But heck. This smells so bad, I had to share what I think.

For a stealth website, NotchUp are doing a hell of a job. I got something like five invitations in the last 12 hours. Some from people I hardly know, and some from people having little to do with the web. The site is going viral like crazy. And for a reason. People are greedy.

The idea is simple. You’re a qualified professional, right? You’re not really looking for a job, but are willing to hear interesting offers? You’re not really being interviewed, it’s YOU interviewing prospect employers? So why not get paid for it? If you’re such a hot shot (which of course you are), make them pay just for meeting you! I’m so good actually, They’ll actually LEARN from interviewing me. It’s like consulting.

So here comes NotchUp. A job site (novel idea, no doubt), where you set a rate for just being interviewed. The default payment stands on $500 but why not make it $1,000? Now that’s new. How come I never thought of that? Why did I agree to be interviewed for free all my life? Darn. Not anymore! I’m going to charge from now on!

Oh. Small problem. It will never work. No employer with little brains to spear (and little experience) will pay. Trust me. I’m a recruiter. That’s (part of) what we do for a living (but don’t just trust my word on that).

Little math: For every open position we have, we’re getting potential candidates in the hundreds (qualifying for the job requirements). Sometimes thousands. We filter and interview tens. Double that by aprox. $500 per interview and you get tens of thousands of dollars paid just for recruiting. Add the first months drop-rate (not fitting after all, or found a better job), and you end up with astronomical recruiting expenses.

So where’s the catch? I’m guessing NotchIn are not at all a job site. They’re aiming to compete against LinkedIn. And they found a way of migrating all of LinkedIn’s database. Using the greedy mob itself.

In the NotchUp signup process you’re offered, for the sake of comfort of course (who has the patience to retype one’s CV?), to enter your LinkedIn user name and password and Voila! All your data is “comfortably” imported to NotchUp, ready to be searched by the stupid, yet rich, employers.

Oh, and of course, if you invite friends (using our comfortable “send to all your LinkedIn contacts” feature) you’ll be getting 10% of every interview they will be paid for (Oops. Now we also have all your friend’s emails. Oh sorry. We had it at hello. When you gave us your LinkedIn user name and password. Did anyone hear “selling your friends”?).

Right.

Ladies and Gentlemen. The king is naked. It’s a hoax. There’s no way any employer will use this service. They are ripping your LinkedIn information.

Nice UI though.

P.S.

I might be missing something here. Please tell me if you think I have. I’ll be more than happy to discuss.

Very quietly.

Many didn’t even hear of bots. No one ever met one.

But don’t be fooled. They are here. And they’re going to take over the world.

A bot, to put things into order, is a small “robot” software, designed to interact in a human like manner. One of the more common uses of bots is in IRC and IM (Chat rooms and Instant Massage software). It’s supposed to give us some service, on a conversation-like interface.

It’s been among us for many years. We heard them reporting the weather, giving zip codes, sport scores, converting currency and unites or just “talking” to us to pass the time. No one really paid attention. We knew they’re out there and didn’t care.

But now, there are signs an invasion is imminent.

On December 3rd, a Microsoft-made Christmas-bot got out of control and started sexually harassing the young and inocent. Kids asking questions about pizza, where pulled into conversation about oral sex. This was only the beginning.

Four days later, on December 7th, another bot surfaced. This time – on the other side of the globe. again – suffering from some sexual issues, but this time, it was also harmful. Russian chat room visitors found themselves involved in romantic conversations with CyberLover, ending up trying to pick pocket their identitys. Body invasion in a cyber era?

A week and a half later, again on the other side of the world, Google announced a translation bot. Simple as it may sound – you write the bot something in your language and it replays the translation – this, as Google states, is only the beginning:

For those of you into programming, why not build your own bot? Maybe a weather service or a rock/paper/scissors game. The Google Talk service uses an open protocol called XMPP, and it’s easy to find client libraries and code samples that will give you a flying start…

Bots now have a way of breeding.

I will not be the least surprised to see companies building bot-warehouses, where users can build they’re own bots, like Widget creation platforms, for appliances like shopping assistance, fashion recommendations, vertical news updates, directions assistance and so on. Give me an API (Google maps, Google news, Twitter and a zillion others), a bot platform and I’ll give you talking companions for everything.

You’ll be able to recognize me with ease now. I’m the one wearing the tin-foil hat.

Invasion log, supplemental: January 6th. “They” now know where we are and tell us where to go.

I mean, think of it:

1. They lack features compared to the client-based ones.
2. You usually have to be online to use them.
3. They have inferior user interface.
4. They’re saved somewhere, by someone, who can actually see everything you write.
5. They’re used by few.
6. You don’t really need to access your files from everywhere. It’s not like the average Joe is working from Cybercafes all over the world because he was sick the day they issued the laptops at the office.
7. We’ve been there before. Talks of thin clients running remote apps have been around forever (at least since the 80s’. Like I said – forever).

So what has changed? Why is it going to work now? This is why:

1. Psychology. People are more used to virtualization. It’s “OK” if the file is stored “somewhere” and not in the “touchable” hard drive under the desk. People who are used to using Flickr and Picasa will start switching to Google Docs, Zoho and the like.
2. Multi platform. True that everyone has a laptop, but people sometimes have more than one. And a desktop at the office. And another (Mac maybe?) at home. Oh, and the iPhone, don’t forget the iPhone. Or the Blackberry. We want to reach our data from everywhere. Regardless of the platform.
3. Reliability. What are you more afraid of: Your hard disk, with the pictures from your daughter’s first b-day dying on you one wintery day, or the servers of Flickr going blank all of a sudden?
4. Offline and online mixing. With tools like Google Gears, and Zoho working offline, it’s no longer a matter of whether you have a connection or not. You can work all the time. And these are “bridging” solutions. Soon there won’t be a need for them. We’ll be connected all the time from every device (iMicrowave, here we come!).
5. Simplicity. We only want to write a letter. Calculate something on a worksheet. We don’t need to merge automated lists and Goal Seek on an every day basis. And if we do, we can always revert to the “heavy artillery” on the desktop. And hey – we don’t need all these little icons we never use. Simple is the king. We’re overwhelmed by information as it is, thank you.
6. Synchronization. Online and offline files will be one.
7. UI and Functionality are becoming very close. With AJAX and keyboard shortcuts for web aps, they start to look and resemble in ease of use the desktop ones. Even for power users.
8. Everyon’s having them. From Microsoft, to Adobe, to Google (Da!), to smaller competitors.

I don’t think it’s the end of the client-based software. Not so soon (they will merge eventually) but 2008 will be the year when it goes mainstream.

Update: It appears the subject is hot. Joe Wilcox covering Microsoft thinks web based office is dead:

“…the channel strategies aren’t working. Awareness is poor and very few consumers use the services. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can sleep easy tonight.”

Mashable, were I heard of this quote, is running a little survey of it’s own. Mashable is not read by a very “homogenized” crowd, but I believe it’s worth listening to them geeks.

Update 2: Here’s the original survey that started all the commotion.

Read: 73% of Americans never heard of Google Docs.

Still. The wind of change is here.