Chaotek Thoughts » india http://blog.chaotek.net [kay-ot-ik] - adj. - completely confused or disordered Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:36:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Outsource your life http://blog.chaotek.net/web/outsource-your-life http://blog.chaotek.net/web/outsource-your-life#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:55:58 +0000 Chaotek If you are anything like me, you find yourself too busy sometimes to get stuff done. You spend more time figuring out what needs to get done, than actually doing it. I can’t afford to hire a personal assistant to help me out, or can I? Corporations have figured out that there is a massive, cheap labor force ready and able to work. They have started outsourcing jobs to India and other nations in an effort to lower costs while still getting the job done. So why can’t the little guys like us do it too? Well, you can. You can outsource your busy work so that you can dedicate more time—to whatever.

  • Always forgetting birthdays and anniversaries? Don’t have the time to order flowers, buy gifts, or need a reminder to call them?
  • Too busy to pay bills or file paperwork?
  • Want tickets to a concert or movie?
  • Want a wakeup call, maybe to let you know what appointments you have today and what the weather is going to be like?
  • Too busy to figure out travel plans or make restaurant reservations?
  • Want to organize your digital photos, maybe into landscapes and group by person, but don’t have the time?
  • Want someone to read your children a bedtime story every night, even when you’re not home?
  • Need to hire a contractor or handyman, but don’t know how?
  • Do you need legal or medical advice?
  • Do you ever need an answer to a question but don’t have the time to look it up yourself?
  • Do you have a website and are concerned about indecent or otherwise inappropriate user submissions?
  • Don’t want to sit on hold and wait to speak with customer service for your phone/TV/whatever?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, perhaps you’d be interested in hiring a virtual personal assistant, who just happens to be in India. Services like Brickwork, AskSunday, GetFriday, and Your Man In India can help you organize your life. For as little as $1.50 per request or $7 per hour, you have can a personal assistant who can take care of all of the little crap that you don’t have time for.

Services like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk can even add artificial, artificial intelligence (A-AI) to your applications. Amazon’s mechanical turk provides an API which accesses a web service, but instead of querying another application it queries a person. Some programs just require a person instead of a computer. For pocket change per request, you can program into your application or website. For example, want to make sure that people are not posting nudity or ads on your site, but there’s no way you can approve every post? Have a mechanical turk evaluate and approve all user submitted content.
Don’t let big corporations have all the fun, outsource your life!

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