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Since it's the weekend, here's something you saw first on Jorbb.com/blog :)
The Waboba ball, which is about the size of a golf ball, has taken off around the world after videos were posted on YouTube.
Made of a combination of plastics with a Lycra coating, it is described as having the consistency of a breast implant.
The ball is about the same density as water and floats when at rest, but bounces high and true when thrown. It continues to bounce until it is caught or runs out of steam.
The ball took Swedish inventor Jan vonHeland several years to perfect, but it is now being sold around the world after first taking off on the beaches of Australia.
“I first got the idea when I was throwing a Frisbee upside down on the water trying to get it to bounce,” he said.
“I thought it would be good to get something that used the water to bounce off and began to experiment.”
Mashable has come up with a list of 5 books that can help improve your thinking about the value of social media to the enterprise.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now.
When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
"How do trends emerge and opinions form? The answer used to be something vague about word of mouth, but now it's a highly measurable science, and nobody understands it better than Clay Shirky. In this delightfully readable book, practically every page has an insight that will change the way you think about the new era of social media. Highly recommended." -Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail
Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this step-by-step guide shows you how to implement a successful Web analytics strategy. Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his thought-provoking style, debunks leading myths and leads you on a path to gaining actionable insights from your analytics efforts. Discover how to move beyond clickstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company’s bottom line.
The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media
"As word of mouth loses opinion-forming power to word of blog, companies are faced with a revolution in how their brands and corporate image will be shaped in the future. Paul Gillin provides a very insightful and well-written guide on how to effectively benefit from these dramatic changes. A must read!" --Patrick J. McGovern, founder and chairman, International Data Group (IDG)
The Art of Strategic Listening
Listening To Your Customers’ Conversations Can Provide Big Dividends
Do you know what your customers or bloggers are saying about your company and your products? Marketers used to be able to assess the perception of their company or their products by simply monitoring the media and reading any letters of complaint that came by mail, but that was pre-internet and social networking.
Now there are more than 80 million blogs, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, video aggregators like YouTube and EveryZing and thousands of other social media sites on the web where customers talk with each other and make all kinds of comments, good and bad about your firm, your competitors, and your industry.
David Allen, author of "Getting Things Done," one of the best-selling productivity books of all times joins Robert Scoble to talk about the future of work and how to make the most of productivity while minimizing stress.
A breakthrough book on productivity written by a dynamic author with national recognition, GETTING THINGS DONE has changed thousands of people's lives since it was originally published in hardcover in January 2001.
Now five years later this book is a national best seller. This shows how valuable and effective this book has proved to anyone looking to achieve their goals in life and work with the minimum amount of stress and the maximum degree of efficiency and flexibility. Whether you are an executive, student, or run a business and/or household, GETTING THINGS DONE will teach you the tips and tricks of how to get--and stay--on top of it all.
As part of being an E-biz Exhibition sponsor, which is happening at SMU today / tomorrow, 100for100 Web Hosting will offer its $100/yr for 100mb plan (Free .com .net .org) at only$50 for 1st year (subsequent years at $100/yr), that's a 50% discount! The account will have unlimited features such as unlimited email addresses, unlimited databases etc.
Visit this link for more information on the package and http://quiz.100for100.com to redeem the promo (500 new accounts available only).
100for100 Web Hosting, a TrustSg certified web hosting provider, is proud to be a sponsor for the event. We have been providing hosting services for online shops, start-ups, blogs, hobbyists with the popular $100/yr for 100mb package which comes with FREE domain name (.com .net .org). This Linux based package also comes with 1 FREE professional Flash template from a choice of 10 and unlimited email accounts, MySQL databases, and much more. With one-click installation, scripts such as shopping carts, blog scripts can be easily added to your website.
Come down to The E-biz Exhibition (TEE) - the FIRST exclusive e-commerce bazaar that will allow online entrepreneurs to showcase and sell their products! Grab amazing bargains from nearly 40 different booths - we'll have gorgeous accessories, handpainted shoes, global fashion imports, personalized gifts, perfumes and more. At the same time, you'll get to learn all about online shopping, selling and entrepreneurship through a series of talks from our invited guest speakers!
