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How to comply with the new CAN-SPAM amendments

Last week we talked about the new amendments to the CAN-SPAM Act and how they could affect your business. Today, I’d like to offer a few simple ways to comply with the older regulation that requires a mailing address on all communications that are commercial in nature.

The new amendments allow you to use a PO Box as your mailing address. This just clarifies the rules as many mailers were already using PO Boxes.

One thing I have always believed when it comes to remembering to do things like backup files or include important “boiler plate” information in mailings – if it isn’t automatic, it isn’t going to happen. At some point, you’ll forget to include it – and that’s the email that some busy-body will use to report you to the powers that be.

Both AutoResponse Plus (ARP) and aWeber have the ability to insert the required information in your emails. They go about it in different ways but they both accomplish the goal.

Another very important provision of the amended CAN-SPAM Act is that you provide a “Single-Option Opt-out.” This is one that a lot of mailers have long failed on by creating complicated processes for unsubscribing – but no more.

From here on in, you need to comply with the new amendments and both AutoResponse Plus and aWeber have long had the feature of single action opt-out.

My email autoresponder services is one of the places where I’ve found that the available Open Source solutions come up short. There is a first-rate Open Source mailing list manager – PHPList – that does a great job for newsletter-type users where the autoresponder service isn’t necessary.

If you need an autoresponder, the best choices by far are AutoResponder Plus if you prefer a self-hosted solution with no monthly fees and aWeber if you prefer a solution where someone else has the responsibilities of software management.

Which ever of these solutions you choose, be sure to back up your mailing lists to your own computer. ARP has a simple export and download function that helps make the process very simple. aWeber has a more complex procedure, but one that anyone can master quickly.

The new amendments are easy to comply with. Using ARP or aWeber makes it even easier.

New emailing rules go into effect at the end of this month. Don’t get caught with your pants down on this one or you might have a problem. The changes aren’t earth-shaking but you will need to know and comply with them if you email any kind of commercial message to a list of virtually any kind.

The Federal Trade Commission has now issued four new rules that amend the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The amendments go into effect at the end of this month – June, 2008.

The amendments affect all senders of any commercial email with a list of any size from 2, on up.

Here are the rules:

#1 The receiver of the email cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her email address and opt-out preferences, and must be able to opt-out of the mailing list using a SINGLE ACTION.

This may be by replying to the email – or by clicking ONE link to go to a SINGLE web page.

#2 The use of the word “person” is defined in regard to whether the CAN-SPAM Act applies. “Person” is now defined to include non-companies. In other words, any and everyone can be liable for sending commercial email – breathing person, company, organization, etc.

#3 You may use a post office box or private mailbox (PMB) – rather than the address of an actual private building – as the physical address in your commercial mailings to satisfy the CAN-SPAM Act.

#4 For any mailing containing advertisements from 3rd party advertisers, either the party who the email is “from” must have an advertisement in the email – or – all of the advertisers with ads in the mailing are responsible for opt-out requests.

This is known as the “Designated Sender” rule. When the party listed in the “From” field has an ad in the mailing, that party becomes responsible for processing opt-out requests.

Source: http://www.i-cop.org/journal/06-23-08.htm
Author: jl scott
You can read jl scott’s take on this in the June 23rd i-Cop Newsletter.

In my opinion, these new amendments cover the places where people most often run afoul of the CAN-SPAM Act. The most common error is not having a “single option opt-out.” And since the term “persons” now includes non-companies (individuals, in other words), it is easy to be in non-compliance even if you are sending emails to a group from your AOL or Gmail accounts or even from your desktop if your email contains any type of commercial solicitation.

Please be aware that complying with the Act and the new amendments is YOUR responsibility as a mailer. If you’d like to read the entire 109 memorandum on these amendments, you can get it here.

Video instruction helps shorten your learning curve when faced with using new software and shows you how to get the most out of your new tools. I use videos to learn new software, programming or any other challenges whenever it is available. And being able to download entire sets of videos on a single subject means they’ll be there when I need to review them.

Professionally-produced video sets currently available show you how to get up and running with some of today’s most popular software. Start Blogging with WordPress. Set up and easily adminster your website with no knowledge of HTML or PHP using a Content Management System (CMS) such as Joomla!, Mambo or Drupal. Create a Membership site using the proven and easy-to-use DLGuard. Create, manipulate, correct and improve photos, graphics and images with theGIMP, and much more.

