The IPO of professional social network LinkedIn is probably the most significant web stock issue since Google, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on LinkedIn’s impact on the world of work. Though ostensibly a general-purpose social networking tool for professionals, and nowhere near as big as Facebook in terms of number of users (LinkedIn has some 100 million users, compared with over 500 million on Facebook), LinkedIn has become an important tool for connecting job seekers and employers, notably introducing several key innovations that repositioned the standard social network profile as a kind of “digital resume,” complete with features with which a user can showcase their skills and demonstrate their professional reputation.

A Digital Resume

Like other social networking apps, LinkedIn enables its users to build a profile and connect with other users. Where LinkedIn differs from its competition is that it defines a users’ profile in terms of their work history, rather than other personal details. At its most basic, it’s simply an online version of the traditional printed resume, listing a users’ work history and academic qualifications. However, coupled with LinkedIn’s reputation tools the profile becomes much more powerful, giving employers much more insight into the capabilities of a particular candidate — an attractive proposition for both employers and job seekers.

A Way to Demonstrate Reputation

LinkedIn introduced two key social network profile reputation innovations: Recommendations and LinkedIn Answers. Recommendations allows users to post endorsements from people they’re worked with on their profiles, which are then associated with the particular job the recommendation is for; they’re like an online version of the traditional reference. Despite concerns that the Recommendations system can be gamed — users offering to give each other fake recommendations to bolster their profile, for example — it does provide a way for employers to screen candidates. Employers using LinkedIn Jobs can even limit applications to users with a certain number of Recommendations.

LinkedIn Answers provides a way for users to demonstrate their expertise by answering business questions posted by the community. These answers are then added to the users profile, enabling users to showcase their knowledge and providing potential employers or business partners with more information about a potential candidate.

Recommendations and Answers are complementary: While Recommendations can be used to assess what a particular user is like to work with, Answers is a way to assess a user’s knowledge.

The Future

While LinkedIn would probably like to be more than just a Web 2.0 job board, those functions drive a significant portion of its income, so it needs to make sure that its digital resume stays relevant. While a LinkedIn profile was once the best way for people to showcase their skills and experience online  there are now many more ways to measure a person’s digital reputation — Klout score, Odesk and Elance reviews, and Quora answers, for example — which arguably could be even more valid; LinkedIn will need to make sure it doesn’t get overtaken by these newer services.

Additionally, with an increasing number of freelancers in the work market, LinkedIn needs to cater to them specifically. Currently, LinkedIn’s Jobs section is heavily skewed towards traditional employment, while its Answers section is seemingly mainly inhabited by consultants and freelancers. It should reconcile this disconnect by providing a way for freelancers and consultants to find employment though the service, perhaps by modifying its existing Jobs section, or perhaps by integrating an Elance-like freelance jobs marketplace.

As Stacey noted when the IPO was filed, the funds raised should enable the company to make some savvy acquisitions to round out its business offering, perhaps even including acquiring some companies that currently provide services to freelancers, or reputation-based services. Whether those purchases and its own innovations will keep it ahead of competition like Facebook, the newer reputation-based start-ups, and even the traditional job boards like Monster.com, remains to be seen.

Photo courtesy Flickr user Coletivo Mambembe

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In the modern world it is becoming more and more common to find people working from home. The Internet offers so many different opportunities for people to make money online, and the benefits of working from home make all of this seem like a very attractive proposition.

There are numerous factors that go into anyone’s success in making money online. One of these will be in choosing the right opportunity to take advantage of. It is important that you are able to find something that suits you and that interests you. If you are simply engaging in work that you find extremely dull, then your motivation to succeed will be diminished.

It is also very important that you create the right sort of working set up. If you have a Home Office that you can use, it is very good to create a decent working environment that will help you gain the success that you desire. As such, it is good that you create the right setting, including having the right corner computer workstation, the right sort of computer, and the right ergonomic chair that will help you to stay comfortable as you spend many hours a day at your desk.

Of course, one home opportunity that people are taking advantage of is trading forex. There are many different aspects to doing this which will be important in order to gain success. One of these is certainly in making sure that you take advantage of all of the forex indicators that are available to you.

