Jayz Internet Solutions

Reading Rules!

Jamaal — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 10:09:15 +0000

Teaching is my biggest passion, and each time I teach I get a tingly feeling inside. That’s when I realise that the bit of information I just shared came from a book I read a few months back, or a podcast I listened to long ago, or a video I saw, or a conference I attended. In that very moment I yearn to learn more. So that I can teach more.

I’m old fashioned, so I still read books, the old…paper kind. People in my industry keep saying books are done, books are last century. I don’t buy that theory. I only see books going one of two ways: They’ll either be around forever, or they’ll at least be around for a very very long time to come. Either way, I’m keeping mine! I rarely travel without a book in hand, even if that travel is just into the city for a business meeting. When I deliver seminars I always have books in my hand, I think it’s effective to inspire people to learn.

I’ve taken a small selection of books from my bookshelf, and made a list. These are books that I think might benefit you in business. I have a very long “Book Wish List” – but I have not included any of those books simply because I don’t have them…yet! You can find the list here: http://www.jayz.co.za/books/.

I’ve also made a list of 65 eBooks which I have collected over the the past few years. I think they’re good, and they’re worth looking over when you have a chance. Very large eBooks I print – I simply cannot read on a screen for very long. Smaller ones I read on my laptop, but I have them on Dropbox, so they’re accessible on my iPhone from anywhere. So standing in a queue, waiting for someone, etc is never a problem for me – there’s always some reading to be done. You can grab them here: http://www.jayz.co.za/ebooks/.

Happy reading!

Social Media Revolution

Jamaal — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:52:31 +0000

Have you seen this video? It was published on 30 July 2009, and has been viewed 2,015,452 times to date. It reveals some interesting statistics, and I think it’s worth spending a few minutes to watch.

Soccer World Cup with Google Maps and Street View

Jamaal — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:43:42 +0000

Google has launched Street View in South Africa, so you can now see your favourite World Cup stadiums and city hotspots online. The image above is from Google Maps, and shows Green Point’s Main Road, with the Cape Town Stadium in the background. Truly magnificent! Of course, license plates and people’s faces are blurred to avoid privacy issues. What is interesting though, is that I’ve seen company signage on cars and this of course cannot be hidden. Try Street View for yourself, but I warn you, it’s addictive. Images are not live, and they’re not current, they can be up to a few months old. So there’s no need to worry about stalkers and the like. This is simply an archive of street imagery that Google has been collecting for a very long time. The launch of Street View is a real big shift for us in South Africa – and I’m very excited about it.

This Google video explains Street View adequately, and towards the end of it you’ll see imagery from Cape Town, which feels nice, I must say.

Are you a mobile user? This video explains Street View for mobile:

If you want to be creative during the World Cup season – or really at any other time – Google allows you to create your own Google Map with a tool called MyMaps. It’s really very simple to do, and it can be done in just minutes. Look at this short video to see how it’s done:

CleverPete has made his MyMaps public. He’s done the Waterfront bus route in Cape Town. Check it out here. This map was created a while ago, but it’s now very interesting because Street View has been activated.

Try Street View by clicking this link.

Brady Corporation goes Google Apps

Jamaal — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:56:52 +0000

Brady Corporation has recently adopted Google Apps as their communication and collaboration suite. Small businesses, large corporations, and even cities like Los Angeles, California have shifted to Apps. Read this interesting post: The City of Los Angeles uses Google Apps.

Brady Corporation is a $1.2 billion international manufacturer and marketer of complete solutions that identify and protect premises, products, and people. They have 7,800 employees across 90-plus locations.

Google Apps is a Cloud-based solution, so deploying to users in a single location is the same as deploying across multiple locations. There are no hardware and networking infrastructure concerns. Everything is online. Simple.

Brady says:

“We went with a “Big Bang” rollout for our 6,000+ users, and it’s been a great success. We chose Google Apps for cost savings over other solutions, but more importantly because we believe it’s the strongest platform to take advantage of future advancements on the Internet.”

To share their story they’re hosting the following webinar:
Choosing Google Apps as the Best-in-Class Cloud Solution
Thursday, June 10, 2010
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

Where are your videos?

Jamaal — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:12:27 +0000

We spoke to a company today about doing Event Coverage for their workshops. They responded by saying that they have an internal video team. Good. Where do they publish their videos? On their website. Good? Not really.

Firstly, their website is completely built in Flash. Flash is yesterday. Ask Steve Jobs. Then, the videos on their website do not play. They have a video player, but clicking play does not seem to feed the video. That’s one of the many disadvantages of hosting your own videos. That’s yesterday too. Online video hosts such as YouTube are where videos should be. Online video hosting means no strain on your own servers, and you also have the advantage of reaching the huge YouTube community, as well as the opportunity for others to embed your videos into their websites. Viral possibilities. Powerful! CNN, The White House, and BMW would not have their own YouTube Channels unless they saw the value of the platform.

I can’t find this company on Facebook, nor on Twitter. Maybe they’re there, hidden? Their website doesn’t have links to these social networks either. Sad.

This company is doing stunning work, but they fail to see the value of Social Media.

We don’t need YouTube. We have our own website. We have our own web servers. CNN has their own news network. Yet they’re on YouTube. And on Twitter. And on Facebook. I think that’s worth considering.

What are you doing online? Are you ‘playing’ where your potential clients are ‘hanging out’ – or is your head still somewhat stuck in the sand? Is control still the highest priority for you? Even when it damages your brand?

