Opt out lists

Michael Geist is a writer for the Toronto Star who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce law at the University of Ottawa. He has set up a website called IOptOut.ca that enables people to opt out of many organization's marketing lists. What you do is go to his website and fill in an on-line sheet. He asks you for a user name and password (this is so you can go back in and add more companies as they are added) as well as any email addresses you have and your various phone numbers as well. You submit this information and then immediately sign in again with your new user name and password and you are taken to a page that has a list of categories of companies that you can opt out of. It's as easy as putting a check mark for whole categories or only opting out of a few in a list.

What his team then does is to send out opt-out requests on your behalf to all of these companies all at once. He has so far sent out millions of requests for people just like you and I who are tired of getting calls (and emails)from companies every day (or late at night) wanting you to buy something.

He is backed by a ruling by CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission)in that it will endorse the national do-not-call registry (DNC). Apparently, the Canadian Marketing Association and the Canadian Banker's Association were upset about this list and told their members that they didn't have to honour the registry. The CRTC's response was "these requests would be in compliance with the Act and the current Unsolicited Telecommunications rules. In short, on the basis of the facts as I understand them, I consider that do-not-call requests made through iOptOut are valid and should be honoured".

So, the CRTC is saying that if you are registered on a do-not-call list, they can't call you without subjecting themselves to fines. About time.

Microsoft strikes again

I've been getting files lately (as have my clients) with the extension of .docx

I can't open these files, and at first I didn't know what they were. (I looked it up to make sure that the file wasn't a virus or corrupt file)

Apparently they are Microsoft's new file extensions for their newest version of Word, Word 2007. I don't have the newest version of Word, so I can't say for sure, but if someone sends you a document with this version of Word, you can ask them to re-save it in an earlier version (if Word 2007 has that option, older versions did). Or if there is no images or it isn't a complicated document with tables or so forth, you could have them just save it as a text file.

However if you can't ask, there is a website called DOCX Converter that you can upload your file to, give them your email address and in my tests, within an hour you get your file converted and you can copy the text to your own version of Word.

Open Office can't open these files yet, but I'm sure that they eventually will work out a converter as well, so you have a Microsoft free alternative.