The 7DollarVideoStore.com has dozens of how-to videos, all available for no more than $7. 7DollarVideoStore.com has created a resource for anyone needing to “learn and earn” on the Internet.

Video instruction helps shorten your learning curve when faced with using new software and shows you how to get the most out of it. I use video tools to learn new software or programming challenges whenever it is available. And being able to download entire sets of videos on a single subject means they’ll be there when I need to review them.

We’re including a sample video from the July 2008 set – Drupal Content Management System to give you an idea of the quality of 7DollarVideoStore.com video instruction. This is video 3 of a 17 video set and shows you how to do a manual install of Drupal.

NOTE: The Drupal Videos mentioned in this article are not yet available on the new website. Register at 7DollarVideoStore.com and we’ll let know know when it is. We are working hard to assure that all videos previously available at HowDoIDoThatVideos.com will be at 7DollarVideoStore.com soon.

When I worked with the interactive (web and internet) departments of some ad agencies, we had at least one person whose whole job was quality control. They went through the code after we finished with it and cleaned up anything that wasn’t right. The age of Dreamweaver was sort of like the digital photography takeover. Almost anyone could do it, but overall quality fell. The error was believing that the search engines would find a way to tolerate the sloppy code and still produce great rankings – or even want to. That was quaint but not true.

Good clean code still helps with search engine rankings. I have at times given in to quantity over quality and it’s bit me most every time. Haste truly makes waste. Google, Yahoo, MSN et al still black mark bad code and things like misspellings. It’s not that they have the tolerance for error of teaching nuns – they frankly have no idea what a "webstie" is – nor do they care. Quality control lives.

Another problem with sloppy work is that once you discover it, you have to go through every page and correct the issues. Errors in spelling would be obvious to most of us, but errors in coding, while invisible to us, stand out like a flare to a machine reading the code as a text file – which is exactly what it is.

I recently read a page where the writer used every version of “there” – “there”, “their” and “they’re” and used everyone of them in the wrong context. Another used “your” for everything. “Your a great person, but I have no use for your poor grammar.” If you know where the error was in that sentence, you’re one of the majority, but that’s not good enough.

This is tough on those whose native language is not English, but some of the worst offenders seem to be those to whom English is a first language.

I have no doubt that I’ve made many of the same type of mistakes. I try to look over each article more than once and proof-read after letting the article sit for a while (it’s ALWAYS a bad idea to proof-read your own copy, but sometimes we are all we have).

The WYSIWYG editors of most of the Open Source web solutions we recommend have a built-in spell checker. That can help a lot.

But don’t always rely on the spell check function. Spell check is great, but it can’t tell that “tome” is wrong when you meant “to me.” Some of the worst atrocities can be traced to copying from a spell- and grammar-checked Word doc and then pasted into a WYSIWYG editor. This would very likely produce mostly accurate spelling and grammar, but could also produce butchered code that would display very messily in a web browser.

So take a little time before you hit the “Publish” button. Run spell check, correct any errors it finds, then save the page and walk away. Do something else before you proof-read. Or better yet, have someone else proof-read it.

Losing your laptop sucks. It isn’t just the money, it’s everything on the computer that should have been backed up but wasn’t.

There are several tracking solutions that track the computer after it’s been lost or stolen and report important information back to a datacenter. But if the datacenter can track the computer and ne’er-do-wells who stole it, theycan also track you. And that raises some serious privacy questions.

But what of you could track your Mac or PC laptop without the aid of a datacenter? Wouldn’t that be nice?

GadgetTrak, anti theft for mobile devices, has solutions not only for your Mac or Windows laptop, but also for your Blackberry, Symbian or Windows Mobile device, Portable drives and devices such as iPods, MP3 players, flash drives, memory cards and digital camers can also be tracked using special USB software. And protection for your iPhone or Touch is coming soon. GadgetTrak’s pricing is very reasonable.

There’s no guarantee that you can recover your missing device even with this software, but it sure increases the odds.

GadgetTrak is at: http://www.gadgettrak.com

Great software that you don’t have to pay for.

On Wednesday, we published a very useful, but admittedly incomplete list of Open Source software for PCs running Windows. Today, we have the list for Macintosh users.

