dropbox
on the desktop, with clients available for Windows and OS X, but its web
portion is more robust than the latter. On the web, Drive ties in with
Google Docs and another handful of Drive apps for Chrome to support up
to 30 types of files, allowing you to view or edit images and videos,
work on documents, and more, right inside the browser.Sharing capabilities are also present, but as far as I can tell you can't set permissions from the desktop client, so you'll need to go to the web app and click through a few options depending if you want to send by email, share with other users, or make a file public. You can set files as view-only or make them editable.
Search is also a big part of Google Drive -- again, from the web interface -- allowing you to search by document type, owner, and other advanced filters. There's even OCR capabilities built into the service so Google will scan any images on your Drive account for text and make them searchable, or if Google can decipher the contents of your pictures (a landmark, for example), you can just search by subject and it will come up in the results. That's a neat feature indeed, although it might turn off more privacy conscious users -- especially after checking the TOS.
Google Drive is also available on Android and the iOS client is supposedly on the way. It comes with 5GB of free storage (Google Docs files don't count towards that limit), and offers upgrade options like $2.49/month for 25GB of extra storage, $4.99/month for 100GB of storage, and 200GB for $9.99/month.
Apple iCloud
Apple's iCloud
lacks many of the features available in cloud storage services like
Dropbox or SkyDrive, but still stands to grab a good chunk of the market
for a simple reason: its deep integration with iOS. In fact, almost 70%
of the 350+ million iDevice users have access to iCloud, with over 100 million using it already.If you are into the Apple ecosystem this one is a no-brainer. It's virtually transparent to the user and can keep your mail, contacts, calendar, documents, backups, and more, synchronized and stored in the cloud. Apple's iWork suite as well as various third-party OS X and iOS apps come with iCloud sync capabilities built in, but aside from those you won't be able to just throw any type of file into your account. It's definitely a more streamlined yet closed way to manage your stuff in the cloud.
Your music, movies, apps, books, and TV shows purchased from iTunes are saved to the cloud but don't count against your free storage, and you'll be able to stream that content to your iPhone and iPad. Pay an extra $25 a year for iTunes Match and you'll be able to store and stream music obtained from other sources, too.
The web interface is more limited compared to other cloud services but it's there in case you need to quickly check up on you mail, contacts or iWork documents from a browser, or to use the handy "Find My Phone" feature. Otherwise it's available on Mac, Windows and iOS and comes with 5GB of storage for free.
SkyDrive, SugarSync, Our Picks
SkyDrive
Microsoft's SkyDrive
has been around for a while but just recently it received a major
revamp that puts the service in the spotlight once again. New dedicated
apps for Windows and OS X integrate into the OS with a folder where
users can drop files into. The service now includes the synchronization
abilities of Live Mesh as well as its unique "fetch" feature, which
enables you to remotely access any file on your computer, even those
outside the default SkyDrive folder. Mobile apps are available for iOS
and Windows Phone.Like Google Drive, SkyDrive's web interface lets you create and edit documents within the browser for Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, and everything is searchable powered by Bing. You can also share files and folders with groups or via public links and set them as view-only or allow edits.
Overall SkyDrive is a very well-rounded cloud storage solution. It comes with 7GB of space, which is already enough to beat the other contenders in this round-up, and if you signed up before April 22 you can bump that to 25GB. Extra storage is also the cheapest all around at $10, $25 and $50 per year for 20GB, 50GB or 100GB.
SugarSync
Another well-established cloud storage provider and perhaps one of the most feature rich services you will find. SugarSync
is among the very few that lets users pick folders all over your
computer to sync, rather than having users reorganize stuff and throw
everything into a single folder. This allows very fine-grained control
over what to sync to each device connected to your account.That extra flexibility brings some added complexity that might turn off novice users -- it's not rocket science but it is a bit more work to manage compared to services like Dropbox that require almost no user intervention.
Other features include uploading via email (with Outlook integration), no file size limits, media streaming to mobile devices, and the ability to share files and folders with specific users or publicly, with the option to password-protect said files. There's also version tracking but versions are only saved for 5 days versus 25-30 on all others.
SugarSync is available on Windows and OS X desktops and just about every mobile platform. You get 5GB of free storage out of the box, while additional storage can be had for a monthly fee of $4.99 (30GB), $9.99 (60GB), $14.99 (100GB), $24.99 (250GB), or $39.99 (500GB).
Making some picks
The great thing about having many free cloud storage options is that we don't really need to pick one single winner. Rather, you should pick whatever meets your needs and has the stronger support for the platforms you use. If you are running low on space you could even combine two or three while sticking in the free tier.
In my case, combining iCloud and Dropbox works just fine. The first because I already have a couple of iDevices and using the cloud to backup my data is as simple as flipping a switch. The second because I've been using it for years to store my day-to-day work files and other important stuff I may need access to while on the go. A service like SkyDrive could replace Dropbox for me, but for now at least, since I'm not running low on space, not even the free 25GB are enough incentive to switch.
If I were to pick some winners, however, I'd go for something like this:
- Ease of use without sacrificing features: Dropbox.
- Best deal on free and paid storage: SkyDrive
- Fine-grained control and vast feature set: SugarSync
- Best browser experience (and no-brainer if you use Google Docs a lot): Google Drive
Examples of Big Data benefits
There is big hype being generating around the topic of Big Data, but there is no doubt that data volumes across global enterprises are ramping up exponentially.
IDC’s latest estimates puts the volume of digital content generated in 2012 at 2.7 zettabytes (ZB), up a staggering 48% from 2011. Over 90% of this information is unstructured (images, videos, MP3 files, and files based on social media). As such it contains potentially valuable information, but is difficult to analyse. As businesses seek to squeeze high-value insights from this data, the research group expects Big Data to become the next "must have" competency in 2012 and to see data and analytics technologies, including in-memory databases and BI tools, move into the mainstream.
