Here is a brief summary of the way CAN-SPAM affects email advertising. If you follow these rules when conducting your email web marketing, you won’t be in violation of the law.

* Make sure you get permission to email people.

* Just to be safe, make sure people double opt-in.

* Make sure you have an unsubscribe option, and if people select it, that you unsubscribe them within 10 days. Make sure that unsubscribing is a one-click process.

* Make sure that the “From” address is the advertiser in the email.

* Don’t use a fake name to advertise.

* Use proper and legitimate subject headings. Don’t lie to get someone’s attention or to encourage him or her to open your email.

* Avoid garbage language – especially the word “free” – because spam filters tend to place these emails in junk folders or bulk folders and they won’t be read.

* Include a physical address in the email – it’s required under the law. It can be your business address or a post office box; it just has to be more than an email address.

If you follow these guidelines, you can usually carry on with your email advertising without a problem. If you use a list other than your own, make sure the person or company you acquire your list from follows these rules as well. You must also make sure the content of your emails is content the user agreed to receive when they signed up for the list.

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It’s been about eight hours since our big Disrupt Hackathon kicked off, and all of our intrepid hackers have been busy letting the code (and the caffeine) fly ever since.

I managed to tear a few of them away from their work (these folks are pretty motivated, so it took a bit of doing) to tell us a little bit about themselves and what they be trying to crank out during the wee hours of the morning.

Devon Peticolas

Devon is a senior at Rutgers University (and the newly-minted president of the school’s undergrad CS club). As you might imagine, he’s no stranger to hackathons either — he can’t quite put his finger on it, but he’s probably in the “double digits” at this point.

He’ll be spending the night working on a mobile web app that allows users to find their friends in a crowd through sort of a hot-and-cold approach — if all goes well, a phone will vibrate when it’s pointing in the direction of a user’s friend, and will vibrate even stronger as the two people get closer to each other.

Peter Verrillo

Peter is the CEO of a company called EnHatch, and during the day he works on creating apps to help promote, demo, and sell medical devices for use in surgery.

He and his team specialize in creating those 3D apps for the iPad, but he’s looking to spend his time at the Hackathon bringing that 3D experience to the iPhone. The app he’s working on tonight deals with slightly less gruesome fare — instead, it aims to walk users through the process of putting together Ikea furniture.

“If Ikea had a good app, this would be it,” he told me.

Dasara Kushi

This is Dasara’s second Hackathon (her first was a photo-centric event), and this time around she and her partner Ronn have decided to spend their night building a web app that uses a computer’s built-in webcam to analyze a user’s face and suggest places for them to go in real time.

“If you look sad, it’ll tell you to go to a comedy club,” said told me.

Their project makes pretty extensive use of the faceAPI, but there’s still plenty of work to do — they’re both still looking at pulling in new data from different APIs, to make the service more robust, but thankfully the night is still young.

Jared Zoneraich

Jared is a 14-year old hacker who attends Bergen Academy, and he’s quite excited to stay up and have fun here at his very first Hackathon. His project of choice? Nothing less than an ad delivery service, of course.

“If I weren’t doing this, I’d be doing homework,” he said.

His hacker idols include Mark Zuckerberg as well as seasoned iPhone cracker George “geohot” Hotz, who just so happened to attend Bergen back in the day as well.

Pavan Krishnamurthy

Pavan and his teammates are cranking away on an iOS app that will tell you what sort of music people in different cities are listening to – a noble and clever goal. Cities that tend to listen to faster-paced music on Rdio are labelled ‘hot,’ while more laid-back cities (Chicago in their mockup) are tagged with the “chill” label.

His team’s mockups look pretty darned solid, but we’ll soon see if the finished product lives up to their ambitions. When he’s not hacking, Pavan works at Bloomberg and (like Jared) looks up to Mark Zuckerberg as his own hero hacker.

