Are Seven

Just a few unsorted broadcasts on the tech tip…

First off is that, now that the areseven.com feeds are working, those of you who are subscribed to both the Are Seven feed and the Tech feed are going to be getting tech posts twice: one in each feed. If you’re an Are Seven glutton and like it this way, you’re welcome to keep it that way. Just sayin’ you don’t need to, so you can unsub from the Tech feed and still get all of the tech posts with no problem. Those of you who want only the tech posts don’t need to do nothin’.

Second is a thought: while this site remains ad free, I thought I’d point something out to you. You know those “sponsored ads” on Google searches? They’re actually worth clicking on. They show up based on your search terms and Google does a great job at making sure that they’re going to the sites and services they say they are. It’s natural to brush them off as just advertising, but you can really find some good stuff that way. Let your eyes wander right on your search results and you just might find some good stuff.

Where you really should be clicking is on people’s blogs. Bloggers and site owners make money off of those ads, and the easiest way to financially tip the people who give the content that so entertains you is to take a look at these ads when you visit the site and click on the ones you see. As always, click sincerely. Don’t just click an ad that doesn’t interest you at all. But if something looks even mildly interesting, go ahead and click, knowing that it’s essentially a small donation to your favorite sites that costs you nothing.

Finally, there’s something you may not know about email newsletters you get.  You know how email programs will now ask you if you want to load images?  The reason that they do this is that the only way that the sender of an email can know that you opened an email is if the images are loaded.  Even “plain text” messages have a tiny image in them that sends open information.

The reason that the email programs have made it standard to not load images is obviously because of spammers.  But there are a lot of legitimate companies out there that gauge interest in the content of their newsletters by the open rate, and if you’re not loading the images, your opens aren’t being counted as a vote in favor of that newsletter.  So the next time you get a newsletter from an online magazine or nonprofit you support, load those images on up.

You’re done now.  Great job.  Go ahead and take the rest of the day off.

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