The Downside of Outsourcing

From the Seattle Times, the stress of BPO and the burgeoning toll it is taking on its young workers.

This link will take you to the Harvard B School grouping of lists of best business books for the year:

BNet Best Business Books

Harvard B School look's ahead to the biggest business challenges in 2008

What do you think will be the big challenges for your business in 2008? asks Harvard Business, which is building a crystal ball around responses from readers. Some early comments:

* The Network as Platform. “The most important trend in networking in 2008, indeed in all of IT, will be the emergence of the “network as the platform” for productivity, profitable growth, resource management and innovation. This trend will play a key role in helping determine success in business as well as in other areas of society (healthcare and education).”
* Eco Business Opportunities. “As private and public entities respond to the extension of social responsibility, many new service provider opportunities will explode in the finance, e-waste, recylcing, remanufacturing, supply chain industry, and service entities.”
* New Geopolitics. “Politically, between US election, China’s coming out party (summer Olympics), and Russia’s new (old) president, 2008 would be an interesting year. Economically, the battle for supremacy between central banks, sovereign funds, and the “real” economy could be on the headline in various disguises.
* Volatile Markets. “The biggest challenges for the managers in the short term is to counter the impact of weakening dollar, rising crude, declining productivity in US and Europe, and outsourcing as competitive strategy.”
* Dollar Decline. “For European businesses the continued decline of the US dollar against the Euro will remain one of the toughest challenges. It will be the catalyst for many changes related to repositioning within market segments, relocation of manufacturing to no-Euro zones and acceleration of innovation drive.”
* Social Networking. “Companies must learn to effectively utilize social networking tools both inside and outside the companies to keep up with what the younger workers grew up with — fast and furious communication tools like texting, facebook, My Space, You Tube, etc. that spread the word now. Not in the next quarter, next month, next week or even next day, but NOW.”
* Soft Skills. “The development and implementation of ‘soft skills’ will be one of the greatest management challenges in the future. With changing attitudes and values it will become increasingly necessary for organisations to undergo cultural change in order to attract and retain high quality young staff and to appeal to the changing values of society in general. The establishment of a culture of community which values all stakeholders, gives a strong sense of belonging and offers flexibility within a secure and diverse environment will be important.”

Is Google going for world domination?

From the Seattle Times: Google is fine-tuning a Wikipedia rival.
All's fair in love and war. Wales is planning on rolling out a new search engine - Wikia - later this month...

PDF now ISO standard

clipped from blogs.adobe.com ISO Ballot for PDF 1.7 Passed! Adobe has received word that the Ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard (DIS) has passed by a vote of 13::1.

Terrific Eye Tracking Clues

Recapitulation from Seth Godin's blog, quoting Christina Laun at Virtual Hosting.com blog
The highlights, in alphabetical order:

* Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation.
* Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often.
* Bigger images get more attention.
* Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
* Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
* Formatting can draw attention.
* Headings draw the eye.
* Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
* Large blocks of text are avoided.
* Lists hold reader attention longer.
* Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.
* One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
* People generally scan lower portions of the page.
* Readers ignore banners.
* Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
* Show numbers as numerals.
* Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
* Text attracts attention before graphics.
* Type size influences viewing behavior.
* Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
* Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them.
* Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
* White space is good.

Mingle from Thoughtworks -for agile Agile development

Mingle - from Thoughtworks, - a project collaboration and management tool for Agile software development.

In co-founder Bismarck's words:
'...a platform that gives content owners control -- marketers accountable video advertising -- and viewers high quality interactive video with non-intrusive advertising...'

checkout Ooyala (beautiful site and one of the Amazon Web Services picks.)

Find out what users think of your site

1. You sign up for user testing.
   
2. We notify user testers.
3. You watch and listen to them use your site.
4. You read their review - what they liked or disliked, what would have caused them to leave...

One user costs $19, five users $95.

UserTesting.com

Power of the People

A move for privacy in the Facebook community has forced Facebook to capitulate to user pressure. They have now added an opt-in button so that users can decide whether their purchases may be blathered across Facebook in a move towards harnessing the tremendous user base for advertising.

Kudos to Facebook for buckling to the pressure and to Overstock.com who abandoned the 'Beacon' feature until Facebook added the 'opt-in button'. Read the Washington Post's story...