Zanola on the Go – what happens in one second online

Here’s a mental image to wrap your head around:  if one byte were represented by one gallon of water, the amount of information transferred across the internet each second (7.79 terabytes/second) would fill the Pacific Ocean in 122 days. 

In the world of social media, 4,051 photos are posted to Facebook every second. Every day on WordPress (which we use to host this blog), 6,649,776 novels-worth of blog content is read.

This data, and more, was part of this interactive infographic on The Content Explosion – what happens in a single second online. We encourage you to check it out!

At Zanola, where most of our employees work from remote offices, we found this information particularly striking. It’d be interesting to see how many bodies of water full of information the Zanola team fills from week to week, with research, general communication, document sharing, and more.

With so much information being shared in the world each second, even if we occupy just a drop in the bucket (or the ocean), it is vital that we keep ourselves organized. We rely heavily on our online storage and organization tools.

Dropbox makes it easy for us to share photos and PDFs and other documents with other Zanola employees and clients.

LastPass securely stores our passwords and information for filling forms online.

Smartsheet is our invaluable resource for keeping all documents for one project together from start to finish – from proposals and agreements to final drafts of studies.
Add linked Smartsheet logo with text wrapped to the right.

Evernote is our resource for clipping quick notes, websites, images, and more for our research.

We encourage you to check out the infographic, as well as our organization tools. We hope they help you stay on top of your part of the 7.70 terabytes per second!

Zanola on the Go

Today’s blog post is brought to you by Rachel Ballard, Zanola’s research manager.

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Recently, we read an article with projections for Airbnb, a trusted community marketplace that provides an alternative to hotel rooms, providing users with an opportunity to list, find, and book unique accommodations around the world. The projects indicate a predicted boom among business travelers using Airbnb.

At Zanola, we haven’t used Airbnb for our business travels, but two Zanola employees, myself included, have used Airbnb for personal travel in recent months. Overall, we both gave the resource rave reviews, an almost too-easy-to-be-true method of booking a bed for travel.

Airbnb users are great about leaving detailed, honest reviews, which put our minds at ease while booking. In our experience, the apartments on Airbnb provide a unique perspective on travel that you may not get otherwise – apartments are embedded in city neighborhoods that are full of unique character, a refreshing experience from the typical row of hotels in tourist-heavy areas.

Apartments can be rented by room or by the entire place, with fees that are competitive to hotel prices (or in our cases, the cost of an entire apartment was even more competitively priced than a hotel.) 

Our tips – ask if a cleaning service is used. Both of us felt that the apartments could have been cleaner when we got there. Also, find out as much as you can about the apartment layout and think through if the space will work for the length of time you want. One of us had a separate sitting area, but for the other, the only option for seating in the apartment was the bed, which became tiresome for the duration of the weekend. 

We’re excited to see Airbnb take off!

By Rachel Ballard