peteblog

CRM - What it is & how it can improve your bottom line

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:49:00 +0000

Warning: I'm going to use the word management a lot in this article.

Where does CRM (Customer Relationship Management) come from, what it is for, how has it evolved and how should it benefit your company today?

CRM comes out of systems designed to help you sell more products to your existing customers, particularly through cross selling. CRM systems do this by helping you capture data about your customers, then analyse that data to find out what other products or services those customers might be interested in. Thus enabling you to tailor your offers & communications to those specific customers.

For example I have a client who sells overseas property. They gather a lot of contacts from their website and from exhibitions they attend. In each case they find out what areas or countries of the world these contacts are interested in. In their CRM system they make a note of these areas and when an opportunity crops up in an area, say Turkey. They run a report to see who is interested in Turkey and then send a tailored email about the property in Turkey to just those contacts. As their contacts are only receiving information about places they are genuinely interested in, they are more likely to respond to the email.

CRMs have evolved from this concept of profiling customers and these days often refer to systems which have additional functionality or indeed specialise in a particular area of client interaction, for example with sales force automation solutions. They have generally expanded to take on functions such as diary management, to-do/task list management, email management and document management. In a good CRM this means that whatever you are looking for should be easily found. This is one aspect of what is known as knowledge management.

For example when someone calls me, I open their contact record in my CRM and at a glance, as well as seeing standard details such as phone number, email and address, I can see a history of my dealings with them, emails sent and received, quotes and invoices raised, organisations they're linked to and products they are interested in or have bought. I should therefore be able to answer any query quickly and effectively, providing better customer service.

Having made a sale, how do you actually make sure you deliver? Some CRMs now help you manage your projects too. Meaning you can keep track of key tasks, appointments, deadlines, sub-contractors, timesheets, invoicing, change notes and so on; making sure no step is missed and the correct product or service is delivered on time.

For example, my client Efficient Air in Polegate is a specialist engineer with an ISO assured quality process. They have to ensure that all the steps in that quality process are followed and monitored. They have about 30 tasks and 20 documents that have to occur for each project they take on. These are auto generated by their CRM system and the project manager then allocates them to the relevant engineers and monitors the tasks to see that they are done on time. Apart from maintaining their ISO accreditation it also means their clients are very happy and come back for more.

So a good CRM these days should be helping you to manage your whole business process, from Prospecting to Sales to Implementation & Support to Delivery to Payment to Selling something more. The bottom line:

Happier customers + more customers = more profits

Online advertising - my advice

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:52:00 +0000

I read a good book about how to use Google AdWords (AdWords for Dummies) which I recommend you read if you are serious about getting lots of business this way.

The key thoughts I picked up from this book, and which I put into practice over the past year and a half are:

Pick the key words and phrases that your customers are searching for and concentrate on these. Google Trends is a good place to test your ideas about these phrases. http://www.google.com/trends

Having picked the search phrases you want your advert to appear for , set up your Google AdWords account (http://adwords.google.com/) and bid for your advert to come up for those phrases.

It may also be worth looking at MSN searches by signing up for Microsoft AdCenter https://adcenter.microsoft.com/.

The trick, particularly with Google AdWords, is to try not to compete on expensive words, you should look for niche phrases relevant to your business.

You should note that for some business types, advertising within Facebook or MySpace (either direct through Facebook or within Facebook/MySpace applications) can be very effective.

Seth Godin - Tribes (We Need You to Lead Us)

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:09:00 +0000

Tribes by Seth Godin. I picked up this book because I thought it would have relevance to the web world where I do business, particularly as I've always want to create communities of users of my products. I'll admit the cover art enticed me in too, I enjoy looking at it even now.

The main audience for this book would be the business community, however it also has a lot to say about how people can change the world, not just in business, but in politics or religion or technology or culture.

After reading a few pages I felt I had grasped Seth's main concept and wondered why he hadn't just written an essay on the subject. But I read on. With the next chunk of the book Seth tries to connect with as many different types of people as possible, through presenting his idea from many angles, using numerous examples. I believe he will achieve this connection.

So, what is Tribes about? Seth believes that tribes are groups of people with the same interest. No matter how large or small that interest group is, it can make waves in the world. However, in order to make these waves the tribes need leadership. He cites Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia, who attracted a small group of people, engaged them in his vision and these 5,000 people accounted for the majority of Wikipedia articles.

