Intercom has witnessed a lot of thick and thin during the last two months. Amid these happenings, everyone in the organization got a chance to showcase his talent. Intercom Online has always believed in people. People, who are young, have an ambition and a team spirit. In this direction, on 25 Nov 2009 IO started its three-month training programme with a new batch.

With the journey towards excellence, Intercom is on its way to become an ISO Certified, company from January 2010. The process has been efficiently started under the guidance of Mr. Vivek Singhal.

The search for smart brains continues for expanding our team and to give cutting edge to our organization. Our recruitments are in process for senior level positions for Business Analyst, PHP, web designer and WAP programmers.

When it comes to performance evaluation, IO has always wanted a way that is transparent in all ways, giving our employees a sense of belongingness. We believe in objectivity. And that is why we chose 360-degree appraisal. The ‘360 Performance Appraisal’ involves soliciting performance feedback not only from our supervisor but also from our customers, employees, peers and all whom we interrelate within the course of doing our job. Subordinates, peers, and supervisors provide feedback. It also includes self-assessment and, in some cases, feedback from external sources such as customers. Therefore we follow performance appraisal every six months i.e. on the 1st of Jan and the 1st of July. The performance appraisal activities have been started. The method to be used is “360 degrees appraisal” aiming to make everybody a part of this important process.

Clients’ Comments: For a change, instead of employees, Scribbles brings to you the valuable comments of our precious clients. And here’s why. Projects are the lifeblood of our company. Intercom is working on open source platform where we are working through various technologies like Ajax programming, PHP Zend development, osCommerce, Dolphin, Joomla, Drupal, PHP. We are working on some really challenging projects, which include CMS – social networking site – E-commerce – shopping cart and payment gateways and our clients are satisfied with our work. Lets have a look at what they had to say about us:

Excellent work. End result is exactly what we needed and what we asked for. Will use again! - D. Berkley.

This is by far the BEST Company I have ever worked with! Excellent customer service, very professional and able to do any type of complex work you can think of. Anylinuxwork.com delivered 100% of my work and provided me with a dedicated and smart programmer to work with throughout the project. I will definitely work with them for all my future projects--they exceeded my expectations. Great prices too. Highly recommended. - Cathy.

Excellent work done and efficient. Prompt response to enquiries and good follow up. Will definitely hire this provider again in my future projects and recommend to others. – Harrace.

One of our employees, Ashish Gavshinde, displayed splendid skills in terms of work and achieved first place in the chart for the employee of the month as his efficiency rate was 87.02 and the grade he got was 2.38.Well done Ashish!

Celebrations are the part and percale of Intercom. On 7 Dec 2009, we celebrated our CEO’s birthday that had a rocking party, a lot of foot-tapping and games. As the birth of Jesus ie Christmas is also celebrated here every year, Intercom’s Santa took everything by storm. The celebrations started from December 21 and continued as Christmas week. New Year’s bash, on the other hand, was another event that left us with great memories to take back.

We bid good-bye to two of our employees- Nitin & Mahesh. A Farewell Party was organized during which both of them shared their fond memories with the organization. It was a great experience to know the feelings of the two colleagues.

Chetan Singhal – Dec 31

Ashish Gavshinde – 17 Jan

Arun Sharma – 17 Jan

Sonam More – 18 Jan

Mayank Salunke – 21 Jan

As India strives to be the super-power in the times to come, we at Intercom Online intend to give a helping hand. And this we intend to pursue by simply saving power in whichever ways possible.

“What is a soul? It's like electricity - we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room”

India does not produce enough energy to be autonomous; around 10% of its demand is missing.

During the hot season especially (May, June) and the monsoon season (July, August), temperatures rise over 40 degrees with a humidity that can reach 95%! As a result, everyone needs and uses AC, fans, water coolers and anything that can help support the weather, and the electricity demand explodes!

Power cuts are rampant. In Delhi, for example, in posh areas during summer, there is a power cut of two to three hours on an average while in rural and less prosperous areas, this cut goes upto six to 10 hours!

When 85 million of electricity consumers switch off a 60-watt bulb in peak load time, as much as 360 mega watts of electricity is saved. The cost of production of 1 mega electric watts is nearly in 8 Crore Indian rupees. So if you switch off one bulb in peak time you can save a 3600 Crore rupees.

The World Bank estimates roughly 2 billion people in the world (a third of the world population) among which ,people in South Asia, who do not have a regular access to the electricity grid in 2006!

A few examples- When there is no electricity, children cannot study after dusk; hospitals, schools and factories cannot run; there is no access to information (TV, internet) and irrigation or water pumping becomes impossible. As a result, in Asia for example, people are missing and demanding electricity even more than water!

A few examples- When there is no electricity, children cannot study after dusk; hospitals, schools and factories cannot run; there is no access to information (TV, internet) and irrigation or water pumping becomes impossible. As a result, in Asia for example, people are missing and demanding electricity even more than water!

For the Indian Rural Areas, 70% of the population, the situation is dramatic: the electricity supply is extremely low and irregular or even absent for 80,000 villages in the country. Additionally, it of course affects the poorest (60% of Indians live with less than 20 Rupees per day) that do not have any other solution. Enough reasons to save electricity. Isn’t it?

We in the cities are blessed with electricity yet we hardly value it. With this thought, IO has been associated with the cause since long. However, it is for the first time that we have made it one of our major goals while striving to contribute to the society in general and to the world at large. We wanted ourselves to be the harbinger towards the cause of Saving Electricity.

We have started doing audits on monthly basis for our own office. We have prepared a set of questionnaire and checks are conducted under the parameter. Each of our employees is giving his/her 100 percent for the cause and now we have started noticing the difference. We also conduct regular discussions to invite suggestions and ideas from the employees about saving electricity.

Switch off all the mains before you leave office.

Always clean your AC‘s filter.

It is recommended that your AC should be set above 22 Celsius because each degree set above will use 3-5% less energy.

Do not leave your computer on standby; always switch off your monitor if not working.

Switch off your light – fans from mains if not required.

Use tube lights and CFL in spite of any other light because they consume less energy.

Always switch off your printer when it is not required.

Gotta find what you love!

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that college graduates should adopt me, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus, every poster and label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. Back then of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.