The Crowd is Out there!

Recently a start-up called CrowdFlower raised $5 million for expanding its services globally. What does the company do? It offers companies labor that is floating around in the cloud.

Idea of the day:

Crowdsource

We've heard enough about outsourcing. Now there is a new possibility that is taking shape: Crowdsourcing. There are a lot of jobs that companies do not want to spend valuable resources on. For example, tedious tasks such as data aggregation and organization do not need highly skilled professionals. The idea behind Crowdsourcing is that you delegate these tasks which do not demand a high level of quality to anyone out there who is willing to do it. The model has a huge potential for success because there are a lot of people who are willing to spend some time in performing such non-demanding tasks, and there is no dearth of such tasks either. It's a powerful concept which has already proven itself in the case of say Wikipedia or Open-Source technology. What tasks would you want to delegate if you were a company? And what tasks would you like to do if you were in the Crowd?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/crowdflower-raises-5-million-for-cloud-sourced-labor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

Don't forget your notebook!

Remember the time when you always had a notebook within your reach? Well with information becoming digital, the notebook has been relegated to unreachable corners. But that does not necessarily mean you should stop taking notes.

Idea of the day:

Use an online notebook.

There is such a large amount of information available online that it is becoming more and more important to curate and manage this information. On a personal level, you may come across interesting articles and bits of information which you would want to store away quickly somewhere, without opening notepad or saving the page each time. An online notebook tool makes it easy to store and retrieve such information. Evernote is a great tool which a lot of users have found easy and effective. It lets you save images, links, paragraphs and lets you create multiple pages and notebooks. And since its stored online you can access it from any system. The good 'ol notebook is still here, in digital form!

Subtle Persuasion

We are all salesmen in some way or the other. And being a good salesman means being able to persuade. This may not come naturally to most of us. But there are patterns that we can find and use.

Idea of the day:

Be Persuasive!

Persuasion usually involves two layers of communication. The top layer is the actual message you want to convey, like "buy this product" or "I'm the best guy for this job". The layer beneath is how you convey it. This is the layer that most marketeers try to capitalize on. It involves a certain amount of trickery and is by no means obvious. If you know the methods, you could either use it yourself, or know when you are being tricked into something you don't really want to do. Here is a list with great examples of what these methods are:

http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-persuasive/1624

And here's the idea: Try to notice these methods in your everyday interaction with different media and personalities. Eventually you might start using these methods yourself. Its highly interesting and could be highly useful in ways you may not foresee.

Mental Gymnastics

You must have heard of this before and most of you must have already tried this.

Idea for the day :

Wiki-hopping!

This is a fun and easy way to broaden your knowledge horizon and also get insights into how different topics are connected. Anticipating such curiosity, Wikipedia already provides a link called "Random Article", which serves as a convenient starting point. Once you're on a page you click on the 1st link on the page, which leads you to the next page where you do the same thing and so on. When do you stop? When you run into a loop (or you can go on all day calling it "constructive procrastination"!). The idea is to do this on a regular basis, like once everyday. Its a good way to take a short 10 minute break.

Too...Many...Ideas!...Must...Blog!

Apparently writing blogs is good for you. I'm willing to give it a shot. Its nice to have a place to go to when something suddenly pops into your head and you need to do something about it. Welcome to the jungle!!

Idea for the day :

Have multiple blogs.

We all have multiple aspects to our personalities and thoughts and they don't all fit into the same category. By limiting ourselves to a single output channel we end up setting boundaries which need not exist. For example, you may want to talk about your trip to Paris and also want to talk about how you made spaghetti yesterday, or how you are going to make a guest appearance in the next Star Trek movie. In my opinion by recording all these items in a single place you are only confining yourselves!

http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/tp/Top-Ten-Reasons-to-Blog.htm