You belong here if there is much information about you on the net, but is has very little relevance to what you want to see it as. This is also applicable when most of the entries on the google search include entries about someone else who shares your name!
You are here if there is either negative or inconsistent information about you on the web. Also you belong here if is nothing about you on the web.
Brands are not created overnight. They are created over time. They deliver credible results. They are noticed and spoken about. They are endorsed based on experience. Time-tested brands are even passed down from parents to children generation after generation. They engender a lasting loyalty.
If that is the power of brands, so can be the power of personal brands that we can create for ourselves. In fact, to survive in the competitive world, a personal brand is an absolute must. We build our brand internally within our organisation by contributing significantly at work, becoming known for our knowledge and sharing that knowledge with colleagues.
Externally, we establish and enhance our brand by making right presence and noise at the appropriate forums. Speaking at leading seminars and conferences and contributing articles to the relevant technology and management media adds to the brand building. Your Google Quotient will depend on your digital branding.
The importance of building a personal brand cannot be overemphasised . Many books have emphasised the need to systematically build a brand for ourselves. Brand connotes many things we readily recognise. Key attributes of a well known brand include the following:
It stands for quality and cannot be substituted easily. It commands a premium price in the market place and generates a sense of pride for the owner / buyer. It gets instant recognition, carries dependability, communicates value, enjoys credibility and visibility and also generates loyalty over time.
What holds good for a premium product brand holds good for individuals too. Brand communicates both credibility and visibility. Those with a personal brand are highly valued, respected and nurtured by the organisations. With your personal brand, you are not another employee in your company.
You are perhaps familiar with the intelligence quotient (IQ), emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) & spiritual quotient (SQ) and you may have been measuring yourself on these! Welcome to the new age quotient you will be measured by and call this Google Quotient !
Your future depends on your GQ score as authors of recently released book (Career Distinction - Stand out by Building Your Brand), William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson point out. Simply put, Google Quotient involves a bit of ego-surfing that most of us probably are familiar with. It refers to the number of relevant hits you would accomplish if you did a google search with your name!
While the focus of the study was to identify the top 50 emerging cities, it also listed the top global outsourcing cities.
The Top 8 Global Outsourcing Cities includes a few new members — Chennai (India), Hyderabad (India), Makati City (The Philippines) and Pune (India).
As expected, Indian cities dominate the list once again. Makati City, as part of the Philippines NCR (National Capital Region) holds its ground.
ECONOMICTIMES.COM
The Top 8 Global Outsourcing Cities includes as many as six Indian cities led by Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi National Capital Region, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.
Dublin (Ireland) and Makati City (The Philippines) are the other two cities in the list, according to a study by CyberMedia’s Global Services and investment advisory firm Tholons.
India’s representation in the top 50 Emerging Global Outsourcing cities has grown to four, from last year’s three, with the addition of Jaipur to the list at No 31.
The other three cities in the list include Kolkata at No 6, Chandigarh at No 12 and Coimbatore at No 17.
Cebu, Shanghai & Beijing tops list of global outsourcing cities
Cebu City (The Philippines), Shanghai (China) and Beijing (China) lead the list of emerging global outsourcing cities.
The ‘Top 50 Emerging Global Outsourcing Cities’ 2008 list has nine entrants - Quezon City, Toronto, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Jaipur, Singapore City, Chengdu, Guadalajara and Mandaluyong City.
Six Chinese cities part of 50 global outsourcing list
Six Chinese cities are a part of the top 50 emerging cities for global outsourcing list, compared to India’s four.
These are Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Dalian, Guangzhou and Chengdu.
Of the top 50 cities, 19 are from Asia and 13 from Central and Eastern Europe. Besides tier-1 Asian cities, outsourcing centers are being set up in many tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
Choice of city important for setting up outsourcing centres
As per CyberMedia publication Global Services, the top entries from Asia are Cebu City, Shanghai, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City, Kolkata and Shenzhen.
The top ranking entries from Central and Eastern Europe include Krakow (Poland), Prague (Czech Republic), and Budapest (Hungary).
Low cost main agenda for setting up outsourcing centres
To set up an outsourcing center the choice of the right city has become more important than the choice of the country, the study says.