Such moves to maximise the value of Big Data stores were recently undertaken at the research and development department of consumer products giant Unilever, which employs over 6,000 specialists stationed in 20 countries. It recently began an eScience project intended to accelerate the company’s access to global information. The programme was conceived to promote the usage of public data for biology and informatics research. To underpin the Big Data service a highly-scalable environment that supports parallel computation and heavy data storage demands was required.
Pete Keeley, Unilever Research’s eScience IT lead for cloud solutions, explained the company decided to partner with genomic data analysis company Eagle Genomics for the project. The programme relies on large Amazon Web Services cloud-based processing, and Amazon relational database service to store the computation results. Amazon’s cloud storage buckets maintain non-relational data as it migrates between various instances.
“Unilever’s digital data programme now processes genetic sequences twenty times faster — without incurring higher compute costs. In addition, its robust architecture supports ten times as many scientists, all working simultaneously,” Keeley said.
Speeding up the generation of reports derived from Big Data was also a priority for Deutsche Postbank in the UK. Its core business in London is corporate lending for commercial real estate (CRE) and, as a result, branch managers need accurate and timely management reports to help them make investment decisions. The financial company reported that a recent Big Data analytics roll out was required because it was finding CRE reporting were becoming increasingly time consuming and involved multiple staff to manually collect data from disparate sources.
In an attempt to address these issues the company evaluated multiple analytics offering from companies including Oracle, QlickView and Logica. Ultimately it selected an IBM Smart Analytics system designed to provide a single view of business information so that decisions can be made based on up-to-date information.
Head of IT at Deutsche Postbank, Clarel Sookun, said: "The system has really proved its worth by reducing the time it takes to produce our reports for CRE from hours to minutes and they are 'accurate to the penny'. The IBM system allows us to centrally store actual and reconciled data and gives us the ability to produce further management reporting at a higher quality level."
The success of the system has led to plans to extend it to the bank's finance operations, analysing loan and interest data, and performing 'what-if' scenarios using graphical data.
Sookun added: "The bank is now able to analyse data in different formats and produce subsets of reports as and when required, which used to be a very labour-intensive task. Implementing the system also unexpectedly highlighted inaccuracies in our existing data and we are now confident in consistent, high quality reporting. The beauty of the new system is that it can also integrate with our existing systems."
Attempts to improve access to Big Data recently led to one of the most “infrastructure challenging” project for global information group Thomson Reuters, which has with 55,000 staff spread across 100 countries. The organisation currently uses NetApp storage to support a wide array of business systems and research platforms. The Thomson Reuters shared IT infrastructure and cloud are built on NetApp storage, the VMware vSphere virtualisation platform, and Cisco networking switches. This infrastructure – supporting around 16 petabytes of global data - provides a foundation for Oracle-based content and metadata systems for Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw legal research service, which is used by 98% of the largest firms in the United States.
A recent enhancement of the Westlaw service – to create the WestlawNext offering required a major infrastructure upgrade for the company. “Our infrastructure strategy for WestlawNext required dramatically scaling shared storage,” said says Mick Atton, vice president and chief architect, Thomson Reuters Professional Division.
To facilitate this the company implemented a shared IT infrastructure and cloud foundation, which allowed it to avoid building a new two-megawatt data centre at an estimated cost of $65m. “NetApp performance and on-the-fly scalability allow us, for example, to search on a significantly larger body of content, as well as to seamlessly handle the unpredictable workloads of a new launch. In just the first year, we scaled to bring on some 6,000 new users, exceeding our first year adoption forecast by 50%,” said Cary Felbab, vice president, technology, Thomson Reuters Professional Division.
For global property consultancy Knight Frank a key objective of its Big Data strategy centred on deploying a system to help staff combine geospatial data with other sources of information. To facilitate this, working with Microsoft Partner intelligence, Knight Frank upgraded to Microsoft SQL Server 2012. The integration, reporting, and analysis capabilities — combined with Bing Maps for Enterprise — provided a platform for building a reporting and analysis tool for the London residential development team.
The first step in this process was to develop an application based on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, to give access to rich data on residential development opportunities in London. As a result the London team can use maps to either find an existing development site or add a new one. The filtering and segmentation capabilities of the application can then be used to drive deeper-level reporting and analysis provided by Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Power View.
Given the exponential rate at which corporate data volumes are expanding it is apparent that the CIOs cannot afford to shy away from the analytical and infrastructure issues posed by Big Data. And it is equally apparently that successfully taming the Big Data tiger can deliver compelling business benefits. The recent Economist Intelligence Unit report, The Deciding Factor: Big Data & Decision making, reveals that nine out of 10 business leaders believe data is now the fourth factor of production, as fundamental to business as land, labour and capital. The study, commissioned by Capgemini among over 600 C-level executives and senior management and IT leaders worldwide, indicates that the use of Big Data has improved businesses’ performance, on average; by 26% and that the impact will grow to 41% over the next three years. The majority of companies (58%) claim they will make a bigger investment in Big Data over the next three years.
Two-thirds of executives consider their organisations are ‘data-driven’, reporting that data collection and analysis underpins their firm’s business strategy and day-to-day decision-making.
“The exploitation of Big Data fuels a step change in the quality of business decision-making,” said Paul Nannetti, global sales and portfolio director, Capgemini.