This book is a call to action by the author. He is trying to inspire many more people to become leaders in all areas of work and life. Hoping that one will suit you, he spends time talking about the different styles of leadership. He explores the negatives that people equate with leadership and asserts that these are not so bad. And in my opinion they aren't that bad. He provides techniques and tools to help us lead our tribe to its full potency. Anyone with a great idea and a hint of leadership potential should be empowered by this book to start their own tribe.

Why does the world need more leaders and tribes? Seth believes they would lead to more creative answers to the world's problems and interesting developments, whether in business, or technology, or culture or in fact anything we turn our attention to. I too believe this would be a good thing. In fact during this recession I think it would be a really good time for people to give leadership a go, as more creative ideas and businesses will get us out of recession faster.

I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

Networking by helping others

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Helping others is a great way to build your reputation and show your expertise. The more questions you usefully answer then the better your reputation and the higher the likelihood that:

a) you'll be found online; and

b) you'll be contacted for advice; and

c) receive more business.

As well as contributing to relevant groups and threads within the business networks such as detailed in my previous post (online networking for business) you should also join and contribute to:

* relevant Google groups http://groups.google.co.uk/;

* industry or product forums;

* industry or product wikis (our examples are our VoIP Advantage wiki and our eLink wiki);

* Yahoo answers http://answers.yahoo.com/ (you have to answer a few questions before you are allowed to ask one);

* Twitter (here you are more likely to directly help people and contacts you know) http://twitter.com/petejenkins.

Online networking for business

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Online networking can be a great way of letting your customers know about you (not to mention it can be good for your search engine rankings). The first use of online networking sites is to provide a profile of you and your business to the users of each site. preferably you should tailor your words to the different feel of each site. I feel that different sites fit different kinds of business. For business to business companies the main sites are:

Xing

Ecademy

Business Scene

Locally: Sussex Networking

and for consumer focused companies:

Facebook

MySpace

Bebo are the main sites.

The second thing you should do is choose the site or two that best suit you and where the other users reflect the type of users you want to do business with and get involved. For instance, my business energies go to LinkedIn and Twitter mainly, and for fun I mostly use Facebook.

Above are the main generic sites, you should also look for any networking sites that are specific to your particular industry, expertise or hobby as well.

Sound & Vision - Marketing Tip

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:24:00 +0000

I believe that adding sound & vision to your website is becoming more popular as a way of informing and interacting with your customers. In fact website visitors are now beginning to expect a variety of ways to find out more about you or your product, and will be disappointed if they don't get this variety.

Podcasts (audio recordings) and videos can be very useful ways of explaining your products and services in a friendly manner. You, as the business owner, are generally your best salesperson. So, a recording of you telling people about your product or service and why they should use you should be especially powerful!

Screen casts (recording what you do or see on a computer screen and recording an audio track/narration over it) can be a useful way of showing how to use your product or even navigate your website or web shop. Screen casts can be particularly useful to explain how to use software products.

Zopa - Good returns on your savings

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:24:00 +0000

If you're looking for good returns on your savings it can be pretty difficult to find a decent rate at the moment. Looking in yesterday's best buy tables I saw that the best no notice savings account gave just 4% interest, and a 90 day notice account only gave 4.5% and even these rates are few and far between.

I believe you should keep some cash available for instant access (for emergencies and as insurance). I think about 3-6 months of enough money to cover your bills is best, though I haven't seen many people manage this! You should, however, be looking to get a decent rate of return on the rest of your savings and it may pay to look at something a little less liquid in order to maximise this.

So, what have I done? Well, for over two and a half years I have been investing my money with a company called Zopa. Originally I invested because I liked the social idea behind Zopa and wanted to show my support for it. I was also less concerned with the rate of return I was going to get and more with the likelihood of getting my money back!

Briefly, Zopa is a site that enables people to lend money directly to other people, sidestepping the need for a bank. Zopa takes a small fee for administration and for credit checking the borrowers, thus giving you the confidence to lend. Your risk is also automatically spread across many borrowers, i.e. you might lend £10 each to 100 borrowers instead of £1,000 to just one borrower, so if one borrower were to go bad it wouldn't wipe you out. The way the Zopa market works means that the rate you lend at is agreed between you and the borrowers. The more competitive the rate you are willing to lend at then the faster your money is likely to be lent out (and start earning). Currently, this market means that borrowers are able to get great rates for their loans, in fact the rates available are in the best buy tables a lot of the time.

