Blog Assignment: Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources
The following are the websites I have found in my search with a brief explanation of each and the most helpful thing found in each site and how it might be used by me.

1. http://www.projectpro.co.za/eZine/Estimating_Effort/estimating_effort.html

2. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/estimate-activity-duration-HA001139963.aspx
3. http://www.hyperthot.com/pm_cost.htm

1. This website shows how to estimate effort on Project Activities. This brings into consideration the length of the activity and the amount of people required. This estimation would be performed even before estimating the duration and cost of the activities. A Rough order of Magnitude (ROM) can be used using a -50% to +150% or an Order of Magnitude (OOM) a -25% to +75% but a more accurate estimate like within 5% or 15% would entail looking at the lower level of detail on the Work Breakdown Structure. This could be used to determine the accuracy of your estimates. Also using the exact resource would help and depending on who the person is, estimate the effort accordingly. Then there are things that could be added on like specialist resource hours, project management time and contingency hours. Rework needs to be considered and adding into the first estimate made and putting in separate activities like making a estimate of completing the deliverable the first time, then adding a second set of events or activities and making corrections and doing recycling many times. Review and adjustments are necessary, also making documents for all assumptions.
The most helpful thing I found about this site is that I must do this estimation before doing the duration and cost estimation. There is also a percentage that could be used for the ROM and OOM and even how I can find a more accurate estimate. These are some of the things I might use to do my project and also it would help me to know what to do in any job situation.

2. This website deals with Estimating the activity duration. In this website the author suggests that in order to improve accuracy, the task should be divided into three distinct steps. These three steps are using the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), estimating the duration of work packages and calculating the project schedule. The Work Breakdown Structure shows how a project is being delivered and breaks down its deliverables into meaningful parts. A person can create the estimation of duration of work packages by dividing the time required to do the work by the amount of people. After doing this, some padding is necessary like taking into account loss of time, persons who work part-time, interference for physical constraints and communication. The project schedule helps a person to calculate the overall project duration. This can be done by using the CPM which is the Critical Path Method, PERT, the Performance Evaluation