Jon Gottfried

Jon works for Twilio (during the day) and dons his hacker cape when night falls. He and his buddies are working on a system for A/B testing Amazon products tonight — not the sexiest idea the in the world sure, but that system is only part of his team’s plan.

They hope that their testing system can be used to determine consumer desires, and use that information to whip up a subscription service — Thingscription — that’s focused on delivering those goods to people on a regular basis.

Octavian Costache

The royally-named Octavian (or Vivi, as he’s also known) and his teammates are working on a second-screen app that provides users with additional context they watch Game of Thrones, which is probably one of the geekier endeavors we’ve spotted today. Need to figure out why that guy just got stabbed? Or some lesser-known facet of some clan’s convoluted family tree? Keep your eyes peeled on this guy.

Incidentally, he is totally in love with the Khalisi (because of the dragons, not the other thing) and his Twitter is Okvivi.

Karina Ruzinov

Karina goes to Rutgers (there’s a pretty large contingent of Rutgers kids, it would seem) and is spending her summer interning for Refinery 29. She studies Computer Science and Math and she says the student parties are real ragers.

She and her team are working on a app that helps people come up with names for their Hackathon projects. It’s not quite ready for primetime yet, but when it is, it aims to inspire people by providing synonyms and rhymes for words that embody their particular project’s spirit.

Victoria Mo

Victoria is a Master’s Student in Computer Science at Columbia University and her tech role model is none other than Google’s Marissa Mayer.

She and her team are working feverishly on an app that helps users find the hottest clubs in town (and not the hottest clubs in Ontario, as it sounded when we first heard the pitch). They aim to accomplish that by posting images and videos of the clubs’ exteriors so people will be able to quickly determine how popular a particular venue is.

What a week. After eight years, Mark Zuckerberg takes Facebook public at a $104 billion valuation. His longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan gets her medical degree from the UC San Francisco. He has his 28th birthday.

And to top it all off, they get married today! Mazel tov.

Apparently, the wedding had been in the works for four to five months, according to a source authorized to speak on behalf of the couple. It wasn’t tied to the IPO, but rather Chan’s graduation from medical school on Monday.

About 100 of their closest friends and family showed up at the backyard of their Palo Alto home, thinking they were going to celebrate Chan’s graduation. When they arrived, they were told it was a wedding. “It was a surprise,” the source tells us.

Zuckerberg gave her a ruby ring he designed himself, which Chan had never seen until today. The food came from their two favorite restaurants, Palo Alto Sol and Fuki Sushi, and they shared it family style. For dessert, they served Burdick chocolate mice (which is what the pair ate on their very first date!)

Chan and Zuckerberg met more than nine years ago while at Harvard. In this cute story from the Harvard Crimson seven years ago, Zuckerberg asked her, “Hey Priscilla, do you want a job at the Facebook?”

“I’d love a job at Facebook,” she responded, offering him a Twizzler.

How things have changed. What an amazing ride for the pair and for the company, and hopefully a lot longer to go too.

There’s a strong murmur in the room with random spurts of excitement. Hackers and coders have teamed up and mostly (hopefully) decided on a project. There are only 15 hours left. But night is approaching. That’s when things tend to get loopy thanks to the sudden influx of food and beer.

So far the event has been fantastic. There’s a 3:2 ratio of Macs vs PCs. Epic t-shirts are everywhere. Caffeine is flowing thanks to Red Bull and Outburst Energy Bites.

The event runs until tomorrow morning. Coding a fantastic app is just part of the fun. Starting at 11:00 am tomorrow morning, teams will have one minute to present their project, hopefully winning over the judges for a shot to present at TechCrunch Disrupt. But first the participants need to make it through the night.

Click to view slideshow.

Hackers aren’t necessarily known for their fashion sense. Most of the time, a t-shirt and jeans is as far as it goes. But there are certain circumstances in which it’s clear that hackers pay a little extra attention after rolling out of bed in the morning. The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon is one of those instances, but that doesn’t mean that the go-to jeans and T have been abandoned.