Proof (so far) that it is a good place to invest:
Since I started investing I have received a rate of return (after fees) of 6.92%;
Money I'm lending out at the moment is being lent at 7.5%;
I've had no bad debts at all yet.

So, I recommend you look at adding an investment through Zopa to your savings portfolio. Here is a link to my referrals page for Zopa (my Zopa member name is supes): Zopa supes referral . Click here first and then explore the Zopa site. If you have any further questions about it, please ask me or the team at Zopa who are very helpful too.

Blog and Twitter - Marketing Tip

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:33:00 +0000

For some businesses and individuals I recommend you write regular articles for a blog. This can help your customers get to know you and how you work. Try posting about what you do (the different things you do on behalf of your clients each day) and your experiences (whether good or bad). Try to keep these relevant to your business/industry. Also, if you have trouble coming up with content, then go and comment on other peoples' blogs. These might even inspire you to create your own content.

As well as a blog some people find using Twitter to be a very good way of demonstrating the type of person you are to potential and existing clients. You need to post more regularly (maybe by updating your Twitter feed between meetings from your phone) and you only have a limited number of characters to play with.

Once you have the blog or twitter or both running, then you can regularly harvest your content to turn it into an email newsletter to send out. I find this tends to be a different audience, so you are broadening the range of people reading your stuff. Plus it makes pulling together the newsletter much easier than having to generate all the news for it at once!

Online content tip - show off your expertise

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:32:00 +0000

One of the best things you can do to market yourself online is to demonstrate your expertise. The simplest way to do this is by writing articles for your website (or for your blog) about your industry. Try and keep it relevant to what you want your customers and potential customers to know you for.

Your articles could be hints and tips, your thoughts on best practices, comments on topical news as it relates to your business and so on.

Case studies - a cost effective marketing tip

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:45:00 +0000

Case studies are important to put on your website. A good case study should tell the story of why an existing customer chose you, what you did for them, what it was like working with you and the benefits they got from using you and your products.

It should show a potential client what a great experience it is to work with you.

Upcoming Seminar reported in the Argus

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:55:00 +0000

We are running an IT Update Seminar in January which I'm pleased has just been reported in the local paper The Argus.

If you want to reduce costs and/or improve your customer service then join us for our morning workshop on Thursday 15th January 2009 from 9.30am at the Thistle Hotel Brighton to look at technologies and techniques that will help you.

Who should attend –

1. Directors responsible for business strategy, for telephone deployment and costs, and for anyone who wants to check how VoIP telephones work, what’s involved and how it might help their business, and how much can they save, for example MDs, FDs, CIOs, Facilities Managers;

2. Directors responsible for the smooth-running of their offices and for anyone who wants to check whether they have arranged their office, sales, admin and project systems in the most effective manner or whether they can get better;

3. Director and Managers who want to give an improved service to their customers;

4. Directors responsible for the profitability of the business process, from getting the order, purchasing the materials, arranging the staff resources and getting invoices paid promptly;

5. Directors who are always too busy, whose desk is covered with paper, or who are always rushing.

The Speakers:

Cliff Jenkins, initially a Chartered Accountant, who became a Senior Management Consultant with KPMG and then specialised in sales and sales management particularly in the capital services sector.

Peter Jenkins, runs two companies e-Advantage Solutions Ltd and Feed My Guests Ltd, he is an Executive Committee Member at Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce and recently became Entrepreneur in Residence at Brighton Business School (part of the University of Brighton).

Clare Evans, is a personal and business coach specialising in helping you improve your Time Management, Clare is also author of Time Management for Dummies.

The Objective of the seminar is that by the end each participant will have identified areas in their business where they can improve cashflow, reduce costs and improve customer service and improve business and personal effectiveness

Programme
09:30 – 10.00 Registration/Coffee and Networking
10:00 – 10.10 Introductions by our chairman for the day Cliff Jenkins
10.10 – 11.00 Internet Telephony for Business. Speaker Peter Jenkins: VoIP, Skype, What is it? Is it relevant to you? Can it save you money? Is it right for your size of business? What do you need to make it work (broadband, hardware, software)?
11.00 – 11.15 Break into work groups
11.15 – 11.30 Coffee
11.30 – 12.15 Working together. Speaker Cliff Jenkins. CRM, what does it mean? Is it software just for sales? Or is it for project management or more? What does business management software encompass? How does this impact on your business? How do I reduce costs by using it? How much money do I save? What about SaaS and cloud hosting?
12.15 – 12.30 Hints and Tips on managing your time more effectively. Speaker Clare Evans, Author of Time Management for Dummies
12.30 – 13.00 What are the changes which will give you the most benefit? Facilitator and Moderator, Cliff Jenkins
13.15 – Summary and Conclusion. Cliff Jenkins.
13.45 Finish.

Spend the morning with other businessmen and women looking at some of the ideas, discussing the problems and the opportunities with like-minded people.

The seminar fee is £29, or £23 for payment by Christmas Eve. Please send your cheque, payable to ‘Yoolaa’, to 4 Julian Court, Wilmot Road, Shoreham By Sea, BN43 6NG or pay direct to Lloyds TSB account name ‘Yoolaa’ sort code 30-98-74 A/c No. 00031709.

Tip Three - Content for your website

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:21:00 +0000

You need content on your website for two reasons. First, the more content (product and service descriptions and so forth) the more chance your customers can find you in a search. Second, good content should convince your customers to use you rather than use your competitors.

My tip is to put some customer comments and compliments on your website. They could be short paragraphs or even as simple as ‘Great service!’ or ‘Saved me money’ & so on. A couple of these on each page of your website could be very useful.

Chuffed to receive great compliment

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:49:00 +0000

I just received a great compliment from my client Amanda Stafford (Adventure Travel Specialist, please see her website at www.dolphinconnectionexperience.com).

"Yes that seemed to work
cheers and thanks for being a very reliable presence in the background for all the tech things"

Tip Two: Online directories

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:33:00 +0000

My second top tip for low cost online marketing of your business is to get yourself added to some online directories. It is good for the search engine ranking of your website and your customers may well be looking in these directories for businesses like yours.

First, add your business to free directories such as FreeIndex.co.uk. A benefit of FreeIndex is that your customers can review your business, and if they do then you get shown higher in the search results.

Second, add your business to any industry relevant ones you can find, i.e. if you search for plumbers you tend to get directories of plumbers as the first few listings in google, so it is important to make sure you're on that list too. These tend to be low cost to join.

Finally, add yourself to any local directories. Brighton & Hove Council have a directory (add your business at www.burrows.co.uk/brighton) and being on the Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce’s own Member Directory is a benefit of joining the Chamber!

Low cost top tips for marketing your business online

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:26:00 +0000

Last night's Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce event 'Five ways to market your business on a bite sized budget' was a resounding success (even if I do say so myself). There was a great buzz around the room as over 50 attendees got great hints and tips from our 6 experts on how to market their businesses more effectively and for a very low cost. There was advice on CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), how to get referrals, good PR, getting the best out of networking and online marketing (my bit).

So, having gone to the effort of putting together a list of my top tips for online marketing, and one of my tips being to write articles and blog posts occasionally, I thought it would be a good idea to post my tips here.

My first top tip is to do with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I assume you have a website and you've been told to make sure your key phrases (that people use to search for you) are used on your website. I recommend that you reinforce the key phrases by also using the keywords from your key phrases in your page title, and in your page description and in your page metatags (ask your web designer for help if needed).

Doing this helps your web page in two ways. First, it helps Google confirm that the content on your web page is relevant to that key phrase, thus helping you up the rankings in the search results. Second, when searchers are presented with Google's results your result should now stand out as being more relevant than the other results around you, meaning it is more likely that your potential customers will click the link to your site!

Marketing on a bite-sized budget

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:22:00 +0000

The next Chamber of Commerce event should be a good one, especially as I'm involved (!) and giving some tips on marketing your business online. The event is: Five ways to market your business on a bite-sized budget

It's on Thursday 13th November at 5.45pm. The venue is the Jurys Inn Hotel, Stroudley Road, Brighton, BN1 4DJ. Free for members and £15 for guests.

More detail about the event:

Businesses of all sizes are reviewing budgets as the credit crunch keeps squeezing the economy. We all know we should keep marketing, but how do we do that effectively when resources are sparse? Come along to our November training event which will feature FIVE EXPERTS each talking about a different way to promote your company and get more bang for less bucks!

This interactive session will provide valuable knowledge that you can put into action straight away. Attendees will get time with each of the experts as we break into smaller groups which will then rotate. Creative, practical and suitable for businesses of all sizes and sectors, sign up now or miss out!

Here's who's covering what:

Talking about how to get the most out of PR is Glen Poole, Communications Director of Neo Communications & founder of the 'Bounce your Balls for Cancer' campaign. Glen draws on years of experience working with high profile campaigns as a writer, strategist, PR man and media spokesman with a focus on fun, effective and inspirational content.

Soraya Shaw is the founder of Springboard Coaching which offers leadership development, management skills, executive coaching and mentoring, as well as bespoke programmes. For this session, Soraya will explain how to get the most out of Networking and other Face to Face Opportunities where you have the opportunity to market yourself and your services.

Charlie Allsebrook, one of the Directors at Brighton & Hove Business Community Partnership (BCP) and Lorraine Bell, Director of Simply CSR, will share their extensive knowledge on Corporate Social Responsibility and, how if done well, this can help to raise the profile of your company in a really positive way.

Peter Jenkins, Managing Director of e-Advantage Solutions, will share the secrets of marketing your business Online and how to get your head around all the weird and wonderful things the web has to offer. Peter will offer advice without using internet jargon or widget talk and can explain all the free stuff you can be doing to increase your web presence, a vital tool in business today.

Julia Chanteray founded The Joy of Business because so many people asked her for advice and support for their businesses. Julia has run a number of successful companies and is fascinated by the opportunities that running your own business brings. Julia will be telling us how to be successful when asking for Referrals so we can win new business from existing happy customers. Julia explains techniques to use and why we shouldn't be scared to ask (as long as we do it properly!)

With access to so much expertise in one room, this event will definitely inspire and motivate so why not bring a colleague or friend and share the marketing love!

To book on to this event, either as a guest or a member, please contact our events co-ordinator Lara Hockman at admin@businessinbrighton.org.uk or call her on 01273 719097.

Perils of cloud hosting

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:08:00 +0000

I'm a firm advocate of using cloud hosting for many of the services I provide. The advantage of paying on a utility basis (per compute hour) means I can provide said services at a much lower cost, and I can easily scale up the resources to match peak loads of demand.

However, all the various cloud services out there are very new, and new services experience new problems. Only yesterday my servers hosted with Flexiscale were affected by a massive platform outage (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/30/another_flexiscale_outage/) and not for the first time either. I also use and watch Amazon Web Services, Microsoft's SSDS and Google Apps and they've all experienced issues over the past few months too. (As an aside has anyone used Rackspace's MOSSO service and can you comment on their platform and service?)

The trouble with using leading edge technologies is that the early adopters have to put up with unexpected problems until the service providers have learnt the most important lessons that their new platforms put up. So, how do you choose which provider to use and what do you look for?

Well, the key for me is how the providers handle the issues that crop up. That will be a sure sign of the quality of the platform in the future. Flexiscale, for instance, are now better at communicating with their customers and providing progress updates (a mix of network status page, twitter feeds and individual responses to support cases) & seem to prioritise their use of resources well.

Previous examples of new platforms I've seen go through these same growing pains include: the hosted VoIP providers over the last 2 or 3 years, the web hosting companies before that, and the broadband and dialup ISPs before that. All had major platform issues at the start and it was the companies with the best customer service that are still around and known today (for the most part anyway).

Cut costs & improve cash flow! e-Advantage e-News

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:58:00 +0000

Please take a look at our Autumn newsletter (eNews Autumn 2008). This edition is sprinkled with hints and tips to help you survive the credit crunch. It has all of our latest news and details of our exciting new products too.

Route to SaaS - Rackspace Seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Late last week I attended a seminar entitled the Route to SaaS (Software as a Service) and beyond run by Rackspace. There were some good talks and I picked up some useful titbits.

Rod Drury of Xero gave an informative talk on the infrastructure they've built in order to provide their accounting system globally just through the internet. A point that I agree with and that is directly relevant to our eLink product is that SaaS products are about commoditising a piece of software and not creating bespoke versions for every client. His top tip was to use loads of switches and flags within the software to tailor the interface for each client needs without having to create a new version of the system for each client. The slides from his presentation are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/guest3c67cf/xero-rackspace-presentation-presentation?type=powerpoint

James Murfin of Mural Consulting gave a talk on marketing SaaS offerings. The highlight for me being that the service and support you provide to your customers is the key differentiator in the SaaS market. Related to that was his belief that you should 'over-invest' in your new customers in the first 60 days they are with you. As these customers will then be telling hundreds or thousands of potential customers about your product by leaving comments on various forums and blogs.

