Uprising Bangladesh:Outsourcing; the next big remittance source

Inspired by the patriotism lately , I started contributing some little things for my country. Basically I have started highlighting all the impact full positive thing that are being taken place in Bangladesh. Twitter is the medium where I am micro blogging the positive thing giving a hash tag of #UprisingBangladesh.

In continuation with that, I am going to share a sudden experience that I have had today. Though, its bit unusual that instead of twitting, I am going to share it in detail. The reason being, the simple incident that touched me so badly, that I couldn't help myself but writing it to let people know.

I have just checked in to Rangpur, one of the seven divisional headquarters of Bangladesh and also recently declared city corporation,  due to some official urgency. Rangpur is not at all a happening city to live. In fact few years back it was called "monga alaka" due to extreme drought.  Unlike Bangladesh , as a whole an agro based economy, Rangpur had to struggle a lot to produce any sort of agro product during a large period of time of the year.And as a result, people had to leave way below the poverty line. 

Unable to make any income, people used to migrate from here to other cities in search of some work that can let them to earn some livelihood. People from other districts, used to recruit Rangpur people as labor. Government along with different human activist groups used to come here by collecting donation from  reach people of the society and distribute among the impoverished people . Rangpur was such a nightmare of this country.

So I am here due to some professional urgency. Though there is a company owned bung-law here, I checked in the best hotel of the town called Hotel North View. Its literally the best one with all the modern appliances like - LCD tv monitor , Air Condition etc. In one sentence , its very slick.

I entered the hotel bit late. It was around 12 am at night. Eventually, receptionist guy was not readily available. So I had to wait a little. While waiting, as usual, was browsing my tab.As I completed the formalities, a boy of the hotel was helping me carrying my luggage to the room no 707. 

The boy was hardly 5 feet height, very thin; bit fair complexion with few beard. He was wearing an uniform of the hotel. A sky blue shirt; black trouser and a pair of sandal. An ideal attire of a hotel boy.We were waiting in front of the lift. 

Suddenly he asked pointing to my tab " Sir, is it iPad ?" I was bit surprised hearing the brand name iPad from him. I replied very consciously with having concern whether he'll understand or not : "Its Galaxy Tab" . He then replied enthusiastically , "Samsung Galaxy Tab!" I was thinking for a while about what to say? I just nodded with a surprise smile on my face and the lift door opened.

We entered in the lift and it started moving up. He again asked a question "Sir , did it cost 54 k BDT?" . Then I thought, ok, this boy somehow is attached with gadget either he has some sorts of involvement with gadget business or he knows from his peers. We both remained silent and reached to our destined floor.He was walking in front of me.

I could not resist myself, but told him "I can see that you have a good interest in gadgets! " In reply he said , "Though I am poor, I have deep interest about updated gadgets"! He continued , " I have a smart phone of LG that I bought spending around 21 k. " I said, "That's pretty cool. LG is in the 3rd position after Samsung & iPhone in smartphone genre. By this time we reached to my room.

I entered my room and he placed the luggage on the corner of the floor. He kept saying, " I am going to have a laptop very soon from one of my brothers." I found the discussion very interesting. So tried to give my personalized opinion, " Get internet connection if you use laptop. So that your laptop will be worth using to you" I told him. 

Real surprise was due for me at that time. He said , " Sir, I do OUTSOURCING work on

internet" . I was speechless for some moment and got very excited with sheer surprise. I enthusiastically praised him a lot and tried to know what kind of job that he does.After talking to him , I got to know, his name is Kabir. He has been working in oDesk for last 3 months as ad poster with multiple accounts. He has already started getting payments and as per his projection, in next month , few more of his account would start earning and then he will leave his current job and will fully concentrate on this outsourcing thing. Besides, he has a plan to establish a business center with a view to having more number of people working together.