Even better, our hackers are choosing to express themselves through the t-shirts, and I have to say that they’re some of the coolest I’ve seen. Last year in San Francisco, most of our hackers had something on their heads, whether it was a baseball cap, headphones, an Ushanka, or even a shower cap.

This year, it’s all about the classic T, but with a coder’s spin.

Without further ado, these are the most badass t-shirts of the TC Disrupt NYC Hackathon:

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

Editor’s note: Jeremy Toeman is a founder of Dijit Media, a startup whose vision is to create the ultimate “hyperpersonalised social TV guide” mobile experience. Jeremy has over 11 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, social TV and consumer technology working with companies like Sling Media, Mediabolic, Boxee, Clicker, VUDU, and more. Follow him on Twitter@jtoeman.

Last time I took a look at the most over-hyped topics of the Future of TV, and I thought a great follow-up would be to look at the reverse case. After all, it’s easy to sit there and critique, but what about the positive side, where’s the action happening but not being talked about as much as it could be?  Here are four things going on in the TV industry that definitely don’t get enough respect…

Open Platforms

Did you know that many cable/satellite/telephone providers have created APIs to communicate and/or control their set top boxes over either home networks and/or the Internet? That’s right, the dinosaurs who are sitting on old technology have opened access to their (formerly) closed systems. If that’s not sinking in clearly enough and I’m not saying this to pitch the company or anything, but by way of example, at Dijit we have the ability to interact with set top boxes that exist in approximately 30 million households today. Just think about it – a _insert cable company name here_ cable box is just as mashup-able as Craigslist.

AirPlay for the rest of us

First, let’s knock another topic off right here: the Apple TV isn’t about being a standalone product, it’s about being an awesome accessory to iPads (which is why it’s effectively the top selling ‘Internet streamer’ over the past 3 years). Works much better when you think of it that way, eh? The flagship feature of Apple TV? AirPlay. If you are “in” the iOS ecosystem, you know how well AirPlay works. If you don’t, you are truly missing out – and I don’t mean you need to rush out to buy one, I mean you need to see how this works: user picks up iPhone/iPad, user finds content, user hits Play, user hits AirPlay to AppleTV, user sees content playing on TV, user enjoys cool refreshing beverage while watching Internet content on TV. Win.

Compare that to any TV-based “10 foot user interface” experience, and you’ll understand the difference. But here’s where it gets interesting: there are a good half-dozen or so startups working on this, not to mention consumer electronics companies like Samsung and others who have already deployed solutions. Granted not one of them is as slick as Airplay, but the era of “fumble around terribly designed menus on your TV” is coming to end, and I for one couldn’t be happier about it. I guarantee a couple of years worth of fragmentation ahead, but either way, the future of interfaces is a bright one.

Death of the content genre

The other day I was trying to reclassify some of my music, and I realized terms like Pop, Alternative, and even Rock are poorly suited to today’s immense breadth of music offerings (and WTF is Adult Alternative anyway???). We are in the age of the micro-niche, driven much due to the growth of Indie music dating back to the 90s. I believe the same fragmentation of big, generic genres like Comedy and Drama will occur in fairly short order.

Considering the rise to 500 channels with the infusion of short and long form Internet videos, the cross-over between content formats is pretty much already here. When I look at the results of most TV recommendations engines, and by that I mean Netflix, I see an increasingly disparate view on content. Am I more interested in Witty TV Comedies (which blends King of the Hill, the Dick Van Dyke Show, Black Adder, 30 Rock, Cheers, and Archer) or Dysfunctional-Family TV Dramas (featuring Rescue Me, Weeds, and My-So-Called Life)?  And while I’m at it, why is Portlandia similar to Twin Peaks? Protip: it’s not.

