A mini feature enhancement to the “My Analytics” tab has been released. From the “What’s New” page:

Read more on the “What’s New” page.

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Abid Mohsin

PALO ALTO, CA (September 27, 2006) — Today oDesk (www.oDesk.com), an Internet startup that provides a marketplace for hiring global technical talent and web-based tools to manage remote teams, announced an $8 million Series B investment led by Benchmark Capital. All previous oDesk investors also participated in the round. The new funds will be used to expand market growth and accelerate product development. Kevin Harvey, general partner at Benchmark Capital, will join the oDesk Board of Directors. A top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Benchmark Capital has been an early investor in leading technology companies such as eBay (EBAY), Handspring (HAND), Juniper Networks (JNPR), Red Hat Software (RHAT), and MySQL.

[read the rest of the oDesk Benchmark financing press release]

Beginning on Oct 4th, 2006 all assignments will be displayed in the oDesk Assignment History section of provider profiles and buyer job openings. Previously, only assignments with 10 hours or more were displayed in this list.

Initially, we made the decision to display only assignments with 10 hours or more based on the assumption that feedback and comments would only be meaningful for longer jobs. We intend the profiles to be an accurate representation of a provider’s skills and ability and did not want the profiles to be negatively affected by small jobs.

However, due to popular demand from a number of oDesk providers, we’ve opted to change the oDesk Assignment History to display all completed assignments with more than zero hours. This change is intended to enable providers that have successfully completed short assignments to showcase their success on their profile. It will allow positive comments on these assignments to be displayed prominently along with any longer jobs.

Please be aware that this will not affect the overall feedback scores in any way. The jobs with less than 10 hours have always been factored into the overall feedback scores, they just have not been displayed in the profiles or job openings.

Also, oDesk users may want to do a check in the My Assignments tab to make your comments public or private based on your preferences.
Thanks,

Josh Breinlinger

Hola oDeskers! This is Dave McClure, O’Blogging for the first time here at oDesk. (and yes, i am Irish in addition to being a geek :)Abid & I are here in wonderful San Francisco at the Future of Web Apps conference, learning about all the latest & greatest web development technology, companies, products, and people. The conference is being held at the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts, home of the Exploratorium.

This morning, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch gave a great presentation on ‘What’s Next for Web Apps‘. He decided to pick a few winners (and losers), and some upcoming startups he called Ones to Watch… and oDesk was lucky enough to be chosen! Thanks Mike

Among other companies Mike talked about, here were the list of Winners (acquired), ‘Very Good Bets’, and ‘Ones To Watch’:

• Winners (got acquired): Writely, del.icio.us, Userplane, Flickr, Weblogs, Inc., Myspace, Bloglines, Truveo, Grouper, Skype, Newroo

• Very good bets: Digg, Facebook YouTube, Photobucket, Zoho, Stumble Upon, Popsugar, PlentyofFish, Netvibes.

• Ones to watch: Jobster, Riya, Zillow, Flock, Sharpcast, Rocketboom, 1-800-FREE411, oDesk, Second Life, WordPress.

(note: Mike is a Dogster investor, but being a humble A-lister he didn’t select them as a ‘One to Watch’… but we think Ted Rheingold & friends are building an awesome company, and just announced a new round of financing from some terrific investors. congrats Ted!)

credits: screenshot & blog post above is courtesy of Dan Farber, one of the sharpest guys in the techreporting universe & blogosphere, shown here interviewing Ted at the conference:

Adrian Bye of DM Confidential just spoke our CEO, Gary Swart.

Here’s the interview. Enjoy.

Here is a great piece by Adrian Bye on 10 tips for Internet Project Management.

His first 3 tips:

1. Give people a small test project, to see how they perform
2. Use a wiki
3. Use an instant messenger service

We couldn’t agree more. Let us know what you think.

We are on Techcrunch.com

Read about us here:

oDesk Provides On-demand Skills

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Abid Mohsin