Bangladesh is going to be the next best place for online outsourcing. It has already started yielding foreign remittance from this sector. World wide, the reputation is improving. For example, one of the highest ranking holders female in oDesk is from Bangladesh. Clients over the world are also becoming more confident on Bangladesh. In December'12 an event of world Outsourcing Summit took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

So all this signs are basically favoring Bangladesh to become the next comfortable out sourcing destination for the world.Again getting back into Kabir. Its not an exceptional case. Rather, Kabir is actually representing the awareness level of this particular prospect in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is the top ranked young country with 70 % of her  population is below 35 years of age. And by rightly exploiting this emerging  prospects this country will definitely progress and up rise defeating all the odds.

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7 features letting Thumb Pro to target the business community

Thumb, formerly known as Opinionaided, allows users to ask questions on varied topics & upload photos for comments from other users. And also share questions outside the Thumb community – using text message, twitter & facebook. It helps million of users to get instant opinion and most importantly from real people.  

My last review on thumb: How to use thumb to become an opinion leader

Since 2010, Thumb is keeping its mark in the social network world being the 2^nd highest time spending network after Facebook. One statistics shows 4.5 hours per monthly is being spent on this platform (thumb) by the active users. Pinterest remains as the closest one with 1.5 hours.

In last three odd years Thumb has been evolved as the strongest network having more than 1.2 mil. user base and thus now is ready to make a big leap for the business community by introducing Thumb Pro. 

The features that are making it standout are given below: 

1. Instant Feedback – You can get instant feedback on the go on your required business topics like – product design, new products & services, concepts, new designs, pre study testing etc. 
2. Target Audience – Thumb has the ability to target the exact demographic i.e gender & age. So you can get opinion of our desired product or service or brands or logo from the audience you are targeting
3. Response Volume – You can get hundreds of responses in seconds. Besides, it has the ability to choose the number of responses you’d like to receive upto 10 K responses.
4. Filter Results – Thumb can also filter results by age, gender, or response and view in beautiful graphs.
   
5. Extract Report - Later on the results can be exported in details to the excel for further analysis & presentation.
6. Interact–Quantitative feedback can’t help to make decision alone. So you can also follow up with responders in a 1 – on – 1 conversation.
7. Simple Pricing – 3 different categories are there to choose your required one based on your budget limit. Number of responses & options of extracting report are the differentiating factors to complement simple pricing plans.  

Thumb has already proven its worth; with Thumb Pro, it will give low cost , instant aid for decision taking for the business community working with brands, agencies and market research. 

Courtesy : thumb.it/pro , research-live.com

Photo Courtesy: thumb pro, Video Courtesy: thumb pro

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Linkedin's recent acquisition of Pulse is not out of the blues!

Linkedin, a niche social network has made itself exclusive for the professionals. Its one of the biggest features is being the meeting place for all sorts of the world professionals who share, learn & connect with loads of individuals and resources. Since inception in May, 2003,

linkedin has relentlessly been working to evolve as a social network that can add value to individuals’ professional life. A recent (11th April'13) $90 million worth acquisition of Pulse, a network that brings all of your favorite blogs, magazines newspapers quickly to read, share and save in one place for free.

Now many people are raising their eye browses looking for reasons this high profile acquisition. Big business concern like linkedin will never be going to spell out the inner reasons of such acquisition. Here I am not going to conclude whether this acquisition has paid off or not. Time will eventually let us know. But I will be trying to pin point the reasons that have played enough as the motivating factors for this deal.

1. Being in the very niche segment, it is imperative that LinkedIn  requires something more to spice it up for its valued users. Rather than having just profile & few connections with professionals, linkedin looked for, to be more dynamic.

2. Technology is evolving at a faster rate than anything else in the world. From desktop, computer has  now come into the palm of the people. Whatever strategy that social networkers formulate nowadays, each of them will have to have the strategy to be strong on the go i.e be active in the mobile devices.

3.  Among the social net-workers  linkedin wants to be the pioneer of being the repository of all the updated and recent news articles with special emphasize as it has direct impact on peoples’ professional lives.

4. Acquisition of Pulse can aid the users for career advancement by injecting professional insights, knowledge like – it allows users to browse multiple media sources, including social networks, to pick and choose the content they want to  read.