All of the presentations from the day's speakers are available to browse at Rackspace's site here: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/SaaS-Rackspace/Presentations/

New eLink website launched today

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:37:00 +0000

I'm very excited to announce the launch of our new website for our eLink CRM product. It has a completely new look and feel to complement the superb new look and feel for the eLink software itself. Lots of useful information about the product, a handy video tour, where to find eLink advisors with the skills relevant to your needs, a wiki with useful information for eLink users, administrators and developers, our news blog and new service status 'twitterfeed'.

Please have a look, find out more about eLink and sign up for a free 1 user eLink database of your own. The website is www.elinkuk.co.uk.

Interested in working with Brighton and Hove businesses?

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:41:00 +0000

Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce is expanding, and we're looking for a new Director to grow the Chamber.

We want someone who understands about business in Brighton & Hove, can look after our members, and can help us to attract new members.

If this sounds like you, or someone you know, please get in touch for an application pack.

Email admin@businessinbrighton.org.uk or call 01273 719097. Deadline for applications is Friday 29th August 2008.

wireless08 - Unified Communications

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:53:00 +0000

Simon Street (Director of Global Mobility Business Development, BT) told us some sensible information about unifying communications for larger enterprises.

But the bit that made me chuckle was he started talking about 'prosumers' rather than 'consumers'... these are consumers using better technology at home than they have access to at work.

wireless08 - Mobile & Wireless Trends for 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:31:00 +0000

I heard a good talk this morning by Benny Har Even (Technology Editor, IT Pro) on what's coming up this year.

First he did a quick recap on the hits of 2007. These were HSDPA connectivity; Data Cards; Wi-Fi enabled phones; VoIP; the Skypephone (on 3); and the iPhone.

Hits this year are & will be: USB broadband dongles; HSDPA integrated into laptops; GPS & Assisted GPS (more accurate & better connectivity) with location based services; 802.11n (& draft n) wi-fi; and Wimax (long range Wi-Fi for the 'last mile'; femtocells (Mobile connectivity boosting for home & office); the 3G iPhone (+ HTC Diamond & Blackberry Bold); the first Google Android handsets from Samsung & LG (at the end of the year); SSD (solid state disks) getting bigger & cheaper; the Eee PC & rivals; and new Intel Atom powered devices.

All pretty much as I thought, but it's nice to have confirmation.

A statistic that was interesting to me was that Mobile internet use is accelerating (Google) & that 40% of Mobile internet use is on social networking sites.

Cool new features on google maps

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:06:00 +0000

Take a look at Brighton with this extra information:

Wikipedia
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=50.82665,-0.142136&spn=0.044349,0.160675&t=k&z=13&lci=lmc:wikipedia_en

Photos
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=50.82665,-0.142136&spn=0.044349,0.160675&t=k&z=13&lci=lmc:panoramio

I may just use this to plan a day out soon :-)

Beachvolleyball? Business? Brighton?

noreply@blogger.com (Pete Jenkins) — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:28:00 +0000

Had great fun yesterday evening. I'd put a team together for the Brighton & Hove Business Beachvolleyball Tournament. The tournament was part of the Brighton Fringe Festival, supported by the council to encourage health and well being at work. Businesses around Brighton were encouraged to enter teams and have some fun.

Seeing as how we don't actually have 6 staff (yet) ourselves to fill a team I recruited a bunch of my ProfitNet colleagues. I figured other small business owners would be suitably competitive and we'd go out to win! I failed to remember that we'd also be stupidly busy and thus weren't able to get any practice in before the event.

Enough excuses. We stepped onto the sand and proceeded to lose (I will say the first team we played went on to be the overall winners and didn't lose a single game), and then lose again, and again and again :-(

Finally, the last match for us, and we discovered the opposing team were in the same boat (winless) and decided we were in with a chance. After an epic battle we succeeded... victory was ours. An honourable end for Team ProfitNet. We then played a friendly against another team and won that too. It seems it took a while (a long while) for us to warm up ;-)

It was either such good fun messing about on the sand, or we're so competitive that we want to win the tournament next time, that we were all very keen to meet soon and play/practice some more.

We had a great time.

In case you were wondering where we found sand to play on, what with Brighton's beach being made of pebbles, it was held at the Yellowave Beach Sports Venue (between the Pier and the Marina) a really excellent venue, with a great vibe.