Elance

Tools for small businesses

Elance is essentially a virtual office building, designed to bring more small business owners into the world of hiring workers they don't know and will never meet. Here's how it works: hiring managers place some of the funds for a job into escrow accounts, from which Elance pays contractors when work is delivered or time milestones are met.

Elance offers a variety of tools to make the entire process--from hiring to project completion--run smoothly for all parties involved. There's a time-tracker widget for contractors that automatically feeds data into the project page and the invoicing system, a … Read more

Webware 100 winner: Elance

Site: Elance.com Category: Commerce

Elance is an online hiring and management service. Employers can find people in various disciplines for hire, then use the site to manage their project status, and get in touch. The site also takes care of things like payments and accounting, making it easier to focus on the actual work being done.

Elance has managed more than $161 billion worth of earnings since 2005, and has helped build some very large sites--including Digg.com, which creator Kevin Rose reportedly paid around $200 on Elance to create.

The tech employees who have to muzzle their dogs and their bowels

The whole delightful, lovely thing about technology is that it knows no boundaries. The whole mean, portentous thing about technology is that it knows no boundaries. Freelance home-office workers used to enjoy only the delights. Now they are not so sure.

The Wall Street Journal slapped me about the chops this morning by unveiling the magical ingenuity of companies such as oDesk.com.

ODesk's website promises that you can "hire, manage and pay contractors as if they were in your office."

And how does oDesk recreate the spirit of office joy in the homes of freelance workers?… Read more

Elance updates tools for hiring, managing contract labor

Online jobs marketplace Elance is getting a big update next week, designed to bring more small businesspeople into the world of hiring workers they don't know and will never meet.

The service will layer in a workflow that should make the whole Elance process easier for newbies. There's a new time-tracker widget for contractors that automatically feeds data into the project page and the invoicing system. (It can be configured per job, if the contract is for piecework instead of time-based.) Elance, by the way, does not support keyboard logging or periodic screen capture of a worker's … Read more

Virtual personal assistants make life easier

Too busy to book airline tickets, order takeout food, or call your parents? For $19 per month, virtual personal assistants from AskSunday.com will run 10 such errands for you.

Welcome to the world of online errand outsourcing, where on sites like AskSunday.com and GetFriday.com, ordinary people can get assistance with everyday tasks, for a small amount. SFGate recently ran an Associated Press article on the phenomenon, citing the growing number of Web sites that are making it easier to outsource virtual errands overseas to countries like India, China, and Bangladesh.

Some of the more unusual tasks handled … Read more