The Robots are Calling
Starting Sept 1 (that’s today!), the Federal Trade Commission banned most prerecorded, or robot, telemarketing calls to "consumers". From this day those calls are supposed to be permissable only if the robot has written authority from you.
"American consumers have made it crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year," said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.
You can report illegal robots making calls to you online at ftc.gov or by calling 1-877-382-4357. Penalties can be up to $16,000 per call, the FTC said.
This sounds like a really fantastic deal and you would think that it would put an end to electronic recordings interrupting your dinner. The FTC’s headline of "New Rule Prohibiting Unwanted ‘Robocalls’ To Take Effect on September 1" sounds very official and definitive. The articles goes on to say that in order for a telemarketer’s machine to call you, the telemarketer needs written approval from you consenting to the call.
However, the ban does not apply to calls which are:
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purely ‘informational’.
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from a debt collector.
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from a politician.
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from a bank.
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from a phone service provider.
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from a charitable organization.
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‘certain’ healthcare messages.
Do you recieve any telemarketer calls which can’t be classified in some manner listed above?
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Artisteer
I’ve been lately searching for better wordpress themes for my niche sites. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the free themes that are out there.. it’s just that I’ve developed my own preferences for layout, color, header graphics, underline colors, background colors… okay, I’m just a little picky.
I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to figure out how to adjust the CSS settings and upload my own images. Works great for stuff like changing colors and an image here or there, but it is nearly impossible to change theme look and feel that way.
I also found that if I decide to reload the theme (since it is possible I would break it trying to adjust it) that I would have to redo all the changes or restore them from backup if I had one.
I found a couple of free online theme generators, but they are just a little clunky to work with (especially with random internet roller-coasterness). I tried the few I could get my hands on, but they just weren’t going to do it for me.
On the GC boards I found a reference to an actual WordPress generator application. It – is- beautiful.
I downloaded the trial of Artisteer and spent the next hour or so playing with it. Within about 15 minutes I knew it was the program I was going to buy. Custom everything. There’s so much in that program that I’m not even going to review it here; just head over to the site at www.artisteer.com and see it for yourself.
If you are looking for an application to use to edit your WordPress blogs, just get the home version. If you need .net and drupal and joomla and all that other happy crap, get the standard edition. Either way, well worth the money.
No, I’m not an affiliate of the site (yet). Just a huge fan.
If you want a peek at what is possible check out the sites I have built using the program so far.
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