Did you know the political emails & phone calls you get are allowed under current law?  I suspect many political candidates are taking advantage of this and calling/emailing folks like crazy this election year.  While it's currently not illegal to send out unwanted political email & robocalls, it's still possible to be considerate of the folks getting all this info.  I hope you can convince the right people to do the right thing before scheduling unwanted calls & emails (if you happen to be the person responsible for clicking those buttons). 

I'm posting excerpts & links to the current anti-spam & do-not-call regulations below for those interested.

Do Not Call Registry Regulations & Exemptions

Read the full text of the National Do Not Call Registry rules.

Do Not Call Exemptions

"Your organization does not engage in any "telemarketing" or "telephone solicitation" activities, as defined by the FTC and FCC, respectively. For example, survey calls and political polling calls are not covered by the definition of "telemarketing" or "telephone solicitations." An organization that places ONLY these types of calls may be an Exempt Organization."

If political robocalls get you down, you can register with stoppoliticalcalls.org to have your contact info forwarded to all political parties & candidates asking they not call you.

Can-Spam Act Rules & Exemptions

Read the full text of the Can-Spam Act then pay careful attention to the language regarding political candidates.

"The FCC’s ban also does not cover non-commercial messages, such as messages about candidates for public office."

Feel Good

Email services like iContact, MailChimp, and Campaign Monitor do not allow purchased lists or political lists.  There are plenty of other services that disallow these lists too.  I'm hoping for self-regulation among politicians (and candidates alike) so we don't have to create even more laws to manage calls & emails.

Disclaimer: I currently provide email design services to clients using Campaign Monitor, and MailChimp.  I really like both services.  iContact is adding new services all the time is also worth a look.  If you sign up for any of the linked services I will get a small commission in the form of email send credits.  I can use those for clients or for my own marketing efforts.

This post originally appeared at posterous.tinym.com. Thanks for reading!

Before you begin, be sure columns match in the csv files you wish to combine. If they match, then you can move on to the next step of removing column headers (copy/paste them into a blank spreadsheet if you need to save them to paste into your final combined csv file). Make sure your csv files are in the same folder. In this example, my sample files are saved in a folder called Files in the My Documents directory.

Combine Your Files

1. Open the Windows command prompt by going to your Start Menu, then click Run.
2. Enter cmd to open the command prompt Window.
3. Open the directory containing your csv files (virtual network directories not supported) using the cd command. It will look like this: C:\>cd C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\Files

4. Windows confirms you're in the correct directory. It will look something like this: C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\Files>
5. Now that you're in the proper directory, combine your files by typing the following where CombinedListName is the combined csv file name you assign. Hit enter to continue. Like this: copy *.csv CombinedListName.csv
6. Windows confirms your files have been combined.
   The confirmation: C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\Files>copy *.csv CombinedListName.csv
samplelist.csv
samplelist_.csv
1 file(s) copied.

Done! Open your newly combined file and add your column headers again (if needed).

chore chart

While I had multiple family members in mind, you can use this calendar however you like. It has the days of the week printed across the top, and space along the left-most column for names or tasks. Each day has a little bit of writing room when the calendar is printed on 8.5x11 paper. Get the biggest writing space by printing on 11x17 paper. The calendar is saved in color but prints well in black in white too.

Download Weekly Chore Calendar 300kb [pdf]

Curly background image available at sxc.hu
Font available at fontsquirrel.com

This item cannot be sold in any format without prior consent from it's author as well as the background image creator. By downloading this calendar, you agree not to sell this item or claim it as your own.

Copyblogger's Jonathon Morrow writes candidly about his own life, struggles, and the value of fighting for your ideas.

Read at Copyblogger: On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas

Download What Matters Now [pdf]

The List Starts Here...

SEO Tools

1. All In One SEO Pack
2. Google XML Sitemaps
3. Hide Pages

User Interactions & Social Media

4. cForms II
5. Simple:Press Forum
6. reCAPTCHA
7. FAQ Tastic
8. Feedburner Feed Replacement
9. Breadcrumb Navigation
10. Share This
11. Tweetmeme Button
12. Comment Luv

Shopping & Mailing Lists

13. WP Shopping Cart
14. Campaign Monitor (integrates well with WP Shopping Cart)

Utilities

15. Register Plus
16. WordPress Database Backup
17. GZIP Output

A few weeks ago I spent a considerable amount of time troubleshooting various JavaScript conflicts in a WordPress site I was working on for my employer. Part of the page design included a neat JavaScript-based fisheye navigation menu. I was happy with the icons and their behavior on the page until we activated a featured content plugin. That plugin caused all kinds of strange behavior on the site...

After much frustration turning plugins on and off then refreshing the pages I decided to scrap unnecessary JavaScript [the cute stuff I liked most] on the page. As things were removed the site began to behave again. Alas, I really wanted that fisheye navigation menu...

I hatched a simple plan to produce a similar effect minus freakish js conflicts. I decided to use an image map styled with CSS. I didn't have a lot of time so I turned to my favorite image map generator at image-maps.com. I created the background graphic with all the pretty navigation icons and created an image map using their online tool. You'll need use some specific settings in the Advanced section. The roll over image should be larger than the image you used on the background. This creates the fisheye effect in the menu.
Image-Maps.com Advanced Settings

Here's the background I used for this demo:

After I generated the image map at image-maps.com I saved the code and edited it in my favorite code editor .

See the css fisheye menu in action. This version will load a little slow since the images are hosted at flickr.com to save bandwidth here. A link to the demo, source files, and icons are listed below.

The Goods



Icons:PRACTIKA by Smashing Magazine
Layered Gimp File for this demo: layered file
Source Files: css fisheye menu source
Also available at the tinym Project Support Wiki: downloads.tinym.com

download (618 kb)

flickr (618 kb)

More free downloads: downloads.tinym.com

Some of my faves from the site:

More cute backgrounds

More retro backgrounds

The official description reads like this: "FancyUpload is a file-input replacement which features an unobtrusive, multiple-file selection menu and queued upload with an animated progress bar. It is easy to setup, is server independent, completely styleable via CSS and XHTML and uses MooTools to work in all modern browsers."

Ajax is so nice.