“But it’s not only through harnessing the many new sources of data that organisations can obtain competitive advantage. It’s the ability to quickly and efficiently analyse that data to optimise processes and decision making in real time that adds the greatest value. In this way, genuinely data-driven companies are able to monitor customer behaviours and market conditions with greater certainty, and react with speed and effectiveness to differentiate from competition.”
Top tips for improving your email marketing success rate
Email marketing continues to dominate as one of the most popular forms of advertising around, yet everyone is continually looking to improve their success rate on this platform. What's great is that you don't always have to move heaven and Earth to boost your stats.
Anyone can send an email out with an advert for a product and score the occasional sale. That's not difficult. To get the real 'wow' stats you just need to look a little deeper at what you are doing in your email marketing campaign and how recipients are reacting to your messages.
A survey from Econsultancy in 2012 found that two-thirds of marketers branded their return from email marketing services 'good' or 'excellent'. The following tips are not just for the one-third that have yet to achieve satisfactory results; they are also for the happy two-thirds, as they may be able to elevate their game even further...
Measure the stats
Before you can talk about how to improve the 'success rate' of your email marketing, you need to define success. There are a range of metrics that could imply success, from the basic open rate to whether people are clicking through from the email to your website, but also whether anyone is actually converting too.It's certainly worth keeping an eye on all three of these stats (along with your list growth rate, unsubscribe rate and any other figures relevant to your wider objectives), while also interpreting them in context. A high click through rate is great, but what does it mean that there are zero conversions at the end of every customer journey?
Further to this, make sure you take into account seasonal trends - it may be that every January the open rate for certain industries is low.
Diagnose the problem, then apply the cure
By looking at the figures - via whichever analytics system you are using - you will see where your campaign is under performing. Like any good doctor, when you begin to see what the symptoms are then you are able to come up with a reasoned explanation as to why it is happening - and begin working on a cure.So if your open rate is low (or simply lower than you would like) then you have narrowed down the problem area. Now think about all the factors that could be affecting this - the 'from' field, subject line, time sent and any deliverability issues. From here, it is a question of tweaking each contributing factor and seeing what the results tell you.
Some simple A/B testing should tell you, for instance, whether a £10-off voucher or a £20-off voucher is required to convince a significant proportion of a certain demographic to open your message. Also, don't forget to include the sign-up process in your diagnosis, maybe the people on your email list simply are not good leads?
Content
The content of your message is, of course, what is driving its success, so think carefully about what you are including and how this contributes to your goals. Some companies try to include too much in a message and end up with several weak calls-to-action - you want to provide the reader with relevant and engaging content (text, pictures, etc.) with a clear 'next step'.Make sure you look at all of the different facets of your email, not just the body text and subject line (although these are admittedly major points). For example, have you thought about playing with the from field? You could have the message coming from an individual within your firm, rather than just the brand name, or perhaps it is more effective to have just the brand name? Keep testing to find out.
A key part of producing the right content is relevance and a prerequisite for relevance is actually understanding your target customer base. Who they are, what motivates them and how they react to certain issues - these can all help you to meet or even surpass their expectations.
Mobile
Adobe research from 2012 revealed that 79 per cent of smartphone owners use their devices to check their email - and the proportion of people with a smartphone continues to grow rapidly - so if you are not taking into account the mobile factor, then you are heading for trouble.Not only will this affect the length of your content, as mobiles have smaller screens and will resize messages, but it should also inform other decisions, such as the type of files you send out and the size of the message. Recipients will not be pleased if they decide to download your message on their phone, only to see 100MB of their 500MB per month data plan eaten up by the email!
Also, think about how your call to action can be adapted if a lot of people are opening the message on a phone - including a link to a cluttered web page may not be appropriate. Instead, think about creating a responsive web page; so if they do come through on a mobile, then it will look good on their screens. You could also consider including a phone number very high up in the email - preferably tracking the number to show that the lead came from an email.
All of these things and more can elevate your email marketing success; it's all about zeroing in on a problem area and making it fit better with your recipients' expectations or motivations.
Powerful Newsletter Builders
Like other forms of content marketing, email marketing
can be a very powerful tool for boosting engagement and generating
leads. But sending plain text emails from your Gmail account just
doesn’t cut it for businesses. To effectively harness the power of
email, you need a strong newsletter builder to create campaigns, manage
contacts, and analyze results. Here are 7 of the best newsletter
builders to help you create email campaigns that get results.
With a drag-and-drop design editor, 437 templates to get you started building your email newsletter, and a powerful template language you can use to create fully customizable templates of your own, Mailchimp is one of best professional newsletter builders out there.
Other features include:
Other features include:
With high-quality email creation tools, an excellent WYSIWYG editor, and 350 templates to choose from, this email builder offers unbeatable creative options. GetResponse also includes powerful autoresponder capability, custom landing page and form builders, a strong spam checker, and in-depth reporting and analytics to help you make the most of your email marketing campaigns.
Other features include:
Other features include:
Other popular features of Benchmark Email include:
Other features include:
Other features include:
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email clients for bloggers thanks to its affordability, ease of use, high-quality campaign reports, and fun quirky culture. This newsletter builder offers an indefinite free trial period based on your number of contacts and emails per month, and its pay scale for additional contacts and emails starts at just $10 per month.With a drag-and-drop design editor, 437 templates to get you started building your email newsletter, and a powerful template language you can use to create fully customizable templates of your own, Mailchimp is one of best professional newsletter builders out there.
