Google Planning Online Storage Service!!!!

Google is developing an integrated service that would allow users to store and organize their information on Google’s servers, according to a report in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal. The Journal said that, internally, the service was known at one point as "My Stuff."

With this service, Google would join an array of vendors, such as IBackup, Xdrive, and eSnips. Itself a veteran of the online storage industry, Google’s Web-based tools, such as Picasa, Gmail, and Docs, already provide free storage and additional levels of paid storage.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar,Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

Mission 2008: Alumni Value Proposition

Companies that create a strong Alumni Value Proposition for their employees successfully attract and retain best people. Aah!? You might wonder. Employee retention and Alumni in same sentence, isn’t that an oxymoron?

Ok, let me try to explain why I made above statement with couple of examples. McKinsey and Solomon Brothers are two companies that are considered most coveted companies (in their respective domains) by every jobseeker. Although if you talk to any employee at any level in these companies, he would tell you that his jobs is extremely demanding, he works almost 16 to 20+ hours a day 7 days a week, often for lower pay than his counterparts in other companies.
So if it is not the money, and if it is not work-family life balance, then what attracts jobseekers to these companies that they always consider them as dream companies to work for.

After speaking with a few senior people at McKinsey and other organizations I realized that it is the Alumni Value Proposition (AVP). When a company tries to create AVP it is no different from what good universities do to attract best students and give to its students when they become Alumni.

So is there a framework for building AVP?

It starts with building a comprehensive process for selecting the best, because first pillar of building AVP is to have best people in the organization. And if you have good people, they connect with former colleagues, locally and globally, build a positive environment about the organization, attract smart people, and, eventually, inspire them to join and build the organization. Also, these very people help peers in career building by counseling and mentoring them properly and adequately.
But, what if these very good people opt to move on to some other organizations. You would be pleasantly surprised to know that it is Alumni who eventually become a great asset for the country.

How? Let’s find out.

It is alumni that take companies message to their new companies, and if that message is strong then it greatly benefits the company in attracting more good people. In today’s fiercely competitive knowledge-driven market, only those companies can thrive which believe in and create AVP. To stay connected with their Alumni, companies need to leverage tool such as Alumni network website and newsletters that enable them to

• Connect with former colleagues, locally and globally
• Communicate and expand social network via live and online events
• Collaborate on special projects or pilots, find a job, a candidate, a supplier, or generate new business contacts

Further, companies need to work on Knowledge Creation, which has been widely recognized as strategically important for organizational learning and innovation, requiring employees to document their learning from projects and other activities they undertake – developing a strong habit and capabilities in employees to communicate well , using tools like Blogs, social community sites, external and internal publishing of contents, etc.
Teamwork plays an important role in AVP, where people own responsibility collectively. It is teamwork that motivates employees to take pride in mentorship and coaching other employees (old or new).

To add grist to the mill, companies let employees take ownership in building the organization, let have them take pride that their contributions is what makes this organization.
Don’t you think that their contributions to recruiting process play a big role in bringing the best into the company.

Branding is one exercise that companies need to do constantly to deliver the message clearly, confirm the organization’s credibility, connect with your target prospects, motivate the audience, and, most importantly, create a positive environment for the company across the industry. Apart from PR activities including media coverage, seminars, webinars, etc, employees and alumni are the carriers of brand message.

And, now, let me conclude that building Alumni Value Proposition based on this framework is our Mission 2008. On the sheer strength of AVP, I look forward to the future with a goal of attracting the best people, creating a niche for OutworX. Alumni represent the company, peers will look up to you for career counseling, and alumni will help establish the future strength of our company. The journey has begun…

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation

6 Essential Things Developers Need to Know About Google’s OpenSocial

Folks,

Awfully sorry for giving latest updates on Google’s OpenSocial model for social networking applications so late, as your Blog Evangelist was a lit bit tied up with some other important activities.

What perceived by some as Google’s smart move to outmaneuver the increasing popularity of Facebook, but this is not going to stop developers from building applications for Facebook.

But that doesn’t mean that OpenSocial doesn’t have advantages. According to Joe Kraus, a Director of Product Management at Google, OpenSocial will make things easier for developers "because it makes it easier for them to focus on making their web apps better; they get lots of distribution with a lot less work. It's good for websites, because they can tap into the creativity of the largest possible developer community (and no longer have to compete with one another for developer attention). And finally, it's good for users, because they get more applications in more places."

