Standardization helps ensure you find and receive the most relevant jobs for your experience and expertise by ensuring everyone is using the same terms for the skills they are searching on. This diminishes any cultural and language obstacles encountered when selecting skills on oDesk, and removes the need to list multiple versions of the same skill (“PHP, PHP programmer, PHP developer, PHP expert,” etc.).

As a testament to how important your skills are, they are now showcased at the top of the new contractor profile. Updating your skills will allow you to best take advantage of the new profile design, so make sure you do so. Read more about the new contractor profile here.

How it Works

When selecting skills for your profile, begin typing your skill, then choose from the available suggestions.

Newly registered contractors are already taking advantage of the new system.

For existing contractors, we will guide you through the process of updating your skills. The next time you log in to oDesk, you will be directed to a list of suggested skills from the oDesk Skills Dictionary, based on the ones currently listed on your profile. You will then have until January 13, 2012, to verify the suggestions, rank the skills, and approve your own custom list. The changes will go live on your profile after you complete the transition form. Starting January 13, all matched skills will be transitioned and any remaining non-standardized skills will be removed from profiles.

The new profile style has phased out skills descriptions and experience information. You may want to make a copy of these descriptions for your own records before updating your skills (to do so, press the View Skills button in the profile editor). For contractors who do not complete the transition form, the descriptions we remove will be sent to you in an email for future reference, as you may wish to put this information in your profile objective, or include it in cover letters when applying for jobs.

FAQs:

• What should I do if I cannot find a skill in the Skills Dictionary? How can I add a skill? Don’t worry — there is likely a similar skill already listed in the Dictionary, and suggesting a new one is easy.
• How is the Skills Dictionary used within oDesk? It is used to help you attract the right jobs by using the right words.
• How will the skills appear in my profile? Take a look at an community forum.

The contractor profile is at the heart of oDesk. Employers depend on it to assess the capabilities of any contractor, and contractors depend on it to attract employers and grow their careers.

Knowing how important the contractor profile is, we have redesigned it to be more useful and intuitive. The new design presents all key information in one clean, streamlined page; this makes it easier for employers to assess the capabilities of contractors, and for contractors to showcase information they want employers to see.

Here are some of the highlights of this new design:

• One simple page. All key profile information is now on a single page.
• Skills are at the top. Employers often look to the skills section first to determine if the contractor would be a good fit for the position. We are also standardizing skills across oDesk to make it even easier for employers to identify the right contractor for the job. Contractors: make sure to update your skills so you can get the most out of the new contractor profile design. Read more about transitioning your skills here.
• Cleaner, modern design.  It’s easier to read, and we’ve removed extraneous information so employers can focus in on what’s most important to them.

Check out the new profile design today, and share your thoughts about it with the oDesk community.

If you have any questions about the new site, please see our FAQs (for employers and contractors) or the “Where Is” table (for employers and contractors).

The site is now organized around core functions. Here’s a quick tour:

From your applicant list, you can:

 See a summary of each applicant.  Quickly flip through each of your applicants without loading a new page.

 For applicants that are a good fit, shortlist them.  You can then review in detail only these  shortlisted candidates.

 For applicants you are less interested in, hide them.  You can unhide them later if you need more candidates.

Here’s a view of the new Quickview pane, or see our short video here.

If you have big applicant lists, we know list management is critical.  Along with these new tools, you can also still decline applicants that are not right for your job, and flag applicants that aren’t appropriate.

We think these new tools will lead to easier list management and faster hires – which is good for employers and contractors.  Let us know what you think, in our community forum.

On the My Jobs application, you will have access to all the tools that allow you to successfully manage and complete your active contracts: My Jobs, Contracts and Reports.

Let’s take a closer look at the new My Jobs application…

My Jobs Home – NEW!

Here, you will see the list of jobs that you have been hired for, the time you have logged, and your earnings for each position.

• Track work progress
• See all your active jobs and easily message your employer.
• Manage proactively
• Review your jobs that are starting soon.
• For Hourly Jobs – See the hours and earnings logged so far this week and review the Work Diary, Timesheet and Contract Details for a particular job.  Easily know when you’re approaching (or have surpassed) a weekly limit.
• For Fixed-Price Jobs – Review the total payments received next to the original bid price.
• Track financial activity
• Review current earnings and time logged.
• Conveniently access your available earnings.

Contracts

 
On Contracts, you can easily review the details of your work contracts – both current and past.

• Access details about your contracts – rate, weekly limits, weekly and total hours worked, etc.
• Search on all contracts – both current and past.
• Download contracts in CSV form for easy integration with accounting systems.

Reports

Reports gives you a set of snapshot views into your work history.

• Timelogs – An easy view into the payments and the work done during the week.
• My Weekly Time Sheet – A summary of work done by you for each employer during a given week.
• My Timesheet – A detailed report of work done by you during a custom time period.
• Time Analyze – A configurable report of hours or earnings during a selected time period.

We’d like to hear from you–what’s your perspective on our new navigation and My Jobs application?

Send us direct feedback via our survey or visit our community forum post.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Both of these contractor and employer use-cases seemed like natural features for a browser extension, so I hired an oDesk contractor who specializes in browser-extensions to help us make a prototype.

Here’s how it works:

• Use PayPal to pre-fund your oDesk account balance, with any amount you choose.
• Your balance is drawn down as you accrue charges.
• Add to your balance at anytime.

Currently, PayPal is only available to U.S. or international employers with a verified credit card on file with oDesk.   For U.S. employers, you will need either a PayPal linked bank account or PayPal balance to fund your payment.  And, please note, payments are currently only accepted in USD.

Go to your Payment Methods, to Pay with PayPal now.

This is just one of the many enhancements we’re making to the way you pay.  Look for more options to pay with PayPal coming soon.

We’re interested in your feedback!  Take our short survey to share how you want to pay.  Or, discuss this new offering with our community.

While we cannot comment extensively on the details surrounding the alleged extortion attempt, I want to clarify a few critical items:

In 2009, an unauthorized user attempted to access our domain registry account. We became aware of the unauthorized activity very quickly –within minutes– and shut down their method of access. oDesk user information was not compromised during this unauthorized access. The incident, and the ensuing communications from the party involved, was reported to the appropriate authorities. We will continue to work with law enforcement to ensure that the person who unlawfully accessed our domain registry in 2009 is held accountable for their actions.

I hope that this news article has not caused you undue concern. Let me reiterate that we are entirely certain that no user information was revealed during the attempted unauthorized access of our domain registry account, and that our oDesk community would be among the first to know if personal information was accessed in such a manner.

Best regards,

Gary Swart, oDesk CEO

Over the next few days, we will be rolling out a simplified navigation.  The new look is simpler, less cluttered, and makes working with oDesk faster and easier than ever before.

We know you are busy building businesses and taking on challenging work from all over the world.  You need a site that can keep up with you!  Now you’ll find that:

• The site is organized around major task areas (e.g., recruiting or managing a team for employers; finding work or managing your jobs for contractors.)
• The things you use most often are now easily accessible.
• You get instant views into new messages and notifications.

oDesk believes in the opportunities available in a truly borderless economy, and the global workforce created when both work and money can flow smoothly across borders. We are continuing our mission to empower this global workforce with the introduction of International Payments. With these new withdrawal methods, contractors’ earnings are deposited directly into their bank accounts, in their local currency, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional wire transfer.

The term “International Payments” refers to the suite of withdrawal options that allow contractors to directly withdraw their online earnings to their bank account. This includes Local Funds Transfer and Wire Transfer (Local Currency). While the mechanism that powers these transfers differ slightly, the end result is the same: easy, low-cost access to earnings in local currency.

International Payments are currently available in 47 countries worldwide, with more in development. We are working hard to bring low-cost, direct withdrawal options to as many online workers worldwide as possible — and deliver with it the potential of a truly borderless economy.

oDesk took the Obama Administration’s vow to create a nation rich in work to the next level, and created a marketplace where a galaxy of employers and workers can build successful remote work relationships. The company harnessed satellite technology to bounce signals to far corners of the universe, enabling remote work that crosses millions of miles of space to create a truly borderless economy. Now humans and intergalatic species can work together in a galaxy full of work opportunities.

“Previously, our communication was limited to crop circles,” said Marvin the Martian. “But with tools like oDesk, communication and collaboration through space and time, and also across species, has become much more seamless.”

Data from the Joint oDesk & Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Report:
Since 2010, oDesk has seen a 520% increase in extraterrestrials using remote work, since it allows access to job opportunities outside their local areas.

• Mars has seen an increase of 98%, the previous 2% being limited to those hired by college kids and conspiracy theorists to create the aformentioned crop circles.
• Pluto, although recently downgraded from it status of dwarf planet to asteroid, houses a surprisingly talent-rich community of translators in a wide variety of planetary dialects.
• Areas of expertise within these intergalactic regions include: Astronomy, Transporter Technology, Linguistics and Meteorology.
• Additionally, with the universe working in harmony, innovation is at an all-time high:
  • Earthlings and Mercureans have partnered to create the Flux Capacitor of Doc’s dreams.
  • Scientists on Neptune claim to be near completion of the cure for space rot.
  • Startups are cropping up across Jupiter and Saturn, overloading TechCrunch with pitches to cover their latest rounds of funding.

“The galaxy is full of fantastically talented creatures, and we’re thrilled to give them all a platform to work together,” said oDesk CEO Gary Swart. “The quality of intergalactic work has been out of this world!”

About oDesk
With more than 1,000,000 contractors in over 150 countries and billions of workers in the far reaches of our galaxy, oDesk (www.oDesk.com) is a universal employment platform that enables employers to hire, manage, and pay a flexible, online workforce.

Find oDesk on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/oDesk

Follow oDesk on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/oDesk

Starting today, we have enabled HTTPS across the entire oDesk site, giving our users an extra layer of security.  Our logged in pages were already fully encrypted, and thus your logged in sessions have always maintained a significant level of privacy.  But, as people spend more time on the Internet, many banking and e-commerce sites are adding SSL encryption across their sites – both logged in and non logged in pages – as a standard practice.  We too want to ensure our users have the highest level of protections available across our entire site.

To use the new fully encrypted HTTPS wide site, just go to www.odesk.com as you normally would.  We will default you to our new full HTTPS site.

For more information on HTTPS, see the “HTTP Secure” article on Wikipedia for complete details.  Basically, HTTPS is a protocol that establishes a secure connection between your browser and our servers.   In contrast, HTTP is unsecured and is subject to man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks which can let attackers gain access to website accounts and sensitive information.  HTTPS is designed to withstand such attacks and is considered secure against such attacks.

Special information for API users. All of our public APIs are currently available over HTTPS.  To start using the HTTPS versions, please just update your app to use HTTPS rather than HTTP.

Special information for Internet Explorer Users (IE 7 & IE 8). We are aware of a Security Warning box that appears when you land on one of the contractor search or contractor profile pages.  This is not actually a security issue and you are safe to view the oDesk pages.  We have made these changes specifically to improve security.  We will be fixing this issue over the next 24 to 48 hours.  In the meantime we recommend using Firefox or Chrome as your browser.  Or, you can disable this warning message in IE by going to the Tools menu, selecting Internet Options, and clicking the Security tab.  Select Custom level, and scroll down half way to “Display mixed content” and change the button to Enable.

To share your feedback and discuss these changes with the community, please visit our forum post here.

Growth of the SMB in a Borderless Economy
Today’s SMBs are no longer limited to just their local area to build their workforce. Once reserved for the Fortune 500, the global talent pool is easily accessible to companies of all sizes, thanks to recent advancements in technology. oDesk alone represents nearly 1 million remote contractors, based in 150 countries spread throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Today, any business can use online tools to identify and retain top talent, regardless of the workers’ location.

Growth of Long-Term Contracting and Contractor Teams
Since 2008, SMBs have increasingly turned to long-term contractors and contractor teams. According to the report:

• The number of employers hiring contractors on an on-going basis has increased 800 percent
• Contractor assignments lasting longer than six months have risen by 540 percent
• The number of SMBs tapping contractor teams of 10 or more has increased by 214 percent

Contractors provide a compelling alternative to the costs associated with full-time, traditional hiring — an option that any business owner with an eye on the bottom line can appreciate.

Growth of Skilled and Highly Paid Contractors
The SMB move from traditional hiring to the use of an on-demand workforce creates a need for highly skilled professional contractors. In many cases, contractors have developed a career by marketing their services to the same SMBs on an ongoing basis.

Contractors are also hiring other contractors, building specialized teams and managing the workflow of multiple contracts. In this way, career contracting is not only enabling individuals to thrive and SMBs to grow, but it’s blurring the lines and enabling career contractors to build their own SMBs from the ground up.

Curious about the workforce trends for SMBs and contractors? Check out the SMB Trend Report here. What’s your take on the SMB-contractor relationship? Let us know in the comments below!

Erica Benton brings nearly a decade of experience as a small business owner and freelancer to her position as the editor-in-chief of the oDesk Blog.

A little over an hour ago, the odometer at oDesk’s oConomy rolled over a major milestone. Our contractors have earned over $200 million dollars on oDesk – a fantastic achievement that made our Redwood City office erupt in cheers.

Hard to believe it was just 1 short year ago that we were celebrating our first $100M earned by oDesk contractors. Just last month, our users gave us another reason to celebrate by surpassing 1M hours worked in a single month. As the largest and fastest-growing global employment platform, more remote work is done on oDesk than anywhere else.

So congratulations again to our fantastic contractors, and to the employers who hire them. You guys are truly changing how the world works!

Update: You can watch the oDometer roll over $200M in this video.

Erica Benton ran around the office giving oDesk employees high fives as the oDometer rolled over. Share your own oDesk celebration story in the comments below, or send them to stories@odesk.com.

The oDesk Customer Support Team was very busy during Customer Service Week, having tons of fun and honing their customer support skills, as they participated in the various activities, events and honors recognitions. Although our team keeps connected with meetings, Skype group chats and messaging, we wanted to continue our goals of team building and creating strong friendships in a fun, upbeat way.

We held various games and gave special awards to our best and brightest oDesk Customer Support Representatives. oDesk support representatives enjoyed the planned activities during downtime between Live Support chats, phone calls, and support tickets. Despite the festivities, we continued to provide the excellent customer service our users have grown accustomed to at oDesk.

On Monday, we held group scavenger hunt. Each team searched the oDesk site for various bits of oDesk trivia to complete the scavenger hunt form. On Tuesday, team members enjoyed filling out the oDesk 101 Crossword Puzzle in their leisure time. Wednesday brought our hilarious Name the Baby Contest. Thursday included an activity and an event. First, each support representative received the oDesk Word Jumble, to solve as a group with their respective team members. Then, we held a CSS All-Hands meeting, where oDesk management shared company goals and achievements, as well as CSS departmental goals and achievements, for the previous and current quarters with everyone.

Customer Service Week ended on Friday with “The Communication Game,” a group activity designed to help strengthen the communication and understanding skills of each support representative here at oDesk.

And, who doesn’t love a free T-shirt? As a lasting reminder of the fun we’ve had this week, each Customer Support Representative received a T-shirt with both the oDesk and CSS logos emblazoned on them. They also received a letter from our management team to thank each one of them personally for their hard work and dedication and for serving our oDesk members with patience, knowledge and empathy.

We would like to issue a special thank you to Suzanne Davis, who worked very hard to plan and create all of the week’s games and activities. She did a wonderful job, and is the major reason the week was so enjoyable and productive for everybody.

During Thursday’s All-Hands meeting, management gave special recognition to customer service representatives and announced the winners of the Customer Service Week.

They are, as follows:

Newest Customer Service Representatives – Althea and Sol.

Newest Phone Representatives – Andy and Ferdinand (both were promoted internally!)

Customer Service Promotions to Level 2 CSR – May, Allan and Thea.

Longest-Serving Customer Support Representatives – Bernadette (since July 11, 2008) and Karissa (since July 15, 2008)

Longest-Serving Team Leaders – Alfa (July 11, 2008) and Michelle (December 18, 2006)

Highest Hours in Customer Service and Support (CSS) – Bernadette, with 4,526 hours.

Highest Hours at oDesk – Thea, with 7,938 hours.

Highest Customer Satisfaction for September 2010 – Barbara and Janice

Customer Service Week Game Winners included:

Scavenger Hunt Team Winner – Alfa’s Team, including Roselle, Karr, Janice, Rina, James and Boo.

Name the Baby Contest Winner – Yen, with nine out of 16 correct answers.

As you can see, we thoroughly enjoyed our first official celebration of Customer Service Week. But, it doesn’t have to stop there. Please let our Customer Support Representatives know how much you appreciate them the next time they assist you. They’ll appreciate the good feedback!

We want to continue to show our appreciation for those dedicated and empathetic customer support teams, by using the momentum of this past week to implement ongoing award programs, including Customer Support Representative of the Month. Customer Service Week was a huge success here at oDesk, and we can’t wait to celebrate it again next year!

Barbara Wright joined the oDesk marketplace in 2007, after more than three years on staff at a national community newspaper company. She is a lifelong writer with two decades of published works. Wright is on the oDesk Support Team, but wears many other hats, helping at the forums and lending a pen whenever possible.

Old versions of oDesk Team no longer work.

Do I need to download the new version?

If you rely on oDesk Team to track time and collaborate with your team, and you do not have the latest version, you will need to upgrade.

Here is a list of the minimum required versions of oDesk Team based on operating system:

• Windows 3.2.79
• Mac 3.2.41
• Linux 2.0.0

If you have this version already, no action is needed. To check what version you are on, open the oDesk Team application, go to Help > About oDesk Team. If you do not have one these versions, please download it now.

What’s in the new version?

With the new version of oDesk Team, you get full chat functionality, an improved interface, a full team roster, and more! And, with your whole team on the same version, you will help ensure you can continue to check in with each other and stay in touch.

How do I download?

Downloading the new oDesk Team application is a simple process and takes just a few moments. Visit our downloads page now.

What if I have questions?

First, please visit our general Team app and platform specific (Windows, Mac, Linux) help pages.

For Windows and Mac users: if you have any additional questions, please reach out to customer support by going to Help in the oDesk Team application, and submitting a ticket. By going through oDesk Team rather than the oDesk website, your ticket will include log files that will help our support reps resolve your problem more quickly.

For Linux users: if you have questions, please submit a ticket to customer support here.

If you have any comments, please visit our community forum.

The oDesk Team

The conference will also feature an exciting startup competition where 25 startups will have a chance to demo their websites, and the winner will receive cash and prizes worth more than $100,000. oDesk will giving all the competitors credits to help them get started on oDesk and show them how they can do more with less by finding software programmers, web designers, virtual assistants and other professionals on-demand.

If you live in the Chicago area, come on out and meet us at the Sync Tech Center. We hope to see you there!

Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk. He’s got a unique perspective on the future of work, influenced by over 750,000 remote contractors and 220,000 employers who hire them online.

James Davis, an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research areas include Computer Vision, ICTD, Technology for Global Social Issues, Computational Photography, and Computer Graphics.

Matt Mireles, CEO of SpeakerText, which turns video into text so that it can be found, read, and shared by everyone.

Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships atUshahidi, a nonprofit organization that is building an open-source platform that allows people or organizations to collect and visualize information.

Want to join us? Here are the details (and don’t forget to RSVP!):

Where

oDesk Office
901 Marshall St, 2nd Floor
Redwood City, CA 94063

The office is a short walk (~10 min) from the Redwood City Caltrain station.
Click here for a train schedule.

When
September 23 from 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Speakers start at 6:30 p.m.
Please RSVP through this Meetup page.

Your developers and designers often work on projects simultaneously from around the world. They need to modify the same files, make updates, and deploy multiple versions of the website or code across different sites. All the while, you hope they won’t cross wires, lose track of versions, or overwrite each others’ changes, any which scenario might set your upcoming release or project delivery date back by days. Sound familiar?

Why You Need Version Control

Having a version control or source code management (SCM) system provides a safety net against human error or corruption. A version control system compiles a complete change history and a set of natural restore points within the repository, providing peace of mind for developers and project managers alike. A good version control system lets you do the following:

– Roll Back Changes
When you make a mistake or discover a bug, you’ll want to roll back to previous changes. Just like in Apple’s Time Machine backup application, version control for your files let’s you roll back to any point in time and restore it if needed.

- Quick Undo
We all work on autopilot from time to time, or make changes in the middle of the night when we’re not thinking clearly. If your developer makes a quick change and commits it, then realizes he made a mistake, a version control system allows them to quickly undo the last change(s).

- Merge Changes Seamlessly
What happens when one developer is working on a file, makes a change, then tries to save it just as another developer is doing the same? Now you’ve got two different versions needing to be resolved (the “split brain” effect). Version control allows teammates to merge changes seamlessly, which is critical when you have multiple developers working on the same project.

- Track Changes and Ownership
As files are created or modified, you can annotate changes with comments (“commit logs”), which are tracked as your repository or file evolves over time. The version control system also tags each change with the name of the person who made it, making it easier to give them credit.

- Branching and Merging
You can break off a piece of your code (“branch”) into a separate area and modify it in isolation. Typically, developers use branches when developing a new feature or fixing a bug – to avoid polluting the main branch. Later, you can merge the code back into the common area.

- Provide visibility and insight
By monitoring commit and activity usage, you can extract detailed metrics and gauge the performance of your development team. There are many 3rd party tools you can plug into an SCM to provide these useful metrics and reporting data.

- Support for multiple file types
You can track changes made to source code (text files) as well as binary files, such as Word documents, media files, and presentations or spreadsheets. This is “track changes” on steroids!

Choosing the Right Type of Version Control System
With the abundance of free (open source) and commercial version control systems in existence, how do you choose which to use? Most professional developers today prefer open source options, which, according to a recent Forrester survey, are closing in on 50% market share. The three most common are Subversion, Git and CVS.

Subversion
Subversion, the most widely used version control system today, is a centralized version control system. Developers pull down or “check out” the latest version of the central repository (“trunk”) to their local workstation, make changes, and merge (upload) those changes back in to the trunk. It’s probably the easiest of the version control systems to learn, allows for fine-grained (sub-directory level) user access control, and  is easy to back up.

Git
Built for development of the Linux operating system, Git is a distributed version control system that has an emphasis on being fast. Because a Git project lacks a central repository, every working directory is a full-fledged repository of its own, and is not dependent on network access or a central server. Git is great when you want to code offline, or have many developers working together independently on a branch, which is why Git is favored in so many open source projects.

CVS
CVS is a legacy system which was replaced by Subversion in 2004. If you’re considering CVS you should probably use Subversion instead, unless you need compatibility with old systems.

Ready to Start Using Version Control?
oDesk has partnered with Codesion to offer free version control hosting to all oDesk users for one year. Log into your oDesk account, select Manage & Work > Team Room, then choose Subversion (SVN) from the Team Tools menu to sign up. Codesion offers Subversion, Git and CVS hosting in the cloud.

But a million is a big number, and a long time when you’re counting in hours. So, we tapped one of our 720,000 talented contractors to show you just how much can happen in one million hours.

To accomplish so much in such a short period of time, it’s obvious that online work is truly changing how the world works. The entire team at oDesk is so proud to have reached this milestone with our employers and contractors. In honor of Labor Day and this tremendous accomplishment, we congratulate online workers around the world over for many jobs well done!

Erica Benton is thrilled to celebrate 1 million hours worked per month with oDesk users the world over. Erica brings nearly a decade of experience as a small business owner, freelancer and independent contractor to her position as the editor-in-chief of the oDesk Blog. This infographic was produced by the incomparable Ernesto Olivares.

Remote Work and Competition

Not About Price – Competition in the Global Economy – In 2006, 26 million Americans worked from home at least one day per week. By the end of 2010, that number is estimated to be over 100 million. People are making a shift away from rigid corporate structures towards a more flexible, more online way to work. But with that shift comes increasing accessibility to a worldwide workforce. Gary Swart, oDesk CEO, will be joined by top educators on the global economy, successful freelance contractors and champions of the online workforce to answer the question: “When facing competition from a world full of people with similar skills, many of whom can afford to be paid less, how can you come out ahead?”

Superhero Telecommuter – Productivity in Your Pajamas – This presentation will focus on giving attendees tips and advice on being a superhero telecommuter. It will also include advice on how to avoid common pitfalls such as “out of sight out of mind” and avoiding distractions of everyday home life, as well as some of the personality traits that fit best for a telecommuter and advice on how to pitch telecommuting to your boss.

Why Remote Work?

Working on a (Temp) Dream – We are living at the dawn of the freelance world, as more and more people find themselves working as consultants, contract workers or freelancers. This change is as profound as the shift that occurred during the industrial revolution. Matt Cooper, oDesk Director of Marketplace Operations, will be joined by top authors Kate Lister (Undress for Success) and Ed Gandia (The Wealthy Freelancer), as well as workplace experts and freelancers to investigate the impact of the gig economy on workers and businesses.

Agile Ain’t Just for Developers: The Agile People Manifesto – Programmers may be familiar with the Agile Manifesto – but how can an Agile approach change the future of work?

Remote Team Management

Team Dynamics with a Remote Team – One team shares their experiences managing a team in multiple locations — this includes working with round-the-world contract houses, and even volunteers.

Getting the Most from Distributed Work Teams – In today’s work environment, it’s not unusual to find yourself in a different city (or even country) than your colleagues and your managers. How can you meet expectations, spark your creativity and foster innovation when the nearest friendly ear is hundreds of miles away? As a manager, how do you effectively manage a team that you may never see face-to-face? Experts from businesses big and small, along with leading figures in higher education, talk about how to get the most from a distributed team.

Deleting the Workspace: Is the On-Site Office Needed? – Times are a-changin! Gen-Y is moving into managerial/leadership positions and they may have a different idea of how a business should be run. Technology allows for efficiently run virtual offices, with employees working from different ends of the globe! What will the future workplace look like? How can businesses properly integrate the changes that are being pushed by young professionals?

What panels would you love to see at SXSW? What other conferences are you itching to go to? Let us know in the comments!

You top three ideas, and our winners of $250 in oDesk credit are:

@softsandila – There should be some big site which could enable users to share in road-trips if a vehicle is traveling with extra space.

@RebeccaHaden – The world needs an excellent new math instruction site as cool as a video game site, appealing to both boys & girls.

@AishaDansalRN – I will set up an online tutorial company tru @odesk for nurses about nursing techniques and basic life support

Here are some of our other favorites, whose bright ideas might still someday change the world:

@oleigatdula – Parental Outsourcing like Tutoring Business. This something we need in todays economy – least expensive to start up.

@finaldata – I would create a small group to brainstorm for a way to address climate change!

@thewritingmommy – my idea is to cr8 a community “gifting” clearing house.people would list their needs & abilities to barter/buy/sale

@pasqual_facundo – At least once a month people who work on a computer should get a free massage

@sarahbuhr – I would like to create a high tech work-spa where ppl can work/freelance/commute and relax at the same time

@Bess – Build an virtual medical rescuer to coach non-medically trained bystanders to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation

@Nawib – develop association for women in business to empower their greatness with a community of peers, biz tools, resources etc

@positivekristen – My next #futureofwork is to take my 16k FB page Power of Positivity & hire bloggers who can help me spread positivity arnd the globe!

@eHhT – “green mind effect” To create a team “green minds” to produce awareness advertisements which will make the people think green

@BENatDAP – reliefoversight.org-improve disaster relief w/transparency so $ gets 2 orgs doing job&orgs get info 2 coord http://is.gd/dMDPN

@nicholashundley – I want all children to grow up healthy, vibrant, and strong #futureofwork see: http://is.gd/dMETv

Congratulations to our winners! And, thanks again to everyone who shared their amazing ideas – please keep us updated on how you’re turning those ideas into reality… we love to hear about how you are changing how the world works!

oDesk: Nilesh, you’ve had a long and successful track record at both public and private companies. You’ve been linked to fast-growing businesses across technology, media and telecommunications industries. What attracted you to oDesk?

Nilesh Lakhani: Mainly, it was meeting with Gary (Swart, oDesk CEO) and the rest of the team. There’s a straightforward openness about Gary’s management style that really appealed to me. It let me know from a very early stage that he’d be a great business partner to work with. The entire team here at oDesk is very transparent and collaborative, and its clear that they really care about what they do.  Additionally, the business model of oDesk is a direction that I believe the world is moving towards — and it was apparent from the get-go that, for the oDesk team, “changing how the world works” isn’t just a motto, it’s a mantra.

oDesk: When you aren’t hard at work, where might we find you?

Lakhani: Most likely, I’ll be spending time with my wonderful wife, our son and our “well-traveled” golden retriever, but living in the Bay Area means I can easily indulge my other passions: enjoying outdoor activities, indulging in fantastic restaurants of all types, listening to rock & roll and watching independently-produced international films. This area has a rich diversity of culture that is so accessible – I’m looking forward to experiencing it all!

oDesk: You recently relocated back to the Bay Area, but you’ve lived in Russia, the United Kingdom and South Africa and have traveled extensively elsewhere in the world. How have your travels impacted your goals? Are there any other places that you’d like to visit?

Lakhani: While I grew up in South Africa and England, I had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for roughly 15 years before moving to Moscow in 2004. Moving back to Silicon Valley is like coming home.

Traveling is a passion of mine, and I’ve been lucky to have experienced many cultures and  communities over the years. Personally, I find it very compelling that I am now a part of a business that provides online work opportunities to those communities. I’m excited about connecting personally with oDesk users online and on future excursions abroad. It looks like the Philippines is the only country represented on oDesk that hasn’t stamped my passport… yet!

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.  The events provide an unprecedented level of networking, team building, learning, and life changes for its attendees and their communities.

oDesk truly believes in the amazing ideas that come out of these intense weekends – so much so that we recently decided to officially sponsor these events worldwide.  This partnership allows entrepreneurs and startup businesses to use the incredible skills that oDesk contractors have to offer, and helps these newly established businesses learn how they can accomplish more with a remote workteam.

Come be a part of this exciting three-day event, which is set to take place July 23-25 at Kicklabs, 250 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA.  For more info on this and other Startup Weekend events around the globe and to learn how to register, click here. Don’t forget to use the promo code “swodesk” to get your discount, and hurry! These events sell out fast!

We know you’re busy.  Our emails are designed to give you pertinent information and allow you to take action as efficiently as possible.  However, if you manage a large remote team or are hiring for many positions, and you already sign into your oDesk account multiple times a day, some of these emails may be redundant. You now have more options for managing the emails you receive:

1. Go directly to the Email Preferences page within your Message Center and select the emails you no longer wish to receive.  Individual emails are listed by category, such as job applications, contracts, etc.
2. oDesk emails contain a link in the footer to manage your email preferences.  Clicking these links takes you to your preferences where the email type you clicked will be called out.

Keep in mind, some emails are not optional, such as those alerting you that your password has changed and other security related communications.

What has changed?

Why has oDesk made these changes?

Some words we have historically used to describe our service and the various roles on oDesk confuse our newest users. We believe that clarifying these terms will help them to hit the ground running faster and clarify for them what oDesk is really all about.

We conducted extensive testing to determine which terms were the most confusing and what the new terms should be. A huge “Thank You!” to the thousands of community members who responded to our surveys and helped us determine the right terminology.

How does this affect me?

Aside from getting used to the new terms (which we believe to be more intuitive than the old ones) there’s nothing you need to do!

What if I want to share my feedback about the new terms?

We’d be delighted to hear your thoughts. Please share them with us here.

• Right up top – see the job description, skills required and preferred qualifications
• Check the job status, including when the buyer last viewed the job, # of applicants and # interviewing
• Quickly see if you’ve already applied to the job
• Review the buyer’s work history and other open jobs

But, that all changes today.  oDesk is now making health insurance available to all of our U.S.-based users. On behalf of our members, we have negotiated pricing, plan offerings and a streamlined approval process that outstrip other plans generally available to individuals.

“By providing access to health coverage options, we’re lowering a key barrier faced by many people that aspire to the freelance lifestyle, and enabling them to focus on building successful careers.”  – Gary Swart, oDesk CEO

There are 3 types of plans available. For more details see: http://www.odesk.com/benefits:

• Wellness plan – day-to-day health care plan with guaranteed issuance, low deductible and up to an annual maximum benefit of $20,000 including hospitalization.
• Catastrophic plan – coverage for major medical care, including hospitalization with an annual maximum benefit of $1 Million
• Comprehensive plan – combine the Wellness and Catastrophic plans to get comprehensive coverage.

Life insurance with critical illness coverage is also available with no physical exam as an additional option on any of the 3 offered plans.

oDesk is committed to supporting both companies and individuals in the new, emerging “contract economy”.  Access to affordable, quality health insurance is an important ingredient to building successful, long-term contract careers, and we’re proud to be taking the lead in offering these types of benefits options to our users.

You can read about the plans at http://www.odesk.com/benefits or you can call 888-895-2440 to speak directly with a benefits consultant (available 8am to 6pm PDT).

Got feedback for us on the plans? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or share them with our Community!

• We take your feedback very seriously – it allows us to continuously improve oDesk.  By consolidating feedback into one place, and ensuring feedback comes from registered oDesk users, we can better identify the needs of the whole oDesk community and respond to you in a faster, more personalized way.
• We have kept all the UserVoice feedback and are using it to improve our services.  Keep the suggestions and questions coming in our Feedback Forum.

• Quick access to our blogs with tips & advice for succeeding online.
• Look for a new “Release Notes” blog coming soon!

• Top questions listed for both buyers and providers.
• One click away from Customer Support.

For Buyers:

• Customized reports to track the providers, teams and time periods you choose
• Easy to read dashboards with summaries by provider, task or memo
• Linked reports allow you to drill down into individual work diaries

For Providers:

• Easier to read weekly timesheet showing hours by buyer
• Detailed report listing daily hours and memos for any time period you choose
• Still Available – Time Analyze – a configurable report to track hours or earnings

For Affiliate Managers:

• Easier to read reports with summary and detailed views
• Weekly timesheets to track total time and earnings by provider or buyer
• Detailed reports showing work completed by memo for any time period you choose

Check out the Reports Center today to find out how much easier it can be to manage your work!

Have feedback about the new reports? Please go to the Community Forum to leave your comments.

The new user Home is now the default landing page whenever you log in. Once you’re logged in, whenever you want to return there from anywhere in the site, just click the oDesk logo. (We’ve made some other changes to the site navigation as well – you can read more about the navigation changes here.)

Questions? Comments? Suggestions for new Dashboard modules? Let us know how we can make your user Home more useful!

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. oDesk is not affiliated with CBS Studios, Inc. nor is “James Kirk” an actual oDesk user. There are not currently any positions open on oDesk involving “photon torpedo retargeting” or “Klingon-to-English translation”.

• New user Home
  • Your personalized Home page will now appear after you log in
  • Visit anytime by clicking “Home” or the oDesk logo from anywhere in the site (once you’ve logged in)

• Streamlined username dropdown menu
  • New access to “Account & Profile Settings” and “Sign Out”
  • Some of the less-used (but still important!) pages have been removed from the menu. You can now access the following pages by visiting “Account & Profile Settings”:
    • User Info
    • My Provider Profile
    • My Company Profile
    • My Teams
    • My Tests
    • Extending oDesk
• Message Center Changes
  • The indicator shown next to “Messages” now reflect the total number of unread Inbox messages and Notifications.
  • “Account Alerts” and “Updates” have been removed from the menu – they are now integrated into the user Home.
  • “Notifications” is now the best place to find the latest communications about your account.

Stay tuned — more changes are under way, all designed to make your oDesk experience better.

Questions? Comments? Let us know how we can make our site navigation easier for you (and new users) to access all the great tools oDesk has to offer!

We love to participate in these events, because we’re all about helping startups build online teams from all over the globe and enabling them to work together as if they were in the same office. We helped each of the startup weekend teams get started on oDesk and showed them how they can do more with less by finding software programmers, web designers, virtual assistants and other professionals on-demand.

We’re thrilled to announce that oDesk is partnering with Startup Weekend nationwide, and will play an important role in the events they organize across the country and around the world.

Have an idea for a startup but not sure how to make it happen? We encourage you to attend an upcoming Startup Weekend in your area and join with other like-minded individuals to see what amazing things you can accomplish. And don’t forget, oDesk will be there to help you every step of the way!

When: 4-7pm Saturday, March 13

Where: The Pure Volume House at 504 Trinity St, Austin, TX.

Who: The Small Business Web– we connect web apps to help small businesses bloom and grow!

You must sign up here for the party. (Austin law requires us to have a guest list)

_____

The Future of Work at SXSWi

oDeskCEO Gary Swart (@garyswart), will also be presenting on the panel “What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work” on Monday, March 15, along with Clay Spinuzzi (professor at University of Austin), Liz Elam (of Link Coworking), and Drew Jones ( from Shift Workspace)

Are you heading to SXSW? Let us know – we can’t wait to see you all there!

• #oWin #oDesk I’m finishing up another web design/development job today. Its great to work from home! oDesk Rocks! – @getterdonegurus
• made my first major withdrawal from @odesk on the day of my wedding last January 30! #oWin #oDesk – @alexis0fDreams
• Milestone: Was sitting at home this week and got an email from a former client who wanted more work from me. #oWin #oDesk – @dcrwrites
• Today I could die from an excess of work #odesk #oWin #happy – @kovalevd
• #odesk has catupulted my copywriting career, over 13 assignments I’m psyched!! – @Ironsunflower
• Working on overdrive to complete the latest project for my oDesk client for whom I have been working for the last year! #oWin – @sampathd
• Didnt notice that I have 3345 hrs in Odesk since August 2008,amazing how Odesk rocked my world and my bank acct #oWin #oDesk – @kmarvs23

And the winner – by random drawing – is…..

Congratulations, @FoodTravelDiva! And thanks again to everyone who shared their amazing milestones – please keep us updated on your successes, we love to hear about how you are changing how the world works!

Be sure to follow @oDesk on Twitter for the latest information on job and hiring trends, tips on successful remote work and more chances to win!

What are they talking about? Your oDesk Milestones!

They are talking, and YOU might be winning.

What could you win? A $50 Amazon gift card and an oDesk t-shirt!

Here’s the deal:

• Tweet about your oDesk Milestones. Passed a personal best for number of hours? Reached a thousand hours in record time? Been active on oDesk for ages now? Made some big $$ through oDesk? Share it!
• Add the hashtags: #oWin AND #oDesk
• Tweet (or re-tweet) by 11:59pm PT tonight.
• Every tweet (or re-tweet) is a new entry.
• Re-tweets count as entries for the original twitterer (so, if ten of your friends RT your original oDesk Milestone tweet, that’s ten entries for YOU!)
• Winner will be drawn at random for a $50 Amazon gift card and an oDesk t-shirt! Winner announcement will be made at 9:30am PT, Friday, February 19, 2010.

@iamdjbrixx, @abhishekdesai, @AishaDansalRN and @tjlytle already have one entry each for kicking us off with their tweets this morning – how many entries will YOU have today?

We apologize for the inconvenience but we are confident that this will result in an even better experience for our users.

As is the case with all of our maintenance windows, we want to remind you that you can continue to log time to the last team you were logged into – your oDesk Team client will cache the time, memos and screenshots, and will upload those details to the server when the connection is restored.

If you need to work for a different team during this time, please discuss with your buyer a need to potentially add offline time later.

If you do work through the outage window, please check your Work Diary after oDesk.com resumes service to ensure your time was logged correctly and make any necessary adjustments.

In an effort to do our part to help startups succeed, we’re extending a helping hand to each of the top 10 companies that presented at Vator Splash. We’re excited to show them how oDesk can help them build online workteams to save money and stay flexible. We’re excited to help and are looking forward to working with such an innovative group.

Of the 176 companies that participated, here are the ten that received the most votes, in no particular order:

	Vidli Vidli is an online video licensor that allows users buy, sell, and rent streaming videos online.
	YourVersion YourVersion offers a free iPhone app and Firefox plugin for users who want to get relevant Web content delivered to them. It grows with the user the more they use it.
	AskYourTargetMarket.com AskYourTargetMarket offers a service for anybody looking to survey their target market on a simple platform where users can set up surveys, pick out exactly who they want to get information from, and pay as they go.
	Thumbtack.com Thumbtack.com is an online marketplace for local services where users can find anybody from handymen and cleaners to tutors and errand-runners.
	CinemaShares.com CinemaShares.com coins itself as, “crowdfunding for entertainment projects.” They sell single shares of stock in a NASDAQ Capital Market IPO and free DVD as a stock dividend.
	RentCycle RentCycle offers a system to track inventory, manage reservations and increase distribution of goods.
	ControlBox Controlbox addresses th online issue the entire society of the Internet is vulnerable to – fraud when it comes to buying and selling things onlineas a central hub both buyer and seller have to go through by monitoring and recording the entire transaction from start to finish.
	Vokle Vokle is a live video streaming site with a focus on showcasing high profile speakers using a platform where users can vote for who they want to meet, and then interact with them at a live online event hosted by Vokle.
	Intelligent Papers Intelligent Papers’ vision is to rid the world of texbooks by creating a handheld device which enables students to have all their textbooks on, take notes, highlight, take tests, and even do their homework.
	MYeGamer.com MYeGamer’s vision is to be the single destination where all competitive gamers go to read news and find out where and when the next big tournament will be. It also offers its readers updated strategies on how to beat their next opponent

$100 towards your first oDesk hire!

So, how does it work?  It’s as easy as 1-2-3:

1) Join the oDesk Affiliate Program.  Go to www.odesk.com and click “Affiliates” in the footer, or find us in the B2B category on Commission Junction.

2) Sign up for oDesk and hire someone you like.

3) Send an email to hwalker@odesk.com with your CJ PID and your oDesk userID and we’ll credit your oDesk account with the cash.

Whether you’re an affiliate marketer, affiliate program manager, independent website owner or an agency, oDesk is a great place to hire, manage and pay remote contractors from around the globe.  oDesk has over 400,000 providers with skill sets in areas such as web development, graphic design, blog writing, SEO/SEM, social media marketing, data entry and more.

With workers available from all over the world, you’ll be surprised at how much work you can get done with $100!

Our Affiliate Program payout terms are quite generous:

• We will pay you $50 for each new business you send us that signs up & verfies a credit card.
• We will pay you $0.50 for each freelancer you send us that applies for a job.

We’re excited about the new oDesk Affiliate Program and are looking forward to working with new publishers and affiliate marketers, especially those attending Affiliate Summit with us!

In just a few short months since our new affiliate program was launched, we’ve already begun working with affiliate marketers to grow the oDesk community. Now we are even more excited to introduce our new and improved payout program for affiliate members. Publishers can use oDesk for all of their day-to-day needs, since oDesk is a great place to find web developers, graphic designers, blog writers, virtual assistants, and online marketers (SEO, PPC, and social media experts).

So what’s new? We’ve expanded our payout to now include provider signups as well as buyers.

Our new program terms are quite generous:

• We will pay affiliates $50 for each new business they send to oDesk that signs up & verifies a credit card.
• We will pay affiliates $.50 for each freelancer they send us that applies for a job.

You’ll find a variety of banner, text link, and flash options for affiliates to choose from as well as a list of recommended keywords to use in your online marketing campaigns. We’ve even created some APIs so affiliates can create custom sites using our job feeds – http://developers.odesk.com.

So if you haven’t done so already, we encourage you to apply to the program and start sharing some of our success.Click here to get started now!

We’re excited about our program and hope you will be, too. We want to work closely with our affiliates and help them succeed, so if you have any ideas about how we can make our program better, let us know! Email affiliate-team@odesk.com.

All 12 presenting companies received a 250 dollar credit on oDesk.

	Timesight Systems Offers a scalable solution to video surveillance makes storing months of footage cost-effective for any business.
	Bonvoy Bonvoy is a Facebook application that allows  users to book trips at discounted rates and share their plans and experiences with their friends. Bonvoy also credits its users loyalty points that can be redeemed for prizes like iPhones.
	Contineo The medical space has been hot for years and Contineo promises to make connecting to a variety of back end medical systems a breeze with its  iPhone application. Health workers can easily view and update patient records from their mobile phones.
	Peerbelt Peerbelt is a search engine based on what you have searched for before giving you personalized  results based on your online search behavior.
	PrivateOnlineDating Distinguishing yourself in the online dating space is a tough job, but PrivateOnlineDating hopes to do so with an exclusive matchmaking algorithm, along with an emphasis on keeping its member profiles as private as possible.
	SnapitToMe SnapitToMe combines crowdsourcing and contests to bring high quality photos to anyone who needs a specific shot.
	ZeSecret ZeSecret can help you find out what another person thinks without having to divulge your exact question using their unique method of forwarding answers and questions to the people you want input from.
	Skydera Managing a cloud computing environment can be a challenge, Skydera promises to make releasing new servers, updating them and periodic maintenance easier and faster.
	Molo Rewards Molo Rewards wants to save you money with its slick coupon delivery system that works on phones with RFID readers. For businesses, it provides a wealth of information on how consumers spend their money.
	MightyMeeting Showing off a very cool meeting application at the event, Mighty Meeting lets you host, invite and control a presentation from your iPhone.
	UDemy UDemy makes creating, watching and monetizing online educational material a breeze with their slick interface.

We received hundreds of great entries, from profound to hilarious to absurd, which made it extremely tough to narrow down the list of entries, let alone select a winner. We managed to narrow the list to the Top 20, then the Top 10, and finally one winner.

Before getting to the results, we’d like to send a shoutout to the following users for making the top 20 list. We don’t have room to list everyone’s notable quotable in a single blog post, but thanks for giving us #oHaikus to remember! @whydowork, @nburmandesign, @melbzki, @dahbou, @littlemissdebbi, @royblumenthal, @_heatherlynn_, @fbarrocal, @telecomladyj, @tjlytle

And now, without further ado, here are the results of our oHaiku Contest… All of these runner-up entrants will receive a free oDesk T-shirt.

Runners Up

10.		@hzrph: oDesk gives me joy When I work there I enjoy Like a little boy		9.		@sodaware: A great article Banish procrastination I’ll read it later
8.		@abelmohler: Reverse in haiku A make would someone that think Not did you bet I		7.		@zarathos: Kindle would be sweet Great gift for my step-daughter Or perhaps not, mine!
6.		@kidswap: Thanks to freelancing I have money in the bank But house is messy		5.		@jl_cool_j: oDesk giveaway Starts with “K” ends with an “E” Perfect gift for me
4.		@pmradio: 140 letters Spaces, Symbols, all to say Kindle I want you		3.		@powbelgado: I’d get a desk job But the boss will not let me Work in my undies
2.		@bhagwad: Working virtual Moving from the physical oDesk’s practical!				…drumroll please…

And the winner is…

@rebeccahaden:oDesk screen capture A small silent coworker Who won’t make coffee

Congratulations, Rebecca, and all of our runners up!

Thanks again to all of our participants! You’ve definitely made this a contest worth remembering – we’re looking forward to your participation in future online events with us.

If you’re still not following @oDesk on Twitter, what are you waiting for?  You could be our next contest winner!

Note: Your entries must be sent via Twitter (details here), and must be received by 11:59 p.m. (PST) on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009.

•••••••••••••••••

Haiku #1: Ode to Outsourcing

Spreading freelance joy:
Outsource cookies; outsource cards;
And outsource Santa!

Haiku #2: Frosted Sugar Cookie at 5 AM

Smelling the coffee
Workday starting in p.j.s
Might end in them too!

Haiku #3: Winning isn’t everything

Counting syllables
To win a Kindle – when I
Should be hard at work!

Haiku #4: My Christmas Wish

Dear Santa, please bring:
Peace, clients, no more recession
And lots of cool toys!

•••••••••••••••••

Now stop your hard working and write a haiku for goodness’ sake. You have nothing to lose but the chance at a brand new Kindle! (Just think of how well you could procrastinate this Christmas with a Kindle in your hands!) Still stumped? Check out what others have entered at #oHaiku!

Working from home can either liberate you or weigh you down — it’s all about how you do it. Having worked from home for over a decade, I’ve learned what works and what just creates more work. Here at oDesk, you’ll find the tips and tools to do it right.

- Tamara

Announced today, oDesk Staffing gives U.S.-based freelancers access to group health coverage options, retirement plans and education savings accounts, in addition to the automatic billing and guaranteed payment enjoyed by all oDesk users. The new service also lets businesses take advantage of oDesk’s guaranteed accurate billing and overall savings on contractor hiring costs, while maintaining compliance with IRS regulations in wide range of contract work scenarios.

Freelancers, Get Access to Benefits

“Previously, freelancers have not had access to affordable and robust benefits options, including health insurance. Today, oDesk Staffing changes that – with benefits packages that are accessible, affordable and comparable to those typically being offered by full-time employers.” – Gary Swart, oDesk CEO

oDesk Staffing provides freelancers:

• Access to Benefits – Get affordable group health and retirement benefits, without the coverage limits or pre-existing condition restrictions of individual plans.
• Flexibility – Work on the jobs you choose, set your own hours, and work within or outside of oDesk Staffing to suit your needs.
• Guaranteed Payment – Take advantage of oDesk’s payment assurance that you will be paid for every hour worked, with the proven hassle-free billing and payment collection system provided by oDesk Team.

All U.S.-based freelancers can work via oDesk Staffing , and U.S.-based employers can manage staff through the service.  Freelancers that average at least 30 hours per week through oDesk Staffing — whether for one client or multiple companies — are eligible to participate in the group health plans and other benefits.

Freelancers interested in oDesk Staffing? Visit: http://benefits.odesk.com or contact us at getbenefits@odesk.com.

Employers, Verify Work for Both Contractors and Staff

“With oDesk Staffing , companies can take advantage of oDesk’s unique system to hire, manage and pay across a wider range of work scenarios. The benefits of oDesk’s tools for independent contractors are now available for those hiring under W-2 classification, as well.” – Gary Swart, oDesk CEO

For businesses, oDesk Staffing brings:

• Cost Savings – Less expensive than hiring through a traditional staffing agency.
• Flexibility – Use oDesk’s high-visibility management tools for both independent contractors (1099) and leased employees (W-2).
• Billing Accuracy Guarantee – Improve visibility, accountability and productivity with oDesk’s assurance that every hour billed is an hour worked.
• Access to Benefits – Offer workers access to affordable, competitive group benefits plans.

Businesses interested in oDesk Staffing? Visit: http://staffing.odesk.com or contact us at w2@odesk.com.

Needless to say, we’re excited to bring this service to freelancers and businesses – it’s all the benefits of full-time work, with the flexibility of freelancing! Got feedback on our latest offering? Please let us know at feedback.odesk.com.

For those unfamiliar with the art of Haiku, it’s a form of Japanese poetry that includes 3 lines (convenient for Twitter), each with a determined syllable count:

• Line 1: Five syllables
• Line 2: Seven syllables
• Line 3: Five syllables

For the purposes of our contest, syllable counting is important, rhyming isn’t!

From now until December 16th, follow @oDesk on Twitter and tweet your haiku in the following format – be sure to include the hashtag #oHaiku and slashes to separate your lines:

oDesk is giving | Away an awesome Kindle | Must re-tweet A-SAP #oHaiku

Be funny, get creative, get festive, get philosophical, anything goes!

Official oHaiku Contest Rules

• You must live in one of the 169 countries (listed here) where the Kindle is available
• You must be following @oDesk on Twitter
• Your entry must be submitted via Twitter
• Your tweet must be in the form of a Haiku (5/7/5 format), rhyming is not necessary
• Your tweet must include the hashtag at the end: #oHaiku
• Enter as many times as you want
• Your tweet must be received before 11:59PM PST (GMT-8) on December 16th, 2009
• One winner will be selected and announced by Friday, December 18th, 2009

So what are you waiting for? Follow @oDesk and start sending your entries in!

oDesk Buyers, you might want to get in touch with these Providers soon…they just completed assignments and are available now, but probably won’t be for long. Click on their profile to check out their work and contact them for an interview!

	Top 25 Freelance Designers for November 2009 were:
Rank	Provider Name	Provider Title
1	Mike P.	Branding, Logo Design, Templates & Full Websites – over 7 years exp.
2	Yuriy S.	i DeSiGNeR) (web, graphic, logo, etc)
3	Chandra Sugiarto	Photoshop, illustrator, flash, premiere, 3Dmax, HTML, CSS, AE.
4	Suraj Gautam	Expert Designer in the Layout/Logo/Integration of Design in CMS
5	Anna P.	Graphic Designer
6	Daniela D.	Professional Graphic Designer specialized in Print Design
7	Matt Greene	Graphic Design Artist
8	Jodi Anne Lorenzo	Highly Creative Flash Animator and Layout Artist
9	Neeru Rawat	Exper Layout Logo Designer
10	Anil Kumar	Web site design, UI design, Logo design, Mockup design, Iphone apps in
11	Hemant Piliya	Flash & Action Script Certified Programmer, Photoshop,Psd to html(W3C)
12	Herbert M.	Fine Artist, oDesk Top Designer
13	Ahmed Ashraf	▐▐▐▐ GRAFIXIDEA▐▐▐▐ graphic, corporate identity & web2.0 design expert
14	Dexter B.	Dedicated Illustrator • Professional Artist • oDesk Recognized
15	Nikhil Kumar Singh	UI/Graphics/Web/Multimedia Designer with more than 8 years of Experien
16	Tania I.	Logo Design, Brochure, Website, Stationary, & Illustration Expert
17	Reggie M.	Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro*
18	Talha Khalid	3d Artist Modeler/Textureing artist
19	Yashwant Thakur	Web Designer/HTML,CSS/Expert in Flash action Script
20	Jessica Weissman	PowerPoint Master
21	Oleg Agafonof	Very good designer
22	Kashif Maqbool	The Professional,Certified Graphics & Print Media Designer
23	Ahmad Ghanayem	Solidworks, ProE, COSMOS, FEA, ANSYS, and mechanical design
24	Enric I.	Creative Graphic Designer for Print & Web, Image Masking Specialist
25	Simeon Kartov	Master skills – GRAPHIC DESIGN, WEB DESIGN, ILLUSTRATIONS, PHOTOGRAPHY
	Top 25 Freelance Software Developers for November 2009 were:
Rank	Provider Name	Provider Title
1	Amandeep Goyal	Expert .net programmer
2	Kumar D.	Multiskilled PHP/MySQL/Ajax .Net Ecommerce Project Manager/Architect
3	Varinder Bagga	Expert in .net technologies–one of the best
4	Sergey Karabitsky	Senior Mobile developer
5	Michael Blix	Senior Director Product Management
6	Vikas Gupta	Versata oDesk Provider
7	Sunil Rao	Dev Manager
8	Michail P.	Project manager, iPhone/Java/C++/Python developer,
9	Rajeev Kumar	Test Lead
10	Vajinder Pal Singh	(None Available)
11	Varun Sharma	Expert .Net Professional
12	Garima Dipti Singh	development manager
13	Haidar H Hussain	(None Available)
14	Alexander Gubashin	Senior iPhone developer
15	Rahul Miglani	Extremely efficient C#/VB/ASP.Net Ajax SQLServer & Reports Developer
16	Mayank Gupta	C/C++/Java Developer with 5+ years experience
17	Alexander G.	Experienced C++/Games Developer (PC, PS2, PSP, Wii)
18	Gurjit S.	Product Manager
19	Yuriy Gulyayev	Top 1% Developer,Trading System,C++,C#,Java,VB,FIX,Trading APIs
20	R F.	Java,J2EE,JSP,AJAX,Javascript,XML,XSLT,XPath,XQuery,SQL,CSS,UI Design
21	Manjinder Singh	Expert .net senior developer
22	Daman Deep	Top Most C#/VB/ASP.Net Ajax DNN MSSQL/Access ecommerce CRM developer
23	Bhanu Tadepalli	Developer(Java)
24	Ross C.	Senior iPhone/C/C++/Web/Python Developer
25	Kirill S.	Web dev: Python/Django, Javascript, databases, web scraping
	Top 25 Freelance Writers for November 2009 were:
Rank	Provider Name	Provider Title
1	Saumil P	(no title)
2	Nidhi M.	Freelance Blogger, Writer, Microblogger – Fluent in English
3	Margaret Huff	Analyst, Technical Writer, Assistant Project Manager
4	Nit Dumlao	I am your efficient, hardworking and responsible Virtual assistant
5	Dorothea F.	♥♥♥Awesome WRITER ♥ DATA ENTRY ♥ OsCommerce ♥ VA ♥ RESEARCHER ♥♥♥
6	Teppo Jakonen	English to Finnish translator
7	Hayley F.	Technical and publicity writer
8	Mat T.	excellent writer, innovative, original and respects deadlines
9	Susan Campbell	Trusted Content Writer – Articles,Sales Pages, eBooks, Website Content
10	Denise E.	Blogger / Article Writer / Author
11	Anne D.	A+ copywriting, research, admin & data-entry – Your office whiz!
12	Angela H.	Brainbench Certified Business Writer – Web Content, Blogs and Articles
13	Naresh Kumar	Ezine Articles Expert Author and Internet Researcher
14	Anwesa Deb Roy	Personal Assistant/SEO Consultant
15	Karl Walker	Native English speaker, Freelance writer, Licensed secondary teacher
16	Chrissy Coleman	Professional Writer, Editor, Communications Consultant
17	Clarisse Caysip	BLOG&ARTICLE WRITER/CSR/VA *GOAL, DEADLINE&CUSTOMER SERVICE ORIENTED*
18	Meredith Hilton	Attorney, Writer
19	Lin Edwards	Published author, freelance writer, editor, proofreader
20	Faith M.	Multi-Skilled eBook Writer/Blogger/Spinner/SEO/LinkBuilder/Top Tests
21	Shirlyn Dee	Lived in USA, 2 Degree, BSCS & Fashion, SEO, Fun Virtual Assistant
22	Romeo B.	Fast and Reliable Content /Technical Writer and Experienced Journalist
23	Alexandra C.	Ghostwriter Extraordinaire, Superb Eng/Span/Eng Translator, M.D., MPH
24	Manal Sh	Accountant , Bookkeeper ,E-learning , English>Arabic Translator,Moo
25	Iris P.	***VIRTUAL ASSISTANT, RESEARCHER, DATA ENTRY SPECIALIST, SEO SEM***
	Top 25 Virtual Assistants for November 2009 were:
Rank	Provider Name	Provider Title
1	Shannon D.	Data Entry Professional
2	Caron Harris	ADMIN ASSISTANT 7 YRS., MS OFFICE EXPERT, WORK-AT-HOME EXPERIENCE
3	Kuldeep S.	SEO/SMM/SEM, Blogger, Ads poster, Email Marketing Specialist …
4	Satyaveer Sangwan	Data Entry/Excel/Internet Reasearch/Email handling/Craiglist Posting
5	Robert Alexander Ortiz Monsalve	Traductor español/ruso
6	Laurie G.	Virtual Assistant for all of your admistrative needs
7	Mark Walusimbi	Dedicated To Client Service, Accurate Data & Timely Delivery
8	Mcristina A.	PC, Mac & iPhone Platforms – Project Manager/ Analyst/Tech Writer
9	Romeo Ratilla Jr	VA | Typesetter | Editor | Remote Technical Support
10	Catherine S.	Internet Savvy, Administrative & Customer Support Professional
11	Winnielyn V.	Salesforce(CRM), Reliable&Honest Virtual Asst.,Customer Support/Admin
12	Delwar H.	Expert Data Entry Operator, Web Researcher, Blog/Article Writer, SEO
13	Darlene A.	Double Degree Holder/ Virtual Assistant
14	Carlo C.	IT tech support, experienced internet researcher
15	Beverley V.	**Over 1000 hrs Data Entry, Excel,Word,Email. South Africa
16	Allen C.	Data Entry Specialist and Excellent Researcher
17	——– Des Monsanto ——–	-FULLTIME VA-Keywords Researcher-Ads Poster-Email Marketer-Data Entry-
18	Madelle Angela Apostol	Executive/Personal Assistant,Hiring Officer,VA,Researcher,Web Content
19	Sridevi Veeraghanta	Experienced Data Entry Operator, Researcher,Typist,Email Extractor
20	Catherine Dianne De Guzman	Proficient in MS Office,HTML,Adobe, Corel Draw,Dreamweaver, Flash,PHP
21	Azmera Nichole	Accurate and Fast Service Delivery at Affordable Rates
22	Marichel S.	Proficient Writer and Data-Entry Professional, Personal Assistant
23	Paula P.	oDesk Top 25 Writer/Multi-talented Researcher/VA/NURSE
24	Julie Daste	Julie Daste: Computer Whizz
25	Rowell C.	XML & XHTML High Quality Data Entry / Help Desk Support Professional
	Top 25 Web Developers for November 2009 were:
Rank	Provider Name	Provider Title
1	Vladimir Kolesnikov	Web/Software Developer, LAMP Admin with 19+ Yrs of Experience
2	Jagjot S.	MCP/MCAD ASP.Net Expert
3	Vijay S.	ASP.Net Developer with more than 4 years of exp.
4	Rocky Uppal [Smartdata]	.Net 2.0/3.5, ASP.net, MSSQL 2008, ADO
5	Andriy S.	J2EE, web architect, BEA Weblogic, Web programming, XML technologies
6	Adrian R.	ExpertRating Certified PHP5 Professional (Highest Score: GPA 4)
7	Yuriy K.	Expert Adobe Flex / Flash / AS2 / AS3 / FMS / Oracle
8	Mikhail Kulakov	Senior Mobile developer
9	Shaharyar H.	Senior Web Developer
10	Dmitry Pismenny	6+ years web development /PHP/Myql/Psql/JS/More(good in from scratch)
11	Igor P.	HTML/DHTML, PHP/MySQL Developer
12	Pawan Vir	SEO PHP MySQL Joomla Drupal ERP Guru
13	Alexander Kroch	Java Technical Leader / Senior Java Developer (Certified Scrum Master)
14	Dmitry N.	Php/Java web-developer
15	Revathy Perumal	4 years exp – Php,LAMP,Mysql,ASP.Net C#,AJAXPRO,SQLServer,Flash
16	Alexander O.	PHP/MySQL Developer
17	Sajid H.	Senior PHP, ASP/ASP.NET Developer & Google Map API Expert
18	Ankur Sood	Topmost .net professional
19	Vladimir Penkin	Senior PHP/MySQL developer – ZF, Magento, WordPress
20	Sergey N.	CakePHP / PHP Developer
21	Dmitry S.	Ruby on Rails Developer
22	Serhiy Kanyuka	I like to mix technologies to got best solution for client.
23	Eren K.	UI Designer
24	Stanislav Chychkan	Zend Sertified PHP5 Developer
25	Robin C.	★ EXPERIENCED Filemaker,Coldfusion,Joomla,ASP/.NET Developer ★

These rankings will be generated each month, and stored in the oConomy under “Rankings”. October Rankings will be published on January 1st, 2010. Congratulations again!

