Helpful Travel Tips

Just a few helpful travel tips .

BOOK AIRLINE TRAVEL from 12:01AM WEDNESDAY MORNING (Eastern Standard Time) on; all new fares are announced/posted at midnight Tuesday evening for the next week

SIGN-UP FOR ALL E-MAIL NOTICES of special prices from low cost airlines that serve your city or target destination (or are near-by).   Examples include: Kayak's FareAlert, Southwest Ding! Fares, Southwest Click 'n Save fares, AirTran, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit Airline Red Light fares.  The low cost airlines' special fares are much less restrictive than the high cost carriers' week-end specials.  You can get a weekly summary of many of the airlines weekend specials at SmarterTravel.com. 

LAST MINUTE TRAVEL – Are you retired, a student off for the summer or can take time off from your job on short notice – then register with various “last minute travel sites” who offer incredible deals for short 3 or 4 days vacations to even longer 14-21 vacation land and or cruise packages – Why??  Arrangements are made & once that ship sails or hotel night passes the revenues can’t be made up, so they’d rather sell the package cheap, knowing you’ll spend money on liquor, side trips, gambling & other amenities…  Some incredible deals if you can leave on a few days notice

CONFIRM ARRANGEMENTS. If transportation and hotel are included in the travel package, ask how to contact those companies and confirm with them directly that the reservations have been made.  Always be sure to print off confirmations and keep a print copy with your folder or send yourself an email with the info..(with being able to sync phones & emails & claendars today it's easier than ever to access this info)

EMAIL YOURSELF ALL PERTINENT INFO: Send yourself an email including all airline info; hotel & car rental info & confirmation #'s an rates quoted; list of credit cards you are taking and their pertinent info - #'s, type, exp date, sc code, bank tele #'s; list of all your medications & dosages; doctors names etc... Today no matter where you go you will find a computer so that you can access this data in a pinch..

If you have a suggestion that might be helpful to others when they are travelling, we'd love to hear it...

What is "Android" ???

We hear about Android Tablets & Android Smartphones all the time, but what is Android?

According to Wikipedia, "Android is a Linux-based operating system designed primarily for touch screen mobile devices such as Smartphone's and tablet computers. Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google backed financially and later purchased in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007 along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance: a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. The first Android-powered phone was sold in October 2008.

Android is open source and Google releases the code under the Apache License. This open source code and permissive licensing allows the software to be freely modified and distributed by device manufacturers, wireless carriers and enthusiast developers. Additionally, Android has a large community of developers writing applications ("apps") that extend the functionality of devices, written primarily in a customized version of the Java programming language. In October 2012, there were approximately 700,000 apps available for Android, and the estimated number of applications downloaded from Google Play, Android's primary app store, was 25 billion.

These factors have allowed Android to become the world's most widely used smartphone platform and the software of choice for technology companies who require a low-cost, customizable, lightweight operating system for high tech devices without developing one from scratch. As a result, despite being primarily designed for phones and tablets, it has seen additional applications on televisions, games consoles and other electronics. Android's open nature has further encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open source code as a foundation for community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices which were officially released running other operating systems."

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you and your family and we hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.  

I want to apologize for the lack of postings the last several weeks - in addition to the normal hustle and bustle of the holidays, I had some major back issues.  So while I was in Boston for the holidays, I finally said "uncle" and gave in and had a necessary medical procedure on my back.  As a result, and much to my dismay, I was unable to spend anytime on the computer (not an easy task for me) as most of you can imagine.....

But I'm pleased to say that I am finally feeling better and look forward to getting back to blogging and teaching...

We hope you will enjoy this little break and we look forward to seeing all of you who are currently taking classes - back when classes resume next week - and it will be week 7 of the current series...

For those of you who are planning to take the next series that will begin the week of February 11th and continue into May (with breaks in February and April during school vacations)..

So enjoy the "refreshing" weather and stay warm... and if you have a topic for our blog or for a class that we should do, I'd love to hear from you...so email me anytime: cherie_houston@hotmail.com