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Tips On Outsourcing Computer Work

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Outsourcing computer work and customer service work has become extremely popular lately because it is easy to find someone qualified to help you with your business needs. The types of jobs that are most frequently posted in major outsourcing websites range from basic computer tasks, database work, web design, logo design, software creation, creative writing, finance and accounting.

There are many outsourcing websites that have very good reputations, but our main focus is going to be on Odesk.com.  Odesk.com provides three things that make it unique and reliable.

Odesk provides online tests for employees to take to prove their skills. They have a total of 341 different tests that service providers can take. Each test is a forty question, online test. Only 57% of the people who take these tests pass them.

When workers take tests in their skill areas their scores are published in their profiles. You will be able to see the name of the test and the percentage of questions they got right. This type of information is a time saver and such a blessing. It helps contractors find people that really are capable of completing your job. If you find someone who ranked in the top ten percent of the skills tests that you feel they need, then chances are you’ll have a satisfying experience with them.

Odesk.com also allows work providers to give an honest evaluation of the person they are working for. So if you are a pain in the neck to work for, it won’t be long before that reputation will follow you. On the other hand if you are considerate, explain your job well and are patient with your work providers, they are able to provide that feedback for others to see. It’s important that you are a good employer so people will apply for your jobs and feel comfortable working with you.

The third thing Odesk.com does is provide hourly workers with a program that records their work. If you are paying someone by the hour, the program intermittently takes screen shots of the providers’ desktop so you can see what they are working on. This helps you to keep track of what they are doing. Working time is automatically tracked for you. Payments and billing are handled through software at Odesk.com. Your workers get paid in a timely manner and you will receive an invoice for tax purposes.

Outsourcing some of your work to people who have specific skills that you don’t, is invaluable. With the rapid pace of technology improvements, the smart business person will benefit from the thousands of workers that are seeking more work. You may even find that many of the workers are extremely grateful to you for giving them a chance to get started. One worker said, ” I want to tell you that you gave me a lot of scope to work for the first time in Odesk. Thanks again for that. I will be grateful to you ever.”

Facebook Characters In The Social Network Movie

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Today, Oct. 1, 2010 marks the release of the movie, “The Social Network.”  The story about the development of Facebook.  Facebook has been recently estimated  to be worth $22 billion dollars.  Mike Morwitz, a venture capitalist said, “the product (Facebook)  helps solve a real problem for many people in a simple, elegant way.” Mark Zuckerberg created the social networking platform that changed the way the millions of people communicates.

As with any company, Facebook has interesting twists and turns during the creation phase and the building out phase of their product. Knowing a little bit about some of the other key players in this company can help you appreciate the evolution of a social network.

Previewing the Social Netwok
Social Media Fans in SLC, Utah, Watch The Social Network Movie Together

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Saverin, a 26 year old born in Brazil, is a graduate of Harvard holding a degree in economics. He assumed the role of Mark’s business manager at first, however his role in the company diminished when Sean Parker was able to acquire venture capital form Peter Thiel.

He was the person behind the development of  the movie, “The Social Network.” At the urging of a friend, Will McMullen, Eduardo eventually  disclosed behind the scenes information to Ben Mezrich who later published a book called, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

Eduardo Saverin  won a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg which allowed his name to be listed as the co-founder of Facebook. He owns a 5% share worth $1.1 billion dollars. Part of the settlement agreement stipulates that he does not discuss this situation any further. Eight days younger than Zuckerberg, he is the newest member of the Forbes 400 Richest People In America List.

Sean Parker

Another key player is Sean Parker. Sean’s childhood brings to light how he became involved with Mark Zuckerberg.

Sean’s father, a  U.S. government oceanographer, began teaching him programming at age seven. When he was just 16 years old he was successfully hacking into various networks, some included the military and large national foundations. His obsession with computers led him to spend odd hours working through the night and basically having a hard time completing school work.

One night his father got angry with him because of his poor performance and grabbed the computer keyboard away from him. Although he told his father he hadn’t logged out of the program he was working on, his father ignored his pleas. He knew that his activities would be discovered.

The next day, his father pulled him out of school for a so called “orthodontics” appointment. Uncomfortable with the “orthodontics” appointment excuse, since he had no orthodontics, he anticipated his consequences. When he arrived home, the FBI was there waiting to interrogate him.

He was given community service for his punishment and for obvious reasons, barely graduated from high school.

At age 19, he invented the popular music sharing program, Napster.

In 2004, he emailed Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook and soon after they became partners.  Mark Zuckerberg said, “few people are as smart as he is.”  Once the President of Facebook, Sean was asked to step down because of his involvement with cocaine.

David Kirkpatrick, author of  “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World, says “He is one of the great serial entrepreneurs of his generation.”

“The Social Network,” opens today and should prove to be interesting for many social media fans and entrepreneurs.

Related Information:

Owners of Facebook:

Mark Zuckerburg – 25%
Accel Partners – 10%
Digital Sky Technologies –  10%
Dustin Moskovitz – 6%
Eduardo Saverin – 5%
Sean Parker -4%
Peter Thiel – 3%
Greylock Partners – 1.5%
Merich Capital Ventures – 1.5%
Microsoft – 1.3%
Li Ka-Shing – .75%
Interpublic Group – .5%
Five early employees – less than 1%
Mark Pincus & Reid Hoffman – undisclosed
Western Technology Investments – undisclosed

Google Awards $2 Million Dollars To Sal Khan

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On Friday, September 24, 2010, Google awarded $2 million dollars to Sal Khan for his contribution in educating the world through his math and science videos. His website, Khan Academy is the largest virtual school on the web and it is free. When asked what he was going to do with the money, he explained that he is going to translate the videos into Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese and all the major languages of the world.

