Happy Chinese New Year from EVERWORKS

Happy Chinese New Year!!

May all our dearest customers and readers have a blessed Chinese New Year! This year is the year of the Horse! The spirit of the horse makes unremitting efforts to improve themselves; it is energetic, bright, warm-hearted, intelligent and able.

Strengths
People born in the year of the horse have great communicating techniques. They are cheerful, perceptive, talented, earthy but stubborn!


Weaknesses
They cannot bear too much constraint. They are overly independent and rarely seek advice.

---
Those born in 2002, 1990, 1978, 1954, 1942, 1930, 1918 this year is your year! 

The year of the horse means there is a greater leadership associated with it this year, but the impulsive behavior of the horse can lead to recklessness!

WORK : People in position of authority at work will do well, but don't expect to make a lot of money and value the income you have!

LOVE : There won't be a lot of excitement in your love life!

HEALTH : Watch your health this year - Make exercise and rest a priority!

What are your new aspirations this Chinese New Year?

Read More

*Office Announcement (January 2014)

Dear Valued Customers & Readers,

EVERWORKS Office will be closed on:

Tuesday (14/1/2014)

Friday (17/1/2014)

Office is open on:

Wednesday (15/1/2014)

Thursday (16/1/2014)

Normal operations will resume on:

Monday (20/1/2014)

*Office Closed for Chinese New Year on:

Thursday (30/1/2014) to Monday (3/2/2014)

Thank you so much for your kind understanding. For issues requiring immediate attention please do not hesitate to contact our technical team.

For technical support, please do not hesitate to contact 24-hour email support at:

cvs@everworks.com

Happy Holidays!

Read More

Favorite Posts of 2013

Another year has come by! It has been a terrific year.

To commemorate all the posts that we've done, I thought it would be appropriate for us to curate our own list of favorite posts. We all like different posts, so you will get a good pile of articles that we feel are worth reading.

Posts our readers have found really exciting this year.

How LTE affect to Malaysia's mobile content business?

A brief on the introduction of LTE. New tech brings new opportunities, but it also brings about an amount of fear, because of the unknown. This post explains how LTE affects the mobile content business for a Malaysian perspective.

What is EVERWORKS's Hybrid Bandwidth System?

What is a Hybrid Bandwidth System, and what can EVERWORKS offer you? Complex as the name may sound, a lot of what the Hybrid Bandwidth System is, actually tailored to give specific customers  a customized bandwidth service based on their bandwidth patterns.

Is SMS Marketing still important for 13th Malaysian General Election?

Political Elections of any country can cast a great amount of doubt and uncertainty, but amidst all of that, we have compiled information that could prove to be integral to your business, as we analyze habits in regards to marketing campaigns carried out by the nation's leaders to ensure that their message is received by the general public.

Posts we feel have been something that will be of great value.

European & US Companies Love Cloud Computing! But why Malaysians prefer Hybrid Colocation?

The title speaks of our intent, as we came across an interesting report that gives a good understanding on Hybrid Colocation vs Cloud Computing, and why Malaysians prefer Hybrid Colocation.

Thanksgiving - Breakfree 2013

This year for Thanksgiving EVERWORKS decided to do something to help a local cause started by college students for the toilet crisis in Cambodia, and this has opened our eyes, and brought us on a very humbling journey, as we come to realize that another person, in another place is suffering without basic amenities when we take it for granted on a daily basis.

Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid

SEO is a baffling subject, and we decided to tackle it head on, with a compiled list of what experts claim to be common SEO mistakes that people often make.

Is SMS in Malaysia Still Relevant Today?

With the rise of smartphones and instant messaging services through the Internet, is SMS in Malaysia still relevant? We did some research and found out some interesting facts here!

__

Those were some exciting posts! Too bad we can't include more, but there are a host of super posts up for you to read, why don't you try them out too? Oh, looks like we got carried away with what we love, but more importantly what were your favorite posts of 2013?

Thank you all for such a wonderful year. We have a lot planned for 2014, so stand up and look out the window, because neat things will be coming your way!

photoby amodiovalerioverde

Read More

8 New Year Resolution Ideas

The new year is just around the corner! With the new year comes many little things, such as celebrations, feasts, deals, and all kinds of good things. As humans we all want to set new goals to achieve every year, and businesses also sets new goals to achieve without any exceptions. It can be hard to determine the exact goal to go for, but everything starts with a simple question:

What does your business aim to 

achieve in the new year? 

Just to help you save some thinking time, here are  8 New Year Resolution Ideas, for any small business.