A forex indicator will be essential in helping you to predict trends within the market and in different trades that you want to enter. You can understand the history of different trends and will therefore have a better understanding of when to enter and when to withdraw from a trade. By failing to utilise these indicators fully, you will really struggle to gain the success you desire.

The problem with these indicators is purely that there may even be too many of them. While many people will believe this is a good thing, all it seems to do is confuse people who are starting off with some early trades. It is important therefore that only a few key ones are chosen to implement into your strategy.

As such it is always a good idea to conduct as much research as possible before you consider entering into any forex trades.

Here’s why paying $530 for an unlocked, unsubsidized Google Nexus One doesn’t sound so bad after all. Flip the first two digits of that price, and you’ll get Google’s early termination fee (ETF): $350. The relevant clause from the Nexus One’s Terms of Service (TOS):

You agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the ‘Equipment Recovery Fee’) equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service. For example, if the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan was $529 USD and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device was $179 USD with a service plan, the Equipment Recovery Fee you pay will be $350 USD in the event you cancel within the first 120 days of carrier service.

To be clear, the ETF applies to those who paid “only” $179 for a phone and a two-year contract with T-Mobile. And the price apparently drops after you’ve used the phone non-stop for 120 days (which is faster than you may think). Besides, those who enter into two-year contracts only do so after much thought and careful financial-planning, right?

Well, given the dearth of advice on how to get out of cell phone contracts early, perhaps not. Worse, due to the vagueness of the TOS, seems Google’s ETF isn’t the only thing premature terminators have to pay; other fees may be due to T-Mobile.

Whatever the case, such an ETF—again only effectively applicable for 120 days after the phone is first set up—makes paying $530 for only the phone a more attractive proposition.

Source (Image from Wikipedia)

Post from: The Gadget Blog

Everyone’s all excited about that Freescale gizmo, but it looks like it may have competition. The Lenovo U1 has a similar convertible design, though with a slightly more rounded look. It’s also different in function: when docked, it runs Windows 7 on the dock’s low-power Intel processor, but once detached it uses an ARM CPU to run a lightweight Linux distro. Not sure how it’s going to handle the segue if you’ve got work in progress and need to dock it, but I’m sure Lenovo has that handled.

Here are the specs, broken down into tablet and dock portions:

Tablet:

• 1.6 pounds
• 1GHz Snapdragon processor
• 512MB DDR1 RAM
• 16GB SSD

Dock:

• 3.8 pounds (with tablet attached)
• Intel Core2 Duo U4100 processor
• 4GB DDR3 RAM (max)
• 128GB SSD

One other major difference: the U1 starts at a thousand dollars. I get the feeling Freescale might be the more attractive proposition to most people. We’ll see ‘em both at CES, though, so we’ll let you know.

[via PC Magazine]

Canadian company Datawind, the guys behind the Pocket Surfer, has entered the netbook market with the UbiSurfer. Spec wise I’m afraid it gets absolutely blown out of the water compared to other netbooks available. An Arm processor with just 128GB of RAM is pretty poor. As is the SSD of just 1GB. But it does have a few features going for it that make it an attractive proposition. Firstly, it’s tiny. If you’re looking for a really compact netbook you’ll struggle to get more compact that this. The screen is just 7-inches and it weighs just 700g. Secondly it’s only £159.99. Lastly, and by far the most crucial aspect of the UbiSufer is that it comes with a pre-installed Vodafone SIM that will allow 30 hours of GPRS web surfing a month. It’s not 3G but it’s better than a poke in the eye. If more than 30 hours are needed a £5.99 a month fee will allow unlimited usage. The 30 hours a month deal lasts for a year, and then it’s just £29.99 a year after that. Roaming charges are pretty cheap too – just 5p a minute in Europe and the States. 30 hours should be more than enough for most surfers – the netbook has Wi-Fi as well so it wouldn’t be totally dependent on the Vodafone connection. So overall, fairly poor netbook, fairly good data deal. For £159.99 it might be worth a punt. Get it online from Maplin.