Date/Time: 25 and 26 July 2008, 12pm - 10pm Venue: SMU School of Economics and Social Sciences Ground Floor
"Nicely sums up the explosion of digital-technology advances during the past 15 years and places the phenomenon in its global context...[Friedman] never shrinks from the biggest problems and the thorniest issues...Ambitious."–Paul Mangnusson, BusinessWeek
Listeners will receive the audiobook in three easy-to-download sections, and soon after that, as an added bonus, will also receive an exclusive prepublication audio excerpt of Friedman's HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED: WHY WE NEED A GREEN REVOLUTION AND HOW IT CAN RENEW AMERICA.
Update: MoFuse has stopped charging for Pro account so all accounts now get these features - Use a custom domain name for your mobile site Use your logo in your SMS widget Create up to 5 mobile sites (increased from 3) Receive 50 free SMS messages a month to promote your mobile site (increased from 10) - HOORAY!
Point your phone browser to http://m.jorbb.com and you can see that we've just enabled a mobile / iPhone version of Jorbb.com/blog.
This was done with a superb service MoFuse. As Mashable described, moFuse is an interface that’s designed rapidly deploy existing web apps as mobile applications. It will take your RSS feeds and compose it into a mobile / iPhone friendly layout.
It only took us 5 mins to get our mobile version up and running, try it on your own blog. They also have methods to monetize your mobile blog and they'll take 50% cut from your revenue.
Give our mobile blog and try and let us know what you think.
If you have an iPhone, send us a photo on how our site turned up on it.
So as part of a blog entry competition (good of Samsung to step onto the social media advertising bandwagon), here are my thoughts on the SamsungOmnia.
I visited CommunicAsia last month, and it was just after the iPhone 3G was announced by Jobs. Obviously, any new phones launched during CommunicAsia would be compared to the iPhone 3G.
Samsung, HTC and LG all displayed their latest phones in a big way. Having tested 3 phones, I would say the Omnia SH-i900 is getting very close to the iPhone BUT with its own character.
What stood out for me are: 1. Haptic Feedback - most iPhone users complain that it felt un-natural to press the touchscreen without any feedback. The Omnia slightly vibrates when a button is pressed. 2. Samsung Today screen which looks so much better than the default Windows Mobile Today screen. 3. Auto-rotate feature (I believe it uses the camera instead of an accelerometer), which auto-rotates your images etc when you rotate the phone. 4. It has every connectivity option you would need - 3G, HSDPA, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM, EDGE. 5. Battery Life - Cnet Asia reviewed that their Omnia phone lasted 3 days under normal usage. Wow! 6. Suite of applications which make "working on the go" seamless - MS Office Compatibility, Push Email.
Being a "PDA" phone, it will easily integrate with your desktop/notebook multimedia files (videos, mp3 etc) and since it's running on Windows Mobile, syncing your existing Outlook contacts / emails / calendar / notes etc will be "one touch" and a breeze.
The Launch event video covers what the phone has to offer, as an alternative to the iPhone 3G.
It's faster, safer and comes with more than 15,000 improvements. Create history by downloading Firefox 3 today and help break the record for the most downloaded software in one day. At time of posting, 2.6 million people have downloaded already.
The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their Employees, Retain Talent, and Drive Performance is authors' Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton's exploration of employee motivation, primarily in the form of praise and rewards. The book is based on an expansive study by the Jackson Organization of 200,000 people over the course of ten years in various companies and what the outcome of certain incentive programs were over time.
There is a lot of business discussion about productivity and employee engagement. Most studies show that money is not the primary element in workplace satisfaction. In fact, the study cited in The Carrot Principle indicates that nearly 95% of employees who report being happiest say their managers are great at recognizing them.
Effective managers must have established themselves in four key areas for employees to trust and want their recognition: goal setting, communication, trust and accountability. If a manager has these four qualities, some of the recognitions that are effective include
"day-to-day recognitions"-the authors say not to underestimate the small but frequent gesture: a handwritten note or even email, a visit to the employee to say thanks or very small gifts
"above and beyond recognitions" - these are for more significant successes and should be personalized and presented in front of co-workers
"career recognition" - these are based more on longevity and an acknowledgment of the employee's loyalty to the company, say every two - five years
"celebration events" - on-site or off-site corporate events to celebrate employee and company success are additional ways to build employee esteem
It's important to be a manager who motivates through altruism vs. intimidation. To be a respected leader, you must genuinely care about your team. Rewards do not have to be expensive and the one least used (day to day recognition) is the one that is least expensive-or free.26 Amazon reviewers give The Carrot Principle more than 4 out of 5 stars and say that it "opened my mind up to some big ideas" and that it "should be required reading for ALL managers".