1. Learn How to Delegate More

When running a small business there tends to be a million things to do. Faxes to send out, email to reply to, accounts to settle, bills to pay, staff to manage, business meetings to attend, issues to resolve, trying to meet monthly sales targets, and the list goes on and on. This is tiring, and it has very bad negative effects on your health. Look at from this perspective, if you are laid out 'cold' for a whole week without any productive work being done, rather being slower in finishing your productive work rather than in 1 day, but in 2 days (perhaps). Your small business has staff that are paid a salary to do work for you, and these staff of yours are excited to learn, grow, and be part of your business. Giving a little bit of empowerment goes a long way. The conclusion is, delegate more and do it more often.

2. Give Something Back to the Community

Make the new year a year when you get involved in your community to give back, give a free seminar, provide free workshops, or even donate some money to a notable cause. Find something that you believe in and support it. Through your honest intentions you could potentially meet new clients, or spread positive awareness about your company. Along the way hopefully generating a large loyal following for your business.

3. Drop What is Not Working, and Move On

Having a conundrum that doesn't seem to go away? Maybe it is time to cut your losses and just move on. Some problems are not meant to be solved immediately, but rather it may be solved in due time. Drop what is not working and move on to something more productive, and potentially more profitable. Why waste your valuable resources, and time into something that is really not working? Put all of your talents and skills into something that would make money, and hopefully through that new venture, it generates more money than what the previous hold up cost you.

4. Learn Something New

Learning something new doesn't need to be limited to your industry, or anything related to what you do. It could be learning Photoshop if you are a service business, or learning engineering if you are in the design field. All of everything you learn will have a benefit in the future, like the two examples used, if you are a service business with some handy dandy Photoshop skills you could whip up beautiful posters that could be used in your advertising endeavors, and for a designer to know engineering, would also be profitable in the future when he/she wants to design anything that requires a little bit of engineering know-how. Pick up something new and don't worry about it, because in the near future, everything you have invested time into will somehow reap its rewards. How do you make more time? Well delegation works right? ;) (Not all education is expensive you can study new things here for free)

5. Set a Savings Budget

Your business is flying online with great new ideas. So hold on to your horses, because in all businesses there are always ups and downs to everything. There will be happy times and also very gloomy times. Set a savings budget, to make sure that you have a safety net to fall onto when there are bad times. 

6. Create a Spending Cap

With money flowing in and out the tendency to overspend available monetary funds can be very tempting. Consider putting a spending cap on monthly activities, and for a more macro view a yearly spending cap to ensure that expenses don't exceed the benchmark you have set. This maximizes efficiency and allows you to make critical spending decisions to ascertain whether what you spend is truly making you a healthy profit.

7. Go Mobile

Now that your business should be somewhat underway (I am assuming that it is, because you are entering the new year with a business, that should mean your business is of age). Go mobile. The mobile market isn't something that you should question its viability anymore with figures flying showing statistics that mobile is probably the new future, as consumers and customers are looking for a more convenient portable way to access basic information. Why lose out on the mobile market when an investment into it wouldn't hurt you, but just grow and expand from your current market penetration. 

8. Refresh Your Website

Your website is awesome, but when was the last time you updated it? Have new projects that you recently completed, your company has a new direction, the trend for websites have changed, and many more. These are some of the reasons to why you should heavily consider reforming your website, as your website is the face of your company in the digital atmosphere and first impressions as we all know it is a lasting impression!

photo by Harold Neal

Read More

Internet Businesses & Malaysia's 2014 Budget

HOORAH! THE NEW YEAR IS JUST 

AROUND THE CORNER!!!

2014 Budget (Latest or not so new news)

The 2014 National Budget of Malaysia, proves to be something of a good news to the Internet Industry. According to a report by Avanti Kumar from MIS Asia (2013) the Budget 2014 proposals tabled by the Prime Minister of Malaysia Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on Friday, October 25th 2013, includes introduction of the new 6% GST that will help reduce surplus, while shrinking and balancing the fiscal deficit by 2020. Among the news was that the ICT Industry didn't miss out on initiatives too, as there was an allocation of RM3.4 billion ($1.08 billion) for the second phase of the national high-speed broadband project (HSBB), which has been so far implemented by Telekom Malaysia. - read more here -

What is High Speed Broadband?

High Speed Broad band in simplicity means fast Internet. Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia implemented a High Speed Broadband Initiative, named the National Broadband Initiative in hope of making High Speed Internet available to the Citizens of Malaysia at an affordable price, with added emphasis for rural areas for the second phase.

How Small Businesses Benefit from Faster Internet?

Malaysia is the 2nd highest country in South East Asia for social media penetration. Social Media has taken to Malaysia by storm! It represents a part of the lives of the people of Malaysia, and proves to be integral in everyday tasks.

Malaysia's eCommerce revenue alone is at a staggering $30,000,000,000, approximately making up 9.88% of the country's GDP. This is just starting as the Internet space in Malaysia is expected to grow at least 20% more ($6,000,000,000) in the near future.

