[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6yYHg-FsGY[/video]There is just something about this guys music that is compelling to me – his hooks and melodies stick in my head – I hope they do the same for you (in a good way).

Enjoy!

I find myself reminiscing about Growing up in the 1970s & 1980s when things seemed much simpler, when things made much more sense, like stuff costing what it should.

We were not as manipulated to purchase and taken advantage of by pseudo pricing structures. Try to use your powers of recall, can you remember any sort of item which was marketed back then with the “craftiness” that Sony uses for the PS3 or Apple & AT&T use for the iPhone, or what Google will undoubtedly do with their mobile phone when it is eventually released sometime in the next 30 years…

It was a time when the free market decided what things should cost, not what some PR firm imagined the cost should be – case in point, diesel fuel – it is easier to refine and actually costs less at every point along the supply chain.

Back in the 1980s, it was your cheapest option for fuel – but today… well, today, is another story. Some ‘Brianiac’ somewhere has decided that smaller diesel fuel vehicles like the Loremo (to be released in Europe sometime in 2009 and in the U.S. probably in 2010) get such good mileage that we consumers should be manipulated into paying more per gallon for diesel than the unleaded fuels which cost much more to produce and even pollute worse than the cleaner burning diesel.

When will the insanity stop?

This Loremo (Low Resistance Mobile) vehicle is a really neat idea – I was reading about it on MSN today. This new car is estimated to get between 130 and 150 miles per gallon (mpg). The way the design engineers have come up with this amazing mileage performance in a 4 seat sporty looking coupe was to go “old school” – they improved engine efficiency, lowered the weight of the vehicle dramatically and worked to reduce as much drag as possible.

What I dig the most about this vehicle is that it is planned to enter the European market at about $15,000 Euros, which translates to about US$22,000 – a much less expensive alternative to the $80,000 Fisker Automotive plug-in hybrid or even the $8,900 premium above what a normal SUV would cost for a vehicle featuring a AFS Trinity Extreme Hybrid SUV.

These are exciting times to live in, even with the massive amounts of manipulation we find ourselves being forced to swallow every day. I am encouraged that with these sorts of vehicles on the horizon, maybe they provide a glimpse of one way to get out of the marketing manipulation we find ourselves in by creating technologies which will provide the ability to normal folks like us to depend less on the things we are being forced to purchase in order to exist in our modern world.

Mark from 45n5.com is up to no good!

He started a new concept which seems to be taking off… A very simple advertising network where you can purchase affordable ads for your business, blog, or really anything you would like to advertise. You can also make money by displaying a little widget he has designed to show ads on any site you wish.

ShowYourAdHere.com is just starting out, and I am both a Publisher & Advertiser on this service. After having used it for a day or so, there are some things which I have noticed that I would like to see rolled out sooner than later:

Publisher List

1. Better Control of Layout - A way to prevent the wrong size ad from displaying and breaking my layout – I believe this could be solved by some simple style tags included in the code snippet
2. Advertisement Preapproval Feature – A way to approve or decline advertising before it is displayed – To be fair, Mark is working on figuring this out, but also to be fair, this would probably not cost a lot of money to implement if he hired a php developer to get it done
3. Site Screenshot Upload – Right now, we have to wait for Alexa to update the thumbnail. The solution to this is also very easily accomplished via php – You can check against MIME type and then use a quick thumbnail application to reduce and scale any type / size of image to less than 5k. Mark, if you read this and are interested, I can put you in touch with somebody who can make this happen for you very quickly.
4. Affiliate Program – It would be nice maybe something similar to BlogRush – If somebody clicks on my ShowYourAdHere.com widget and becomes an advertiser/publisher, I would like to get a piece of the action too – This would be a win win win – Mark’s network would grow more quickly; As the network grows, more and higher quality sites to advertise on would become available; and we could all *share the wealth*

Advertiser List

1. Search Features – We need to have a way to search for the size and type of ads which are still available on the network. It would be great to see a drop down box to select the category of site we are interested in advertising on and then to search for the ad type and sizes which are available in that category.
2. Ad Editing Capability – Right now, it looks to me like you only have one shot to upload the ad during your advertising period. If you want to make changes to the code or link (to insert an analytic or better looking affiliate forwarded link) you have to cancel the ad and buy a new one… we should be able to edit the ad any time during the campaign.
3. Future Scheduling of Ads on a particular Publisher – I think this feature would benefit both the Publisher and the Advertiser. Right now, if somebody purchases all of the ad space available for a given time period if you look at the site in the Marketplace, all you get is a “sold out” message. It would be great to have the opportunity to “schedule” future ad periods out past the current advertiser’s window. This would allow both the Publisher the ability to see future revenue and plan around it and would allow Advertisers the ability to get onto sites without having to “luck out” and be there on the day the ad space becomes available. This is a complicated feature, as there would have to be a limit on the amount of future ads which were allowed to be scheduled to give the Publisher the opportunity to adjust rates, but that could be something which is set in the Publisher Control Panel.

I’m looking forward to the new features and functionality Mark will create on ShowYourAdHere.com!

