A discussion with my friends brought about this topic. The discussion initially started with talks on the condition of Software Exports and the amount of revenue it brings to the Indian Economy as a whole. Though the Software Exports business (by way of consulting projects) has been good over the past so many years and have made billions of dollars for companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro, etc., the question that we all had was about the future of the Software Exports business.

We all know that India has been receiving consulting projects because of the talent pool we have and secondly because of economical per hour rates when compared to USA and European countries. But, with time other countries are coping up. Their talent pool and per hour rates are comparable to ours.

Take China for example. To my understanding China is not far behind on grounds of talent pool and per hour rates. We have been slightly over-confident about the fact that such projects will keep coming to India because we are the largest English speaking country (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population). But for how long? How long will China be left behind? One fine day China will come up to our levels. What will be the competitive edge that we will have then?

I think it’s time that we start building software products and market them. Ultimately a product offers more power of earning because you develop once and then implement/install everywhere. We should definitely start to think in this direction and start building capacity both educational and entrepreneurial. After all why can’t we have the next best Operating System or an Office Productivity Suite or a Programming Language IDE, etc. etc.

I think India has a lot of scope as regards “Made in India” Software products. Think about it.

Please feel free to add your comments and replies.

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If you wish to start a blog or already have a blog and have this issue that you keep running out of ideas, I recommend that you consider the tips mentioned below to help you generate ideas for your blog posts.

1. Discuss issues with other people
When you discuss issues in your area of specialization, you get to know problems faced by other people. The moment a discussion starts; you should make mental notes. Once out of that discussion; jot the notes on text editor or a piece of paper. Using these notes you can create a new blog post based on the problems/issues discussed.

2. Research on a common pain point
Identify a pain point in your field of specialization. There could be many such pain points or problems for which people need help or solutions. To give you an example, I belong to the technical field and the pain points that I have identified are code optimization, query optimization, response times, server loads, etc.. So, identify such pain points in your field of specialization as well. Give it a thought or use Google to research. A good source is to visit forums where problems are discussed.

3. Publish solutions to problems that you faced
Build blog post ideas on the basis of the problems that you face in your day to day professional or personal life. I see no harm in publishing solutions to the problems that you dealt with. Creating a post on the basis of your solutions also serves as a repository that you could refer to later when faced with a similar problem. Beware, that you don’t expose information that is a trade secret of your company.

4. Publish analysis on news articles
Analyze news articles in general or in the area of your specialization. Don’t just copy paste articles on your site. This won’t do good to you. Analyze the article and post your understanding, concerns and reviews. A lot of blog authors publish blog articles based on their analysis of news article published on news site.

Please leave behind a comment below if you have more blog post ideas that you wish to share or disagree with some.

Getting a proper web hosting package with your required domain names is little difficult task. You will find a lot of dedicated server hosting companies offer web site design cheap domain names. You need to select the reasonable one.

In this age of competition and business flourishing, gone are those days when employers would look at someone specialized to execute projects. Though this still holds true for Architect level positions, but; employers expect a little more from programmers and software engineers.

Today knowing an array of technologies help you get a job of your choice and also helps you to negotiate a better pay package. The reason why employers prefer multi-talented employees is because not all projects is to be developed using a particular technology or language. Further, many software installations are the outcome of successful integration of various sub-systems written in different technologies.

So the question is how do you keep adding to your knowledge? How do you learn so many things and retain information? Where do you meet people to share information with you?

I recommend the following ways in which knowledge can be enhanced

1. Make a plan of action
This is the first step towards the path of enhancing your knowledge. The basis of this plan should be, a properly done research on various trends and requirements that companies follow. You need to analyze whether learning .NET is good or Java, or learning Web Services would help you or knowledge of AJAX would help you. Look at various job postings available in Daily Newspapers. Identify a pattern of technologies that various companies have a requirement for. Once you have identified technologies that you wish to learn, make a plan and execute that plan.

