Review: elance.com

The most difficult part of making money online is the fact that there are too many scams out there. You do a search on the net and you get a bunch of results with 99% of them being something that is going to fool you into joining something that is not going to benefit you. In my search for a legitimate site to find online work I came across Elance.com. The initial interface gave me some confidence about the site. Then I faced problems searching their database on my Internet explorer window, this put me off a little and raised the thought of this being another scam,but for the sake of it i tried the site on Flock. The listings started coming up and unlike other sites these where legitimate listings. The customer care responds to your mails. The listing in different categories are from all over the world. There are many categories available.

They charge you per transaction and there is no registration fees thus giving you a better level of trust. The system relies on a bidding system and the best bid gets the job. The testability of the listing cannot be commented on because one can never know who posts the listing and their credibility, but the site is a genuine Lister of online opportunities.

http://elance.com

Google Webmaster Tools Reviewed

Google's Web master tool, even though it cant be called the Swiss knife of a web master, it has some pretty cool features. The most important thing about google's tool is that it gives us a reflection of what a search engine see's of our site, thus enabling us to tweak and tune our site for better search engine results. There are third party scripts available in the thousands for tracking users through one's site and so on(even google has one), but the ability to see what Google thinks of your site is a great advantage on the webmasters side.





What all does Google webmaster tools do ?


Basically it shows us what the Google database has seen on OUR site and then what it has seen on OTHER sites about us. Now IT lets us know the number of links cumming into our site and that too with page specific information. The tool can identify errors on your site like missing link etc. It also lets you know you site position on site related terms on Google that too by Google portal location.
You have an option to optimize the site for image search there by ensuring more of your images to come up on Google image search. Over all its a tool that can enable you to become an SEO your self. The amount of specific data that you can obtain using this tool is amazing.
All in all an amazing tool that can give you insider information from a search engine perspective thus giving you a hand in you SEO endeavours.

The only negative about the tool is the fact that it is really slow in updating changes Considering the Mass nature of the tool it is something that actually can be compromised.

Airtel Messenger

Bharti Airtel announced the launch of 'Airtel Messenger' that will enable Airtel mobile users to text chat within a community or set of communities.

It needs a Airtel Live enable Mobile phone with GPRS capabilities.

It allows users send and receive messages in real time via their mobile phones without the need to be attached to a computer.
The enables users to convey multiple emoticons while in conversation and have multiple textual conversations at the same time. A presence-enabled address book helps senders know when their contacts are online.


To download 'Airtel Messenger', Airtel mobile customers need to have a GPRS and Airtel Live-activated handset. They can register by sending an SMS to 57070 with the message 'IM'. Once registered, they can create their own messaging communities by adding friends from their phone book, or manually adding new contacts.

It is free-of-cost till August 31 this year

Job site With a Social Networking Mix

Skillda all set to release its beta in june is a concept where Social Networking and Job browsing gets integrated you many of the social networking features and aslo a Job search engine mixed to give an intresting new concept.

The social networking features like profile has been converted to give a job oriented touch. Here you dont have a profile you have a Resume. There are comunities but most are again related to jobs or thing that has to do with jobs. You can add a vedio to your resume, which is infact a new idea for the jobseeker.

You can set your intrest level in new jobs from not intrested to only terrific offers. You can also set the location of intrest and who can view your resume.

You can send messages to your friends , ask questions or forward job refferals.

A good venture still in its Infancy lets wait to see what it turns out to be.

Positives:-

• Good concept
• Clean and easy Interface
• Good implementation of ajax that doesnt overwhelm you

Negatives(Still in Infancy so there is room to change):-

• Not all social networking features available, so this can replace your current social networking account.
• Search is not optimised and is not giving proper results
• Does not show when you have invited some one as a friend
• Beta is not realeased even though the site says beta release in June(They have made it July)
• At current state one wouldnt need more than 30 mins to get bored with the site, this is because of serious lack of user content.

http://alpha.skillda.in/

Wallop Redefining Social Networking Interface

Wallop a 100% flash based social networking site is so good to look at that you get hooked to their looks.

Functions are same as any other social networking site with option to prevent people from leaving comments on your profile. The most interesting bits is mods, enhancements that you can purchase to modify you profile, already some really cool mods are available. You have an option to create and sell mods by joining them as a freelance developer, they have not mentioned whether you get paid in real cash or just in virtual earnings.

The system lack groups though which would have been a great addition. One can upload music and friends can listen to them so that gives a limitation to abuse of the system. There is also a built in blog option like most of the other social networking sites.
Negative:-

• Bandwidth taking
• No groups
• Blog interface lacks quality
• Searching for members is not efficient and can be made a lot better
• Does not display how you are connected to your friends
  
• Need more quality features
  
• Lacks video
  

Positive:-

• Great interface
• Superb design
  
• Good collection of enhancements
• Invite based thus limiting spam(with invite criteria)
  
• Everything at a hands reach
• Super fast uploading of photos
• Batch uploading supported
• Slide show based album browsing.
  

Flock

The open source browser built up from the Mozilla engine is commendably robust and fast. With social networking features built into the browser its an interesting mix.

The browser which has not evolved much from its initial state is undergoing some serious makeover with the social networking integration on flock.

One feature that is quite interesting is the photo upload feature which lets you upload photos to Flickr or Photobucket directly from the browser. Setting it up is an easy deal. But you need a Flickr or Photobucket account. Similar plug ins are available on other browsers too but this comes with the browser.

Blogging as you browse , the best of the lot. Once you set up your account you can directly blog what you encounter on the blog. This can be pictures , selected text and almost any thing that you see on the blog.

My News is a very good tool similar to Google reader but here it is built into the browser. You can add feeds or pages to this. You can directly browse these and mark them as read or save them. Better yet you can directly blog it.

