Tom Anthony Personal Blog

I follow a lot of blogs, including one by Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey. Silverpop is a email marketing company the provides users with wizard driven email marketing campaigns – and a lot of reporting features. IN a recent posting Nussey talks about new rules which may affect you if you do any kind of list based email. This is a direct partial copy of that item, and a link to the blog is found in my blogroll.  Enjoy.

In case you haven’t heard yet, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last week enacted new rules intended to clarify the original provisions of the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act. The supplementary ruling, which goes into effect June 26, may have important ramifications for your email marketing program. I encourage you to seek the advice of your legal counsel about how these new rules may affect your programs. In the meantime, here’s a summary of the key provisions for discussion purposes:

Mandated Simplification of Opt-out Processes
The new rules clarify the opt-out required under CAN-SPAM. You’ll want to examine your opt-out process to determine if it is in compliance with this new rule, which states:

The opt-out may not be conditioned on the payment of any fee.
The recipient must not be required to provide anything more than email address and associated opt-out preferences for that email address (i.e., no password, account number, name, etc. can be required).
The opt-out mechanism must rely on either a reply email or a visit to a single Internet Web page and nothing more (i.e., multiple Web page opt-out processes are no longer allowed).
P.O. Box Usage Confirmed
Businesses may publish a sender’s P.O. box or private mailbox in a commercial email message to comply with the valid physical postal address requirement.

Designated Sender Rule Established
This new rule provides a framework whereby multiple advertisers that appear in the same commercial email message, each of which normally would satisfy the Act’s definition of “sender,” may designate a single sender among them as the sole sender of the message. If you routinely engage in list rentals or joint promotions, you will want to examine this provision closely.

Rules Regarding Incented Forwarding
The new rules confirm that if a company offers something of value (e.g., sweepstakes entry or discount) to incent a user to forward a commercial message to a friend, the company providing the incentive is held responsible for complying with CAN-SPAM as a Sender of the resulting message.

The FTC was widely expected to collapse the amount of time senders have to comply with an opt-out from 10 business days to three business days, but no change was issued. The 10 business day opt-out rule remains in effect.

The Email Sender & Provider Coalition has issued a summary of the new rules, which you can check out here. Or, you can access the full FTC text by clicking here.

Many times, I delete forwarded email without even reading them. This one from my brother in law made me think. Thanks Allen!

TIPS ON PUMPING GAS

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…but here in California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon…

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps. When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3)stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some other liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money. One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.

Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up–most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some f the dirt that normally settles on the bottom. Hope this will help you get the most value for your money.

DO SHARE THESE TIPS WITH OTHERS!

Makes sense – right? Well no matter how humble these things sound there are damn few that are for real. Here is another view:

From the Rumor website – Snopes.com

Origins: This collection of purported money-saving tips for buying gasoline is another item difficult to classify as strictly true or false. It’s not completely false in that one or more of the tips might actually result in some savings (however modest), but it can’t fairly be classified as true either, as the practical utility of all of these tips is disputed, and the economic gains to be had from following them is highly questionable.

From Yahoo Answers

this myth has been around since the late 40′s when gasoline storage tanks were just starting to be buried underground. in the early days the tanks were buried just below the surface, and thus temperature did have an effect of the volume of fuel in the tank, but mostly due to the amount of vapor released due to the higher temperatures. these days the storage tanks are buried much deeper to the point where the tanks are kept at a steady 55 degrees regardless of outside temperature, and thus has no meaning these days.