Because I took such an extended sabbatical, I have had a lot to update on the site. Recently, I have been working my way through my Blogroll. I didn’t realize that Kumiko’s Cash Quest had been sold last year. I visited it and found the site in a great deal of disarray. Some of Kumiko’s original articles are still there, but I was very disappointed to see that the quality of the site had diminished so rapidly. Apparently, a company called iEntry has purchased the site, their gate page seems to come in at about a PR4 and according to my Alexa widget, their gate is ranked 8,726. You can find this on their About Us page:

The iEntry Network consists of the best business-to-business web search engine, several targeted “niche engines” and email newsletters reaching over 6,000,000 unique opt-in subscribers. Total newsletter delivery is over 50 million emails per month.

Comments appear to have completely dried up at Cashquest, you will notice that I am not including any links to either iEntry or Cashquests in this article. Right now, I do not believe that either of these sites will continue to add value to the reader and subscriber base we are currently building at Bloglyne.com – Now, I could be wrong about iEntry and I am open to hearing your comments. But for now, Cashquests will be removed from our Blogroll and we will also be removing a post we made last year reviewing her site – I wish Kumiko the best – she really had something going there, I’m sorry to see “Kumiko’s Cashquests” has gone the way of the dinosaurs.

I have been following Kumiko’s Cash Quest for about the last 4 or 5 months. I mean who wouldn’t want to follow this “Cash Quest”?

On her “About” page, she answers the question on everybody’s mind:

Q: Why is your site so pink?
A: I like pink!!

Well, let’s just say that anybody who gives that much personality in 9 words or less – I am going to follow their stuff.

Her observations are also extremely relevant to those who are at the start of their online money making ventures. By focusing on how to make money online, she adds value to the affiliate community by providing her successes and failures along with fully disclosing her earnings. I really dig this approach and will continue to follow her online cash quest experiences.

Recently, we created the first contest at Bloglyne as a way to raise money for the March of Dimes. Kumiko is offering a contest which is generating links and traffic to her site through her Cash Quest Competition – something you should check out! Should we win the prize for our entry, we will donate the $100 cash portion to our “Be A Hero For Babies Day” promotion.

Note: I was not going to include this review on this site, as it did not seem relevant, but after having received numerous comments on the review given at Stackblog, I thought it might be alright to include it here. After all, a lot of affiliates are providing links to this video – so, without further ado, here is my review.

As a Christian, it is obvious to identify serious issues with Christianity and The Secret if you do not temper it with the tenets of our Faith.

Again, I am still in process on this one – but where it really crosses the line is when one of the “Teachers”, Lisa Nichols, says that you are “God manifested in human form.”

According to my Christian belief, Jesus was the only one who was truly God manifested in human form.

So, I am not okay with that statement from The Secret, but what I am okay with is modifying the statement to realize and remind myself that I am a creation by God in His image.

Make no mistake, just like many philosophies put out there by humans, there are real problems with some of what the Secret says, but, I do not think The Secret was made by Christians, so why should we use that measuring stick?

Now, if we choose to apply anything out of The Secret, we must be careful to remember the basics of our Faith and use our Faith to judge anything we choose to apply. But, remember, that can be said for anything we apply and use in our lives as Christians.

I do not see why these two things, “The Law of Attraction” and Christianity must be exclusive to one another. In fact, I believe that the Universe is part of God’s creation, and when God set it into motion he did so with certain laws in place for it to operate under.

Everything humans have made (I did not say created, because, this is also where The Secret misses it – we are NOT Creators of the energy discussed in the movie. God is the Prime Mover and Creator of everything. God does allow us to shape it though.) Everything we have made, we have made with the building blocks of the universe God created for us to exist in.

So, why should our Faith and The Law of Attraction be exclusive? The Law of Attraction is one of the laws that the universe operates under. Another way to think about this, as I have applied the lesson to my life is that the universe hates a void, and if you create a void by declaring a need – the universe will rush in to fill it. Good, bad, or indifferent – so we must be careful what we declare.

The universe and God are two separate things, of course. I do not thank the universe, it is a thing created by God. I thank God. I ask God, that if something is his will, that I would have it, regardless of what it would be. For example, I ask that if it is in His will that he would give me patience, love, kindness, the ability to forgive, I ask him for my daily bread, and by that, I mean, money, food, shelter, clothing, more than enough to meet not only my needs, but the needs of my family, along with the needs of others. It is scary! It is a scary thing to put yourself into the hands of the living God. Although, we would do well to remember that there is nothing to be scared about – God is not the evil step father waiting to punish us. He is the anxious father waiting for us to turn to him through Christ so he can sweep us off our feet.

I believe it is our tendency to take something like The Secret and dismiss it as a whole because there are things in it that make us uncomfortable, and we do not trust ourselves to discern the good and right things from the bad things in it and rightly so. Because if you still trust yourself for anything, you are heading into dangerous territory – we can all be fooled, every last one of us.

But, if you trust God to peel the scales away from your eyes, and allow that if anything is right and good and just and within His will that He will allow His discernment to guide you. You can trust that He will guide you and that you will be alright.