Google+ Now Lets You Merge Your Personal and Work Profiles

Google announced on Thursday that Google+ users with a profile attached to a regular Gmail account and a work-related Google apps account can now blend the two together.
When Google Apps gained Google+ support last October, Google promised a migration tool was on the way. Nine months later, it’s finally here.
The new tool, which is a part of the company’s Google Takeout data-liberation service, allows users to elect a master Google+ account and transfer circles and other information to one main profile, instead of having two separate accounts. For those that make the transfer, you will only be able to log in with the email address associated with the primary Google+ profile.
After requesting a transfer, there is a seven-day waiting period before the merger begins and once the process begins, it takes about 48 hours to complete. Once a transfer is started, it cannot be cancelled or reversed.

How to Merge Google+ Accounts

First, click Google+ circles transfer tool at Google Takeout. This tool transfers your Google+ circles and connections from a “source” account to a “destination” account.
Request a transfer. This process will slow down Google+ functionality in both accounts, so you won’t be able to share content or update circles until the transfer is complete. Again, this could take up to 48 hours.
When the transfer is complete, circles, blocks and ignores are copied from the source account to the destination account, but content from the source account such as profile information, posts or comments won’t be transferred to the destination account, the company said.
“If you no longer need your source account Google+ profile, downgrade the profile associated with your source account and select Delete your entire Google+ profile,” Google said “Before downgrading, we recommend downloading your Google+ data from your source account at Google Takeout.”
Google offers additional information on how the process and transfers works on its help page.
If you decide to keep your source account profile, Google suggests deleting content that was posted by that account to avoid confusion and select the uncheck option that makes the profile visible to others via search.

Proceed With Caution

Google has done a great job of explaining the migration process, but we still suggest users proceed with caution before using the tool. Be sure to back-up all of your Google+ data and make sure you understand the limitations of the tool. Google+ addicts also need to be prepared to give up using the service for up to a week while the transfer takes place.
Profile migrations don’t always go as planned. Last year, Mashable’s Christina Warren inadvertently committed Facebook suicide when a Facebook Profile to Fan Page migration went terribly, terribly, wrong.
We doubt anything that catastrophic will happen with Google+, but again, be prepared and backup your important data first.

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Established LPOs garner more than the smaller ones

Latest reports from Indian outsourcing sector has revealed that established LPOs or Legal Process Outsourcing firms in India are doing much better than the smaller LPOs.  The global financial crunch has had a negative impact on the revenue and growth of these LPOs. The reason smaller LPO firms have performed poorly is only because of this reason added to their lower infrastructure and availability of resources.

The growth of the Legal Process Outsourcing in India is flag marched by companies like ntegreon, Intellevate, Pangea3, and UnitedLex. The report giving stats mentions that LPO companies in India with more than INR 100 million have been able to garner more profits sustainably.  The report citing the cause of it as consistent high revenue earned per employee.

The report further states findings of a report titled “Legal Process Outsourcing: Financial Performance Review” published by ValueNotes, a market intelligence and consulting firm. The report analyses the key financial ratios of 32 “pure-play” Indian LPO companies, which exclusively provide LPO services.

Arun Jethmalani, Managing Director of ValueNotes, says, “An area of concern for the small LPO service providers is their inability to maintain consistent operating profits, resulting in rising debt levels.”

As far as the growth of larger LPOs is concerned all looks bright. The smaller LPOs however will need to address the challenges they are facing effectively and efficiently, for them to be able to make promising growth and revenues.

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BPO - A serious career option

Since its inception in India, the BPO sector has attracted the highest number of Indian youths as its employees. By offering lucrative wages, minimum educational qualification, spoken English being the only important criteria, the Indian youth who were still studying, or were without a degree, for the first time got an opportunity to earn without a degree. This made the Indian youth seek the BPO call center jobs easily when they were short of finances, or when they’d just wanted to earn quickly. Youngsters working made India the IT/BPO hub. However, in the course the way the industry, moreover a job in the BPO industry is perceived as one which is menial, a temporary stop to earn in short time without a degree.

Now, with the growth of the Indian BPO industry, the industry leaders want to change the perception associated with the industry employees. With the further development of the industry, having more to offer than just telephone callers of a call center company, many more Indian youths are aiming to make a serious and long lasting career in Indian BPO industry.  It is with this that many BPO companies in India have come up with various educational programs, seminars, workshops, trainings, to tap the Indian youth for a longer time in the sector. With this, the youth is also seen to get fascinated by the extraordinary monetary rewards, other educational incentives and any such opportunities attached to the industry.

It is as a result of this that the industry is now not just being perceived as what it used to be. Now, there isn’t any more weekend walk-in occurring for BPO jobs in India, which used to happen when the Indian youth had taken the sector lightly. With the growth maturity noticed in all of the BPO companies in India, the process of hiring has changed. Earlier, there were merely Indian call centers and spoken English was the only qualification needed. However, with the maturation happening in the industry, there have been opening up of more operations than just restricted to the call centers and those operations more often include the prospective employees to not only be proficient at their spoken English ability but also be specialized in some field, and should be possessing higher level of analytical ability.

It is because of this that we see, high-end processes being handled by metro cities, since the employee base there is much more talented while delegating the matured and low end processes to the company centers in Tier II and Tier III cities respectively. Moreover, since, the processes are going higher in terms of value, these employees who had once perceived the industry as a place of temporary job to get quick and more money only to further their educational ends or for their experience, are now getting to understand the whole dynamics of the BPO industry and the fact that how much are the functions performed by the industry so vital for ANY business in this day and age.

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Indian IT outsourcing companies on a road to its makeover

Since the trend of IT outsourcing took its root in India, it has since then that we’ve always thought about it with an image of many young workers with headphones over their ears, talking, convincing the clients out there in UK or US.  The business of outsourcing has without doubts been beneficial to Indian economy; however, this has stereotyped the way India’s IT companies/IT outsourcing companies are functioning.

This has popularly made India to be thought of an Intelligent, growing, young country where work can be done cheaply – Cheap India dump. India notices tremendous traffic of US and UK companies shipping/outsourcing their work to India. However, with the changing times, India now is on the positive growth stage, one of the fastest growing economies from the third world countries, these IT and BPO outsourcing companies in India worth $100 billion now feels the change to be made the way they are seen.

For this, our Indian IT and BPO companies are aiming to employ US workers. Since the US economy is in its doldrums, US workers are inclined to work and India, being a fastest growing economy at this time, especially, the IT/ITES sector booming with leaps and bounds, asking US workers for jobs in Indian IT/BPO companies, is good for both the countries.

However, US President Barack Obama, is against outsourcing of US jobs to India. Since Indian IT/BPO companies are growing in billions and trillions, they have set their presence in almost all the big countries. You can see the presence of Wipro, Infosys branches in US. Earlier it was Microsoft and IBM setting up their branches here, now, it’s the other way round.  There has been a sea change in the way that these companies look and function now.

For this the companies are trying to change their look and feel as similar to the country they are functioning in. So for instance, Infosys in US will change their look and feel and make it just as other US organizations are in their look and feel.  These Indian IT/BPO multinationals like Infosys is aiming to double local recruitment as soon as by the next financial year.  At present, Infosys has 15,000 employees in US, and had hired 1, 200 in the past year, the company thereby making employing 145,000 people internationally. For that matter Wipro, India’s second largest IT firm, is also seen following this pattern. For them their centers in US are mainly Georgia and Atlanta, being successfully recruiting the local talent. The company in its Atlanta center, which is its strategic development center, has hired local talent from various fields such as campus recruits and military veterans. The company wants to replicate the same hiring model in any other city it aims to open its center in US.

This will certainly enhance Indian IT/BPO companies’ image/reputation as international job creators in US keeping in mind the fact of the downturn of the economy and employment crunch being felt more by the next Presidential election in US, in November.

Moreover, these companies always want to enhance their stronghold in the countries they are establishing their businesses. As a matter of that fact, the CEO’s of these companies are constantly into getting local political support. This not only helps flourish their business objectives but also help bring about positive economic changes in the country they are serving. For instance, Tata Consultancy Services ( TCS), India’s No.1 software services exporter, last month opened a technology centre in Santa Clara, California to serve as global headquarters for its mobile computing work and when it also opened its center in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2009, the state governor was seen attending the opening ceremony of the company’s center.

Thus, Indian IT/BPO companies, happy with their growth, are now not only aiming at tapping the Indian talent, but also spreading their wings and wanting to help other countries, just as we saw above.

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Google Now Comes Online Now

Google Now, the smart personal search assistant announced yesterday at Google I/O, has now come online. Well, the landing page for the service has come online, that is. The new site introduces the key aspects to Google Now, which arrives in Google’s next mobile operating system, Android 4.1 (aka Jelly Bean), including its ability to track flights, keep an eye on traffic and your calendar, check sports scores and weather, see suggested places nearby, and more.
The feature, accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the homescreen has already been referred to as a “Siri killer” by some Android fans because of its ability to not just assist you, but to proactively alert you to new information based on your needs. One example which Google showed off in its demo yesterday was a flight search, which would later pop up a card that appeared with flight alerts and delays as they occurred in real-time. In another example, Google learned what sports teams you liked based on your search history and could then alert you to upcoming games and scores. In another, you could see suggested places to eat or shop as you walked down the street.
However, the biggest piece to Google Now is that the information comes and finds you – not the other way around. This is a key difference between how Siri operates today and what Google is promising. Of course, you as the user are in control of the experience and can enable or disable which cards and alerts you would see. It’s opt-in, which goes a long way to dispel the potential “creepy” factor here. It’s not as if Skynet has just come online. (I think).
The idea for this type of search-without-the-search technology, if you will, has been in development for some time. In 2010, then CEO, now Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke of a “serendipity engine” as the future of Google search. “We want to give you your time back,” Schmidt said at the time. Google Instant was the first step towards that goal, but Google Now takes a giant leap. At the IFA conference in Berlin, Schmidt described the experience that is today’s Google Now, talking about how phones could spout off random facts as you walked around town, or how they could inform you of the weather, understanding the natural language of human speech. He called this idea a new age of “augmented reality,” where computers work for us.
Unfortunately, for the time being, that new age will only be available to a precious few – those who buy or can upgrade their Android-based devices to Jelly Bean. But much of what Google Now offers could be bundled into an Android or even iOS (!) app using the platforms’ push notifications feature. Hopefully that is in the works, too.

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