Better if you look at the 6 essential things, which you need to know about Google’s OpenSocial:

1. OpenSocial only offers the lowest common denominator, not the full richness of each social networking platform.
2. OpenSocial is largely based on open standards and there's only minor developer lock-in.
3. OpenSocial is a real doorway to social networking data portability as well as potential security holes.
4. OpenSocial is simple and straightforward but also capable of developing full-blown, rich Internet applications.
5. OpenSocial is from Google and excessive philanthropy should not be expected.
6. A new era in competency in social software is being ushered in by models like OpenSocial.

If you want to know more about Google OpenSocial, look at the video....



Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

Significance of Data Encryption

Data encryption is all about the scrambling process of stored or transmitted information, making it unintelligible for the unintended recipient. It is being increasingly used by the financial industry to protect money transfers, by the merchants to protect against the credit card fraud, and by organization to security against leakage of proprietary information. To know more about Data encryption, click here.

Posted by Manhar Goandi, Project Manager, OutworX C orporation

Standardized Security Test for Software Developers

Hi Software developers folks! As announced by the Secure Programming Council, a standardized test is on the anvil to test software developers’ knowledge of secure programming. With such standardized security test, companies can ensure that their developers have a basic knowledge about wrapping security into software applications.

The council is rolling out its "Essential Skills for Secure Programmers Using Java/JavaEE" the first of six standards initiatives. Later, it will add skills tests for C and C++, as well as languages .Net, PHP, and PERL.

The proposed testing will include areas such as data handling, authentication, and session management and access control. The skill testing is designed to not only ask developers whether they know what encryption is but whether they understand the differences between PKI encryption and other forms of encryption, said Ryan Berg, co-founder of Ounce Labs and a member of the Secure Programming Council's Java and JavaEE steering committee. SANS will administer the tests, which are scheduled to begin on December 5 in London and continue for the next eight months in cities through out the United States and Europe.

The tests cost between $50 and $450, for participants ranging from students to employees of large corporations.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

Google launched Android, mobile phone platform

When Team OutworX was in the festive mood, Google –led Open Handset Alliance has released the Android. Android is an important part of Google’s strategies of providing access to information to users wherever they are. Android will soon be the foundation for many mobiles and will create a new mobile experience for users with new applications and new capabilities, so far unheard of. The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) will deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications. Look at the Android OS early look.

Download here the Android, and more details about it are available here.

In addition, Google also announced the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million to developers who build mobile applications for Android.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

OpenSocial: Google answer to Facebook for social networking power struggle

Realizing its broad social networking ambitions, Google is coming out with OpenSocial, a new project, which is a set of common APIs that developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks, called “ hosts”, that choose to participate. OpenSocial allows developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

And, more importantly, what precisely seems to be Google answer to Facebook. Google’s approach is new in this sense that instead of launching yet another social network platform, it provides an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. There are two categories of partners in OpenSocial: hosts and developers. Hosts are the participating social networks, which include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle. And developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.
MySpace and Six Apart are soon joining Google’sOpenSocial initiative.

OpenSocial addresses the problems of developers learning yet another markup language for every social network platform. In OpenSocial, developers will immediately start building on these APIs to get distribution across the impressive list of hosts above.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

Does OutworX have Profile,Community & Widget on Facebook ?

We all know about Facebook, which is a media, community and application platform that offers a thriving ecosystem, scalable growth, and word-of-mouth marketing. Originally kicked off as a destination for students to connect with one another through social networks, the site has expanded to include companies, professional networks and geographic regions. As per one rough estimate, over half of Facebook’s 43 million users visit every day, spend an average of 20 minutes on the site, and view over 54 billion total page views per month. Now, it is impossible to ignore the growing size and scope of Facebook.

Also, the company announced a set of APIs to make integration and support with third-party services even easier for consumers. The Application Platform gives a web team the capability to swiftly deploy a widget.

In addition, Facebook provides you with targeted advertising option to market effectively, where you can provide messages segmented by location, gender, and or preferences.

If you want to know more about Facebook, click here .

If you want to develop a Facebook platform application, click here .

Participate in Poll

Now, we request Team OutworX to participate in the poll, and let us have your mandate on the following points:

• What should be Outworx Facebook Strategy?
• Does OutworX have its profile on Facebook?
• Can we kick off a Community on Facebook?
• Shall we deploy a widget/application on Facebook’s Application Platform?
• Can you suggest a widget/application to be deployed on the API?

Send in your mandate at oxblog@outworx.com

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation.