Yahoo web search is built into the browser. The interesting part is you can select a given text and then use it as a search string. This is quiet useful. The same feature is available on Google tool bar or yahoo tool bar but again this come by default.

The photo bar is a great way to browse photos from Filkr. It shows a list of photos taken from Flickr public listing or you could log in and then see and manage your photos. You have an option of two image sizes on this list and also a built in search. When browsing on Photobucket or FLickr taking the mouse over another users photo will display, that users photos on the photo bar.

Built-in full-text search using Clucene. Search as you type for pages in the cache. This is quite useful and innovative.

It also has integrated spell Check capabilities.

Installing the Me.dium plug in enables you to share and also see what your friends are browsing in real time. This is an interesting tool. You can choose not to share what you don't want to share too. The background sharing feature makes this automatic, this is very handy.You can also communicate with friends on Me.dium.

The Note tool is very useful you can store things that you find interesting for later use just by dragging to this tool at the bottom of the screen.

You can also share your favorites with other users or share it between multiple computers.

This browser is a great mix of inbuilt tools that otherwise need different plug ins built directly into the core browser.

For the advanced User :-

The foot print of the program is relatively low and can be run on relatively low end machines.

You can batch upload photos to Flickr etc very easily with Flock.

Tab browsing is there by default.

You can use photos on the Photo bar directly into online document editors.

The engine is basically Mozilla with a few tweaks here and there.

There is a built in Javascript console that can be useful for developers.

With all these tools the packages is less than 10 MB in size.

The page info tool gives a lot of information about the page you are currently on.


Negatives:-

The interface needs a lot of guessing to work on.

Most features are not well documented.

You have to play around to discover many of the new features.

Serious lack of theme availability.

The browsers core engine could have been made a little more configurable.

The yahoo search integration could have been switched over to Google as it is clearly the leader in search.

More social news site should be supported.

Social Networking,now a money making tool

Are you one of those still stuck on Orkut? Studies with a group of 2000 Orkuters showed that on average, they spent 2 hrs a day on orkut. It also showed that they spent more time trying to find new people. On average, most users visit friends's profiles atleast once in a month. So in our point of view, I would simply say that all these people are wasting serious time and money(Power bill, Internet charges etc). Orkut still being one of the most popular Social networking site, can be taken as a bench mark.

So, with the entry of many new players into this niche market, it seems that plainly offering facilities to share video, photos and offering an array of communication tools are not enough to lure people into the newly opened services. So what are they doing? They are giving out money to use their services. OK, now that would be like yahoo offering to give you money if you receive or send a mail or Google giving you money for searching. OK this is not a new phenomenon when email was still young and new free email firms were coming up everyday, some of them had tried this.

What all are on offer?
mylot.com will give you money for being active on their site. That is, when you post something that gets good response from other users, you get paid. They are not specific about how much. You can get a part of your friend's income by inviting them to join mylot and then encouraging them to be active. The down side of this is that they only have Paypal or eGold payment options.

Desimartini.com OK, the site is not good to look at and has only standard social networking features and most features are copied from other places. Very little serious work has gone into it but, never the less they have an option to let you place your AdSense code on thier pages. The simplicity of this deal is what makes it attractive. One thing that you might need to be careful about is that your friends (who would be visiting pages belonging to you the most) are going to see these ads the most and cant say whether Google might think the clicks on your ads are fraudulent. They have very efficient methods to find this. So be careful about this.

Yaari.com was offering an ipod for the 50 most popular users. The offer has expired but might just come back because they are still lacking a huge user base that any social networking site needs.

bharatstudent.com belonging to Axil group (which is behind the" call any phone free" Globe7 site) is offering to give money to campus reps and ambassadors for their site. Their campus reporter offer seems more real. It offers 2 $ for 1000 views of a video that you upload, simple as that. They have not specified how they are going to pay you. Mostly moneybookers and paypal should be available because those are the methods Axil usually supports.

Another method that has existed for a long time is using AdSense or the like on your profile on services like myspace etc. But the problem with this is again fraudulent click detection and ethics of making your profile a billboard.

Now these are not the only ones available. A search on Google gets you lots of returns and most probably the other new entrants might come up with such schemes soon.

So, is it actually time to leave Orkut ?

Google promoting spyware

About an year ago Google and Dell announced a partnership to include the Google Toolbar on new Dell computers. At the same time, Google was trying to convince the Department of Justice that changing the default search engine in the (then) new IE7 was too difficult. Now this meant that each time a Dell user used the Internet their details will be sent to Google. Now if the poor guy made a typing error that meant money for Google and Dell, what they do is simple they display a page with ads all over.

The above picture shows the screen that is shown to a user, when a typo is detected. A simple look at it will show you that on a 800 * 600 resolution screen you see no results but only ads. Now the picture below show the results of a study on "where people look at most on a Google results page". The redder the area, more the attention it gets.

Now taking that into consideration Google is creating a scenario where people are not using their service at their own will because the toolbar is installed by default and even if you uninsulated the tool bar the Browser Address Error Re-director remains providing this service and a normal computer user will find it hard to remove. Thus it comes to point that this "tool" provided by dell and Google can be termed a spy ware because :-

1. Users dint ask for it.
2. Removing the toolbar which is what people identify the results with most does not stop this.
3. The results are showing mostly ads in the visible area.

So we users must rise to the occasion and realise that Google is not any more about not being evil. This act of Google to display ads by force can only be termed evil. Is Google loosing its identity and becoming a solely money oriented business with no values what so ever ? If not they would have shown the proper results or suggested the correct spelling first rather than ads. The margins in hardware industry is very low and thus Dell or any other hardware company would want ways to bring in continuous revenue and forcing the users to see ads would be one but Google partnering the act of evil!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!