2. Tips on learning many technologies and retaining
This is what I do. I always compare each new procedural language to ‘C’ and each Object Oriented Language to ‘C++‘ and ‘Java‘. Use the style of associative learning. Think to yourself, if you have printf() in C – then it resembles to print or echo in PHP. This way you can make associations and retain.

Making notes for each technology so that you can revise it later as required.

3. Participate in forums
Participating in forums has a win-win situation. You not only share your knowledge, but also get to learn from it. Help as many people as possible. As a result of helping people you get to understand the subject more in depth, plus if you lack knowledge in some areas; other members of the forum supplement the missing piece of information.

4. Get into the habit of reading
Subscribe to blogs or technical news sites that publish learnings and tutorials of various technologies. Schedule time over the weekend to review articles and implement examples.

5. Participate in Meetups and conferences
A good source to add to your knowledge is to participate in meetups and conferences. Attend such events with a broad mind and accept knowledge that has been relayed. Take notes, meet people and discuss with people there. When you meet like-minded people; try to network with them and create a schedule to meetup once a month and discuss learnings.

Conclusion:
These are some of the ways in which you could improve your knowledge and skills. Over a period of time you must sharpen your axe. The field of technology is rapidly changing and one cannot always keep up to the changes and new technologies introduced. Following the above mentioned steps will help you in a big way.

Please leave behind any comments that you mind have if you have other tips as well.

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4. 6 Billionaire College Dropouts

Are college dropouts more successful than people with good education? It would seem so if you consider that many billionaires are people who dumped college. However, what this hides is the fact that although millions quit studies before completing them, very few of them go on to become rich. What the list of the super-rich dropouts signifies is that in business, a top degree is not as important as having the right aptitude, attitude, determination and vision.

Here are some dropouts who went on to become billionaires:

Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (1955-), along with Paul Allen, co-founded Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest software maker. Bill Gates, the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $480 crores (Rs 211,200 crore!), is probably the best-known college dropout.

Gates attended an exclusive prep school in Seattle, went on to study at Harvard University, then dropped out to pursue software development. As students in the mid-70s, he and Paul Allen wrote the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, the first commercially successful PC.

In 1975, Micro-Soft – later Microsoft Corporation – was born. Three decades on, Gates has been Number One on the Forbes 400 for over a dozen years. And here’s something you probably didn’t know: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently provides 90 per cent of the world budget for the attempted eradication of polio.

Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph Ellison (1944-) , co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, founded his company in 1977 with a sum of $2,000. Once a school dropout, he is now, according to Forbes, one of the richest people in America with a net worth of around $184 crores. The figure also makes him the ninth richest in the world.

As a young man, Ellison worked for the Ampex Corporation, where one of his projects was a database for the CIA. He called it Oracle, a name he was to reuse years later for the company that made him famous. Interestingly, the organisation’s initial release was Oracle 2. The number supposedly implied that all bugs had been eliminated from an earlier version.

Ellison is quite a colourful man, and has long dabbled in all kinds of things. Want to learn more? Try his biography, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison.

Dhirubhai Ambani

Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani (1932-2002) was born into the family of a schoolteacher. It was a family of modest means. When he turned 16, Dhirubhai moved to Aden, working first as a gas-station attendant, then as a clerk in an oil company.

He returned to India at 26, starting a business with a meagre capital of $375. By the time of his demise, his company – Reliance Industries Ltd – had grown to become an empire, with an estimated annual turnover of $120 crores!

Dhirubhai was, in his lifetime, conferred the Indian Entrepreneur of the 20th Century Award by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. A Times of India poll in the year 2000 also voted him one of the biggest creators of wealth in this century.

Dhirubhai’s is not just the usual rags-to-riches story. He will be remembered as the one who rewrote Indian corporate history and built a truly global corporate group. He is also credited with having single-handedly breathed life into the Indian stock markets and bringing in thousands of investors to the bourses.