5. 750+ Publishers of 190 countries, will view the network having 200 million + users of linkedin, as a prime destination to release exclusive contents thus the window of mega business opens up.

6. Pulse’s core value proposition is to help foster informed discussions that spark the decisions shaping the world around us through news and information. Linkedin will leverage that in the form of news, influencer posts, industry updates, discussions, comments and many more.  

7. Linkedin is now pretty comfortable in terms of having large number of users 200+ mil and 2+ sign up per second. Now they want to increase users time spend on linkedin both on fixed and mobile platform via  the content of Pulse.

8. Linkedin wants to become the indispensable site for professionals worldwide, whether they're on the go and checking in on their mobile devices, or sitting at their desktop.     

9. It will boost linkedin’s expansion into the smartphone’s & tablets of busy professionals.

10.The shared views of (Publish, Discover & Connect ) of professional information and knowledge can transform lives and the world makes linkedin and Pulse a particularly great fit.

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Professionals turn to the site for trusted recommendations and quality content. With all its changes, though, Linkedin needs to make sure it can stay focused on the social media niche it has so successfully carved out for itself. If it makes too many efforts to connect strangers or bombard users with trivial news updates, it runs the risk of looking too much like the social peers that many LinkedIn users try to avoid.

Courtesy: Technewsworld Social Media Linkedin Blog

Photo: webpronews.com, brandwatch.com, arkovi, allthingsd

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Irritation for Evernote; “Google Keep” catching up with the proven feature

The latest update of "Google Keep" has overcome the shortcomings that it embraced during launch. Now it contains all most all the proven effective features that other similar apps, like Evernote, have. Features like - you can now take notes that include text, audio, and photos, and make checklists. And your notes are synced with an online server which are stored in your free Google Drive online storage account thus you can edit notes on the Web, too.

So if “Google Keep” has brought in the parity with the leader (In this segment) Evernote again the big question comes - Evernote or Google Keep ? In my last review ("GoogleKeep" - another invention to keep millions of users) I only stated the “color scheme” as the only distinctive factor till then. But the game has slightly been changed now. 

It seems that the most pressing distinction that “Google Keep” is carrying is their symbolic strength of giving

adequate free space in the server. And that’s where the difference has already been created. Evernote is giving small monthly upload allowance that freeloaders get i.e 60 MB. And most critical one is Evernote’s monthly reminder of how much you used and about how many notes you can still make until your balance refills.

Meanwhile, “Google Keep” – having unprecedented reputation by giving enough online space, is giving 5 GB of free storage in Google Drive. Google , the game changer, has once again kept evidence of changing the game for Evernote.

I believe, Google has this ability to keep their mark banging on large free space. The most successful one was when Google had changed the whole game by introducing Gmail with unlimited storage. That particular time , couple of first mover free email service providers were dodged down and Gmail climbed the top.

To me, if other features of Google Keep remain at per, only the free storage can play a big role in giving hard time to Evernote. After all, at the end of the day, it’s the bucks you pay, that matters the most. So “Google Keep” can bang on their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of large free storage and thus can win the hearts of million users.

So Evernote can’t stand still anymore. They need to come out of being so conservative and need to do something out of the box to remain ahead of the game. Traditional strategy of combating competition won’t help as Google is not a conventional competitor for any of the online giants.

Courtesy: Technology Review

Photo courtesy: mashable.com, tech2.in.com, technozan.com, macworld.com, marketingpilgrim.com

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Facebook Home : GIANT is making the GIGANTIC leap

A lot more buzz is spreading around regarding the recent declaration of "Facebook Home" by co-founder Zuckerberg. Different folds of discussions are taking place. Few people are commenting it as another version of screen saver, while some are deeply concerned about the security of the users.

Interestingly all are commenting based on few assumptions & perception made on sheer imagination as this particular thing has not released any prototype yet. This innovation is going to hit the world wide web on 12th April'13. So for the time being commenting on the good or bad sides of Facebook home is absolutely foolish act.

To me Zuckerberg , the person who have redefined the social media , is not going to do something whimsically. There is sharp indication of bright future business prospect. Just think for a while, if the screen of your smart phone is pre-occupied with one app , you are so much within its control. This is huge business.

As a business entity if you are in control of the major touch point of your consumers to display your product, you have the absolute monopoly power of making making great business out of it.

Primarily as the name suggests 'Facebook Home' which will let the users have their home screen active with facebook application with live chatting option. So far my understanding says , you will remain logged in and news feed will actively show on your display.

So whenever you will look at your smart pal (phone) you will have to see through facebook. Bang on ... that's the hot spot where you will have the liberty and endorsement for displaying your offerings to the right consumer.

Nowadays, the most common touch points that we use to reach prospective consumers, are either expensive or do a little to grab attention. But this time around, such a concept of permanently occupying the home screen would make the deal so hot for overall businesses.

Again another revolution is just at the doorstep. Stepping upon the uniqueness and first mover advantage, for one more time , Zuckerberg is going to rewrite the history with shared benefit. Giant is making the gigantic leap.

Photo courtesy: allthingsd.com t1.gstatic.com rack.1.mscdh.com
Review by Abir Hossain

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1Weather; an amazing weather app

1Weather; an amazing weather app Weather app in mobile always amazes me. You dont need to rely on tv or radio to know the whereabouts of the weather of a particular time. It’s withinh your palm now. You can surprise people with your prediction reading through the weather app. That’s the best part to me.

Few days back, more specifically in last moonsoon season, I made several prediction about the possibility of rain and it worked like anything. I started sharing it with my dad. Initially he thought , it was a fluke.Neither I was properly convinced at that time. But with the proof of several incidents , I got convinced and thus I have grown the interest in me.

At the very onset of my smart phone using, one of my senior colleagues recommended me such an app that can give the weather forecast of my location. That was accuweather. I immediately downloaded it and started using with sheer excitement.

I have been effectively using this app till date. But couple of days ago, while browsing Playstore randomly, I came up with another weather app i.e 1weather. After going through few user comments, I decided to give it a try with an expectation of experiencing something completely new.

Honestly speaking, I have found 1Weather a very nice and effective app. And it’s way better than any

weather app of such genre  It’s nice to keep your eyes on, smooth, attractive visuals, wonderful graphical presentation etc have made it standout. To me the most effective attribute of this app is that, it can detect your exact location and can give the forecast with beautiful presentation.

I believe, 1weather is more impact full due to it’s several distinctive factors. Till now I am pretty happy with that , and I would highly recommend people to have it who wants to track the weather forecast.

Review by Abir Hossain

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"Google Keep" - another invention to keep millions of users

” Google Keep” - another invention to keep millions of users. Just downloaded Google Keep. Not because of it’s utility but the name Google attracts me so strongly , that it becomes very hard to resist.

I somehow feel attached with Google for so long. Particularly I have witnessed the rise of Google and how it has become the internet giant . Hope ‘keep’, another of it’s creation would hook millions of net savvy like me.

The softer part of adding color to the note must make it stand out with others. One thing is for sure, color always spices up our lives. To me it’s one of the major sources of happiness. And Google has once again proved it’s amazing ability to redefine simplicity which is well depicted here in ’ keep’ by adding color schemes.

It’s quick and simple but to my utter surprise, there is no scope of uploading any file as attachment. So one needs to take photograph using camera and that would be uploaded tied with relevant notes . Other than that , voice recording system looks pretty handy and off course , sharing options are good as usual.

Now the big question comes - Evernote or Google Keep ? To be frank , despite my blind support towards Google  I have found color as the only distinctive factor with Evernote. But on the other hand , few important options are missing.

Therefore, just a suggestion for Google, don’t go for inventing something just for the sake of combating competition. Such a monster does not look good doing so. You have already outsmarted others , just keep doing that with unique invention.

Review by Abir Hossain

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