Other features include:
- Unlimited image hosting (exceeds market standard)
- Spam checker
- Autoresponder
- Full featured API
- Automatic removal of unsubscribes and bounced emails
- Social media and Google Analytics integration
- A/B testing
- Detailed reporting
- Mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android
Aweber
Another popular email client for bloggers and internet marketers, Aweber is known for its professionalism, support, autoresponder capability, and anti-spam policy. Aweber ranks at the top in terms of customer service, offering all types of support 24/7 to help customers build amazing email campaigns. While this email client does not offer any image hosting or a drag-and-drop editing feature, the WYSIWYG editor is an excellent tool and includes 150 templates to start with.Other features include:
- Spam Assassin spam checker program
- Autoresponder series with advanced scheduling
- Facebook, Twitter, and third-party integration
- 100% email deliverability
- RSS-to-email and blog digest capability
- List segmentation and tracking
- Educational knowledge base, blog, webinars, and videos
GetResponse
This professional newsletter builder is known for its design flexibility and top-notch reporting. In fact, according to one email marketing review, GetResponse has no disadvantages or cons to worry about, making it a powerful yet affordable email sender.With high-quality email creation tools, an excellent WYSIWYG editor, and 350 templates to choose from, this email builder offers unbeatable creative options. GetResponse also includes powerful autoresponder capability, custom landing page and form builders, a strong spam checker, and in-depth reporting and analytics to help you make the most of your email marketing campaigns.
Other features include:
- 1 GB image hosting (exceeds market standard)
- Both time-based and action-based autoresponders
- Social media and Google Analytics integration
- Powerful reporting on ROI, autoresponders, social activity, and more
- Mobile apps for iPhone and Android
My Newsletter Builder
With high marks in ease of use, reporting, and customer service, My Newsletter Builder is the email client of choice for many big brands and groups. This email campaign tool offers the perfect combination of affordable and flexible with over 1000 templates to choose from, a high-quality drag-and-drop editor, and unlimited image hosting. While MNB doesn’t have a built-in spam checker or A/B testing, it does include hundreds of stock buttons and images, photo editing, audio and video streaming, and lots more features that make it a flexible and powerful email tool.Other features include:
- Non-profit, business and personal, and enterprise-level solutions
- Pre-created content and designs to help you get started
- Advanced HTML editor
- Header customization
- Unlimited multimedia storage
- Unlimited contacts and segmentation
- Free online sharing, publishing, and archiving
- Automatic bounce management
- Google Analytics and Survey Gizmo integration
- Third-party app integration
Benchmark Email
This email client consistently ranks well in all categories and is affordable to boot. Benchmark Email combines solid contact management, in-depth statistics reporting, and high-quality customer service with hundreds of email templates, plenty of image hosting, and an excellent drag-and-drop editor to help you make the best email campaigns possible. This email sender offers a range of send-based, list-based, and high-volume plans to accommodate everyone.Other popular features of Benchmark Email include:
- Spam checker
- Human approval of emails to prevent spam
- Autoresponder capability
- Social media and Google Analytics integration
- 10 MB image hosting
- Automatic unsubscribe and bounce removal
Campaign Monitor
If you know HTML or prefer to design your own emails, Campaign Monitor is an excellent newsletter builder for you. This email manager offers unlimited image hosting, automatically inlines CSS, and doesn’t impose design restrictions or “powered by” badges, allowing you to be as flexible and creative as you want. Campaign Monitor also offers about 40 templates to help beginners send professional-looking emails.Other features include:
- In-browser HTML updates
- Powerful template language to turn web pages into email templates
- Mobile-optimized designs
- One-click content importing
- WYSIWYG template editor
- RSS to email
- A/B testing
- Autoresponders and triggered messaging
- Social media, Google Analytics, and hundreds more integrations
- Paid spam checker
Constant Contact
Known for its high-quality customer service and contact management, Constant Contact is the newsletter builder of choice for many small businesses, associations, and non-profit organizations. With hundreds of professional email templates, a quick and easy drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor, and some image hosting, this email client makes it easy to create and send beautiful emails without any technical experience or HTML.Other features include:
- Detailed reporting and analytics
- Several contact importing options
- Autoresponder capability
- Spam checker
- Automatic duplicate email check and unsubscribe removal
- Free personal coaching and support
Other Newsletter Builders
Which email clients do you use and why? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments!The malware is the result of a growing trend of cybercriminals targeting online brokerage accounts, Group-IB researchers say
Security researchers from
Russian cybercrime investigations company Groub-IB have recently
identified a new piece of malware designed to steal login credentials
from specialised software used to trade stocks and other securities
online.
The malware targets Internet trading software called QUIK and FOCUS IVonline from Russian software development firms ARQA Technologies and EGAR Technology, respectively, Group-IB researchers said Wednesday in a blog post.
The software can be used to trade on the Moscow Exchange (MICEX), the Saint Petersburg Exchange, the Ukrainian Exchange and other exchanges. It's also used by other brokerage firms like BrokerCreditService in Cyprus, Otkritie in the U.K. and Russia, InstaForex, as well as by large banks like Sberbank, Alfa-Bank and Promsvyazbank, Group-IB said.
Once installed on a computer, the malware checks for the presence of the targeted applications and begins to monitor how the user interacts with them by taking screen shots. It also steals the log-in credentials and uploads the data to a command and control server, the Group-IB researchers said.
Customers should have standard malware protection installed on their computers like antivirus programs and firewalls if they use financial software, Vladimir Kurlyandchik, head of business development at ARQA Technologies, said Thursday via email. "This is our standard recommendation."
Customers who suspect that their accounts might have been accessed without authorization should immediately change their access keys, he said.
According to Kurlyandchik, the QUIK software supports several mechanisms that can prevent account hijacking. This includes the ability to restrict access only to certain IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, as well as two-step authentication via SMS or RSA SecureID tokens.
Clients and brokers can choose the best option suited for their situation, Kurlyandchik said. The brokerage firms can also use some tools to monitor activity and block access to suspicious IP addresses, he said.
