The Global Economy and Business

Sometimes we have to deal with a kind of strange customers. They may take anything you have without even asking a word. The only thing they tell you is that they are smart enough to choose by themselves.

The others want to know every single operation that you have to perform in order to provide them with the quality product. They believe that controlling every part of the process is the right way to get what they want. Something like that: “I want to order Symfony Web Application Development because my previous site was on Ruby on Rails and I didn’t like how long it took me to have it done. And please don’t use php 5.2 as I’ve heard of a new HTML standard coming soon” :))) It’s hilarious. In fact you may sit near the professional and even know that he’s cheating you but you’ll never find how he does that…

Just a good quote: “If you want to help your son then do it with him, if you want to help your friend then do it yourself, if you want to help a professional then don’t bother him, if you want to help a fool then you are a fool”.

Here is the complete article from ActiveRain site - social network of realtors and other real estate professionals. Interesting conclusion but I cant believe that it can really be so influential…

Today I think that nobody will deny that financial crisis impacted almost every industry of the world economy. But in the real estate industry it did the greatest harm as we can see. It has eliminated the stability and people’s beliefs in that stability that was usually associated with the real estate industry.

I have analyzed the situation during the last moth and came to an interesting conclusion. Ordinary people are still looking for that stability. They started to evaluate companies from that point of view. One of my clients said that he spends time and counts the number of ads printed in the newspaper from the local RE companies. He believes that if company decreases it’s advertising budget this means that company is loosing it’s positions… And visa verse, if a company continues to publish the same number of ads it speaks in its favor.

To go forth I have heard almost the same regarding the office decoration and even the clothes of the personnel. People start to pay attention to the cost of clothes of their realtor… Many of them believe that if realtor wears the same shirt and jacket it means that his financial position is really poor… And they start to look for another agent. Is it fair? Of course, no! But what can we do with people’s beliefs…

We can and have to hide the after-effects of financial crisis. We may do a lot of easy and cost-effective things – paint the walls in the office (they will look fresh) and buy some new designer clothing with discounts. It’s easy to find some really good fashionable shirts and pants from the 2008 collection online. By the way, my favorite is foreverfashion.com

I found an article called The law of diminishing returns from IT with rather interesting ideas/ the author tries to apply the law of diminishing returns to the IT market. The interesting fact is that he (or maybe she) describes the IT market as a market of resources not products.

Worth reading I think!

The principal facts published about Pakistani IT look like following.

IT industry of Pakistan went unnoticed for years. In seventies there were only several companies in Lahore and Karachi catering to public and private needs within Pakistan. Few computer institutes came up offering courses in computer programming languages. By 1980 there IT industry was already mature and well established. Starting from 1997 global IT went into hyper activity, until then Pakistan was a very small player with only few companies exporting software and services. By 2000 Pakistan had over 700 software companies. Ninety percent of which had based their business models on offshore development and related services.

In present days IT industry of Pakistan is rather developed. Main services, offered by Pakistan, are:
ITO - Information Technology Outsourcing
BPO - Business Process Outsourcing covers things like running call centers, processing insurance claims.
Software - Offshore Software Development
Search Engine Optimization

And the main advantages, which are determined by Pakistan’s IT specialists, are:
1. Western experience
2. Professionalism and integrity
3. Higher labor availability
4. Low cost talent pool.

But is everything really so good? Let’s consider all the points separately.

Pakistan specialists in web-development really do amount of work for western companies, so they have some experience in it, BUT it is not that kind of experience, which is needed for high quality.

Professionalism and integrity? How can it be? The level of education in Pakistan is one of the lowest in the world due to the political and economical situation in the country. Very small part of Pakistani specialists can afford to gain knowledge and experience in foreign developed countries, because incomes of citizens are really low.

Higher labor availability - that is true, but is it not connected with such term as quality. By the way, how can person, who has almost no holidays and days-off, really do his job always properly? You know the answer?

And the last thing. Low cost is great, when workers are professionals. But do you really think, that it is good to spend even less money for bad result?

Yesterday I was searching the Net and found an interesting statistics. The last survey of the Internet users shows that the percentage of people who are 55+ has increased over the last 5 years. What conclusions can we make from this?

I think the first thing that every site needs to add is a special part dedicated t retired people. Fore example, mortgage brokers have to provide the online training explaining special conditions for old people.

But even more. During the period of financial crisis the old people are the ones who become even more economical than usual. They don’t want to spend money on gasoline or taxi and to go to bank many times. They will look for financial consulting online. I think that it can be really good to implement (embed) into the site a sort of video streaming software. The opportunity to communicate with you online can help you to win a competition among the other mortgage broker companies.

The second thing regarding the increased number of pensioners online is concerned online shopping. And one more time I need to say about gasoline or taxi expenditures. The statistics shows that the sizes of online trade have increased by 34% and the greatest impact was done by people who are older than 55 years. They surf the Net and buy designer clothing online and order presents to their children, relatives and friends. They buy book on Amazon and even use chats and dating sites for Internet dating.

More and more of the think about investing through Internet or using web 2.0 sites like Zillow or Fizber.com to sell and buy homes….

Internet is growing… and becomes older! This opens new opportunities for online business.

Today I’ve received an interesting information regarding one new technology innovation. Hope this will be interesting:

If you are a student, you can expect lots of troubles: need to learn heaps of unnecessary information you never need in your life before these tedious exams. Exams are import to pass, because, in all likelihood you wish to finish the university.