Bottom line here is expect more and more filters, views, and correspondingly value placed on matching people with the micro-niche hipsteresque genres that describes them, uniquely. Second protip: stop trying to recommend shows because I like Arrested Development, it stand alone.

Who’s Going to Disrupt the TV Industry? The TV Industry

The Internet has disrupted a great many things, and we’ve seen startups emerge to tear down many sectors. Craigslist, started by one dude, disrupted newspapers. eBay owns Christie’s. Music was killed by, well, it seems like the Internet and poor business models, as opposed to startups per se. But when it comes to TV, it’s just not as simple as all that. I can name almost two dozen startups who thought they could just run on down to Hollywood, buy up some content, and start a business – all are now dead. I’ve seen almost as many think they could do the same thing by just trying to use some “trick” through the system to accomplish the same. Most are already dead.  Even Google has now twice failed in their attempt to court the content industry.

But we can see the signs that disruption could and should occur. I’d argue, however, that the real interesting thing happening is the intra-industry battles. At last year’s Cable Show, for example, multiple cable companies showed their services running as “apps” inside Smart TV ecosystems. Comcast, as another example, has OnDemand (broadcast video on demand), StreamPix (Internet video on demand), DVR, TVEverywhere, and other ways to deliver you content. What happens if they decide to bring their services outside their existing geographical boundaries? What happens when cable co’s actually leverage devices like Xboxes to deliver fully authenticated content offerings? What happens when NBC decides Hulu is a bad investment, and creates an openly accessible content feed using third party authentication? What happens when local affiliates continue to get squeezed out of the business?

We can and should expect to see cracks in the system. But I don’t think it’s about cord cutting and little startups. This is the Barzinis teaming up with the Tattaglias to take out Vito, and I hate to say it, but Silicon Valley’s no more than a Clemenza, at best. But there is war a-coming, and there will be great opportunities for startups to rise to great heights if they understand how the system works today, and what’s coming down the pipe. Pun intended, don’t forget to tip your waiter.

It’s been just over nine months since Google announced their intentions to acquire hardware manufacturer Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, and now it seems that the final pieces of the deal have fallen into place.

According to a new report from the Associated Press, Chinese officials have finally given the Google-Motorola deal their blessing.

China’s official approval of the deal has been a long time coming — Google managed to score regulatory approvals from the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission back in February (on the same day no less), but China’s anti-monopoly bureau leapt into action just a few days later. That period of intense regulatory scrutiny is a routine part of the purchasing process, as every company that makes more than 400 million yuan ($63 million) in China and 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) globally is subject to the process.

Google and Motorola originally expected to close the deal in “early 2012″, and it turns out they weren’t too far from the market. With this final approval in place, Google has confirmed that they expect purchase to be completed some time next week.

With the long process of purchasing Motorola Mobility finally drawing to a close, Google seems to be shifting their attention to the process of selling hardware on their own. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Google was looking at fleshing out the Devices section of the Google Play Store with unlocked smartphones and tablets — all of them “lead” devices —  from up to five major hardware manufacturers. Now that Google will have their own in-house hardware team, it stands to reason that they might soon offer their own devices alongside those from hardware partners like Samsung and HTC.

In a post shared on the official White House Blog today, the Obama administration expressed its support for Twitter’s move to join the ranks of sites employing the privacy feature, Do Not Track.

The privacy feature, which Twitter now supports in all browsers, allows users to opt-out of third-party tracking cookies, including those used for advertising.

In its post, the White House explained the importance of tech companies adopting the Do Not Track feature, emphasising the importance of seeing the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights become a reality:

As much as people use and love the internet and other digital technology, there has been a growing concern that rapid advances in technology can lead to an erosion of personal privacy. As the Internet evolves, maintaining consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy. That’s why the Obama Administration unveiled a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in February, to give users more control over how their information is used online (download as PDF). Immediately an association of over 500 companies (including search engines, internet platforms, advertising networks and browser developers) committed to expanding individual control with “Do Not Track” technology before the end of 2012.