Listas: Microsoft's New Social Bookmarking Service

Listas is a new social bookmarking service from Microsoft Live Labs for you to keep track of content you come across while surfing the Web, and sharing it with other users. It is presently in a “technology preview’ stage for you to play with. It lets users to make their own containers, with all sorts of links, and supplement it with text, images, and RSS feeds, using a WYSIWYG editor.

Microsoft’s Listas is clearly a more advanced effort than TagSpaces, providing users with a bookmarklet to tag any item of their choice. Listas is specifically designed to handle media and collaboration in a better way. Like other social bookmarking services, Microsoft has included a toolbar to help users speed up their list creation.To know more about, Listas click here.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation.

Facebook Vs. MySpace: Race for Superiority

There is no end in sight so far as race for superiority among social networking sites is concerned , particularly between Facebook and MySpace . If a recent post of TechCrunch can be believed, “MySpace remains the most popular social networking destination”.

As per the new figures released by HitWise, MySpace is losing its market share at least in Australia, as the Facebook razzmatazz goes on. “Facebook has tripled its traffic in the 10 weeks to October 13” as compared to MySpace, which has lost its visitors by 5% during the period.

The post further says that it is tough to grow traffic when you’re already at the top. Though MySpace is soon going to open platform to provide additional services to its members, not much is happening on MySpace front at least for the time being. What goes in favor of Facebook is amazing word of mouth publicity. However, the post accepts with increasing lot of people is using Facebook , maybe it will soon become the only choice in online social networking.

You can read the complete post on the TechCrunch.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

Significance of Web 2.0 lessons from the BBC

Forrester in one of its recent blog posts discussed how the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) experimented successfully with social computing and adopted various Web 2.0 tools. Today, the BBC has thousands of bulletin board users, wiki users, and hundreds of bloggers. All these tools have added enormous value to the company; however, it was not an overnight success. Have a look at some of the key lessons the BBC learned from its Web.2.0 experiment:

Enterprise Web 2.0 tools can be the catalyst for a more collaborative work environment, and the BBC’s internal forums, one of the Web 2.0 tools, helped the company to be more collaborative than many formal initiatives they had tried in the past.
Experiment, start small, and clarity in ownership have been the mantras of success in a collaborative business environment, as Web 2.0 tools have transformed the traditional hierarchical and command and control structure and prepared the organization for flattening effect of these tools. As the forum environment was collectively owned, people took the responsibility for its sensible use.

Web 2.0 tools breed trust. “The BBC found that when people are given responsibility, right tools, and a little coaching, most of them will do the right thing”. Increasing use of social computing tools also let the people understand the value of their efforts. A transparent policy about the proper use of Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis, and make the workforce understand its ramifications, let both employees and management work towards the organic growth of the company.

Challenge yourself, venture where no one has ventured before, has been source of innovation at the BBC. “At the BBC, employees were allowed to post on internal forums about anything they wanted to. Someone started a conversation about the pros and cons of being single. This evolved into something awfully close to a dating service. Managers, as you might imagine, were cringing.” But, producers turned up for producing a program on being single. This was truly an example of delivering true business value out of something seemingly most un-business like preposition.

If interested, you can read the complete post on the BBC here.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation

“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”

It was an odd night on October 2nd, and I woke up at an ungodly hour of 3:30 AM. After making a cup of tea, listening to BBC TV, I pondered what made me wake up at this moment. I looked at the date, I have just completed my first 6 months in the OutworX family.
The last 3 weeks were hectic, and throughout the appraisal process I came to know most of you better than ever before, yet there is still to know lot more. My thoughts wondered a bit more and I remembered Paul Gaugin’s eternal question – “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”

Pondering on the answers, I thought, that answer to the first question is we at OutworX are as diverse as our vast nation, with our own culture, ideas and ambitions, which I had felt during those few hours I spent with all of you during the Appraisal process. However, despite my consistent effort, I couldn’t get any convincing answers to the last 2 questions. I thought, if we need to grow, we better do something to at least seek the answers to those 2.

So, here we are with our own blog wherein we will seek the answers in a joint forum which will eventually give us clarity of thought and goals ahead. Sharing of ideas and thoughts is the best way to learn ourselves and also to let the world know about us. More you express, the more clarity we will get on those 2 answers, which will be a key to our success; at least, it will put us on the right path-a path where we want to go in near future.

The next 6 months I dedicate to 2 important themes about which I will write in my next post. And, those 2 themes are –

a) Excellence in ‘EXECUTION’
b) Communication and Sharing.