Attributes of a city like available resources (quality and type of work force, cost, available infrastructure), and its long-term potential in fulfilling demand for specific services determine its attractiveness as an outsourcing centre.
While Bangalore, Krakow, Makati City and Shanghai are the established centers for finance and accounting, Cebu City, Colombo and Pune are the emerging centers of excellence for this function.
Similarly Shanghai, Dublin and Bangalore are currently the leading centers for research and development and Beijng, Chennai and Prague have been identified as the new emerging centers for R&D services in 2008.
San Antonio & Glasgow provide high-end functions at low cost
Interestingly, there is a trade-off between cost benefit and complexity of services offered by a city. In many cases, an offshore location with lower costs, also processes less complex services and vice-versa.
For instance, offshore cities such as St Petersburg, Shanghai, Bangalore, Makati City, Ho Chi Minh City and Delhi (National Capital Region) provide high-end, complex functions but not necessarily at a lower cost.
Similarly, it is possible to get less complex work done at onshore locations such as San Antonio and Glasgow at lower price.
rs before the software giant issues genuine critical patches as part of its monthly Patch Tuesday cycle, according to security firm Sophos.
The emails, which have the subject line `Security Update for OS Microsoft Windows’ claims to have come from Steve Lipner at securityassurance@microsoft.com.
The email tells unsuspecting computer users that the attached file is a high-priority update and needs to be installed by users of various versions of Microsoft Windows.
However, running the attached file infects Windows computer users with the Mal/EncPk-CZ Trojan horse, and could give hackers control over your PC. The file attached to the file is named KBxxxxxx.exe (where ‘xxxxxx’ is a randomly generated number) in order to disguise itself as a knowledgebase file.
Sophos is intercepting the malicious emails spammed out by the hackers, which read as follows:
Dear Microsoft Customer,
Please notice that Microsoft company has recently issued a Security Update for OS Microsoft Windows. The update applies to the following OS versions: Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows Millenium, Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista.
Please notice, that present update applies to high-priority updates category. In order to help protect your computer against security threats and performance problems, we strongly recommend you to install this update.
Since public distribution of this Update through the official website http://www.microsoft.com would have result in efficient creation of a malicious software, we made a decision to issue an experimental private version of an update for all Microsoft Windows OS users.
As your computer is set to receive notifications when new updates are available, you have received this notice.
In order to start the update, please follow the step-by-step instruction:
1. Run the file that you have received along with this message.
2. Carefully follow all the instructions you see on the screen.
If nothing changes after you have run the file, probably in the settings of your OS you have an indication to run all the updates at a background routine. In that case, at this point the upgrade of your OS will be finished.
We apologise for any inconvenience this back order may be causing you.
Thank you,
Steve Lipner
Director of Security Assurance
Microsoft Corp
utions to transform static data into more dynamic information.
Backed by an investment of two billion dollars over three years, the new portfolio would further strengthen IBM’s position as the world’s leading provider of information infrastructure offerings, the company said in a statement.
With the proliferation of mobile Web, the average individual’s “information footprint” — the digitisation of entertainment, health-care, security, social networking, retail preferences — would grow from one terabyte (about 50,000 trees cut and printed) per year to more than 16 terabytes by 2020, IBM said.
“As India goes through a radical shift away from the decades-old client/server model to a radically more efficient Internet-style architecture, we have taken a giant leap to address foreseen customer challenges with the new information infrastructure launch.
“With our future investments and key acquisitions throughout the last 24 months, we have cemented our strategy to provide information on demand,” IBM India/South Asia Director Systems and Technology Group Shashi B Mal said.
There is no bigger opportunity for the company’s clients than to unlock the value they have in their data centres and help them create smart, innovative offerings for their consumer, Mal said.
Microsoft Corp is betting its next Windows operating system will be faster and easier to use and avoid the missteps of Windows Vista that alienated many users of the software that powers 90 per cent of the world’s PCs.
Windows 7, which was previewed yesterday, is set to be introduced in a test version early next year with features including touchscreen technology and the ability to more easily personalise the system.