However, even if such security features are available it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is using them. There are many ways to extract funds from online trading accounts because of poor anti-fraud protection on the server side, said Andrey Komarov, the head of international projects at Group-IB.
For example, FOCUS IVonline is normally used through an encrypted VPN (Virtual Private Network) channel provided by a Russian security product, but this is not enough and hackers can still easily abuse the software, Komarov said. The malware can use remote access tools like VNC or RDP to allow attackers to connect through the victim's computer.
Most of these specialized trading applications are well designed and have good security, but they are installed in untrusted environments, so it's hard to protect them, Komarov said. The customer's PC security is the main issue, he said.
There have been previous reports of hackers compromising online brokerage accounts. Those attacks primarily used form grabbers and Web injects like those seen in online banking malware, Komarov said.
Targeting online trading accounts is part of a big and growing trend for cybercriminals, he said.
The malware targets Internet trading software called QUIK and FOCUS IVonline from Russian software development firms ARQA Technologies and EGAR Technology, respectively, Group-IB researchers said Wednesday in a blog post.
The software can be used to trade on the Moscow Exchange (MICEX), the Saint Petersburg Exchange, the Ukrainian Exchange and other exchanges. It's also used by other brokerage firms like BrokerCreditService in Cyprus, Otkritie in the U.K. and Russia, InstaForex, as well as by large banks like Sberbank, Alfa-Bank and Promsvyazbank, Group-IB said.
Once installed on a computer, the malware checks for the presence of the targeted applications and begins to monitor how the user interacts with them by taking screen shots. It also steals the log-in credentials and uploads the data to a command and control server, the Group-IB researchers said.
Customers should have standard malware protection installed on their computers like antivirus programs and firewalls if they use financial software, Vladimir Kurlyandchik, head of business development at ARQA Technologies, said Thursday via email. "This is our standard recommendation."
Customers who suspect that their accounts might have been accessed without authorization should immediately change their access keys, he said.
According to Kurlyandchik, the QUIK software supports several mechanisms that can prevent account hijacking. This includes the ability to restrict access only to certain IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, as well as two-step authentication via SMS or RSA SecureID tokens.
Clients and brokers can choose the best option suited for their situation, Kurlyandchik said. The brokerage firms can also use some tools to monitor activity and block access to suspicious IP addresses, he said.
However, even if such security features are available it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is using them. There are many ways to extract funds from online trading accounts because of poor anti-fraud protection on the server side, said Andrey Komarov, the head of international projects at Group-IB.
For example, FOCUS IVonline is normally used through an encrypted VPN (Virtual Private Network) channel provided by a Russian security product, but this is not enough and hackers can still easily abuse the software, Komarov said. The malware can use remote access tools like VNC or RDP to allow attackers to connect through the victim's computer.
Most of these specialized trading applications are well designed and have good security, but they are installed in untrusted environments, so it's hard to protect them, Komarov said. The customer's PC security is the main issue, he said.
There have been previous reports of hackers compromising online brokerage accounts. Those attacks primarily used form grabbers and Web injects like those seen in online banking malware, Komarov said.
Targeting online trading accounts is part of a big and growing trend for cybercriminals, he said.
Microsoft launches YouTube app, Google demands it taken down
Google yesterday issued a cease-and-desist letter to Microsoft, demanding Redmond pull its YouTube app from the Windows Phone Store. The app has been available for over a week; however, it violates YouTube's API usage terms. Google says Microsoft has until May 22 to withdraw or change the app before deeper consequences are triggered -- possibly even legal recourse.
Microsoft's primary offense is the app's ability to strip advertisements from YouTube videos -- an entirely deliberate feature, according to reports. Additionally, the WP8-based app provides users with ability to download videos to their devices -- another mark against Microsoft in its use of YouTube's API.
When ZDNet asked Microsoft if something had changed policy-wise, allowing them to release such a YouTube app, the company stated, "Windows Phone invested additional engineering resources against existing APIs to re-architect a Windows Phone app that delivers a great YouTube experience, including support for unique Windows Phone 8 features such Live Tiles and Kids Corner. Microsoft did not receive any additional technical support to create the Windows Phone YouTube app."
Shortly after Google issued its notice, Microsoft responded that it would be "happy to include advertising", but claims it needs Google to provide the "necessary" APIs. An "API" is a set of high-level instructions commonly used in software and web-based services, allowing developers to utilize features in a simplified way.
At the time of this writing, the app is still available for download and there have been no outward signs of Microsoft hustling to remove it.
Microsoft's official response is as follows:
"YouTube is consistently one of the top apps downloaded by smartphone users on all platforms, but Google has refused to work with us to develop an app on par with other platforms. Since we updated the YouTube app to ensure our mutual customers a similar YouTube experience, ratings and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive. We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers."The "necessary APIs" part is a bit misleading. The APIs Microsoft appears to be interested in are for metadata only; these bits and pieces of information about each video aren't really necessary for displaying ads. Rather, the difficulty for Microsoft is its desire to craft more than just a WP8 app which essentially opens to YouTube's website; the software-maker wants to build an app that follows WP8's tile-based design and sports its own look and feel. To do this though, Microsoft needs access to YouTube's video metadata -- data which Google doesn't seem eager to part with.
China to pressure it to cool its cyber-attacks on U.S. targets
The notorious Unit 61398, also known as the “Comment Crew,”—an elite cyber unit linked by U.S. security firms to the China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—has renewed its raids on U.S. entities using different techniques, the New York Times reported Sunday.
Cyber security firm Mandiant told the Times that the attacks had been renewed, but would not identify the targets—although it did acknowledge that many of them were the same ones assaulted earlier by the Chinese cyber unit.