Sal began creating teaching videos in 2004, while working as a hedge fund manager. He wanted to help a family member learn math. The videos he made were posted to YouTube and started becoming popular with people all over the world. People would write in and tell him that they were able to pass algebra because of him. He saved some people from dropping out of school completely. He received so much positive feedback, that it inspired him to keep creating videos.

Since then, he has created over 2000 learning videos on subjects like algebra, basic math, calculus, chemistry, economics, finance, geometry, linear algebra, physics, venture capital, statistics and trigonometry and his web site has attracted close to 2.5 million views.

There couldn’t be a better qualified individual to learn from. Sal received a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT exams. He earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one in mathematics, one in computer science and one in electrical engineering. He earned two master’s degrees, one MS from MIT and an MBA from Harvard.

Creating simple videos with basic tools, Sal has an exceptional ability to take complicated concepts and make them simple. Watching the videos is like being in math class where the teacher writes out equations on the blackboard. He is so engaging that some people say that they like him better on video than they do in person.

Sal has been dubbed as Bill Gates favorite teacher. “This guy is amazing, said Gates. “I’d say we’ve moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-may-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day when his wife let him quit his job.”

At a recent gathering held in Aspen, Colorado called the Aspen Ideas Festival, where leaders from around the world gather to discuss ideas and issues of global concern, Bill Gates spent time speaking about Sal Khan and his contribution to the world. Mr. Gates has used the videos to help his own children learn biology and algebra. Sal Khan was probably not surprised by this recent public attention because in 2009, he was awarded the Microsoft Tech Award for education.

Finding A Business Partner

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Finding a good business partner may be a little tricky, but according to Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, it is one of the most important decisions you can make.

Max Levchin earned a bachelors degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where the first first Internet graphical browser, Mosaic was developed. This browser led to the boom of the 1990s and made the Web accessible to the ordinary person for the first time. Firefox 3, developed from this basic browser, had more than 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, setting a Guinness World Record.

After being influenced and taught at the same institution where Mosaic was created, Max decided to head for the Silicon Valley. Not intentionally looking for a business partner, Max randomly walked into a classroom on the Stanford University campus, trying to get out of the heat and searching for an air-conditioned place to sit.

He sat in on a lecture given by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel’s expertise in business and entrepreneurship inspired Max to chat with him after class. The next day they met for breakfast and he shared with him several ideas he had for business projects. This meeting was the beginning of an extremely profitable business partnership.

They ended up creating a company called PayPal, an online payment processing company which allows people to send money to each other in a completely new and different way than they had ever been able to before. PayPal sold to eBay on July 8, 2002 for $1.5 billion dollars. Max’s share was worth $34 million and Peter Thiel’s share was worth $55 million.

One of the qualities of a good partnership is that the partner can tell you when your ideas are good and also when they are just way off base. The success of the partnership depends on you choosing the right person.

Some partnerships last a lifetime and end up being good for both parties, while others may last half a life time and end up with one or the other sending their partner down the river. Choose your business partner as wisely as you would choose a marriage partner.

Who Is Max Levchin?

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max-levchinThere are many people who can be considered pioneers in the development of web technology and most seem to be millionaires or billionaires. Max Levchin is no exception. Who is he?

He is a thirty-five year old, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He was born in the Ukraine, and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991 under a political asylum. He earned his bachelors degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Accomplishments

In 1997 he co-founded two companies NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media.

In 1998, he co-founded FieldLink with Peter Thiel and John Bernard Powers. Powers left the company and the company name, FieldLink, was soon changed to Confinity. The two partners, Levchin and Thiel then developed  the popular payment product known as PayPal. After merging with a company called X.com, the official name of their company was changed to Paypal Inc. Levchin was well known for developing the anti-fraud component of PayPal called CAPTCHA a process that will differentiate computer input from input by human beings.

PayPal went public in 2002, and shortly afterwards, eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion dollars.  When PayPal was acquired by eBay, Levchin’s interest in the company was worth $34 million dollars.

Levchin did not remain idle after this aquisition. In 2004, he went on to create yet another company called Slide. He invested $7 million dollars of his own money in this company. Funding was also acquired from various venture capitalists. The company was first developed to allow users to organize photos on their computers and post them to personal blogs. Later it became known for creating applications that became very popular on Facebook. Some of the applications were “Top Friends”, FunWall”, “My Questions, “Fortune Cookie”, and “Super Poke”. By 2008, Super Poke Pet was launched were you can care for and buy things for a virtual pet.

On August 6, 2010, Google purchased Slide.com for $182 million dollars. Levchin received $39 million dollars for that sale. Shortly after that, on August 25, Google offered him a job as the Vice President of Engineering.

Advice To Entrepreneurs

Max Levchin’s best words of advice to other technology entrepreneurs is to try your best to find a good co-partner. Having the checks and balances from another person that you have respect and trust for and the ability of that person to tell you when you are way off base at exactly the right time is extremely valuable, if not the most valuable thing.

Future Plans

It will be exciting to follow his next accomplishments as a new Vice President of Engineering at Google.