Referring to Twitter’s move as “an important step”, the White House applauded the tech company for its decision:

In the meantime, the actions of Twitter and others show that when companies are mindful of basic privacy principles articulated in the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and blueprint as they design their services, the very same creative energy that has led to the development of extraordinary new Internet technologies can also help to protect Americans’ privacy.

In stark contrast to social networking sites like Facebook, which at one point tracked users even when logged out, Twitter will soon be joined by Yahoo and Google who will be rolling out Do Not Track services of their own.

It hasn’t been all good news in Washington as far as Internet privacy is concerned. Privacy activists have been fighting against the ‘new SOPA’, CISPA, which has now made it past the House and is in the hands of the Senate.

CISPA would allow tech companies to hand over traffic information to the US government, under the guise of protecting against cyber threats. The problem with CISPA is that it opens the door to online surveillance, or worse.

That said, the Obama administration itself has already taken a stance against CISPA, putting the future of the bill into doubt, while simultaneously placing its weight behind the Do Not Track initiative.

The White House post about Twitter can be read in full here.

The anticipation is palpable.

Hundreds of hackers have congregated outside Manhattan’s Pier 94, planning, strategizing, and praying to baby Jesus that their fates will be similar to those of Group.me and Docracy. We’ve seen plenty of Hackathon winners go on to do incredible things, make millions of dollars, and rise to startup stardom levels, but the journey isn’t a simple one.

Click to view slideshow.

Let me paint a little word picture for you:

The hackers will be in a massive warehouse for the next 24 hours and beyond. They’ll have API sponsors and helpful workshops, sure, but the challenge of creating a product, or even a prototype, all comes down to them. Red Bull will be an unavoidable temptation, especially after a couple hours staring at white code on a black background.

They know they might crash, but they don’t care. They need the energy. Snacks will abound, and snacks are all they have time for anyway. A huge meal is sure to weigh down the belly and slow their pace.

After a few hours, fights are destined to break out. Maybe it’s a disagreement over which API to use, or which color the UI should be, or really anything. They’re under an insane amount of pressure, and even the slightest frustration or hindrance can cause a major break. Teams will turn against each other, and joyously reunite after a few moments of pensive reflection.

When the clock strikes midnight, that’s when things get loopy. The empty cans of Red Bull will be joined by full cans of beer, heads and shoulders will begin to slump, and the fights that have since been resolved will resurface.

Certain members of various teams will begin practicing their presentations, most certainly distracting other teams from their work, but this is, after all, a competition. The coffee pot will be refilled twice as often for the rest of the Hackathon, and bean bags, tables and even cold, hard floors will be converted into napping pads.

And alas, the sun will rise. Obstacles will be overcome. Prototypes will be completed. Presentations will be perfected.

And perhaps, just maybe, the beginning of a beautiful story will be written.

Disrupt NYC is set to be one of our biggest shows yet, with returns from Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, along with a variety of big names like Marissa Mayer, Sarah Tavel, Fred Wilson, and David Lee and more. It’s going to be huge.

If you’re interested in checking out Disrupt and/or the Hackathon yourself, tickets are still on sale here and info on the Hackathon can be found here. Companies who want to join the Battleground can apply for the last remaining spots in Startup Alley. You can find the full agenda here.

The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Gabe Rivera, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — play toe jam football in the shadow of the Facebook IPO. Try as we might, we can’t shake the weight of Facebook’s dominance of Techmeme and maybe the fate of the global economy. Greece, move over. @gaberivera joins near the 30 minute mark.

@scobleizer tries a reverse Statue of Liberty play around the forthcoming Samsung phone and the threat to Apple (nonexistent) but our hearts aren’t in it. I fail in a weak attempt to roll up everything under push notification. Face it: our hopes and dreams are now tied to our jobs as feeders of the Facebook Empire.  Please Twitter. Save us.

@stevegillmor, @gaberivera, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor