Monday, August 28, 2000		Lead Article

 GET SMART, GET  FREEBIES

You can really change the way you do business and interact. The Internet is full of opportunities and there are tonnes of material, which could be very precious for you, says Vipul Verma.

It's the law of nature that best things in life come free. Be it air, water, sun, or anything under the sun that is crucial to life, all is offered free by nature. This principal finds its universal application for everybody in the real world. In the virtual world, too, this law is applicable, but in a different way.

Apart from the difference that in the virtual world the free things are not offered by nature, the only other difference is that, in the real world, nature comes to you. But in the virtual world — the Internet — you have to go and explore what is free and of use to you.

There is an old saying in English: "Two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud, the other saw stars." This is specifically true for the Internet, as this is the world where your vision and a little effort can really change the way you do business, interact with people, and live your life. The Internet is full of opportunities and there are tonnes of material, which could be very precious for you.

The Internet is for everybody. But the younger generation can, especially, take a lot of advantage from it. Mostly people use the Internet for sending and receiving e-mail; other popular uses are chatting, music downloading, and general browsing. Some serious young Net surfers also use the Internet for the purpose of education and enhancing their professional skills. However, despite these common uses, the Internet means a lot more for the young surfers, particularly students.

It's normal for students to send their resume (bio data), by post or e-mail to prospective employers. The tradition of sending bio-data on paper is age old and continuing since several decades and is still the basic requirement.

However, simple and plain bio data sent through the normal procedure does not highlight personal achievements the way it should.

Moreover, there are thousands of job seekers for a single job. So, if you want your bio-data to stand out from others, you have to be different and present your information in a way that truly highlights your achievements and communicates exactly what you want it to. It is common that during the first round of scrutiny employers do not read the resume fully and only the final few selected resume gets proper attention. So, using information technology you can make all the difference.

Its no longer a secret that audio-visual is a better mode of communication than simple text. If you add audio-visuals to your resume you can achieve the desired results better. Well, to do all this you do not have to be a software engineer or an IT expert. You can do it all using a software — RealPresenter Plus. All you need to do is follow simple steps and apply your creativity. If you do not have this software, you can go to www.real.com and buy it. Otherwise, you can search for the RealPresenter Basic (http://www.realnetworks.com/products/index.html?src=prstr_062600) which is free evaluation software.

Using this software you can combine the power of Microsoft PowerPoint with the magic of Real Presenter to make what you imagine a reality. You can create slides in PowerPoint and add narration in the form of your voice or music to these slides and compose them in a form that can be read by Real Player. In this case you are just required to have the basic idea of the PowerPoint and following simple instructions can do the rest. If you are a student you can create your resume using this software.

The method for creating your audio-visual resume is as follows. When you run this software you will find many options on your screen. Choose to create a new PowerPoint presentation and then customise it as per your need. You can choose to have only text divided in columns or you can choose text along with pictures or graphs. You can also select a design for your page. On each page, which will be shown as a slide, you can add text, graphics and voice as required. As you create the presentation it gets recorded and when you play it using a Real Player, it is run automatically.

If on the first page you have inserted the basic data of your resume in text and voice both, and on the subsequent pages you have mentioned your special achievements in the form of voice, text, graphics etc., the same shall be displayed in the order you have worked in and will run till the end unless interrupted.

So you can virtually reach out to your employer and communicate your achievements directly. Since both Internet Explorer and Netscape come equipped with a free copy of Real Player, it is most likely that whomever you send your resume to, would be able to see it.

This software is not just limited to sending resumes. It can also be used to present projects or the results of any analysis. All you need to do is compose your study/project/analysis and create slides of it using Microsoft PowerPoint and following the above-explained procedure. You can give your presentation not only in a classroom but also to a large number of people located separately.

In India two things are very important in a persons life — job and marriage. Thus far we discussed this software from the job point of view. However, its use in matrimonial matters is equally important.

When a matrimonial alliance is sought, normally people exchange photographs and a few important personal details of the bride and groom. This procedure works fine when the alliance is sought domestically. However, if this kind of communication is being made internationally, then it is more time consuming and expensive. In such cases you can use this software to create a talking photo album of the bride/groom along with narration and exchange it over the Internet instantly.

Moreover, you can also add special effects and improve the quality of your photographs tremendously, using software like Photoshop, and then use it in your slide. This could be a much better idea in comparison with sending photographs on paper. Besides sending photographs, you can also highlight the major points in voice, text or graphic, which would surely draw the required attention. You never know what might click at the other end.

Apart from matrimonial alliances, this is excellent software for businessmen, exporters and importers. A businessman spends a lot of money on promotion of his products and similarly exporters and importers spend heavily on their samples. In these cases you can use this software very effectively. If you are a manufacturer and want to reach out directly to your customers, you can make a completely interactive presentation of your product in PowerPoint, add voice for highlighting the features of your product and send it as e-mail to the customers in your database.

Moreover, if you wish to advertise your product, you can do so by sending the mail to the people known to you. (Sending unsolicited e-mail is an offence in certain countries.)

This will be a complete presentation of your product for your target customers and would help them know about you services better. This software can also save a lot of money and time for exporters and importers as they can create complete and comprehensive catalogues with photos of their samples along with narration and can send them to their prospective customers abroad.

Another software, EL Shop, which is available at www.elshopsoft.com is also a very good. This could mean real e-commerce for small businesses. Using it one can design and distribute electronic catalogues of products and services for the Internet as well as CD-ROM.

It can prove useful to those who have to send samples of their products to customers at far-off places. This software can efficiently handle catalogues maintaining database and even order-processing. While RealPresenter is also very good for sending samples, it cannot manage database or process orders.

But that's not the end of uses for RealPresenter. It can also play a vital role in the field of education.

If you offer consultancy or give tuitions, then you can add a lot of value to your profession as you can compose your lectures chapter-wise, or page-wise, using this software and can either use them at your place or give them to students to read and listen to at their own pace.

The major advantage in this case is that if a student has not been able to understand a particular point he can always stop and replay a section or the whole lecture. Thus, using this software, you can add a lot of efficiency to work and save a lot of effort.

Another product from this site, like Real Player, is immensely popular and is one of the best software for listening to music from the Web. It has several online radio stations and news channels in the software that can be accessed very easily.

This is just one of the products available on the Internet that you can utilise for several value-adding purposes, which are not defined anywhere. One has to apply one's own creativity to work out the alternative uses.