This proves that the Internet is a strong and growing marketplace for Malaysia. Faster broadband can deliver more productivity at lower costs, and small businesses can benefit from from reduced costs greatly. Small business can connect easily to the world, supporting innovative ideas, high-tech jobs, and grow productivity.

Clearing the air between Bandwidth vs Speed.

Bandwidth and Speed are two very different things. Just for everyone to understand lets use the highway example, where the lanes of the highway represent the bandwidth, and the speed well represents the speed. Adding more Bandwidth means adding more lanes to the highway allowing more traffic to flow, in this case more data, but the speed limit still stays fixed. So if you want faster Internet for better quality, then check speed not the Bandwidth.

Great, now what should you do?

Take advantage of the Internet by:

1. Having a legitimate different approach to after sales service through the Internet, where problems faced by your customers can be posted to an online portal for you to address to.
2. Creating a blog to engage with your customers. (Learn how to develop better titles for your Business Blog here)
3. Organize discounts and deals through an online campaign.

Optimize your results by knowing what Google is doing with their search; 'Organic' SEO.

Let us know what you think:

1. What is your perspective on the latest 2014 Budget for Malaysia?
2. Does the 2014 Budget leave any implications for Internet Businesses in Malaysia?

Image sourced from Suara Generasi Baru | data sourced from GDP - World Bank Indicator | News from MIS Asia

Read More

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

With all the festivities going on, I just thought, Christmas is about the spirit of giving and the New Year has all kinds of new aspirations, wants and needs. So I thought of doing something a little bit different, sort of a catch! I believe through creating a definitive list of what you should own would draw a trail enough to give gift ideas, or what you should need.

Things you should own~

1. Pen and Notebook. To write down all the nitty gritty stuffs.

2. A Library Card. To read more and learn more.

3. A good Phone. Something you can call your friends with, not just through dialing, as this is the age of other methods of communicating.

4. A TeaCup.

5. Soap. Hygiene is important.

6. A gym membership. Working is great, but your health helps you do greater things!

Having mental block? Looking at a single perspective is tough. Running into a brick wall over and over again isn't going to get you around it. Tough as it may sound, presented above in the short 6 list shows you just how to look at the "brick wall" from a different camera angle. This allows ideas to stream in! This doesn't just apply to gift ideas, it can work for many other things too. Sometimes a road block doesn't mean you have to make a u-turn there are alternative routes around the corner.

Consider approaching your problem head on and looking at it from a bird's eye view, taking a deep breath and looking at it one step at a time.

When the going gets tough consider turning for expert advice! You could consult a stationary expert on potential stationary that would suit your exact needs, or you could even consult expert advice on technological information you may need to know that could save you time, and "brain juice".

Hopefully these give you ideas you need for Christmas gifts, or New Year needs that could boost your productivity!

photoby John B. Petersen III

Read More

10 OS X Mavericks Keyboard Shortcuts

What it takes to be productive

Focus. It seems to be rather elusive of late and doesn't really help you when times are getting more and more difficult. It can be rather draining when you find yourself working for 'hours' and not get anything done at all. Times like this call for some drastic action. Right now you could be needing to do 3 very important things. Here is the trick. Pick only one. Eliminate the rest. 

Now that the task is clear, destroy all other forms of attraction. Bookmark all your tabs, and only leave the one tab open that is going to work for you.

Then from here, just dive in.

How to reduce clutter

There is a time in life where everyone is faced with a whole lot of clutter, when things just get out of hand, and continue to pile up in an endless clutter. The answer is simple. Declutter.

Actions that you must take. Now.

How to do just that? Well how do you get started? Let's do it in simple steps:

1. Take 10 minutes today to sort through a pile of clutter.
2. Ask relevant questions like: Do i really really really need this?
3. Stop after 10 minutes don't do too much. It will eventually turn into a negative action which doesn't make decluttering a little more pleasant that what it is.

Here are some of the 10 shortcuts that I use when I am on my Mac. (Sorry Windows folks, I will get to that bit in the future!)

1. Command + Shift + 3

Full-screenshot (for times when you want to remember something really quick and it will just pop onto your desktop with no hassles! 

2. Command + Shift + 4

For the time when you really want to screenshot something very specific (and this also pops onto your desktop)

3. Command + Tab

Change between active applications quickly from your desktop!

4. Command + N

when in Finder this creates a quick New folder.

5. Command + [

Go back in Finder.

6. Command + ]

Go forwards in Finder

7. Command + Delete

move files in Finder to trash

8. Command + Spacebar

launch spotlight!

9. Command + W

Close window

10. Spacebar

preview highlighted items in finder

Most of these shortcuts, really help when times are tough. Rushing to complete deadlines, or finish work that seems to be piling up! All of these help a ton.

If you have more and would like to share how you use these in a creative way, or how it helps you to declutter let us know what you think!

All images are rights of their respective owners | Neither EVERWORKS nor the author take any ownership of the images. 

Read More