So how does spy earpiece can help here?

Earpiece  is a small thing, simple in operation, which consists of tiny wireless earpiece that can be plugged into an ear, with an inductive loop wire attached to a Bluetooth hands-free used to transfer the signal to a micro earpiece. Also, a small battery is needed for an earpiece. In a package from us you receive 3 batteries, and if you need more you can buy one at any local store.

Once, you’ve synchronized a Bluetooth hands-free device with mobile phone, and put a batter inside a spy earpiece, you can start using it!

There is no special knowledge required to install the device. Everything is simple and easy to use. Just in case you expect any troubles you can read the step-by-step manual to fix the problem.

Now, when you armed yourself with this powerful weapon you can seamlessly pass all the exams, tests, and other boring and stressful tests. You won’t have to memorize the unnecessary data, whereas you will be able to focus on creativity and inventions.

Now, spy earphone in details:

This wonderful invention consists of two parts:
1) a spy earpiece itself
2) wireless set (that is usually hidden in your pocket)

A invisible earpiece is on the picture in the top left corner, and a Bluetooth device with. As you can see there is nothing special or extraordinary here. Everything is plain and easy.

This week we faced the new stage in the decrease of US dollar currency. Stock market was influenced and international trade will shift one more time.

Analysts suppose that in this situation countries that use dollars as their second main currency can benefit from providing export services. It can be rather beneficial for countries that accept dollars for their outsourcing services.

As European countries and Japan loosing their export money and buy more cheap American import goods they need to think about lowering their costs of production. If to take the industry of web development as an example I believe that more and more Japan and European software developing and software distributing companies will outsource some parts of the development to such countries as Belarus.

This country has rather small chances to join the European union because of some political issues. This means that dollar will play a certain role for enough long period of time. More Java development companies can turn to qualified Belarusian computer programming service providers trying to save their economic positions. At the same time software developers from the new EU countries will loose their position as their costs will be not so competitive because of very strong euro. Here are my predictions for software development industry and IT outsourcing for at least the next 6 months.

Real Estate market falls but…Yacht Building is booming. Yes! It’s really so! At least some parts of the economy don’t suffer from the trends…

Just some quotes to prove this:

… the super-rich are still lining up to pay tens of millions of dollars for mega yachts. The well-heeled buyers of the floating mansions are increasingly coming from emerging economies — in the Middle East, Russia and South America. The source of their wealth runs the gamut — technology, venture capitalism, new industries….

“Nobody is buying these yachts because they need them,” said William S. Smith III, Trinity’s vice president. “They’re buying them because they want them.”

There are about 3,800 yachts over 80 feet in service around the world now. About 1,800 of those have been built since 2000. The study predicts that that by 2010, there will be 5,000 such yachts on the water.

“There’s not enough supply,” said Ed Slack, editor of International Boat Industry. “It takes two years to build some of these yachts and the demand hasn’t slowed down.”

So far, Trinity’s largest vessel has been a 192-foot yacht that would carry a replacement price of $60 million to $65 million. The company is working a 242-footer that will have a price tag in excess of $90 million.

And to prove this new projects in this sphere of business are opening. As I see the Mr.Boating site (http://www.mrboating.com/) that faced very slow growth now is being renewed. They see the market possibilities and don’t want to miss them. So, let’s see…

The number of people who choose working FSBO has increased greatly. The main reason for this is that selling your home online can really save you a substantial sum of money. At first blush 6% may not sound like much. But imagine that if the average price of a house is about $300,000 this means that the seller will have to pay nearly $18,000 to a broker. In reality you can save this money by marketing your property directly to the consumer using online services.
Today there are plenty of internet resources and sites that offer their services for FSBO buyers and sellers. But which site to choose for listing your property.
I have visited several of such sites and can say that Fizber.com is an outstanding choice for those who work FSBO. It offers an enormous variety of different services, has a large database of homes listed, and provides its users with an easy search and account creating.
And have you ever heard of Drive Score? This is one of the services available at Fizber.com. With Drive Score, buyers can see how close establishments are by car. Drive Score shows a map of what establishments are in a property’s neighborhood and calculates a Drive Score based on the number of places within a convenient driving distance. Homes are often located in an area where restaurants, libraries, grocery stores, hospitals and other businesses are easier to get to by car than on foot. That’s why it is really very important for home buyers to be aware of nearby infrastructure to make their choice.
At Fizber.com you can also visit the Press Room and get acquainted with the latest news and achievements in the sphere of real estate.
To sum up, Fizber.com may be undoubtedly included into the list of FSBO best sites that offer a wide range of all possible services to their clients.

“Blogging is the new model of interactive journalism,
COMMUNICATION and learning.”
from ABBYY Lingvo 11

Hi there!

Your favourite weblog -http://insurance.viaden.com/- found new author!!! Is it a good piece of news??? We will see… It was a really good and interesting blog and I will try not to spoil it. So, this weblog will be devoted to insurance, as before. It will be a kind of Live Journal where I will express my own opinion and comment on different events in the field of insurance.There is a good English saying: «Wise after the event». It means that it’s easy to give many pieces of advice after something happens. But it’s rather difficult to predict everything in order not to get involved in an unpleasant incident. And that is why you can be ensured against different risks with the help of insurance. And I will tell you about it…