Mandiant did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Background
Mandiant released a report in February that kicked off the shame campaign against China. In it, it tied Unit 61398 to cyber-attacks on 141 companies—87 percent of them have headquarters in English-speaking countries and against companies that work in 20 industries considered strategic by China.Immediately following the report’s release, China repudiated the document, maintaining it was based on flawed evidence.
Nevertheless, the attacks began to abate after the report’s release, and the hackers removed their spy tools from the organizations they had infiltrated, according to Mandiant.
Over the past two months, however, Mandiant found an uptick in infiltration activity aimed at the same companies but originating from different servers.
Activity now is about 60 to 70 percent of what it was before the hiatus began in February, Mandiant estimated.
Not a good strategy?
The shame campaign was a dubious strategy, asserted Jeffrey Carr, CEO of Taia Global and author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld.”It’s a terrible idea,” he told PCWorld.
Shame, as a diplomatic tool, doesn’t seem to work however it is used. “We’ve tried to use it to shame North Korea into behaving itself and obviously that hasn’t worked,” Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst at IT-Harvest, told PCWorld.
Carr said that the U.S. government needs to cooperate and collaborate with China to pursue criminal groups engaging in intellectual property theft.
”You’re not going to stop a government from engaging in espionage, so that should just be off the table,” he said.
What might work
By collaborating with China to attack groups operating within its border or commandeering its computers from outside its borders for criminal espionage activity, much data theft could be stopped, Carr said.”The New York Times and Mandiant have collaborated on this theory that Comment Crew is part of the PLA,” Carr added. “Mandiant has never established that. It just made the claim that it is.”
Another way to counter cyber threats from China is to make it more expensive for the hackers to get the information they want, added Stiennon.
”Right now it’s very inexpensive to engage in these cyber-attacks,” he said.
”Mandiant’s report slowed them down, forced them to retrench, pull their tools out, and reengage,” he continued. “They spent a lot of man hours because of that report.”
”That reaction was expensive for the attackers,” he added.
charge your phone in less than 30 seconds - won $50,000
An 18-year-old recently won $50,000 in scholarship funds for inventing a supercapacitor that could one day be used to fully charge a mobile device like a smartphone in just a few seconds. Eesha Khare and two other teens were among the top winners at the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.
Her design, a tiny device that fits inside cell phone batteries, would allow them to fully charge within 20-30 seconds. The supercapacitor can last for up to 10,000 cycles which outpaces traditional batteries by a factor of 10. Intel said the invention also has potential applications for car batteries but it’s the mobile side that could have the most immediate potential.
She is one of two recipients of the Intel Foundation Young Scientists Award this year. The other winner, Henry Lin, created a model that simulates thousands of galaxies. The Gordon E. Moore Award, which honors the best of the best, went to Ionut Budisteanu who created an AI model that could eventually lead to cheaper self-driving vehicles. The 19-year-old earned $75,000 in scholarship money for his efforts.
Khare’s invention has only been used to light up an LED thus far but it was reportedly able to do a great job at it. With any luck, Khare will continue to develop the technology and bring it up to scale where it could be used inside future portable devices. After all, battery life in portable electronics is still a pretty big problem for most people – especially heavy users.
Google Checkout payment processing tool to shut down in November 13
Google will retire its Checkout payment processing tool on Nov. 20, and warned retailers they will need to move to a different payment processing platform.
Checkout, which launched in 2006, was merged with Wallet, which is a mobile payments tool, last November. The product was aimed at taking on eBay's PayPal service, which dominates Web-based payments.
Google said it has partnered with Braintree, Shopify and Freshbooks to offer discounted options for retailers that have not yet selected an alternative payment processor.
Wallet will now be the company's focus. Developers for its Play store will be moved to the Google Wallet Merchant Center, Justin Lawyer, senior product manager for Google Wallet, wrote. There will be no changes for consumers using Wallet on sites such as Priceline and Uber, according to Lawyer.
U.S. merchants who do have a new payment processor can apply for Wallet's "Instant Buy" feature, Lawyer wrote. Instant Buy, which was formerly known as "Google Wallet for Online Commerce," allows consumers to share their payment details with merchants.
Wallet stores users payment details and is also capable of performing contactless payments with NFC-enabled Android devices.
Last week, Google announced it had integrated Gmail with Wallet, allowing U.S. users to send money to each other. Transfers made from a bank account linked with Google Wallet are free.
12 Benefits Of Having A Website
Some of the goals that can be achieved by launching a website include the following:
1. Far Cheaper and Much More Flexible Than Print Advertising
The Internet is extremely different from print advertising in that space is cheap, your advertisement is accessible for a longer period of time, the content can be changed without having to ask someone to do it for you (if you use a content management system) and you can potentially reach a wider audience.
This is not to say that you should not use other forms of advertising at all You can use it to entice people to visit your website and find out about your company and potentially open two-way communication between the potential customer and a sales person.
2. Market Expansion
The Internet has allowed businesses to break through the geographical barriers and become accessible, virtually, from any country in the world by a potential customer that has Internet access.
3. Diversify Revenue Streams
A website is not just a medium for representation of your company, it is a form of media from which everybody can acquire information. You can use this media to sell advertising space to other businesses.
A recent trend has risen where businesses feature their very own directory of complimentary services, where the visitor can search for information on a business that will enhance the use of your service. The business sells complimentary businesses a listing in their directory.
A good example is a catering company featuring a directory with businesses such as event co-coordinators, electronic equipment rental companies, etc.
4. 24 7 365
No more turning customers away when its time to close shop, putting up a note saying closed for public holiday , or leaving an irritating message on your answering service specifying your trading hours tell them to visit your website for information they are looking for.
5. Offer Convenience
It is far more convenient for a person to research a product on the Internet than it is to get in a car, drive somewhere and look for or ask someone for information on a product. Also, a potential customer won t have to judge a call centre agent to determine whether he/she has their best interests in mind, or just wants to make a sale.
The potential customer can visit your website whenever they like in their own privacy and comfort, without the stresses and distractions that exist in the real world .
Your website is a self-service medium for example, instead of having to wait in a long cue to pay your TV License, you can now do it electronically through the TV License website.
6. Add Value and Satisfaction
By offering convenience, a point of reference and that touch of individualized customer service, you ultimately add value to your offering and your customers experience a higher level of satisfaction.
Your website can add value in other ways too, by featuring tips, advice and general interest content you can entertain your customers. This will also help them remember you better.
7. Standardize Sales Performance
By looking at which approached / pitches have worked in the past and those which have not, you can produce the ultimate pitch and use it with your website, so that you use it on every customer. No more training of sales people and waiting for them to get a feel for your line of trade.
8. Improve credibility
A website gives you the opportunity to tell potential customers what you are about and why you deserve their trust and confidence. In fact, many people use the internet for pre-purchase research so that they can determine for themselves whether a particular supplier or brand is worthy of their patronage, and won t take them for a ride.
The Internet also allows for Viral Marketing where your website visitors spread positive word-of-mouth about your business - your customers do your marketing!
9. Promote your Brick n Mortar Presence
Getting lost trying to find a place can be frustrating for a potential customer. You can publish what they call a dummy map on your website, which shows directions and landmarks graphically, and the potential customer can print it out when looking for your Brick n Mortar premises.
You might advertise a promotion on your website encouraging the visitor to visit your Brick n Mortar premises (e.g.. At a branch near you! ).
Also, if you recently moved to a new location, you will have to wait for the next 'phone directory to come out before people figure out where you currently are. Because a website is flexible you can change the content as you like you can change you contact details instantly and lower the risk of losing customers when moving to a new location.
10. Growth Opportunity
A website serves as a great place to refer potential investors to, to show them what your company is about, what it has achieved and what it can achieve in future.
11. Two-Way Communicative Marketing
Customers can quickly and easily give feedback on your product and/or marketing approach.
12. Cheap Market Research
You can use features on your website such as visitor polls, online surveys and your website statistics to find out what your customers like more and how they feel about certain aspects of your business to determine how you can improve your product and the way you do business.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Do's and Don'ts on LinkedIn
1. Share links (using a URL shortener) to interesting articles, websites
or video you have found that some individuals in your network might
appreciate. Don't worry about whether all of your connections will find
the information equally valuable. Also, try to use words that grab the
readers and encourage them to click the link.
2. Pose a question that could lead to solving a problem you have, like: "Anyone know any good controller candidates?" One of my connections saved $20,000 in recruiting fees by posting an update like this a couple days before calling a recruiter. (I apologize to all recruiters for having to mention this situation.)
3. Conduct an informal poll of your network (which consists of many smart businesspeople) relating to a topic that is of interest to you, such as: "What interest rates are you seeing for lines of credit in the current environment?"
4. Mention a person or a situation that might be helpful to some of your connections, like: "I just met with John Jones from ABC Insurance Company and found out they are saving companies lots of $$ on workmen's compensation insurance."
5. Talk about an event you are attending or have attended to encourage involvement and/or questions about what you learned there.
6. If you are a job seeker, don't use this to say, "Hey, I'm still looking for a job." Rather, mention job fairs you are attending, people you are interviewing with, networking events you are going to, etc.
7. Use the "Like" feature when you see a helpful update from one of your connections. Doing this shares that update with your entire network.
DON'T DO THIS:
1. Mentioning personal things--like what you had for breakfast and the fact your dog is sick today--is just wrong. This suggests to the business professionals in your network that you don't really respect their time.
2. Continually talking about specific products and services takes people back to the days of big newspaper ads and screaming radio messages. This is not the purpose of social media, especially LinkedIn.
3. Avoid talking about topics that might be sensitive to some of your audience. I am too embarrassed to even think about, let alone share, some of the items I see posted as status updates. You know what I mean. If your mother wouldn't want you talking about it, don't put it in your LinkedIn Status Box.
4. Think twice before posting your physical whereabouts. I have heard several real-life examples of people's homes being broken into after putting out an "I-am-out-of-town" update on Twitter. Sorry, all you Foursquare users, but I had to share that.
5. The LinkedIn/Twitter interface is causing people to have too many LinkedIn updates as well as inappropriate updates. So, if you are using that interface, be selective about the updates you share between the two platforms. LinkedIn and Twitter are designed with different purposes and strategies.
6. The netiquette on LinkedIn is no more than a couple updates per day, whereas on Twitter you are almost expected to tweet twenty times per day. (I apologize to my Twitter followers for not getting out twenty per day!) So, watch the frequency of your LinkedIn status updates.
7. Don't waste your time reading updates from people who violate all of the above. By using the "Hide" function, you can stop an individual's status updates from showing up on your home page.
2. Pose a question that could lead to solving a problem you have, like: "Anyone know any good controller candidates?" One of my connections saved $20,000 in recruiting fees by posting an update like this a couple days before calling a recruiter. (I apologize to all recruiters for having to mention this situation.)
3. Conduct an informal poll of your network (which consists of many smart businesspeople) relating to a topic that is of interest to you, such as: "What interest rates are you seeing for lines of credit in the current environment?"