Google Chrome Speed Tests

Jamaal — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:23:55 +0000

Yesterday Mashable reported that Google’s web browser, Chrome, was increasing it’s market share while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was losing ground. Chrome holds 6.73% of the market, while IE holds 59.95% – but the downward trend should still be concerning for the big M. You can read the complete story here.

This is actually just a quick post to share with you the new YouTube video released by Google today, emphasizing the speed of Chrome. Very creative. Very innovative.

Why do you blog?

Jamaal — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:58:21 +0000

I love blogging. Actually, I love writing. I have been writing for years. I love expressing myself. I love sharing. And I hope people find value in that. I find value in what other people share. Books. Videos. Blog posts. One famous person said that if one day is not an improvement from the previous, then you’re better off dead. So we must learn. We must learn from each other. From each other’s knowledge, thoughts, and experiences. We’re all unique. And we’re all interdependent.

Seth Godin talks about blogging in this video. I think it’s powerful. I’m going to play this video at my next blogging workshop – it’s extremely insightful. I hope you’ll watch it.

Yola got it right!

Jamaal — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:53:15 +0000

Yola, an innovative web company founded by South Africa’s own Vinny Lingham, has a very striking slogan. It says: “stop browsing. start building.” I get caught up in this all the time. I’m browsing, reading, researching, reading some more, filing – and I’m spending too little time building. Too little time producing. Too little time creating new products. Too little time developing new seminars and workshops. It’s my avidness to learn that does this. But it’s not a wise thing. I need to have P/PC Balance. P is Production, and PC is Production Capability. You can read all about it in this post. I have my scale titled more on the PC side, when in fact the scale must weigh evenly on both sides.

I’m not always out of balance, sometimes I get some good balance. But those times are too few and far between. This morning I posted a message to Facebook and Twitter. Here is the Facebook version:

Twitter and Facebook are immense resource pools. The information is there. But in order to build, we need to switch off these pools for a while. I find this hard, but I need to correct this. I find many people do.

Billboards are like sea turtles

Jamaal — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:25:36 +0000

I recently learnt about sea turtles, what a fascinating creature. Did you know that they are almost always submerged in water? It is for this reason that they have developed an anaerobic system of respiration. Although they breathe air, under dire circumstances they may divert to anaerobic respiration for long periods of time. They quickly refill their lungs with a single explosive exhalation and rapid inhalation when surfacing to breathe.

The sea turtle pictured here is called the Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle. Beautiful!

My first time learning about this creature was on a tv documentary. They showed how the eggs are laid in the sand, on the ocean’s shore. Wikipedia states that:

The mature nesting female hauls herself onto the beach and finds suitable sand on which to create a nest. Using her hind flippers, she digs a circular hole 40 to 50 centimetres (16 to 20 in) deep. After the hole is dug, the female then starts filling the nest with a clutch of soft-shelled eggs one by one until she has deposited around 50 to 200 eggs, depending on the species. Some species have been reported to lay 250 eggs, such as the hawksbill. After laying, she re-fills the nest with sand, re-sculpting and smoothing the surface until it is relatively undetectable visually. The whole process takes thirty to sixty minutes. She then returns to the ocean, leaving the eggs untended.

Now this is not a simple process. Due to the physical design of the sea turtle, movement out of the water is not very fast. It sort of crawls to move forward, and digging the hole to lay the female’s eggs is also a slow process.

After all this effort, the mother returns to the ocean, not knowing how many of the eggs will survive. And it has been statistically proven that only a very small proportion of each hatch – usually .01% – succeed.

God has designed nature and the universe with perfection – we all agree on that. But if we had to apply this type of process to business, it would be akin to shooting in the dark.

I think that is what advertising is, particularly big spend advertising like billboards. Advertising is shooting in the dark. It’s like dumping a whole lot of money in a hole, and expecting about .01% success. And if you have the opinion that advertising for branding is a smart thing – its not. And Chet Holmes will agree with me on that.

How do you know how many people viewed that billboard? How do you know how many people purchased your product due to that billboard? Measurement = impossible.

Did you know that $220 billion is spent on unmeasured advertising every year – in the US alone?

There’s a saying that advertising is the price you pay for not being remarkable. I’m sure you’re remarkable. We all are. Or more accurately, we all can be remarkable – but it takes some work. Advertising is the easy way out.

I’ll leave you with words by Seth Godin on this topic: “Do you want to bet your future on a process [that of advertising] that’s getting less effective every day?”

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Who’s watching?

Jamaal — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:38:55 +0000

Do you remember the movie Ocean’s Eleven? I’m sure you do. Right at the end, Tess (played by Julia Roberts) says to Terry (played by Andy Garcia): “You of all people should know Terry, in your hotel, there’s always someone watching.”

She’s referring to Terry’s earlier comment that in his hotel someone is always watching, referring to the surveillance cameras everywhere. At this juncture of the movie, Tess has just witnessed Terry – via one of his own cameras – saying something which ended their relationship.

The Internet is moving to that level. Someone is always watching. Someone is always ready to write a blog post, or to tweet, or to update their Facebook status. Mobile phones make photo and video sharing child’s play.

Now, more than ever, it’s important to act and speak with integrity and good character at all times. We should be true to this standard of ethics even if no one is watching, of course. That is the ultimate model to strive for.

Gary Vaynerchuk was prank called at SxSW a few days ago. I think Gary’s a great guy, and I think his videos are brilliant. Someone called Gary in his hotel room, at 5am in the morning. Gary did not know it was a prank caller, and Gary did not know that the caller was video recording everything. Gary did, however, act with integrity and not lose his temper.

Watch the video…

Photo credit: ell-r-brown