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beyond web 2.0

wiffiti.com [web 2.0 review]

A cool website that we found that allows you to embed a flash widget into your blog or profile page is Wiffiti.com. We created a wiffiti and put it under ‘Jeela Stuff‘ so send us a text message…..

Basically you place this widget anywhere and people see what messages have been sent to you via text messaging. It is mentioned on the site that you can project it on your wall, personally I don’t see the practicality of this but I do see the widget being used on peoples personal pages.

The widget can be customized with fonts, colors and backgrounds but unfortunately not the size of the widget. I would expect a wide adoption by the user community in the near future…

wiffiti.com

gotjeela? rating: 3/5

Outsourcing 2.0

  I have used ‘offshore’ resources for many projects in the past and can honestly say there are some pros and cons. The touted benefits of saving a lot of money by replacing a permanent FTE (Full Time Employee) with an offshore resource have to be carefully considered. My experience has been that a project can really benefit from Designing and Specifying a project or feature and then handing off the development work to an offshore team and manager. The team and an on site point of contact should routinely communicate and share progress (Normal project management stuff). I have seen though that the teams I have dealt with had a high turnover rate and that to mitigate this risk the domain expertise should kept in house as turnover in the states is a lot lower.

If you consider the cost savings of a FTE vs. and offshore developer you are immediately drawn to the concept. But consider that the offshore team will require more oversight than an internal team simply because of the distance. Also take into account the time difference between teams and the impact it will have on the resources that will interface with them. And finally, make sure you account for equipping the offshore teams with specific software that you may need for the project as this is typically not covered contractually. Many firms have researched the actual savings of using offshore resources and the numbers I have read mention between 10-20%, personally I have calculated a 35% savings based on my experiences.

A few references below with some good points:
 eweek.com

birnbaumassociates.com

silicon.com 

sourcingmag.com 

My experience overall has been positive to the concept of offshore programming but only if used in the correct fashion. There are many large companies in India, Ireland, South America and Europe that specialize in IT related contract services and only too happy to talk to you.

If your a small company and only need a few hours of consulting time don’t forget about rentacoder.com, sologig.com and posting on craigslist.com, all good sources for local and distant programming help.

meinone.com [web 2.0 review]

There are a lot of mashups out there and we came across this one, it caught our eye not for what is currently is, but it could grow into. Many of us maintain several emails, websites, blogs, photo sharing site, etc… and if one company can deliver an intuitive, easy to use sight then it would be hit. Meinone.com offers us a place to store our personal links in 1 place. I didn’t see where you could store email addresses but it was clear that blogs, RSS feeds, articles that the user liked and other personal information could be stored in 1 place.

Below is a typical mashup page that in my humble opinion could use some tools to personalize the view (colors, backgrounds, etc…) Also the ability to integrate ‘at the glass’ music, photos and videos would be a cool add.

Cool site with a lot of potential, keep up the good work mubs!

Meinone.com

gotjeela? rating: 2/5

bubblecaption.com [web 2.0 review]

We have reviewed many sites on jeela.com but this is 1 that will have an immediate impact (IMHO). CaptionBubble.com / BubbleCaption.com allows anyone with a MySpace, Facebook or any blog owner to point to any picture (or upload) and add text bubbles to relevant and interesting areas of a picture.

There are people with graphic editing software but this allows you to do it all online and then point to a URL on the BubbleCaption website and include it on your page.

Below is the slick UI built in Flash that allows you to drag and drop text bubbles on to a picture and save it…

And here is the actual image on BubbleCaption.com

bubblecaption.com

gotjeela? rating: 4/5