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs (1955-) and Apple Computer are names that have long gone together.
Born in the United States to an unknown Egyptian-Arab father, Jobs was adopted soon after birth. After graduating high school, he enrolled in Reed College, dropping out after one semester.

In 1976, 21-year-old Jobs and 26-year old Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Co. in the family garage. Jobs revolutionised the industry by popularising the concept of home computers.

By 1984, the Macintosh was introduced. He had an influential role in the building of the World-Wide Web, and also happens to be Chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation Studios.
Today, with the iPod, Apple is bigger than ever. Incidentally, Jobs worked for several years at an annual salary of $1. It got him a listing in the Guinness Book as `Lowest Paid Chief Executive Officer.’ He was once gifted a $9 crores jet by the company though. And his net worth? Moer than $3 billion.

Michael Dell

Michael Saul Dell (1965- ) joined the University of Texas at Austin with the intention of becoming a physician. While studying there, he started a computer company in his dormitory, calling it PC’s Limited. By the time he turned 19, it had notched up enough success to prompt Dell to dropout.

In 1987, PC’s Limited changed its name to Dell Computer Corporation. By 2003, Dell, Inc. was the world’s most profitable PC manufacturer.

Dell has won more than his fair share of accolades, including Man of the Year from PC Magazine and EM>CEO of the Year from Financial World . Forbes, in 2005, lists him as the 18th richest in the world with a net worth of around $1600 Crores. Not bad for just another dropout.

Subhash Chandra Goel

Here’s something not many people know about Subhash Chandra Goel : The Zee chairman dropped out after standard 12.

Subhash Chandra started his own vegetable oils unit at 19. It was, in a manner of speaking, his first job. Years later, a casual visit to a friend at Doordarshan gave him the idea of starting his own broadcasting company. We all know how that story ran.

Chandra knew nothing about programming, distribution or film rights. What he did understand quite well was the Indian sensibility though. Funded by UK businessmen, Zee came into being as India’s first satellite TV network.

Today, it reaches 320 lakhs homes, connecting with 20 crores people in South Asia alone. The network also covers Asians in America, the Middle East, Europe, Australia and Africa, making this dropout a very rich one.

The answer is very simple… added cash!!! But that was not the reason that I was referring to.

Though earning cash is important and I don’t discount that fact. In addition to earning cash, a developer should free lance because freelancing provides you with many challenges that your job would not.

1. More exposure
In a job you would be assigned to a project and be responsible to do a small portion of the project called module. This way you would only know how to implement that small portion. To gain good experience it is important to understand and implement a complete full scale project. With a freelancing job, you get to know requirements of the world and automatically learn to implement projects.

2. Client Management Skills
On a job, you always have a boss to look up to for client interaction. You don’t get a chance to explore your style of communication with a client. Unless you are given a chance to explore your style of communication, how would you learn and grow? How would you understand the areas where you goof up. In freelancing you are your own boss and there is no one to look up to. You are the solider and the commander yourself. You get to learn how to deal with your clients and get to learn details of cross-culture communication styles.

3. Time Management Skills
With a full time job at hand it takes courage of steel to take on freelancing projects. Managing time becomes an issue especially if your client is on the other side of the globe. In situations like these you start to feel the stress and issues only after a week or so. But then slowly you tend to learn from your mistakes.

4. Improved Creativity
Handling freelancing projects require you to think out of the box. Some projects are simple and the others require you to give a considerable amount of thought. Either ways, you are required to think out of the box. This helps you to improve your creativity.

5. Improves your business domain knowledge
For a freelancing project you are the Business Analyst, Project Manager and Developer. Thinking like a Business Analyst gives you the opportunity to learn about the business domain for which you are hired.

These are some sites where you could freelance:

• getacoder.com
• rentacoder.com
• elance.com

Additionally, whether or not you want to execute freelancing projects; I would recommend that you still subscribe to the mailing service of the above mentioned sites which mail the list of new projects added each day. How would this help you? This is because you get to know what are the problems that the world faces. This could provide insights to creating an open source or commercial product if you want to.