Join us for an office hour, in which we’ll answer your questions about how to work on oDesk. This is no prepared webinar — every session will be your questions, our experts’ answers, live.

Advanced buyers and first-timers are invited.

Go here for more information and a complete list of times — and then step into our office!

Some of our festivities include:

Facebook Contest Become of fan of oDesk on Facebook and upload a photo of yourself in an oDesk shirt to be entered to win a $50 Amazon giftcard! Don’t have an oDesk t-shirt? No worries! Get creative and make your own!

Live video Jason from IWearYourShirt.com is wearing his oDesk t-shirt today, and will be doing a live video blog at noon Pacific time. We’ll be chiming in inside his chat room during that time, join us!

As we experienced a doubling of our case load to nearly 10,000 tickets and chats submitted per month, we also recognized the need for improved internal tools to help us achieve operational efficiency, and meet to overarching goal of better serving our customers. After an exhaustive search of more than 15 help desk software solutions, we have selected the one that we feel best meets our needs, as well as the needs of many of our users.

We are pleased to announce the selection of Zendesk as our internal case management solution. Zendesk’s open architecture and rich APIs were a key factor in our decision. We find the SaaS solution elegant, easy to use and learn, and very robust. We look forward to an early 2010 launch of a new customer support portal, which will make use of the Zendesk platform and enhance the experience for all users.

We believe so much in the strength of the winning team of oDesk and Zendesk that we are also thrilled to announce a deeper partnership that includes a new Zendesk Group on oDesk. Within this new group, oDesk buyers will find tried and tested customer service agents, admins and integrators who are experienced with Zendesk. These approved professionals can help transform your help desk and, more importantly, your business. The strong pool of customer service experts available on oDesk combined with the increasing demand for this type of work ensures the ongoing success of this group – we look forward to great things to come from our partnership with Zendesk!

oDesk Buyers, you might want to get in touch with these Providers soon…they just completed assignments and are available now, but probably won’t be for long. Click on their profile to check out their work and contact them for an interview!

	Top 25 Freelance Designers for October 2009 were:
1	Arvind T.	PHP/IIS/MS SQL, joomla, PHP, Drupal, MySQL, Ajax, XHTML
2	Susan B.	Silver Cat Studios – Audio/Video/CBT Production; Script/Copy Writing;
3	M Paul	3D artist/animator -3DSmax, Zbrush, After Effects, Flash…
4	Vivek Acharya	Programmer in Iphone/VB.Net/ASP/C#/PHP/Joomla
5	Kim M.	Senior Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and InDesign
6	Abdullah Al-Baki	Ultimate 3D Modeler and Architectural visualizer
7	Anna P.	Graphic Designer
8	Mick D.	Web Expert, Photoshop,Flash Animation, HTML/CSS, Web2.0, Logo Designer
9	Xenia S.	Search Engine Optimization, Blogging, Social Media Marketing
10	Herbert M.	Fine Artist, Over 600 oDesk Hours, Perfect Rating, Great Portfolio
11	Guillaume Le Taeron	3D for game & Illustration, Iphone game development, Android
12	Bill Whitney	Illustration, animation art, for corporate presentation and law cases
13	Stanimir S.	<+> Creative Freelancer 2D & 3D Designer (Architecture) <+>
14	Anait Sagoyan	►► PROFESSIONAL LOGO & WEBSITE MOCKUP DESIGNER WITH HIGH-END PORTFOLIO
15	Agnes B.	creative logo designer always in time/strong in marketing & branding
16	Daniela C.	ARCHITECT – 2d and 3d- DESIGNER
17	Jonathan Antonio	ODESK TOP DESIGNER / ILLUSTRATOR
18	Nikolay Atanasov	3D Generalist / Post prduction
19	Johlett Van Der Merwe	Unique & Noticeable Print Design & Fine Art
20	Srujith Kudikala	Microsoft Certified .NET programmer, PHP/MYSQL, ORACLE,JOOMLA
21	Joanna C.	Listed #1 Best Freelance Designer Sept 2009/Joomla/Zencart/Graphics
22	Wajeeha Hussain	3 years experienced and professional Graphic Designer+editing expert
23	Alexey Medvedev	○●○●3D MODELING║VISUALIZATION║ARCHITECT║GRAPHIC║CAD specialist○●○●
24	Michelle Gamboa	MICHELLE@WORK
25	Jashan K.	Web2.0, Mockups, Logos, Prints, Illustrations, HTML, DHTML, CSS, Flash

	Top 25 Freelance Software Developers for October 2009 were:
1	Vikas S.	4yr Exp. Sharepoint,C#.Net,VB.Net,SQLServer,AJAX,WebServices
2	Alexander M.	Microsoft Certified C#.NET/ASP.NET/J2SE/J2EE Senior Developer
3	Ivan T.	Sr. .NET Developer / Technical Architect, 6+ years of experience
4	Gurpal M.	ASP.NET/Ajax and DotNetNuke Professional
5	Ravi K.	ASP.NET+VB+VB.NET+AJAX+RSS
6	Luis Gomez	Sr. Developer in C#, C++, MS SQL, Website Development & Administration
7	Alex Bowling	Wide Array of Experience
8	Yuriy E.	4000+ oDesk hours, Senior C#/.Net Developer
9	Anatoly Mikhailov	RubyOnRails/Ruby, jQuery/Prototype Developer | xHTML, CSS Designer
10	Shrish T.	Silverlight and ASP.NET 3.5 expert
11	Denis S.	.NET and java Developer
12	Amit Agrawal	Programmer / Developer
13	Pankaj Singh	Java Developer
14	Vlad I.	.NET 3.5 (C#, ASP.NET), C++(STL,Boost, ATL,MFC,WinAPI), Java
15	Cantor Fan	7+ years experience/J2EE/EJB/Java/Oracle/PHP/ERP/Twitter
16	Budugu N.	Top 10% in Testing – QA, iseb Trainer, Online Research, Admin Support
17	Amrik Singh	ASP.Net/VB.Net/C#.Net/VBA programmer
18	Meteonic Innovation	PMP/Sys-Engg/Architects/Designers/System Test ::C,C++/Games/Android
19	Rodion Bykov	Adobe Air/Flex/Coldfusion/MSSQL/PHP/MySQL development & management
20	Jan K.	❶ Experienced Flash / Web / Joomla developer ★★US Based★★
21	Ross C.	Senior iPhone/C/C++/Web/Python Developer
22	Ajit J.	Expert DNN Programmer
23	Alexey Verenikin	Web design & development, 10+ years of experience
24	Sandra Qiu	oDesk certified iPhone expert (1st!)
25	Nelson T.	Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, HTML, CSS

	Top 25 Freelance Web Developers for October 2009 were:
1	Evgeny M.	PHP/MySQL/DHTML/Ajax Developer/Project Manager
2	Tatiana D.	PHP, MySQL, Drupal Developer, Team Leader
3	Alexander D.	Expert J2EE/JBoss, PHP/MySQL, AJAX, SMARTY Developer
4	Olexiy O.	Java/J2EE Architect / Senior Developer
5	Dmitry A.	ASP.net/Mobile – Professional Experience
6	Dora M.	Dora
7	Vladimir K.	ColdFusion/MSSQL/PHP/Smarty/mySQL developer
8	Denis S.
9	Fahmi A.	Full PHP Experience
10	Igor G.	Java Developer
11	Yaroslav O.	Senior (around 3000 oDesk hours) PHP/MySQL/Ajax, Project Manager
12	Alexander Aristov	Self-motivated software developer (j2ee, JSP, javascript, ASP, .NET)
13	Mircea C.	Senior Delphi Expert Software Developer, with JAVA, C# .NET and PHP
14	Misha B.	Drupal/PHP/MySQL/HTML/JS/CSS
15	Jane Durm	Sales & Marketing, Management, Admin. Assistant, Customer Service
16	V K.	Unmatched Silverlight and ASP.NET 3.5 Professional
17	Maninder S.	HTML/ XHTML/ CSS Developer, Certified WordPress Professional
18	Gurdeep Dhillon	PHP/MySQL/Ajax Drupal Joomla WordPress ECommerce Rails UberCart Expert
19	Denis Statsenko	Greatest PHP/MySQL/AJAX/Symfony/Smarty/osCommers/Joomla developer
20	Vladimir Fedorov	Flash & Flex developer
21	Andrey Z.	Experienced PHP/Python/Django/Coldfusion/Flex web-developer
22	Yogesh S.	Certified ASP.net|C#.Net|VB.Net Developer|SQL Server 2005|VB 6|VBA
23	Alexei Shulga	PM & Zend certified PHP,MySQL,Ajax,CakePHP, CI, ZF senior developer
24	Durrab Khan	Sr.Software Lead & Architect | Flex/AIR/Spring/Java/J2EE/J2ME/Android
25	Sri Vardhan Gogineni	Developer

	Top 25 Freelance Writers for October 2009 were:
1	Deborah Hemstreet	Specialist in Online Help, Manuals, Presentations, and More!
2	Chitra Raghavan	Business Research Analyst
3	Christopher Subijano	TOP 10%! Superb SEO Writer/Link Builder/Business Consultant/Engineer
4	Deepa Ashith	TOP ODesk Writer/Business Analyst/CopyWriter
5	David Tong	Senior Technical Writer, Photography Instructor
6	Manal Sh	Accountant , Bookkeeper ,E-learning , English>Arabic Translator,Moo
7	Cc M.	Professional – Project Management, Design, Content, Data Entry
8	Georges D.	Forex trader / MQL coder / English – French – Arabic translator
9	Jayne W.	♣♣♣ Microsoft Office Expert ♣♣ Researcher ♣♣ Teacher ♣♣♣
10	Jamie M.	Data Entry, Data Mining, Copy and Paste Work Expert
11	Graham Land	Creative/Copywriter, research, travel, branding, SEO, Swe-Eng trans.
12	Michelle Grace	Data Entry/Researcher/VA/Social Bookmarking/DocumentEditing/WebContent
13	Ramon B.	Excellent WRITER, resourceful ADMIN ASST, first-rate TRANSCRIPTIONIST
14	Ray Kirstein	Voice and Production Pro
15	Jason Spidle	Professional Writer, Web Programmer and Certified Project Manager
16	Bryan D.	Experienced Email support, Research/Writer, Graphic Designer, CSR
17	Sally R.	On the ball administration, research, writing, editing and data entry
18	Betsy Pickering	Creative/Technical Writer | Native English Speaker
19	Ed Q.	۞ Data Entry Expert/Autocad Capable/Virtual Assistant/Video Editor ۞
20	Maria Revillo	English to Spanish translator
21	Susan Campbell	Trusted Content Writer – Articles,Sales Pages, eBooks, Website Content
22	Geefe A.	efficient and committed business writer/researcher/virtual assistant
23	Faith M.	Multi-Skilled eBook Writer/Blogger/Spinner/SEO/LinkBuilder/Top Tests
24	Ronald Uy	Result Oriented/ Hard Working/ Professional/WordPress Writer-Blogger
25	Roselyn M.	Data Entry/Research/Social Bookmark/Article Submission

	Top 25 Virtual Assistants for October 2009 were:
1	Roshni K.	Kashwork :Writer, VA, Data Entry, CRM, Project Manager, Admin Support
2	A R.	Virtual Assistant/Data Entry/Data Mining/Research/VA/PA/eCommerce
3	Suresh M.	Virtual Assistant,Data Entry,Data Mining,Excel,Web Research,PA&VA
4	Marc A.	Data Entry, Directory Admin, part-time Writer, and more…
5	Sujata John	Data Entry Specialist – Freelance Data Entry Professional, India
6	Hazel S.	Smart, versatile and capable native english speaker
7	Livia R.	Data Entry-Virtual/PersonalAssistant-Directory Submission-Researcher
8	Benedetta De Rose	Professional Translator
9	Angela S.	I am your Experienced and Professional Administrative Assistant
10	Desiree L.	Expert Fr/Sp Translator, Social Media Marketer and Content Manager
11	Lizza M.	***Virtual Assistant, Researcher & Data Entry Professional***
12	Abigail Paladin	Admin. Assistant, 6Yrs as Call Center Agent, ESL Tutor for Japanese
13	Kaye A.	Accounting/Bookkeeping/MSOffice/Data_Entry/Craigslist Proficient
14	Kevin Ochoco	FREELANCE I.T. Technician / Data Entry / Customer Support
15	Manolito Sulit	Online Media Strategist, Project Manager, ITO/BPO Provider
16	Marcela N.	Data Entry, Social Bookmarking, Researcher
17	Minhaz P.	oDesk 5000+ hrs, Data entry specialist, Link builder, Banner designer
18	Rachel L.	Reseacher, Data Entry, Social Bookmarking,Facebook
19	Abraham Jozsef	Experienced oDesk Provider – Data Entry, Research, MS Office, Admin S.
20	Nouman K.	VA,Web-research,HTML,CSS,Craigslist and Data Entry Expert
21	Michael B.	Expert in Data Entry, Article Writing, SEM, SMM, SEO, Tech Support
22	Daizy Raisinghani	Data Entry Expert
23	Travis B.	American! 5 Star Rating! Highly proficient with broad set of skills!
24	Simolyn S.	~Virtual Assistant/Customer Service/Telemarketer/Researcher/Recruiter~
25	Lily Roy	Legal, Administrative Support, Reserching, Writing & Data Entry

These rankings will be generated each month, and stored in the oConomy under “Rankings”. October Rankings will be published on December 1st. Congratulations again!

Runners-Up:

• “iPOV Corporate Website Design” This project was a complete overhaul of the design of the buyer’s corporate website. The purpose was to clearly communicate their instructional design approach to visitors and potential clients. The new design has a new look and feel, layout, and diagrams to help get the buyer’s message across within a clean, professional design.
• “LingQ Redesign” This was an update to the design and functionality of the buyer’s website at LingQ.com. The talented providers hired for this job made significant changes to the site’s core functionality and design to provide a cleaner and more user friendly appearance.
• “HelperHire Website” This was a design of a database driven website similar to a dating site in functionality. The buyer wanted a simple design with the least amount of pages and text as possible but also user friendly with a friendly, outdoors, happy theme.

This month’s contest served as a reminder of the amazing design talent we have in our oDesk community of providers. All oDesk buyers who completed any type of design job through oDesk were eligible to submit their designs to the contest. Winners were determined entirely by oDesk community voting. We’d like to thank all of the participants in this month’s contest and helping to make it yet another success. Stay tuned for our next contest which we anticipate will be bigger and better than any we’ve done in the past. As always, we’d love your feedback so feel free to submit your suggestions within the comment section below for future consideration. And please join us in congratulating our winners for October! Nice work folks!

In an effort to do our part to help startups succeed, we’re extending the oDesk Challenge to all of the companies demoing at FailCon.  We’re going to roll up our sleeves and find the very best talent on oDesk for these companies, so they can build online workteams to save money and stay flexible.

Here are the companies showcased at FailCon – we’ll be personally extending our offer to them during the event today.

