Short Takes: December 1, 2009
By SD Times Editorial Board
December 1, 2009 —
Spam-o Perpetua
Turns out Idaho isn't just full of potatoes.
The rural state leads all 50 United States in the amount of e-mail spam received there, with 93.8% of e-mail sent to Idaho considered spam, according to statistics released by security services company MessageLabs. The company’s executives attributed this high level of spam to the economic downturn and a rise in botnets.
The other highest-spammed states, in order, are Kentucky, New Jersey, Alabama, Illinois and Indiana. Montana, meanwhile, was named as the least spammed state. — Jeff Feinman
Leaving XP alone
The initial reports about Windows 7 are encouraging. Surveys are indicating that it is drawing swells of Windows Vista users to upgrade, and I'm not hearing any disaster stories.
Windows XP users, meanwhile, are staying put. That could be because Microsoft has no upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7, or their hardware might be too wimpy to run it. In doing so, Microsoft also saved itself—and users—from upgrades gone badly.
It was wise of Microsoft to make the cutoff at Windows Vista: Bad word of mouth could have sunk Windows 7. Windows Vista gave many users a bad impression that, unfortunately for Microsoft, did not go away. — David Worthington
Broadening the Web form horizon
I'd wager your company's customer base is quite diverse. Whether you're selling golf clubs or patent litigation, the folks who come to your corporate website likely come from a wide cross-section of the human experience.
One segment that often is overlooked is the transgender community. I attended a talk at the San Francisco hacker collective Noisebridge in October, where the speaker said there were more than 900 possible types of gender with which a person could identify. As such, the speaker suggested that Web registration processes offer more selections when asking users for their gender. It could be as simple (and some would say, degrading) as an “other,” option, or you could list a dozen or so sexuality/gender options.
It's not exactly a best practice, or even something that will likely accommodate more than 1% of your customers, but when a transgender user does sign up for something on your site and immediately notices the less myopic view of gender held by your company, you will likely win over a customer for life. It's a small thing, but when you spend your life feeling like you don't belong anywhere, something as simple as a Web form can make you feel a whole lot more comfortable in your own skin. — Alex Handy
Related Search Term(s): e-mail, Windows
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