I learned about “content farms” from NPR.
“Content farms pay people almost no money to turn out very mediocre content that can serve up very cheap ads.” This generates hits for advertisers, when search engines find matches with low value or little real information – just filler pulled together in minutes.
Recently, Google made changes to try to filter these sites out.
The here is the full (short) transcript: Google Tweaks Algorithm To Spot ‘Content Farms’
I learned that, here in the U.S. of A., periods and commas generally go inside quotation marks when they run into each other. I also learned that the misuse of this order of things causes physical pain to my sister, so I won’t be getting that wrong again any time soon!
Hey, what would I know? I was a computer science major and although my friends (yeah, you know who you are) made great use of my gorgeous baby blue electric typewriter that my dad bought me for college, I calculated that I typed about six pages during that time. I’m pretty sure that none of them contained quotation marks.
BTW this rule made no sense to me until I found out how it came to be! This is from the Grammar Guide of the Capital Community College Foundation:
There are peculiar typographical reasons why the period and comma go inside the quotation mark in the United States. The following explanation comes from the“Frequently Asked Questions” file of alt.english.usage: “In the days when printing used raised bits of metal, “.” and “,” were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a ‘”‘ on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using ‘.”‘ and ‘,”‘ rather than ‘”.’ and ‘”,’, regardless of logic.” This seems to be an argument to return to something more logical, but there is little impetus to do so within the United States.
From the same site: “In the United Kingdom, Canada, and islands under the influence of British education, punctuation around quotation marks is more apt to follow logic.” <– for Lava
I have learned, or I am trying to learn, to check out major websites on the first of April, every year.
Favorites this year are Google (featuring Gmail motion) and LinkedIn (check out “People You May Know”).
But you have to do it today.
Quick! What else?
While shopping for a digital camera at Best Buy, I tried the Consumer Reports app to look for ratings. All you do is hold the phone over the bar code on the box. No reviews yet but they did show that Amazon had it $10 cheaper so I asked for a price match, while flashing the Amazon page, and got it!
Today I was cutting though a different Best Buy and saw the cutest case for my new camera. I thought $20 was a bit steep so I tried the CR scanner again and got it for $9.99! (they did not have Amazon in the cash register list and had to use “other” but it worked!)
There are other bar code lookup apps that will tell prices. Let me know what works for you.
Here is the prize itself:
I learned that I can copy a column in Excel and paste it into a row (flipping it 90 degrees) by using Paste Special and checking the Transpose box.
Did you already know this?
Carolyn introduced me to ravelry.com. This website has an advanced search engine for over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND knit and crochet patters, and two thirds of those are free!
This is dangerous stuff.
From Gale:
I learned that when the temp is [very] cold, my garage fridge turns itself off and the food in the freezer defrosts.
Doodle is awesome – and free! It lets you propose and find common times to meet. Michelle introduced me to Doodle years ago when she used it for scheduling meetings across multiple companies. Since then we’ve used it for picking social dates, looking for common times. Now our family is using Doodle for elder care scheduling, looking to book unique times.
I learned a way to get around a missing feature: For “doodles” that span long periods of time, you lose the participant name on the side. It lacks what Excel calls “freeze panes”, so the names scroll away.
Steve showed me this: although you can’t always see the original list of names, each name will be displayed if you hover the mouse over a booked block.
Hey! I learned how to pull an Adobe document into a Powerpoint slide! It’s so easy!
1. Open the .pdf file.
[on my version of Adobe reader, which is 9]
2. Tools > Select & Zoom > Snapshot Tool
3. Click the corners of the area you want . This automatically copies to the clipboard and says so!
4. Paste into PowerPoint.
SCORE!
I was happy to learn that Southwest has $5 WiFi because it would give me a great opportunity to catch up on all the lessons I have scribbled on paper or filed in email.
It’s easy connect and it’s fun to track the plane over America (crossing border from Kansas to Colorado as I type this) but when I go to WordPress.com I this:
Oops!
You are trying to view a restricted site.
Please head back and remember that, in order to provide a fast, safe WiFi environment, Southwest must restrict access to some web sites
How rude!
Jane's Lessons Learned 