The company also adopted a ’simple is better’ philosophy, looking to remove complexity from an operating system that incorporated 50 million lines of programming code in Vista.
Here’s looking inside the new features packed in Windows 7.
Microsoft plans to introduce more user-friendly features, such as a new taskbar that previews all the open windows from a single application by hovering over the programme’s icon.
The designers have removed redundant buttons that launch applications. When users roll over a programme’s icon in the taskbar, it will be easier to see how many documents are open, and switch between them.
Another new feature is called “Jump Lists,” which provides updated lists of recently worked-on documents or often visited websites without first having to open Microsoft Word or an Internet browser.
The new software will ditch some prominent features included in Vista including Calendar, Windows Mail, Movie Maker, Contacts and Photo Gallery, which will now be available for free download from the Microsoft website.
The forthcoming Windows 7 will let users choose to see fewer alerts and warnings from their computers. Rampant notifications alerting people to security risks in Vista are said to be a irk for many users.
“We had all the best intentions of helping to secure the PC platform even more, particularly for novice PC users who needed to be protected,” said Steven Sinofsky, a senior vice president in Microsoft’s Windows group.
But Sinofsky acknowledged that Microsoft needed to work more closely with outside companies to avoid a similar mess this time.
In Windows 7, Microsoft introduces a concept called Libraries, which automatically collects similar files scattered across PCs on a home network and displays them together in a single folder.
These Libraries are like virtual folders that can reside across multiple folders and even multiple networked PCs. The default Libraries are for Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, and Videos.
Microsoft has said that Windows 7 will be faster and need less memory to run. Vista generally needs costlier hardware configurations than the older Windows XP.
Sinofsky held up a “netbook” — a low-cost, low-power laptop that would have a hard time running Vista — and said it’s working with Windows 7.
Windows Vista was heavily criticised due to poor compatibility with devices and slow start speeds that it became the target of an effective marketing campaign by rival Apple Inc.
Windows 7 adds features to more easily connect personal computers to cameras, printers and home networks.
It’s new feature Device Stage will be a one-stop point to manage and gather information for devices from mobile phones to printers to digital music players.
The new feature will let people better personalise machines and set up networks that mesh capabilities of mobile telephones, printers, digital picture frames, computers and other Smart devices.
Among the innovations unveiled by Microsoft was a touchscreen capability that will allow users to select folders and control programmes without using a mouse.
The Operating System will also enable computers to respond to gestures, like the iPhone, whether a person uses a mouse or his finger, depending on the type of computer screen. Whenever a user presses his finger to the display, a ‘water drop’ appears, showing that the touch has been recognised, and the mouse cursor disappears, to avoid input confusion.
In Wondows 7, desktop Themes selector highlights the ability to change window borders’ Glass edge. Users have a choice of 18 tints for their glass, with accessibility themes also available, as well as more themes downloadable online.
The notification area or System Tray too has become less cluttered. Users can determine what events and applications can place icons in the tray and when they can pop up warning messages.
Windows 7 aims to keep hardware requirements in line with that of Vista so that companies do not need to buy special machines to run the new operating system.
Microsoft also showed off lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote software that work in Web browsers and look as they normally do, but don’t have to be installed on a PC. The new programmes were running “in the cloud” on the new Windows Azure system Microsoft unveiled, a move aimed at helping it catch up with Google and other nimbler Web companies. Azure lets Microsoft run software and store data in its own massive data centers around the world, instead of requiring people to install programs on their own PCs.
Office Web applications will be available for consumers on Office Live, though the company did not disclose whether it would be paid for by advertising or subscriptions. The Office Web programmes represent what Microsoft believes is a more polished take on what Google has tried.
Microsoft’s online Office programmes let people work on a document at the same time, and make it easier to publish charts and PowerPoint presentations to blogs with few clicks.
Microsoft’s early 2009 target for people to begin toying with Windows 7 is striking because the Redmond, Washington-based company promised deadlines it couldn’t keep when it was developing Vista.
Microsoft is trying hard to avoid a similar debacle this time. Sinofsky said there is no date yet for the next milestone, a “release to manufacturing” version of Windows 7, but reiterated that the system is set to go on sale in early 2010.