Here are a few of our favorite Open Source applications for Max OS X – most of which we use on a regular basis. We’ll list some our favorite free applications for Windows and Macs in later posts. In the near future, we’ll go in these great apps a little more in-depth, one at a time.

In the meantime, download the ones that interest you and start using them. If you have any reservations about learning about how they work, visit HowDoIDoThatVideos.com and see if there is video for the software. If there isn’t now, there very likely will be in the near future.

Web Browsers

If you’re not using Firefox, the Open Source web browser from Mozilla.org, you are missing out on some of the best the web has to offer. Faster and more standards compliant than Internet Explorer, extensible with add-ons that allow you to surf the net safer and easier, themes that allow your Firefox to look like you want it, and much more. Use more than one computer. There is a Firefox plugin that keeps your Bookmarks in sync on two or more computers, even if you have a mix of PCs, Macs and Linux boxes. Get Firefox here.

Camino is an open source web browser developed with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users. The Camino web browser is powerful, secure, and ready to meet the needs of all users while remaining simple and elegant in its design. Camino combines the awesome visual and behavioral experience that has been central to the Macintosh philosophy with the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine. Get Camino here.

Sea Monkey – Web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editing made simple — all your Internet needs in one application. Get the Sea Monkey suite here.

Email

Thunderbird from Mozilla.org is an extensible Open Source desktop email client that is at home on PCs, Macs and Linux alike. Just like web browser Firefox, Thunderbird has a ton of plugins and themes so you can get it to look like you want and do what you want. Pick up and send mail from multiple email accounts, set up signatures for each of your mailboxes, and much more. Like all Open Source software, Thunderbird is free for you to download and use. Get Thunderbird here.

Calendar

One more Mozilla product before we move on. If you have a need for a desktop calendar program (and who doesn’t?), you might want to give Mozilla Sunbird a try. Set appointments and alarms, get help remembering birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates. Schedule your days and weeks. Set reminders about dates far in the future. Then publish the calendars you choose to the web in standard iCal format. There’s even a 3rd party PHP application that can handle that for you. Get Sunbird here.

Office Applications

NeoOffice is the Mac OS X-native port of OpenOffice. NeoOffice can do anything that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access can do. But it can do more. And it’s much easier on our wallet. NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office. Get NeoOffice here.

AbiWord 2.6.3 is an award winning, small, fast, full-featured and cross-platform word processor. Get your copy today to experience the state of the art in word processing. Light weight, easy to use and it can read and write MS Word and Open Doc files. Get AbiWord here.

Bean is a small, easy-to-use word processor (or more precisely, a rich text editor), designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable. Bean is Open Source, fully Cocoa, and is available free of charge! MS Word, OpenOffice, etc. try to be all things to all people. But sometimes you just want the right tool for the job. That is Bean’s niche. Bean is not a replacement for MS Word. It does not do footnotes and is only partially compatible with the various Word formats (more here). Get Bean here.

Image Processing

Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework. It runs natively in Mac OS X – it does NOT require X-11. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP’s technology and uses the same native file format. However, unlike the GIMP, Seashore only aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products. Seashore was created by Mark Pazolli who, together with a handful of other developers and helpful users, still develops it to this day. I have used it for basic image processing jobs like resizing images and adjusting color and it worked just fine. Get Seashore here.

Ever had a need for PhotoShop but couldn’t justify the expense of buying it. If so, you owe it to ourself to take a good look at theGIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP can do most of the things that PhotoShop can do and it’s Open Source so anyone can download and use it. There are hundreds of plugins and extensions developed by theGIMP Community. TheGIMP can read and write PhotoShop PSD files as well handle images in it’s native XCF format. As I write this, running theGIMP on a Mac requires the use of the X-11 system extension which is not very Mac-like. You can install X-11 from your OS X installation disks. An OS X-native version of theGIMP is in the works, but no date has been set for it’s release to the general public. Get theGIMP here.

Video

Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats.
Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional Media Types:
• MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivX, H.264, FLV1, FSV1, VP6, H263I, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), MPEG Layer II Audio
• AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
• Subtitle support for SSA and SRT
Get Perian here.

VLC Media Player (formerly VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. I have used it to play AVI files that have audio or video problems when played in QuickTime even with the Perian plugin. Get VLC here.

