When all else is equal, you must rely on the unpredictable and uncontrollable elements to decide an outcome. Unfortunately, there is just not much, if anything, you can do to change the end result.

Even losing comes with its perks and benefits, but only if these variables were recognized and anticipated ahead of time.

“Anything that is good and worthwhile takes a lot of time.”

It sounds like an obvious no-brainer, but it’s important to digest its complete meaning.

In today’s fast-food world, we want convenience so we have drive-thru.

In the technology world, we want instant information, so we search on Google.

All of this has truly corrupted our perception of true value and the time it takes to create it.

Fast food is terrible for you. Better, much healthier food must be measured and prepared.

Instant access to information isn’t natural. What ever happened to learning something new over time?

When you know what you want, assess the quality in which you want it in and proceed with the utmost patience and dedication.

In the case of my wife and our new home, she wanted double vanities for bathrooms, and of course, her persistence allowed her to get her way in the end. However, you better believe she had to be patient throughout the process.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you should recognize each of these from my constant updates throughout the entire month. This is a clean all-inclusive list of the top 25 UCF holiday items that I conjured up for all of the fellow Knights out there.

1. UCF USB Flash Drive
2. UCF Wrapping Paper
3. UCF Tie
4. UCF Santa Hat
5. UCF iPhone Case and Another One
6. UCF Ball Ornament
7. UCF Board Shorts
8. UCF Dog Collar
9. UCF Socks
10. UCF Puzzle
11. UCF Golf Balls
12. UCF Tumbler Cup
13. UKnighted For The Cure T-Shirt
14. UCF Carbon Fiber Pen
15. Monsoon Survivor T-Shirt
16. UCF Hat
17. UCF Homecoming 2011 T-Shirt
18. UCF Notepad
19. Once A Knight, Always a Knight T-Shirt
20. UCF Bottle Opener
21. I Love Knights T-Shirt
22. UCF Wall Clock
23. UCF Window Decal
24. UCF Helmet Desk Caddy
25. UCF Sunglasses

The Email Game is an interesting solution to people with this problem.

Essentially, the Email Game is an application that grabs your email account and toggles through your latest emails one-by-one. With each email, a timer is displayed, and it then becomes your task to reply, read, or dispose the email before the timer runs out. Although the points aren’t as important to me, you do earn them each time you succeed. However, it’s more about the time saving component for me.

I have been using the Email Game for almost two weeks now and I can honestly say that it saves me hours everyday. I used to have to monitor email all day waiting for important Client issues, but now I can take 5 minutes every few hours to toggle through everything super quickly.

Check out the Email Game and let me know what you think. For your reference, I have embedded their overview video below.

The Email Game – Conquer your Email from Baydin Inc. on Vimeo.

I have a lot of thoughts on this and I’d like to share some of them with you.

First of all, never bet against a guy like Jeff Bezos. Over the years, he has done a countless number of impressive and unexpected things with the Amazon brand. He’s acquired major companies, he’s disrupted the publishing world, and most recently, he is proving that a less expensive product, even if you lose money on each sale, equals more market (and mind) share and creates lifelong customer loyalty. What he has done with the new Kindle Fire is arguably just as impressive as the unveiling of the first generation iPad (at least to me). It’s still an e-Reader (not a tablet), yet it’s carving it’s own sub-section of tablet/reader hybrid products. And let’s not overlook the Silk browser. The caching technology alone is as innovative as something like a browser can be. I can’t wait to see how Silk disrupts browsing on the computer in 2012.

Next, if the aforementioned rumors are true, Amazon’s retail stores will be a whole lot more than just Kindles. Bezos has apparently been secretly working on a broad collection of retail products that can be offered under the Amazon label. I know this sounds risky, less-focused, and out of scope for an online company like Amazon, but again, Bezos is doing this for a reason. If you can pick up some other amazing products while you’re in a store shopping for a Kindle, you’re going to do it – especially if you already love the Kindle and have shopped with Amazon for several years already. After all, isn’t Amazon known for having just about everything on their site?

That leads me to my next point. Amazon has done their time. They’ve served billions of customers over the years. In order to continue being an innovative technology company as oppose to just being a stale e-commerce site, they have to continue to grow. How else can Amazon’s products reach the older generations that deserve to read from a Kindle? It’s much easier to sell a newbie on a product when their grandchild begs them to go into a store because they have been shopping at Amazon online for 7 years. From that, more eyeballs will generate even more sales – but it all stems from the trust that they have built with the world over time.

There is no stopping Jeff Bezos anytime soon. I will continue to follow his every move as an entrepreneur as he continues to innovate and disrupt any of the markets he can touch. It’s a real pleasure to watch him.

What do you think about Bezos? Please leave your comments below.

I will be aggressively studying social media globalization throughout 2012. You never know – my studies might just lead to a book of some kind. I think the topic alone lends itself to a heap of interesting topics to discuss, so we’ll see how I can format everything together in one tight package.

To serve as light promotion for a great company that Endagon works with around the globe, I wanted to throw a link over to a great SEO company that is worth checking out. If you’re looking for SEO optimisation (note the difference in UK spelling) in the UK, look no further than these links.

I look forward to enlightening everyone on my findings throughout 2012. Get ready to learn a lot more about global markets – whether you like it or not.

A lot of the commerce taking place on the web has been designed like that of a pyramid. A great product is created, then passed down the line, either as an imitation or repackaged in the form of a Reseller’s program.

A good example of a business that creates this type of value down the line of consumption is PHP Dir Submit. Essentially, this site sells a “business in a box,” which allows purchasers to open their doors as a service provider thereafter. This particular product is an article directory submitter, but I’m sure you can see how this type of business infrastructure can work in many types of verticals.

If your passion lends itself to a multi-tiered sharing system, tap into it. Be careful, however, that you don’t cross into being an MLM or a Ponzi scheme. At the core of the business has to be a valuable product that is actually well worth the purchase.