	Webvanta Webvanta is a new kind of hosted content management system (CMS) that allows designers to easily build content-rich sites with structured data, without having to mess with back-end code.
	YourVersion YourVersion is a revolutionary real-time discovery engine that lets you easily discover, share and bookmark new, relevant web content tailored to your interests.
	WeMakeItSafer Statistically, you have at least 5 products with safety defects in your home right now and don’t know about it. WeMakeItSafer has the only recall search tool with advanced filtering and image gallery to help you quickly identify potential hazards.
	MyJobReferrals With MyJobReferrals.com, it’s easy for individuals to browse through open job opportunities and identify positions that a friend or colleague might be interested in hearing about.
	Klout Klout measures influence on topics across the social web to find the people the world listens to.
	Freshout We’ve had clients from every continent and deeply enjoy the intersection of different verticals and cultures. We view your distance as an opportunity to innovate rather than a challenge.
	Fido Factor The Ultimate guide to dog-friendly locations.
	Creative.ly Creative.ly is a fun place to find and collect the best images from all over web. Catalog your favorite photos from flickr or other great websites. Show off the images you love and discover new images from people who share your taste.
	BackBlaze The no fuss solution to getting all your data backed up securely. Online backup for only $5/month per computer for unlimited storage.
	MoApps The first real estate app you need. Before you purchase a home, or move to a new location, you need to know the local economy.
	ScrumNinja Plan and estimate projects with ease. Keep your team focused and productive. Track progress and who’s working on what. Deliver high-level business value to your product owners. Manage feature delivery and acceptance.
	MeeHive Specify your interests, and we deliver the news. Get the latest from around the world Take MeeHive with you via iPhone, RSS, email and more Discover new interests Share and discuss with friends and family
	TribeVibe Tribevibe will change the way you think about measuring and curating content. We’re not quite ready to let the world hear the beat yet. But you can register now to request an invitation to the initial alpha program. More than 3000 people have already signed up!
	Envolve With Envolve you’ll be able to discuss websites in real-time with other readers, share your thoughts with a global audience, and network with other like-minded individuals.
	Econetix We build residential energy efficiency systems that are focused on providing rich end-user experiences. Our products are affordable, easy to use, and are designed to introduce long-term energy efficient behaviors into the home.

This rate grows every day, and there will be more work done on oDesk this month than on any other online work marketplace. Period.

In addition to passing this tremendous milestone, oDesk continues to grow 3-5 times faster than any other online work marketplace.

So congratulations to our incredible providers, and to the buyers who have hired them. You guys are changing how the world works!

We look forward to working with affiliate marketers to grow the oDesk community.  We are even more excited to introduce the world of affiliate marketing to oDesk.  Publishers can use oDesk for all of their day-to-day needs, since oDesk is a great place to find web developers, graphic designers, blog writers, virtual assistants, and online marketers (SEO, PPC, and social media experts).

Why should you enroll in our new program?

• We will pay affiliates $10 for each new buyer they send to oDesk that signs up & verifies a payment method.
• We will pay affiliates 10% of all of the money we make from those buyers for the first year after they sign up.

We’ve provided a variety of banner, text link, and flash options for affiliates to choose from. We’ve also provided a list of recommended keywords for them to use in their online marketing campaigns.  We’ve even created some APIs so affiliates can create custom sites using our job feeds - http://developers.odesk.com.

Affiliate marketers and users of our user-user referral system are welcome to apply to the new program. Click here to get started now!

We’re excited about our program and hope you will be, too.  We want to work closely with our affiliates and help them succeed, so if you have any ideas about how we can make our program better, let us know!  Email affiliate-team@odesk.com.

We received responses from across the globe, from providers proud to lend their voices, faces and home towns to bring the oDesk Manifesto to life.

The response:

We really can’t say it any better than they have!
oDesk. Changing How the World Works.

It was a pleasure to attend last Tuesday’s JuicePitcher event and see the finalist’s pitches.  These startups are creating some impressive offerings.  We’re also excited to announce we’ve extended our oDesk Challenge to all of them.  We’re going to roll up our sleeves to help them find the very best talent oDesk has to offer.

Our sincere congratulations goes out to the winner, Thumbtack.com, a marketplace for local work.  Not only do we think Thumbtack offers an innovative service, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they are already a happy oDesk buyer!  Thumbtack uses oDesk providers to review all of the job posts on their site, to make sure they meet the community standards.  According to Marco Zappacosta, CEO of Thumbtack, “the quality and timeliness of the work has impressed [him] every step of the way.”

The ten finalists (and latest oDesk Challenge takers) are:

We look forward to helping these companies do more with less on oDesk!

Patrick Schwerdtfeger, one of the Bay Area’s preeminent Social Media evangelists, will be hosting his next Entrepreneur and Small Business Academy event tonight at 6:00pm at the Hotel Shattuck Plaza, in Berkeley, CA.

At the event, special guests Kane Minkus & Jeff Slayter will share their wealth of Entrepreneurial experiences with their presentation, “Blatantly Unfair Sales Magic Sooo Powerful You Might Be Afraid To Use It.”

The presentation will cover:

• Stealth email tricks that boost client loyalty
• Linguistic tools that make you indispensable
• A precise system for creating a constant stream of clients and customers
• Three behaviors of top-producing Entrepreneurs that will change your perspective on how to do business in the current market place
• Advanced techniques for balancing multiple income streams

Patrick will also have copies of his book, “Webify Your Business: Internet Marketing Secrets for the Self-Employed“, and his new 6 DVD Set “Social Media Victories – Real Businesses, Real Campaigns, Real Results” available for purchase.  Patrick has agreed to offer oDesk users a $100 discount to the DVD set.

We’ll have a table at the event to chat with folks about oDesk, so make sure to stop by and say hello!

In fact, we’re so excited about Juice Pitcher, we’ve extended our oDesk Challenge offer to the 10 finalists (who haven’t yet been announced).  These early-stage companies are under constant pressure to do more with less, and a great way to do that is enlist the help of teams of online contractors.  Through participation in the oDesk Challenge, we’re going to help them find the very best talent on oDesk, so they can begin reaping the benefits of having an online workteam on their side.

Our CEO, Gary Swart, and several members of our team will be attending tonight’s event – if you’ll be attending, we look forward to seeing you there!

oDesk Buyers, you might want to get in touch with these Providers soon…they just completed assignments and are available now, but probably won’t be for long. Click on their profile to check out their work and contact them for an interview!

	Top 25 Freelance Designers for September 2009 were:
1	Joanna C.	Web Design, Logo, Collaterals, Brochure, Joomla
2	Nikolay Atanasov	3D Generalist / Post prduction
3	David Moehle	Voice Talent/Start to Finish Digital Audio Creation and Editing/Writer
4	Francis M.	►► Photoshop | Illustrator | Indesign Cr8TiVE @rtist™
5	Salman N.	Senior Ruby on Rails/ PHP/J EE/ Flex/ Flash/HTML/CSS Developer
6	Evgeniy Ognarev	Illustrations, character design, flash animations, storyboards
7	Allen Kerry	â–º 3D Artist Character Modeler, 12 yrs Game dev exp, Fulltime biz, US â—„
8	Kamal Garg	Photoshop, Flash, HTML/DHTML/XHTML, Versatile Website & Logo Designer
9	John Basile	Scraster Professional Screencasting
10	Peter Safwat	Flash Designer & Developer + Web & Graphic Designer
11	Cheryl B.	Graphic designer, 18 years building better brands
12	Kamal Pahuja	3D Modeling, Texturing, Lighiting – Freelance Website/Flash Designer
13	Tania I.	Logo Design, Brochure, Website, Stationary, & Illustration Expert
14	Dexter B.	Dedicated Illustrator • Professional Artist • oDesk Recognized
15	Nitya S.	Web & Graphics Expert, Flash Animator, Web2.0, HTML/CSS, Logo Designer
16	Anna P.	Graphic Designer
17	Sm R.	web research, video creator, adobe cs3, ms office expert.
18	Nikola Sudarevic	Desktop Publishing and Design
19	Jorge Puntriano	Senior Graphic Designer, Illustrator, Pixel Artist and 2D animator
20	Jeff W.	*Creative* Video Editing / Camtasia / Flash / Audio / Graphic Design
21	Talec H.	Expert in web designing,CSS, Div based sites & html
22	Victor Novak	Web/Print Design. Brand Identity/Logo/Stationery. IA/UX consultant.
23	Kamal Pahuja	3D Modeling, Texturing, Lighiting – Freelance Website/Flash Designer
24	Allen S.	ILLUSTRATION/WEB/GRAPHIC DESIGN/ **LOVES WORKING WITH ILLUSTRATOR**
25	Abhinav B.	â–‘â–’â–“â–ˆ Superlative Php/MySql, Web2.0, Ajax — Developer █▓▒░

	Top 25 Freelance Software Developers for September 2009 were:
1	Gabriel V.	Programmer / Developer
2	Dmitriy L.	C++ / Python developer
3	Christine Hui	BVG
4	Vinod Podar	Senior Program Manager
5	Dharminder S	.Net C# VB ASP.net .Net2.0 .Net3.5, healthcare, dontnetnuke
6	Roman Kudiyarov	C++/Python Developer
7	Harry R.	.Net/MVC/LINQ/MS SQL/T-SQL/jQuery/JSON
8	Ranjana S.	Experieced OsCommerce,Ajax,Smarty,Wordpress,Cakephp,Magento Programmer
9	Ross C.	Senior iPhone/C/C++/Web/Python Developer
10	Chinmay Das	Senior Software Engineer
11	Andrew Kramarew	Senior developer: ASP.NET/C#/MSSQL/MySQL/AJAX/JQuery/Prototype/Magento
12	Supriya B.	4+Years experienced PHP/MYSQL Web Developer
13	Paresh D.	Sun Certified Java Prof, Java,J2EE,Struts,Ajax,Hibernate Developer
14	Daniel G.	Experienced PHP/Perl/ActionScript(2,3)/C/C++/JavaScript developer
15	Tejinder A.	Web 2.0, CSS, xHTML, Flash Actionscripting Programmer
16	Dmitry Papusha	MS SQL, ASP.NET, C#, SSIS, Crystal, SSRS, DWH High-Skilled Developer
17	Goran P.	Experienced Programmer, Mobile Phones Programmer and Web Programmer
18	Gilbert E.	*PHP+mySQL*,Flex,C#.Net+MSSQL,AJax, RUBY,XHTML/XML,J2ME,VB/C/C++
19	Veer Singh	PHP Developer
20	Alexey Z.	C/C++ Technical Lead
21	Dmitry S.	C++/C# software developer
22	Andrei Mamitchev	Senior Java/JSP/Struts/Spring Developer
23	Denis Borisenko	Flex/ActionScript/AIR/Flash Developer
24	Rajan Kulkarni	Sun Certified Java Developer – Java/J2EE, Struts, AJAX SQL, HIbernate
25	V K.	Unmatched Silverlight and ASP.NET 3.5 Professional

	Top 25 Freelance Web Developers for September 2009 were:
1	Evgeny M.	PHP/MySQL/DHTML/Ajax Developer/Project Manager
2	Tatiana D.	PHP, MySQL, Drupal Developer, Team Leader
3	Alexander D.	Expert J2EE/JBoss, PHP/MySQL, AJAX, SMARTY Developer
4	Olexiy O.	Java/J2EE Architect / Senior Developer
5	Dmitry A.	ASP.net/Mobile – Professional Experience
6	Dora M.	Dora
7	Vladimir K.	ColdFusion/MSSQL/PHP/Smarty/mySQL developer
8	Fahmi A.	Professional PHP/MySQL/XHTML/CSS/ Developer
9	Igor G.	Java Developer
10	Mircea C.	Senior Delphi Expert Software Developer, with JAVA, C# .NET and PHP
11	Misha B.	Drupal/PHP/MySQL/HTML/JS/CSS
12	Jane Durm	Sales & Marketing, Management, Admin. Assistant, Customer Service
13	V K.	Unmatched Silverlight and ASP.NET 3.5 Professional
14	Maninder S.	HTML/ XHTML/ CSS Developer, Certified WordPress Professional
15	Gurdeep Dhillon	PHP/MySQL/Ajax Drupal Joomla WordPress ECommerce Rails UberCart Expert
16	Amit C.	.Net Professional
17	Denis Statsenko	Greatest PHP/MySQL/AJAX/Symfony/Smarty/osCommers/Joomla developer
18	Vladimir Fedorov	Flash & Flex developer
19	Andrey Z.	Experienced PHP/Python/Django/Coldfusion/Flex web-developer
20	Yogesh S.	Certified ASP.net/C#.Net,VB.Net Developer,sqlserver2005,vb 6, VBA
21	Alexei Shulga	Zend certified ZCE,PHP,MySQL,Ajax,Frameworks (CakePHP, Zend Framework)
22	Durrab Khan	Sr.Software Lead & Architect | Flex/AIR/Spring/Java/J2EE/J2ME/Android
23	Sri Vardhan Gogineni	Developer
24	Uday S	PHP, AJAX, Joomla, MySQL, CakePHP, Drupal, PHP/IIS/MS SQL
25	Ashish Singh	Microsoft Certified ASP.NET 3.5,C#,LINQ,SQL server,AJAX,JS,Sharepoint

	Top 25 Freelance Writers for September 2009 were:
1	Nelson Manning	High Quality Writer: Technical, Dev Spec, Business, Creative, Copy
2	Aashita S.	Experienced Tech Writer, Project Manager, ID, Editor, PR, Copywriter
3	Jery Esparas	7.5YRS Exp.PROJECT MANAGER/EXCEL/VIRTUAL ASST (FULLTIME Provider)
4	Oliver N.	Versatile Writer++
5	Carlo Gabriel Simbajon	TOP oDesk Writer for July 2009; ECONOMIST: Economics, Business, Mngmt.
6	Rosanne L.	Professional Writing Services – Copywriting, Web Content, SEO, eBooks
7	Sally R.	On the ball administration, research, writing, editing and data entry
8	Susan Campbell	Trusted Content Writer – Articles,Sales Pages, eBooks, Website Content
9	Nitima S.	Highly reliable Writer and SEO expert
10	Candan Kayaguney	Data Entry/Research/Personal Assistant/Translation/Administrative Supp
11	Marilyn M.	Top 15 Provider on oDesk~ PROFESSIONAL~SEO NINJA~AFFORDABLE~QUALITY~
12	Shaira B.	All-around Data Entry~Research Assistant+Graphics Editor
13	Yigit S.	Turkish native – (Tur-Eng) Translation, Proofreading, Localization
14	Houda A.	Translator French /Spanish/English-Proofreader-transcriber
15	Elvis S.	GraphicDesign/SEO/DataEntry/QA/A+cert/AudioEditor
16	Donna M.	Experienced and Published Writer
17	Deepa Ashith	Experienced Technical Writer/Business Analyst/CopyWriter
18	Faith M.	☼Multi-Skilled☼—eBook Writer—Blogger—Spinner—SEO—LinkBuilder—Top Tests
19	Susan Campbell	Trusted Content Writer – Articles,Sales Pages, eBooks, Website Content
20	Melissa Lind	Pharmacist Writer/Research/Editor in Medicine/Health/Lifestyle/SEO
21	Teresa Schultz	HTML/photoshop/writer
22	Faith Anne Hurley	Writing for you – mathematics, humanities, and education
23	Daphany Dixon	Data Entry Expert and Office Assistant
24	Mark Aragona	A Wizard with Words: Creative Writer, SQA Specialist and Voice-over
25	Kamran Mehmood	MBA IN FINANCE (DATA ENTRY EXPERT IN MS. WORD, EXCELL, POWERPOINT)

	Top 25 Virtual Assistants for September 2009 were:
1	Marie C.	Graphic Design Print & Web, Photo manipulation, correction and other
2	Marie C.	Data Encoder Specialist, Internet Researcher, Data Mining.
3	Janice Alcantara	☼ ♥ TOP SEM, SEO, Link Building, Web Content & Article Writing ♥ ☼
4	Philippa E.	British certified SEO Practitioner and Copy Writer Extraordinaire
5	L Maher	Virtual Assistant – Highly experienced
6	Ariel Pichersky	Native Spanish speaker| Writer| Discourse worker| Letters student @UBA
7	Rostyslav K.	â–ºDATA ENTRY, RESEARCH, FRENCH TRANSLATION, ADMINISTRATION, EXCELâ–º
8	Mia B.	Highly Reliable Project Coordinator, Writer,Researcher
9	Bobby L.	BlackSheepUK|Graphic/Web Designer+CSS+Photoshop+Video Traffic Expert
10	Bobbi D.	Executive Virtual Assistant
11	Jessica H.	★★★ Design/Data Entry/Writing/Research ★★★
12	Renee B.	Information Professional/Business Researcher/Librarian
13	Vinayachandran Gopalakrishna Panicker	Admin. Professional/Data Entry Professional
14	Candy W.	Joomla/Wordpress/Ecommerce /Senior Virtual Assistant from China
15	Arpan K.	Excel/Word/Powerpoint/HTML/Virtual Assistant/Data Entry
16	Deepika Tiwari	Web Researcher/Marketing and Sales/Data Entry/Recruitment professional
17	Pradeep Chandru	MySQL certified DBA who provide support in any MYSQL activity
18	Charmaine G.	~~Customer & Tech Support,Virtual Assistant,Research Specialist~~
19	Mark Walusimbi	Dedicated To Client Service, Accurate Data & Timely Delivery
20	Sanjeev Chauhan	Certified System Administrator/Link builder/ SEO Expert/Sharepoint
21	Arlene Santillan	~ 10 YRS. EXP VA ♥ RESEARCHER ♥ ARTICLE SUBMITTER ♥ WEB CONTENT EDITOR
22	April Toucheque	Multi-Tasking Admin. Asst. with Bookkeeping Experience
23	Christine B.	Experienced researcher/ Data Entry-Virtual Assistant
24	Liza Roy	Legal, Administrative Support, Research, Writing & Data entry
25	Arvin S.	Highly motivated virtual assistant, data enterer, and web developer.