Audio Processing

Record, edit and output audio files in all of the popular formats including MP3, WAV, AIFF and Ogg Vorbis. Convert your records and tapes into digital recording and put them on CDs. Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds. Audacity is cross-platform and top-quality. Get Audacity here.

HTML and Text Editing

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. KompoZer has built-in FTP and site management capability. Get KompoZer here.

Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs – like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on. Versins are also available for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.3.9. Get Smultron here.

FTP Client

Open Source and cross-platform, we use this program all the time. It is fast and has a logical side-by-side interface. FileZilla supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). It supports resume and transfer of large files. Site Manager, drag-and-drop and remote file editing are just a few more of it’s features. Get FileZilla here.

Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, QuickLook and the Keychain. Very easy to use “drag-and-drop” interface. Get Cyberduck here.

RSS Client

Applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites are called RSS readers or “aggregators.” RSSOwl is such an application. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It’s easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It’s platform-independent. Get RRS Owl here.

File Utility

Very simple to use and install – simply copy it into your Applications folder or whereever you prefer, and then set archive filetypes to open using it. This can either be done the usual way, or by double-clicking the icon to show The Unarchiver’s preferences. Supported file formats include Zip, Tar-GZip, Tar-BZip2, Rar, 7-zip, LhA, StuffIt and many other more or less obscure formats. Support for so many formats is achieved by using the libxad unarchiving library. Get Unarchiver here.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of Open Source software for the Mac platform. These are programs I’ve used and feel comfortable recommending. We’ll be reviewing more software as time allows. A more complete list of Mac Open Source software is available at: OpenSourceWindows.org

FreeSMUG is the Macintosh Free Software Mac User Group. There’s a whole lot of info on free software for the Mac including update news on Open Source software. FreeSMUG holds events around the world and live streaming video of the events is available at the FreeSMUG website.

Great software that you don’t have to pay for.

So what’s the difference between Open Source and Free?

Wikipedia describes Open Source software as “Open source software (OSS) projects are built and maintained by network of volunteer programmers. Prime examples of open source products are the Apache HTTP Server, the internet address system Internet Protocol, and the internet browser Mozilla Firefox. Yet, one of the most successful programs is the Linux operating system, an open source Unix-like operating system.”

Free software is often created and maintained by commercial software developers who release a free version in order to let you try their application before buying a more feature-laden version. Often, the free version serves the user’s needs quite well.

The web hosting offered by OrangeCat.net uses several Open Source applications including the FreeBSD operating system (also the underpinning of Apple’s Mac OSX) and the Apache web server software.

Here are a few of our favorite Open Source applications for the Windows O/S – most of which we use on a regular basis. We’ll list some our favorite free applications for Windows and Macs in later posts. We’ll have our Open Source list for Macs later this week. In the near future, we’ll go in these great apps a little more in-depth, one at a time.

In the meantime, download the ones that interest you and start using them. If you have any reservations about learning about how they work, visit HowDoIDoThatVideos.com and see if there is video for the software. If there isn’t now, there very likely will be in the near future.

Web Browsers

If you’re not using Firefox, the Open Source web browser from Mozilla.org, you are missing out on some of the best the web has to offer. Faster and more standards compliant than Internet Explorer, extensible with add-ons that allow you to surf the net safer and easier, themes that allow your Firefox to look like you want it, and much more. Use more than one computer. There is a Firefox plugin that keeps your Bookmarks in sync on two or more computers, even if you have a mix of PCs, Macs and Linux boxes. Get Firefox here.

Email

Thunderbird from Mozilla.org is an extensible Open Source desktop email client that is at home on PCs, Macs and Linux alike. Just like web browser Firefox, Thunderbird has a ton of plugins and themes so you can get it to look like you want and do what you want. Pick up and send mail from multiple email accounts, set up signatures for each of your mailboxes, and much more. Like all Open Source software, Thunderbird is free for you to download and use. Get Thunderbird here.

Calendar

One more Mozilla product before we move on. If you have a need for a desktop calendar program (and who doesn’t?), you might want to give Mozilla Sunbird a try. Set appointments and alarms, get help remembering birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates. Schedule your days and weeks. Set reminders about dates far in the future. Then publish the calendars you choose to the web in standard iCal format. There’s even a 3rd party PHP application that can handle that for you. Get Sunbird here.