4. Mention a person or a situation that might be helpful to some of your connections, like: "I just met with John Jones from ABC Insurance Company and found out they are saving companies lots of $$ on workmen's compensation insurance."
5. Talk about an event you are attending or have attended to encourage involvement and/or questions about what you learned there.
6. If you are a job seeker, don't use this to say, "Hey, I'm still looking for a job." Rather, mention job fairs you are attending, people you are interviewing with, networking events you are going to, etc.
7. Use the "Like" feature when you see a helpful update from one of your connections. Doing this shares that update with your entire network.
DON'T DO THIS:
1. Mentioning personal things--like what you had for breakfast and the fact your dog is sick today--is just wrong. This suggests to the business professionals in your network that you don't really respect their time.
2. Continually talking about specific products and services takes people back to the days of big newspaper ads and screaming radio messages. This is not the purpose of social media, especially LinkedIn.
3. Avoid talking about topics that might be sensitive to some of your audience. I am too embarrassed to even think about, let alone share, some of the items I see posted as status updates. You know what I mean. If your mother wouldn't want you talking about it, don't put it in your LinkedIn Status Box.
4. Think twice before posting your physical whereabouts. I have heard several real-life examples of people's homes being broken into after putting out an "I-am-out-of-town" update on Twitter. Sorry, all you Foursquare users, but I had to share that.
5. The LinkedIn/Twitter interface is causing people to have too many LinkedIn updates as well as inappropriate updates. So, if you are using that interface, be selective about the updates you share between the two platforms. LinkedIn and Twitter are designed with different purposes and strategies.
6. The netiquette on LinkedIn is no more than a couple updates per day, whereas on Twitter you are almost expected to tweet twenty times per day. (I apologize to my Twitter followers for not getting out twenty per day!) So, watch the frequency of your LinkedIn status updates.
7. Don't waste your time reading updates from people who violate all of the above. By using the "Hide" function, you can stop an individual's status updates from showing up on your home page.
7 outsourcing nightmares in IT business.
Outsourcing IT functions can be a smart business move, particularly if your organization lacks specific expertise. IT infrastructure, networking, application development, help desk -- plenty of high-quality service providers are available to fulfill your IT needs.
But like other major business and technology initiatives, outsourcing comes with risks, regardless of how experienced the outsourcing provider is or how good the move looked initially.
Outsourcer employee turnover, communication breakdowns, shortsighted contracts: They can all sink an arrangement, resulting in lost opportunities, downtime, or worse. In the interest of forewarned is forearmed, here are seven real-life examples of what can go wrong with an outsourcing initiative - and how to avoid or resolve these outsourcing arrangements gone amok.
Outsourcing nightmare No 1: Outsourcing employee exodus
Several years ago, Coalition (Technologies had a project for an important client that it sent to an outsourcing partner to complete. The Web design and marketing firm had worked with the outsourcing partner before, and the experience had been positive. The partner had been responsive and provided a high level of quality and communication, says Joel Gross, founder and CEO of Coalition."Everything seemed to be moving along fine, until the project neared its completion date," Gross says. Then the outsourcing company's CEO contacted Coalition to report that more than half of the company's staff had quit.
"They did not have the capability to complete the project," Gross says. "As a result, we had to scramble and find a way to resolve [the problem] internally on extremely short notice."
While Coalition was able to deliver the work without too much added delay, it learned a valuable lesson about the risks of outsourcing. Now, the company tries to keep all of its critical IT work in-house, relying on a dedicated, handpicked (team.
When technology projects pile up, Coalition does contract outside providers to perform basic tasks, Gross says. It might sound obvious, but including every possible contingency in the contract is vital.
"Avoiding contracting nightmares is possible; you just have to lay the (ground rules," he says. "In order to ensure the quality and standard of work, we have a strict and explicit contract that must be signed."
Payment schedules and consequences for late or bug-prone work are central components of those contracts.( Contractors receive 25 percent of cost funded upfront, another 25 percent upon beta (completion, and the remaining 50 percent when the project is complete and has been( certified bug-free by Coalition project managers.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received roughly 50,000 "packages" with H-1B petitions
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services received roughly 50,000 "packages" with H-1B petitions on Monday, the first day of filing for the next fiscal year.
Based on historical patterns, each package represents about 1.2 H-1B petitions. A package can contain anywhere from one petition to several hundred.
The data on H-1B petitions comes from FCi Federal, a Leesburg, Va.-based government services and technology provider that is supplying personnel to assist the USCIS in processing the H-1B petitions.
FCi's estimate confirms predictions that H-1B demand will be at its highest level since 2008, the last time the petitions exceeded H-1B visa caps.
If the the cap is exceeded this year, which now appears likely, the federal government will distribute H-1B visas via a lottery.
The USCIS will stop accepting H-1B petitions once it reaches its two visa caps -- a general 65,000-visa cap and a 20,000 limit on visas for holders of advanced degrees from U.S. universities. But for the purpose of calculating the total visa count against the caps, the government treats the first five days of April as essentially one day.
FCi's estimate means that the USCIS received somewhere in the range of 60,000 petitions on day one of the filing. The number is not official -- it's clearly an estimate. The USCIS does not disclose how many petitions it has received until after the first five days have passed.
In 2008, the U.S. received some 163,000 petitions in the first five days.
The number of packages received fell sharply on Tuesday, said an FCi official, but did not estimate the total.
The large number of petitions received on day one was expected.
The USCIS, in a March 15 press release, said that based on feedback received from "stakeholders," which would include immigration attorneys who prepare petitions, it was possible that the H-1B cap would be met in the first five business days of the filing season.
FCi has 800 employees working at USCIS processing centers, but it has had to hire more than 100 temporary workers to help handle the workload.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)