These rankings will be generated each month, and stored in the oConomy under “Rankings”. October Rankings will be published on November 1st. Congratulations again!

Here at oDesk we have the privilege of bringing businesses and individuals together with remote workers to collaborate on oDesk, and seeing amazing results come out of it. Our buyers are proud of their products and likewise ourrebeccaturner providers are proud of their hard work. This month’s contest is rather unique because it was open to all types of design work. It allows buyers a chance to show off their masterpieces, from logo and illustration, to video, to web design and everything in between! We’re also excited to showcase the incredible design talent of our community and honor some of the best work done through oDesk.

Winners will be chosen entirely by community voting which will continue through October 31st. The grand prize winner, or Design of the Month will officially be announced on November 1st. So what are you waiting for? Click here to cast your votes – you are allowed to vote for up to 3 apps per day. Facebook guru? You can also vote via our Facebook App. That way, your votes will show up on your walls, and your friends will be encouraged to vote as well.

The grand prize winner will get $1,000 oDesk credit, an iPhone, possible press opportunities, and of course, ever-coveted bragging rights! The three runners-up will each get an oDesk t-shirt.

So what are you waiting for? Check out the competition (we think you’ll be as impressed as we are) and cast your vote today! Good luck to the contestants – may the best design win!

To access the new page, visit My Jobs > Assignments and click on any assignment, active or ended.

For buyers:

The assignment detail page is your central screen for each provider. It shows key information, statistics, and actions all on one screen. Everything you need will be one-click away…

• see the provider’s local time
• link to the provider’s work diary
• see how much time (and money) was spent last week, this week, and for the entire assignment
• send a message to the provider or staffing manager
• change rate or weekly limit
• make bonus or fixed-price payments
• end an assignment
• manage feedback for ended assignments

For providers:

The assignment detail page is your central screen for each of your assignments…

• view your own work diary for that assignment
• see how much was earned last week, this week, and for the entire assignment
• send a message to the buyer
• end an assignment
• give refunds

Let us know what you think!

Last week, we listed out some of the most useful iPhone apps for business use. We intentionally left one off that list, so we could share it with you in more detail today:

Your oDesk team room is a great place for staying abreast of all the things your teammates are working on, but sometimes you’re not in front of your computer and you’d like to keep up to date with what’s going on back in the virtual office.  With the new oDesk iPhone app, now there’s an app for that.

The oDesk iPhone app gives you literal visibility of your online workteam no matter where you are:

• See all providers in your team room grouped by current work status – Working Now, Worked in the Last 24 Hours, Other
• View each team member’s latest work memo, local time, 24-hour work sparkline, and latest snapshot
• Check complete work diaries including memos, full-size snapshots, activity indicator, billing status, timestamp, and active window for any date

The app is designed for both buyers and providers.

Watch Brain Goler, oDesk’s VP of Marketing, give a quick demo of the app in action:

Ready to download? If you have an iPhone (or iPod Touch), follow this link to install the app.  Or, search the App Store for “oDesk” to find it.

If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear them at iphone-app@odesk.com, or in the comments section below.  And, if you like what you see, please rate the oDesk iPhone Application it in the App Store!

____

If you’re a blogger or member of the press looking for more information, please contact press@odesk.com.

The oDesk iPhone App announced today was built by leveraging oDesk APIs, which are now publicly available in the oDesk API Center. In releasing access to our APIs, we’d like to encourage developers and managers to create custom workspaces that shape existing oDesk tools to fit their own specific needs.

The APIs currently available:
* Authentication – Allows for login/logout functionality to be implemented from outside the oDesk site.
* Provider Search – Facilitates the searching of oDesk provider data.
* Provider Profile – Returns detailed profile information about a provider or list of providers.
* Team – Provides multi-directional interaction capabilities with the oDesk Team and its members.
* Work Diary – This method retrieves all screenshots captured from a user account within a single day.
* Get Snapshot – Retrieves one or more snapshots of activity from a user account in a company’s team at defined points in time.

Visit the oDesk API Center at: http://developers.odesk.com/

Once a venture-backed company signs up as an oDesk buyer and posts its first job, our team takes over. Just let us know you want to take part in the oDesk Challenge, and we’ll get to work – starting with a brief phone call with you to understand what skills you’re looking for. We’ll then handle sourcing & interviewing candidates for you, and serve up the top 3 candidates for your job within a week.

Please visit www.odesk.com/oDeskChallenge for more details!

One of these ‘oDesk Challenge’ account managers will find the top 3 candidates for your job Amit Bakshi amitbakshi@odesk.com donot deleate Rebecca Daneault rdaneault@odesk.com donot deleate Josh Breinlinger josh@odesk.com donot deleate

Customer Service 22,000 oDesk providers Interact with your customers via phone, email, and chat Hourly Rates $4-15 Graphic Designers 87,000 oDesk providers Do your HTML, CSS, and offline graphic design Average Hourly Rates $10-30 SEO/SMM Experts 43,000 oDesk providers Blog writers, social media account managers, and SEO linkbuilders Average Hourly Rates: $8-30

Here’s the demo our CEO, Gary Swart, gave.  The panel of experts consisted of Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Paul Graham, Tony Hsieh, and Marissa Mayer.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our demo table and gave us the chance to earn your vote.  And thanks for everyone who blogged, and facebooked, and especially tweeted on our behalf.  The twitter activity was amazing.  We love these events, as they give us the chance to get in front of users, old and new, and remind us that we’re playing a small part in Changing How the World Works!

So, our job is to get you to visit our demo booth, blow you away with our demo, and get you to give us your poker chip!  Please stop by and give us a chance to earn your vote!  (Voting closes at 2:30pm)

Visit www.odesk.com/oDeskChallenge for more details!

Last week we were fortunate to be invited to the fbFund REV incubator program’s demo day.  For the past 12 weeks, 22 startups with facebook apps were educated, mentored, housed, and funded with up to $100,000 by fbFund (a joint venture by Facebook, Founder’s Fund, and Accel Partners).  We liked what we saw – these startups were innovative, scrappy, and entrepreneurial, and in fact reminded us a lot of oDesk buyers. We wanted to do our part to help out, so we decided to roll up our sleeves to help them find the very best talent on oDesk.

We’re pleased to announce that 7 of the 22 fbFund startups have agreed to take our offer, and we’re in the midst of helping them build online workteams on oDesk!  The teams (and newest oDesk buyers) are:

Funji is a mobile virtual community for the iPhone and iPod touch, satisfying users’ desire to express themselves and communicate with others in a fun, creative way in mobile devices. The team has more than five years of experience in the mobile market in both South Korea and the US.

Gameyola is a distribution and monetization platform for casual Flash games. Flash games currently monetize poorly, but Gameyola solves this problem by providing Flash developers tools to sell virtual goods and to acquire users through social channels.

From keeping track of your kids to protecting your identity and getting back your lost stuff, Life360 is the place you go to keep your family safe, secure, and prepared for daily life.

Churches create their own social networks on MyChurch.org. They extend their community between Sundays with tools to connect and engage their members. Over 30,000 church congregations are represented on MyChurch.org.

Simplify the way you manage Facebook and other social networks through your email inbox. NutshellMail consolidates activity from all your accounts into a single email digest delivered on your schedule. Don’t let email alerts clutter your inbox. NutshellMail keeps you connected and productive at the same time.

Combines the success of resident referral programs with the power of social networks. Residents refer their community to friends through social networks like Facebook, and email to earn rewards and live with friends.

RUNmyERRAND is a social networking inspired web and mobile marketplace that provides people and businesses an easy and trusted way to get everyday tasks done in their own hyperlocal community.

We think oDesk is a great fit for companies like these to access talent anywhere in the world, scale their teams up & down as needed, and save as much as 80% on labor costs. All of these companies need to remain lean and agile on their paths towards profitability, and using oDesk to hire, manage, and pay remote contractors is a great way to do just that.  We wish them all the best as they continue along their entrepreneurial journeys!

Here in the oDesk community we have a pretty impressive bunch of designers, if we do say so ourselves.  To celebrate some of the amazing design work being done through oDesk, we thought we’d try something a little different this time around and hold a “Design of the Month” contest for the month of October.

As with past contests, the competition is open to all oDesk buyers and will be used to showcase all types of graphic design, including web design, logo & icon design, 3D animation, video editing, illustration and more.

If you’ve hired a designer through oDesk, why not show off the results by entering?  The winner will receive $1,000 oDesk credit, a gift card for a new iPhone 3GS, press opportunities and, of course, bragging rights.

Voting for the “Design of the Month” will be based on visual aesthetics.  For example, if a web site is submitted, it will be judged on how it looks, not its functionality.

So what are you waiting for?  Enter today.  Submissions will be accepted through September 30^th with voting to take place throughout the month of October.

Let the competition begin!

oDesk Buyers, you might want to get in touch with these Providers soon…they just completed assignments and are available now, but probably won’t be for long. Click on their profile to check out their work and contact them for an interview!

Top 25 Freelance Designers for August 2009 were: 1) Jason D. Sr. Graphic Designer | Creative Director 2) Enric I. Creative Graphic Designer for Print & Web, Image Masking Specialist 3) David Moehle Voice Talent/Start to Finish Digital Audio Creation and Editing/Writer 4) Lily W. Sr. designer for logo, banner ,website and business card(Photoshop & I 5) Athen Desautels 3d Artist, Character Animator, Digital Content Creator 6) Drupalchamp D. drupalchamp 7) Mike P. Branding, Logo Design, Templates & Full Websites – over 7 years exp. 8 ) Justine B. Bilingual Photojournalist, Blogger and Translator (Spanish+English) 9) Pavle Borovac | Logo – Branding – Corporate Identity | 10) Matthew G. Video Editor – Viral Video – On-Line Video – 12 Year Professional 11) Greg Williams Creative Voice Talent and Audio Production 12) Bohdan S. Highly skilled flash developer, Web Designer 13) Agnes B. creative logo designer always in time/strong in marketing & branding 14) Dexter B. Dedicated Illustrator • Professional Artist 15) Tyler Bartlett Corporate Identity, Illustrator, Graphic Designer 16) Mirza M. Architect, Designer, 3d & jewellery modeler, real estate consultant 17) Alexey Medvedev 3D MODELING • VISUALIZATION • ARCHITECT • GRAPHIC • CAD specialist 18) Bogdan Macoviciuc Motion Designer 19) Tania I. Logo Design, Brochure, Website, Stationary, & Illustration Expert 20) Nick L. Print and Web Designer – www.nicklay.ca 21) Jeff W. *Creative* Video Editing / Camtasia / Flash / Audio / Graphic Design 22) Amit Thakkar 3D designer/animator/media graphics and visual effects 23) James A. Web-Graphic Design / Logo / Brochure / Flash / HTML / CSS / template - 24) Silvia Boyadzhieva Motion Design Video/Audio Production 3D Modeling, Rendering 25) Michael Stagkos 5 years+ expert in Creative design & Typography

Top 25 Freelance Software Developers for August 2009 were: 1) Denis M. Senior C++ Developer 2) Matthew S. Developer 3) Dmitriy S. C++ Developer 4) Oleg V. C++ Developer 5) Parth Bhatt CERTIFIED, ASP.NET, C#.NET, PHP, AJAX, Joomla, XML, PDA 6) Atif H. Sr Software Engineer | ColdFusion, ASP.NET, VB, C#, cakePHP,SQL Server 7) Atif Q. IT Consultant 8 ) Maneet S ASP.Net 2.0 3.5 ADO.Net C# WEB 2.0 AJAX Healthcare appl expert 9) Dmitri G. TOP QUALIFIED JAVA|FLEX|AS3 DEVELOPER | OnlyMegaâ„¢ 10) Ross C. Senior iPhone/C/C++/Web/Python Developer 11) Yash Pal Top Notch Facebook PHP/MySQL/Ajax FBML Ecommerce developer 12) Goran P. Experienced Programmer, Mobile Phones Programmer and Web Programmer 13) Alexander Rudenko iPhone / .NET developer 14) James Hammond Customer Support Engineer 15) Varun Shingal High Quality Software Delivered! 16) Maxim K. C#/.Net Developer, C++ Developer 17) Fabricio Daza ►►Experienced & reliable (PHP-MySQL-.NET-VB-C#- MSSQL) Developerâ—„â—„ 18) Yaroslav Y. ASP.Net, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, VB.Net, C#, MS SQL Server, MCTS 19) Devarshi M. â–“ 7+ YEARS IN QA/CODING [WEB & DESKTOP APPLICATIONS/IPhone] â–“ 20) Rachana Patel CERTIFIED, ASP.NET, C#.NET, PHP, AJAX, Joomla, XML, PDA 21) Rakesh Patel CERTIFIED, ASP.NET, C#.NET, PHP, AJAX, Joomla, XML, PDA 22) Daniel I. C# GUI, WPF, .NET 1.1 – 3.0, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, MSSQL, FireBird 23) Jiten Solanky 6+ Years of Experience in QA/QC 24) Alexandr S. C# Developer 25) Manoj K. Expertised in AJAX 2.0, Joomla,OSCommerce, PHP/ MySQL, ASP.NET, VB.NET

Top 25 Freelance Web Developers for August 2009 were: 1) Andrew K. Java/C++ Developer 2) Denis P. Brainbench Certified Java/C++ developer 3) Ratnamraju N. Ruby on Rails (RoR) Developer 4) Chowdary N. RoR and PHP Developer 5) Ivan S. Java Developer 6) Sergey S. Consultant 7) Elena E. C++ developer 8 ) Ivan S. Programmer / Developer 9) Aleksandar M. Flash/Flex/PHP GURU 10) Swaminadhan N. Ruby on Rails (RoR) Expert Developer 11) Mel A. ASP/ASP.NET – Senior Developer 12) Pavel L. JavaScript/ExtJS Developer 13) Egor N. JavaScript/ExtJS Developer 14) Teddy E. Software engineer / Project manager 15) Sony J ASP.NET+ADO, AJAX, MSSQL 2005, SQL SERVER REPORATING, WCF, WPF, XML 16) Sergey P. ASP.NET / C# Developer 17) Yuriy P. JavaScript/ExtJS Developer 18) Vadzim L. PHP/MySQL , Symfony, Zend Framework, ExtJS/jQuery Developer 19) Andrey V. Web Developer PHP/MySQL/JavaScript/HTML/CSS/*nix 20) Ivan V. Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: .NET, C# 21) Oleksandr B. RIA [Adobe Flex & AIR / AJAX] and Web 2.0 [JavaEE / Grails] specialist 22) Evgeny C. C# Developer 23) Eugeny Petrushenko JavaScript/.Net/Asp.Net Developer 24) Ruslan Gayfulin C++/C#/Asp.net/JavaScript 25) Oleg V. Senior Analyst LAMP Developer [backend/frontend], Project Manager