I have just chosen the themes, but it is you who will help me paint my canvas.

Now, I welcome all of you to the world of blogosphere, take up your pen and paint- brush and start expressing yourself.

Posted by Goutam Bakshi, VP (Engineering & Technology), OutworX Corporation

Can Facebook be Built in India?

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on outsourcing, titled – Building Facebook in Bangalore: Outsourcing 2.0 – it had a good mix of panelists – one early stage investor, couple of entrepreneurs, and one CEO of a boutique outsourcing firm. Entire discussion was focused on panelists’ perceptions on differences between culture of Indian engineers and the culture of Web 2.0 companies – and at the end their conclusion was that it is very painful, if not impossible, to build Facebook kind of services in India.

I do not subscribe completely to the conclusion drawn by our panelists. I believe that some of the most attractive and sustainable consumer oriented Web (2.0) services can be built by engineers sitting in India. And, I argue that three cultural traits of Indians, i.e. diversity, adaptability and entrepreneurship, make the Indian minds rightly suited for doing so.

Cultural diversity has never been new to Indians. A country that is built with democratic fiber, rapid globalization, and a very successful and unshackled media, has exposed Indians to far reaching global cultural diversity. Adaptability trait of Indians has trained Indian minds to always listen, understand, and adopt the alternate viewpoints, much more easily than other countries, once this exposure is made. And finally, entrepreneurial Indian mind is always looking for ways to make a “useful” enterprise out of everything new they learn through this exposure.

This makes Indian minds lot more similar to Silicon Valley minds that start and build great Internet businesses.

However, having said that, there must be some reason why panelists’ with their experience with outsourcing were converging on the conclusion that they did. Yes, there are a few reasons, most important of all is picking the Right set of people and motivating them to do work for them. Often people go into outsourcing with misplaced convictions, some of them were clearly resonated by panelists – “I would save 80% in labor cost”, “I would not hire engineers with top school education because attrition is very high in that group” etc.

Second important factor is attention deficiency disorder in Indian engineers. This often goes hand in hand with entrepreneurial trait as well as competitive job market in India. Indian engineers work very hard to reach the 90th milestone but after that their minds often get attracted towards other new things, and they do not give same rigor to last 10 milestones- often referred as “finishing touches” or “final packaging” – this is where their American counterparts building consumer products are clearly differentiable – Americans understand very well that packaging plays a huge role in attracting consumers to products even in a crowded market.

At OutworX, we strongly believe in building the right teams. We hire the right people, and motivate them to highest levels. We do not believe in conventional thinking and do not let misplaced convictions distract us from our goal of building the right teams. We train our engineers to understand that race never ends on 90th milestone, it just gets more competitive in final 10.

We recognize the above three cultural traits of Indian minds, we create an open environment in the organization that exploits these three traits to fullest and further nurtures them in the minds of our engineers.

Yes, Facebook can be built in Bangalore. But what is more important is whether your idea, that is generation ahead of Facebook, can be built in India?

My answer is resounding Yes. Talk to any OutworX engineer to see for yourself how.

Posted by Rajiv Jain, CEO, OutworX Corporation

OutworX Launched OX Blog

I am truly pleased and, at the same time, overwhelmed to officially announce OX Blog, the corporate blog of OutworX. With a view to improve employee relations, customer relations, and to perk up business processes, we have launched our corporate blog, as blogs have become one of the most economic, efficient and effective platform for both internal and external communications.

OX Blog is our sincere effort to establish a direct relationship with our customers and our employees that build trust and loyalty organically, demonstrate our corporate openness, show our product development expertise and technology capabilities, make obvious our thought leadership, and amplify our corporate message across the industry. And, more importantly, with our corporate blog we are ready to engage in dialogue our clients and market, as well.

In today’s Web 2.0 driven environment, web strategists are relying more and more on blogs and social media platforms for better and real-time interactions with their clients and employees, we too,with OX Blog, are geared up to harness very tangible benefits in the form of customer information and lead generation, increased sales, new business opportunities, higher organic search engine rankings , and in general extra buzz about the company on-line.

In order to accomplish this, creating and maintaining a corporate blog proves to be a very demanding task for your corporate blog evangelist, who is going to have a very tough job in hand, requiring corporate approval for most of the blog initiatives and activities. So the blog journey has flagged off, now enjoy reading, responding, and commenting.

Posted by Praveen Panjiar, Blog Evangelist, OutworX Corporation