Office Applications

OpenOffice can do anything that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access can do. But it can do more. And it’s much easier on our wallet. In their own words, “OpenOffice.org 2 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.” Get OpenOffice here.

AbiWord 2.6.3 is an award winning, small, fast, full-featured and cross-platform word processor. Get your copy today to experience the state of the art in word processing. Light weight, easy to use and it can read and write MS Word and Open Doc files. Get AbiWord here.

Image Processing

Ever had a need for PhotoShop but couldn’t justify the expense of buying it. If so, you owe it to ourself to take a good look at theGIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP can do most of the things that PhotoShop can do and it’s Open Source so anyone can download and use it. There are hundreds of plugins and extensions developed by theGIMP Community. TheGIMP can read and write PhotoShop PSD files as well handle images in it’s native XCF format. Get theGIMP here.

Audio Processing

Record, edit and output audio files in all of the popular formats including MP3, WAV, AIFF and Ogg Vorbis. Convert your records and tapes into digital recording and put them on CDs. Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds. Audacity is cross-platform and top-quality. Get Audacity here.

HTML and Text Editing

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. KompoZer has built-in FTP and site management capability. Get KompoZer here.

Notepad++ is a free (free as in “free speech”, but also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. It features syntax color-coding and some nice HTML features. Get Notepad++ here.

Last updated (v3.70) in 2004, Crimson Editor is an oldie but goodie. HTML and PHP syntax coloring, simple interface, light-weight text editing program, it is no longer in development, but is available for download. If your are comfortable hand-coding, Crimson Editor may be all you’ll ever need. Get Crimson Editor here.

FTP Client

Open Source and cross-platform, we use this program all the time. It is fast and has a logical side-by-side interface. FileZilla supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). It supports resume and transfer of large files. Site Manager, drag-and-drop and remote file editing are just a few more of it’s features. Get FileZilla here.

RSS Client

Applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites are called RSS readers or “aggregators.” RSSOwl is such an application. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It’s easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It’s platform-independent. Get RRS Owl here.

File Utility

Fantastic archiving utility to extract and pack archives of an extensive amount of formats. PeaZip also features password protecting archives, keyfile support, system integration, a lovely interface, and much more.Get PeaZip here.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of Open Source software for the Windows platform. These are programs I’ve used and feel comfortable recommending. We’ll be reviewing more software as time allows. A more complete list of Windows Open Source software is available at: OpenSourceWindows.org

I’ve got some news about a special project from OrangeCat.net that could benefit all of you tremendously.

Learning to use new technologies effectively can save you time and money. Lots of time and money. But the learning curve of most software, especially web software can be intimidating.

Tech manuals are written by tech people for tech people. They assume a basic knowledge of the subject that you may not have.

That’s not your fault. The time you spend running your business eats up a large part of your day. You’d rather not spend your precious family and personal time studying how to use the latest whiz-bang software.

I recently had a customer tell me that even though they knew that having a blog could really help them gain new business as well as retain current business, she just didn’t have the time to invest in learning how to setup and use a blog.

Now, that’s something we can all relate to.

That customer’s problem got me to thinking. Why couldn’t there be an easier way for busy business persons to have a website complete with all software set up for them? Why couldn’t it be delivered turn-key and ready-to-go ? Then why couldn’t there be a way to learn to use that software in a user-friendly, time-efficient way backed up by world class service?

Well, now there is. And you are among the first to hear about it.
(It hasn’t been officially launched yet)

OrangeCat.net has put together software and hosting packages that make it easy for you to have your own blog, put your real estate listings online or both – and its all set up for you and accessorized with add-ons to make your website even more effective.

Get it now! => http://www.OrangeCat.net/ez/

And how about that easy way to learn we promised?

HowDoIDoThatVideos.com has video sets you can watch at your leisure and learn all about the software on your website. And if that’s not enough, membership in HowDoIDoThatVideos.com is F-R-E-E to all OrangeCat.net hosting customers.

You can join HowDoIDoThatVideos.com without being an OrangeCat customer. See the website for more information.

So what are you waiting for? Your competition is getting ready. Are you?

Get it now! => http://www.OrangeCat.net/ez/