Top 25 Freelance Writers for August 2009 were: 1) Theresa Mccuaig Writer, Editor, Content Provider 2) Shula Kopf Published journalist, clear, compelling SEO copy for websites 3) Leo Gatdula IT-Tech Support/Helpdesk/Customer Service/Research Specialist 4) Ariadne S. Master MOS, Dutch translation & more. Your 1 stop shop! 5) Merliza C. Blogger Par Excellence/ Veterinarian/Creative Writer 6) Derek J A Content Writer, Copywriter, and Blogger For Your Online Needs 7) Susan Campbell Trusted Content Writer 5 Top % Skills – Sales/Landing Pages/Articles 8 ) Rebecca Haden quality copywriting and SEO 9) Christopher Subijano TOP 10%! Superb SEO Writer/Link Builder/Business Consultant/Engineer 10) Bhagwad Park Expert Creative Writer with SEO Skills 11) Hal Major Writer/Editor/Proofreader/SEO/SEM/Web Copywriter/Expert Rank-EzineArti 12) Monica B. Web-researcher. English-Portuguese Translator. Data entry. 13) Dagmara M. Experienced SPANISH / ENGLISH / POLISH Translator TOP 25 Provider 14) Sabou R. Data Entry, MSOffice, Photoshop,Internet research 15) Sawsan E. Academic Writer, Editor, Proofreader & Translator 16) Aurelien Capella Translator English/French/Portuguese – Marketing Researcher 17) Monika S. Senior Technical Writer/Instructional Designer/Content Writer & Editor 18) Grace Florencia Manalili EXCELLENT ENGLISH/VA/WRITER/EDITOR/RESEARCH/TRANSCRIPTION/DATA ENTRY 19) Iris P. ***VIRTUAL ASSISTANT, RESEARCHER, DATA ENTRY SPECIALIST, SEO SEM*** 20) Karen G. MULTI-TASKED V/A,RESEARCHER,POWERPOINT,TYPIST,DATA ENTRY EXPERT 21) Inika Arora >Top 10% | SEO Copywriter, Blogger, Editor 22) Sheetal R. â–ºSOCIAL MEDIA~Facebook~eLEARNING~eBOOK~CAMTASIA♫VOICE♫TRANSCRIPTIONâ—„ 23) Katrine S. Experienced writer, researcher, blogger, forum poster, illustrator 24) Rick Sizemore Experienced Catalog/Web Copywriter, Editor & Proofreader Pro 25) Kristin F. Writer, Editor, Administrative Support

Top 25 Virtual Assistants for August 2009 were: 1) Alejandro D. Expert in Webpage Designing 2) Ritesh Dembani ASP/PHP Expert With 4+years of Experience 3) Laurie G. Virtual Assistant for all of your admistrative needs 4) Ronald M. Affiliate Manager, Content Writer 5) Sheetal S. A commited Virtual Assistant/Researcher/SalesForce.com Expert 6) Floremer M. VA; Data Entry; Researcher; osCommerce; Transcriptionist; Photoshop 7) E Suratos | VIRTUAL ACES | DOUBLE DEGREE HOLDER | VA | RESEARCHER | 8 ) Estrella L. SEO/Internet Marketing/Link Builder Efficient Data Entry, Researcher 9) Madelle A. Personal Assistant,Team Leader,VA,Researcher,Web Content,CMS,LinkBuild 10) Florante F. Project management/ Technical assistant/ Engineer /Web developement 11) Marilyn M. ~VERY FAST~ DETAIL-ORIENTED~PROFESSIONAL~SEO NINJA~AFFORDABLE~QUALITY~ 12) Marie C. Graphic Design Print & Web, Photo manipulation, correction and other 13) Devi D Data Entry Specialist 14) Mark Walusimbi ▫♣▫♣ Dedicated To Client Service, Accurate Data & Timely Delivery ♣▫♣▫ 15) A R. Virtual Assistant/Data Entry/Data Mining/Research/VA/PA/eCommerce 16) Tanya C. Executive Assistant/HR Professional/Recruiter/Web Researcher 17) Lorena C. Researcher, Writer, Transcriptionist, Data Entry Professional 18) Jerah Y. Technical Support Representative \ Transcriptionist \ VA 19) Darlene A. Double Degree Holder/ Virtual Assistant 20) Jacklyn Ruiz ►A SMART CHOICE: COST-EFFECTIVE, ACCURATE, RELIABLE, SKILLFUL ACHIEVER 21) Mohammed H. Experts in Data Entry , SEO & SEM , Content Writing any projects 22) Janneth S. SEO Specialist/Virtual Assistant/Graphic Designing/Researcher 23) Melanie L. 5 yrs exp in BPO industry, data entry, outbound & inbound calling, 24) Kristin Fenton Virtual Assistant, Researcher/SkipTracer. Data Entry and Admin Asst 25) Brenda Espinoza Excellent Administrative Support/ Data Entry/ Online Order Processing

These rankings will be generated each month, and stored in the oConomy under “Rankings”. September Rankings will be published on October 1st. Congratulations again!

iCooking is an innovative iPhone app that provides easy and simple solutions to avoid the hassle of deciding what to cook for dinner. Users can get multi-course dinner menu suggestions, as well as starters, main courses, deserts, soups, browse existing recipes, edit them and add your own.

They actively promoted their contest submission, bringing in an impressive number of votes and helping them win a $1,000 oDesk credit and an Apple iPhone 3GS.

Runners-Up:

• SpaceClash
  SpaceClash is an exciting multi-player on-line role-play game that erases the border between real life and fantasy world. It allows you to play with other people like you, make new friends and defeat enemies.
• Carpenter’s Helper Pro
  Carpenter’s Helper Pro is a unique application that offers iPhone users an advanced construction calculator, capable of handling even the most demanding construction projects. With Carpenter’s Helper, you’ll always have the calculating power you need on you, every time you need it.
• Cirris
  Cirris brings the classic game of bricks to your iPhone and iPod Touch. But there is a circular twist to this game. Player needs to complete a ring with the falling pieces in order to remove it.

All oDesk buyers who completed applications through oDesk were eligible to submit their apps to the contest. Winners were determined entirely by oDesk community voting.

We’d like to thank all of the participants in this month’s contest and helping to make it yet another success. Stay tuned for our next contest in which we will be looking for the best design commissioned through oDesk in our Design of the Month Contest.

As always, we’d love your feedback so feel free to submit your suggestions within the comment section below for future consideration.

And please join us in congratulating our winners for August! Nice work folks!

Leverage the power of Social Networks – Promote your product, your business or yourself
Thursday, August 20, 2009
6pm to 8:30pm
Location: Hewlett Packard, Oakroom Auditorium
19447 Pruneridge Ave, Cupertino, CA 95014

Over the last several months, the role of social media has dramatically changed. No longer are social sites like Facebook or YouTube or Twitter solely used for exchanging trivial content. Large companies are shifting their marketing dollars from traditional outreach channels to social media. In addition to reducing marketing spend, firms are realizing that they can reach specific target markets more effectively through social media.

How can you leverage social media to your best advantage?

• If you are a product manager or an engineer, you might want to learn how you can use the power of real-time customer feedback and proactively incorporate it into your product development.
• If you are an entrepreneur, you can promote your company to a variety of audiences much more effectively.
• And as an individual, you can use these networks to make a brand for yourself and become a valuable player in your own industry.

We have assembled a fantastic panel of experts who are actually in the process of leveraging social networks for personal and business purposes. Please don’t ignore this key trend. Don’t even watch from the sidelines or dabble in the shallows – come and play with us on on August 20th and gain the tools to start leveraging social networks!

Moderator : Edith Yeung, Host of CBS 5 Startup Profile and Founder of BizTechDay

Panelists
Himanshu Jhamb – Founder, Active Garage
Megan Casey, Editor in Chief, Squidoo
Gary Swart, CEO of oDesk

For more information, visit: www.sipa.org
To register, visit: https://www.123signup.com/register?id=jzpgr

Inc. Magazine announced the results of their 28th annual Inc. 500, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. Inc. editor Jane Berentson said of the list: “If you want to know which companies are going to change the world, look at the Inc. 500. These are the most dynamic, fast-growth companies in the nation, the ones finding innovative solutions to problems, creating smart systems, and inventing products we soon discover we can’t live without. The Inc. 500 list is Inc. magazine’s tribute to American business ingenuity and ambition.”

We’re proud that oDesk has been able to join this elite group of companies, and we could not have done it without the fantastic buyers and providers in our marketplace, and the efforts of our phenomenal global workteam. Read the details of our ranking on the Inc. 500 here – and pat yourself on the back. We couldn’t have done it without you!

oDesk Buyers, you might want to get in touch with these Providers soon…they just completed assignments and are available now, but probably won’t be for long. Click on their profile to check out their work and contact them for an interview!

Top 25 Freelance Designers for July 2009 were: Victor Novak, Jonathan Antonio, Rajat P., Manu B., Alexey T., Hamid Akbar, Neil F., Emmanuel U., Max Uzkikh, Sampad T., Lateralcreativa Team, Alex C., Joseph Bempong, Jorge Puntriano, Anna P., Kim M., Michelle Gamboa, Lateralcreativa Team, Rob Louw, Nikola Sudarevic, Daniel Rothier, Brad B., Lucky L., Yan Bellavance, Kamna S.

Top 25 Freelance Software Developers for July 2009 were: Daljeet Singh, Neil H., Martin Pollard, Gayle Myers-Harbison, Dmitry S., Andrey Kurashev, Atif Q., Lester F., Atif H., Haseeb K., Alexander Rudenko, Goran P., Sergey T., Eugene P., Srinath Gunasekaran, Ashar Samdani, Raju Maharjan, Goran P., Khalid G., Aashish Nadkar, Dmitry I., Gurdev S, Radhika Anandaraman, Victor Velasquez, Raj Sharma

Top 25 Freelance Web Developers for July 2009 were: Humayun S., Peter P., Komail Noori, Maxim D., Yuri Perevoznikov, Sergey R., Singh B., Jaggy S., Ezhil Maran, Vaibhav Joshi, Andrew Murenko, Sergey Shoublakov, Sajid H., Roman V., Sergey R., Roman Poznahirev, Johnathon Wright, Kiran R., Robert D., Tahir Awan, Louis H., Sarabjeet Dhillon, Leszek P., Kamil D., Ivan R.

Top 25 Freelance Writers for July 2009 were: Amna Nadim, Lilia Carone, Sridevi V., Irene B., Angela N., Gloria Mcmahon, John Essick, Carlo Gabriel Simbajon, John Carl Villanueva, Ruth S., Paula P., Rachel M., Dagmara M., Betsy Pickering, Sally R., Christopher Subijano, Fia C., Ayoub Chouchou, Eva B., Karen G., Revy Ablen, Jeanne Bowyer, John Martel, Anna A, Revy Ablen

Top 25 Virtual Assistants for July 2009 were: Sergey R., Sreenath V., Vivin J., Ramsh G., Simon Wakefield, Gheet Pakhra, Jaclyn Azuela, Talec H., Yun Yang, Karla K., Marie F., Rattandeep S., Ping F., Sujata John, Juan Lorenzo Natividad, Michael Hope, Maria Erika Nillas, Julian J., Saurabh K., Becky L., Solaiman Sujon, Ana B., Jery Esparas, Pedro Cisternas, Bharat B.

These rankings will be generated each month, and stored in the oConomy under “Rankings.” August Rankings will be published on September 1. Congratulations again!

We’re happy to announce that voting has officially begun in the oDesk App of the Month contest and the competition is now in full force. We’re excited to have 37 amazing entries, each of which was built by the oDesk community.

Every day, we have the privilege of bringing remote workers together to collaborate on oDesk, and seeing incredible results come out of it. Our buyers are proud of their products and likewise our providers are proud of their hard work. This month’s contest gives them a chance to show off their Facebook and iPhone masterpieces! We’re also excited to showcase the development talent of our community and honor some of the best work done through oDesk.

Winners will be chosen entirely by community voting. Voting will continue through August 31st, with the grand prize winner, or App of the Month, officially announced on September 1st. Click here to cast your votes – you can vote for up to 3 apps per day. You can also vote via our Facebook App. That way, your votes will show up on your walls, and your friends will know what you’re up to.

The grand prize winner will get $1,000 oDesk credit, an iPhone, possible press opportunities, and of course, bragging rights! The three runners-up will each get an oDesk t-shirt.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over, take a gander at the competition and cast your vote today! May the best app win!

Last week, we had asked everyone to submit their best “Remote Working” or “Remote Management” tips for a chance to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card. We received many wonderful responses, and we managed to narrow down the list to our top 10 tweets.

It’s a good thing we drew the winner randomly, because all of the tips we received were great! We had a hard enough time picking our top 10, let alone a single winner!

Thanks to @chaviebugsey on Twitter (our unofficial random number generator), our winner of the $100 Amazon Gift Certificate drawing is:

@tjlytle (Tim Lytle):Make sure you (and your client) know the difference between an employee and a contractor.Tim Lytle is a Technology Consultant & oDesk Contract Web Developer. Owner of timlytle.net ltd since 2003, his oDesk adventures have been mentioned on the BBC’s Click and in Forbes Magazine.

Congratulations, Tim!

Here are the Top Ten #oTip Tweets (in alphabetical order) and our responses to them:

	@AnneSemana (Anne Semana): That’s simple. Use oDesk!!! – Best tip ever! Our response: Yes, we like shameless self-promotion! Who doesn’t?
	@arronguy (Arron Washington): Don’t friend clients on Facebook. Ever. Our response: Funny, but true. We doubt you’d want your buyers knowing which Twilight character you should marry, or the top 5 people you want to punch in the face.
	@CrystalsQuest (Crystal Woods): Silence ISN’T golden. New clients need reassurance of you checking to clarify anything unclear BEFORE you go ahead and do it Our response: This is a MUST. ALWAYS ensure both you and your buyer know what the expectations are for each assignment BEFORE you start.
	@Deepa7476 (Deepa Govind): Never respond to email in haste, No body expects instant updates. So collect your thoughts, present them well & use spell check. Our response: We couldn’t agree more…especially if you’re upset!
	@EricaFenik (Erica Fenik): Overcommunicate. Clear expectations + execellent results = WIN for freelancers + buyers. Our response: Yes, this was sent in by an oDesk Staff member (so it disqualifies her from the prize), but this is very sound advice.
	@JoannSondy (Joann Sondy): My #oTip based on 15+ yrs of serving clients remotely = email isn’t always the answer. Pick up the phone occasionally! Our response: Absolutely! Even though our teams are staffed by oDesk providers, we have weekly conference calls to make sure everyone is on the same page.
	@likke (Fleire Mae Castro): Network with other oDesk providers. Referrals will be appreciated. Who else is gonna help you but other freelancers, right? Our response: Yes! Even though you’re competing in the same job field, you can still make friends and help out other providers – who knows? They may get too busy to take on work and refer clients to you (or vice versa).
	@michelem (Michele Marcucci): When you submit a proposal double check what the buyer is asking for and if you’re in doubt ask a question within the proposal Our response: There are no such things as stupid questions…okay, maybe there are sometimes – but don’t be afraid to ask questions! It can save you lots of time and money in the long run.
	@mylescxy (Mylene Sereno): Before letting out a loud sigh or scream “Whew! Whatta day!” while talking to a buyer on GoogleTalk, make sure your mic is turned OFF! Our response: I think we’ve all been there before!
	@tjlytle (Tim Lytle): Make sure you (and your client) know the difference between an employee and a contractor. Our response: Absolutely! This is the most important, yet highly misunderstood, aspect of freelancing!