CrowdFlower
http://crowdflower.com/

Yet another abstraction layer between you and people working for you. Managed crowdsourcing via outlets like MechanicalTurk

The place for people to share things they're willing to do for $5 Buy. Sell. Have fun.

Fiverr is a place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5: Funny and Bizarre, Social Marketing, Graphics, Advertising, Technology, Business, Programming and more!

Using RentACoder

Interesting use of outsourcing from 4 Hour Workweek to free up more time

hiring someone to cook for you. craiglist. includes his original ad.

2008.08.04 Sid Savara Food

The Results So Far I’ve been doing this experiment for 3 weeks now, and I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. I literally never have to go out shopping anymore, and I hardly even need to use dishes as she prepares everything so I can eat it directly out of Tupperware (which I can place in the dishwasher). Best of all - I now have over 10 hours a week that I didn’t have before. I bet it doesn’t take her more than an extra hour or two a week worth of effort, since she’s cooking meals for her family anyway - and I don’t care if it takes her only 10 minutes a week. The extra time I have is worth it. She asks for my input, but I for the most part ask her to make any healthy food she wants (high in fiber and protein, lots of fresh vegetables/fruits, lean meats etc etc). It is the first time in years I’ve had fruits and vegetables fresh from the farmers market. I’m eating better than ever, and cheaper than if I was going out to restaurants.

industrial zone is not a pretty place. You can’t rent a car, even if you wanted to. There is no public transportation. Pick-ups and drop-offs are pre-arranged with factories. The good news is that the factories love when I visit or, for that matter, when any Westerner visits. There’s a certain hospitality that can be found doing business in China that doesn’t exist to such a great extent in th

4hww

Why get one virtual assistant when you can get a team?

Virtual assistant team: I think the biggest benefits of TimeSvr versus a single assistant are 1) the quick turnaround, 2) the multiple aides working on multiple tasks at a time and 3) 24/7 access. Also, for TimeSvr specifically, the dashboard is awesome – having insight into what tasks are being done is great for people like me who have to know exactly what is going on all the time. The quality of work done, generally speaking, was better than my single virtual assistant. Will the quality hold up as the service scales? Time will tell. I was wrong about one thing: I thought this would be a more expensive option, but it turns out, depending on your needs, TimeSvr can be cheaper than a part time assistant, since it’s less than $15 a week.

“In this article, I discuss my experiences with a virtual assistant. I also review TimeSvr, a new service offering a a team of virtual assistants, and compare my single virtual assistant versus TimeSvr’s task based processing.”

heh; I didn't know there existed such a thing

RT @lisawilliams: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen: http://bit.ly/9oaK1Y

Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Many of my friends have been in the same position, so here's my best advice, below.

RT @sivers: How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen: http://sivers.org/how2hire

Ouch, nasty stats on actual cost savings vs. original pitch.

The Outsourcing Low Cost Lie | Lessons of Failure - http://j.mp/cV2RpX

outsourcing kan ikke betale sig

The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

Andy Grove writes interesting/controversial piece arguing for protectionism and other techniques to generate American jobs.

Fantastic piece from the former CEO of Intel on the problems with focusing on profit-margins over jobs. The possible decline of Silicon Valley looks rather similar to the collapse of manufacturing that the UK went through in the late-70s and 80s. The challenge for us is to work out how to recover from that problem.

How it works nowadays: successful companies rarely make what they create.

Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter. The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 -- lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers -- factory employees, engineers and managers. The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenue last year was $62 billion, larger than Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. or Intel. Foxconn employs more than 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel and Sony Corp.

Die langweiligen Industrie-Jobs sind doch gar nicht so doof.