|

April Follies

In Windows you can chain-load many programs using ninite.com and now there is a similar method for installing many applications at the same time on the Mac Head over to GetMacApps.com and don’t get scared with using the Terminal to accomplish this.

One final reminder Windows XP and Office 2003 security support ends this month, April 8th.  This means no more security updates, even if the bad guys figure something from the patches Microsoft might be issuing for Windows Vista, 7, and 8. At least, Microsoft will continue updates for Security Essentials, although you won’t be able to do a new install of SE on XP.

An email marketing company has found the sweet spot for email subject line word count and likelihood of an email being opened. Focus the subject line with between six and tens words to achieve the highest chance of your message being opened. They found that greater number of words really dropped the open rate, with fewer words suffering a bit less but still the best is 6-10.

I realize that I often toss out abbreviations and acronyms, presuming that everyone knows what they mean. A recent study by VoucherCloud shows that I should not always assume that everyone knows what HTML or gigabyte is. They found that a bit over ten percent of Americans thought HTML was an STD, translated as a website programming language being thought of as a sexually transmitted disease. Even more think a gigabyte is some kind of insect, when it is a measure of data storage. I am sure there are questions about how this survey was done, but after chuckling a bit, I realized I should be more careful when using computer shorthand. So, email me with some of those acronyms or abbreviations that you find mystifying, even when you have tried to google them and can not figure out what they really mean.

A number I would not have thought to figure out, 54. That being how many days ahead of a flight you should buy your ticket for the cheapest price. At least for USA flights, says cheapair.com, you should buy your ticket between one and three months ahead of time. This is the power of big data, they analyzed over four million tickets sales in one year to figure this out. I suspect that for travel around the major holidays you would want to book earlier, cheapair.com does point out that fares won’t drop when demand is always high for certain locations and time.

Similar Posts