Living the 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More by Richard Koch was published in 2005 following the success of The 80/20 Principle in 1999. The 80/20 principle is based on an economic theory by Vilfredo Pareto which states, essentially that 20 per cent of action (stuff) produces 80 per cent of results. The flip side is that 80 per cent of what we work on or do doesn't result in much. However, this is a serious simplification and Koch helps readers understand how to use this rule to improve their lives in his more simple follow-up.
In Living the 80/20 way, Koch helps us "cut the fat" and define the efforts that are yielding the results so we can focus our energies there. This takes continual reexamination of you, your relationships (to people, to work), your life. Some of the questions to ask are "what am I passionate about and, of those things, what comes easiest to me?", "who do I want to be?", "what things am I doing that I struggle with or don't bring me joy?".
Koch rightfully insists that you cannot just think about your 80/20 plan, you must continually review and revise it, carry it with you, asking continually "Can I find easier, more pleasant, richer ways to achieve my goals?". Once you start identifying some of these things, the author encourages you to slow down and enjoy your "happiness islands", those areas that you really enjoy, and to start expanding them so you are spending more and more time on them.
Twenty Amazon.com reviewers give the book 4+ out of 5. Reviews include "the material in this book can be much more valuable than an MBA", "practical and easy to implement", "finally a book that offers solutions that are achievable and take pressure off."
Stephen Covey stands as one of the industry leaders in personal and professional development training. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was published in 1990 and has since sold more than 10 million copies. The 8th Habit (From Effectiveness to Greatness) is the follow up, published in 2006, meant to acknowledge and explore how the 7 Habits have been affected by the advent of the Internet.
The 8th Habit is "find your voice and inspire others to find theirs", a mantra repeated in many current business books (Marcus Buckingham's Now Discover Your Strengths and Tim Sanders' Love is the Killer App). Covey believes management is still operating under old Industrial Age thinking instead of moving into the Knowledge age. Employees are treated more as objects than people and for organizations to excel, they have to move towards seeing their employees holistically.
Covey believes that most extraordinarily accomplished people have four traits: vision, discipline, passion and moral conscience and that the best way to find your own "voice" is to help someone else find theirs. Most of the book is spent in discussing how you can help others find their own voices and how you can keep people engaged at work.
Amazon readers give the book 3.5 stars out of 5 with most negative reviews pointing towards the writing and not the message. The book can be a bit "business-y", loaded with jargon and at times hard to understand. However, the message is still relevant.
In the introduction to Alpha Dogs: How Your Small Business can Become a Leader of the Pack, author Donna Fenn (Inc. magazine) recounts her first time meeting entrepreneur Chris Zane in 1995. Zane owned a bike shop, Fenn was not excited about the interview. But what she found was, despite the size of the business and Zane's age (30), he had an instinct for great business development: "stellar customer service, one-to-one marketing, continuous learning, employee development, and cause-related marketing".
Zane now has 65% of his market share, 4 competitors vs. the 16 he started with, and $6.1 million in sales. Zane is just one example of many in this realistic read of the successful small business experience.
Focusing on very small, mostly unknown businesses that serve niche markets and utilize creative, passionate marketing strategies, the book succeeds in inspiring and providing a road map for both those with a new idea and the CEO of well established companies. One Amazon reader says it will "energize your entrepreneurial spirit" and 29 reviewers give it 5 out of 5 stars.
In 2007's The Dip, Godin challenges the notion of "winners never quit" by saying it is untrue, they are just more selective about what they do quit, making sure it is things that are detracting from their success. He advocates pursuing your one main goal versus being distracted by side projects. "The dip" is that point of giving up, when you realize how much energy must be invested to master your craft, your skill, your niche. Godin says most people don't push past this point-due to lack of funds, time, people. It's what makes the difference between success and failure...pushing past the dip.
To avoid this point in your journey, Godin insists you have to be clear on your goals from the start and have a way to measure success and progress, no matter how small. Defining that end goal requires examining the payoff of many options. What's your payoff? More time, more money, more fame. Define which goals will provide which payoffs and continue to measure your progress, says Godin in this slim book of less than 100 pages. Amazon readers say things like: "this was exactly what I needed to hear", "this is one of the best quick to read business books ever!", "definitely worth it if you have fallen from the path...". Many readers suggest reading it through, putting it away and reading it again. The message is simple but doesn't always stick easily. 111Amazon readers give The Dip 4 out of 5 stars.
Since it's the weekend, here's something you saw first on Jorbb.com/blog :)
