In the overwhelming sea of spam, there is hope… Two of my favorites right now are Cobra Commander and the recent hit Kayne West is gonna LetYouFinish but.

Cobra Commander is a classic and hopefully will always remain so. LetYouFinish will probably die out in the next couple days as people grow bored of the novelty… The person running that account looks to already be losing a little steam. All the same, it’s worth a read.

I think the site still needs some turtle wax though. Using IE 7 (why use IE?), I found problems with two of the five themes currently on the site. One theme gave java errors, another disappears after it loads. It’s framed so it’s hard to tell what the problem is.

So far all the themes listed cost $69 (or more if you want the .psds), which in knocks most folks out of the running in terms of considering the theme for use. The site is relatively new so it is one designer putting his themes against each other. I’m sure that will change though as the site grows.

Because the site is geared towards premium themes, I don’t think it will go very far unless they can somewhat regularly showcase cutting edge designs. I could be completely wrong, but I don’t think that the majority of people who would buy themes are the same group of people who care to spend time voting on them.

Still, it’s an interesting concept. What can be done with their idea to make something that has a better chance at earning the love of the masses? That’s when question ThemeWars/UnqueBlogDesign was trying to answer changes to become “How do you moneytize a site based on the American Idol model that uses free blog themes?”

Free themes will draw the visitors/voters. I’m sure you could find some design-for-hire places willing to advertise. In addition to that, there is are plenty of blog related items that aren’t themes. Hosting, support/consulting services, custom coding, premium plug-ins, etc. There’s always good old fashioned contextual ads if you think have to go that route.

Like any good carny game, your chances of winning weren’t good. Only on this midway, the price to play is time and not money. Oh, and the prizes usually aren’t highly flammable children’s toys.

Not anymore. Woot’s distribution of the famed burrito of chorizo (see woot filters) is different this time. Instead of simply selling the bags of crap first come first server like normal, they are holding a raffle of sorts. Buy woot-off lights for $8, your receipt also mentions that “You ordered 1 Crappy Anniversary Promotion (see below).” The “see below” part references to the rules of how you can win your bag of crap. Their numbers game is based on ponies the DJIA end value for 7/13 or something like that.

There have been debates in the forums on the legality. Legal or not, this will be my last bag of crap attempt if this is how the rest of them sell. I’m not a fan of the lotto. With 1 in 10 odds of scoring a bag of crap, I don’t want to have to buy $80 worth of raffle tickets (and $3 novelty items that I don’t really want) to land a box of stuff that sometimes is only worth $30. Granted my bags of crap have all been great. More than $100 retail, sometimes more than $200. Still. No thanks.

Hopefully woot figures out something else for the bags of crap. I don’t understand the problem with a captcha or changing up the title/pricing a little to get past the bots. Customers would understand. And I’m sure they’d like it better than the raffle route.

UPDATE: Good on woot. They just sent out emails saying that everyone who bought themselves a birthday raffle ticket also got themselves a pair of $5 off coupons for future purchases. The coupons help smooth over the buyer’s remorse a bit. Thanks woot for making this a better deal.

The only real new “news” of interest is that we are getting ready to kick off an contest where we will be giving away an iPod Shuffle. I know… It’s not a Touch or a new car or anything exciting like that, but still.

Now I just have to think of interesting contest to use so we can give this thing away. Any ideas? I’ve got a few but I’m sure there is something better out there… Once I do post the details over at BlogExplosion, I’ll post them here too.

When I check my email, I get to see muffintops. When I read the news, more muffin tops. Sometimes, if I’m really lucky I might get a little mouseover game where I can make the morbidly obese woman’s chin jiggle.

I tell you, there is nothing better. My only concern is that someday the ads telling me about the mom in Nearbytownsville who lost 34 pounds of belly fat by following one simple rule will all dry up. I’m still broken up over the loss of all “Miley Cyrus has an IQ of 83, can you beat her?” ads. To prepare for the potential muffintop free future, I’ve already been collecting screen caps.

I’m praying to God though that when those ads do run there course that the next massive campaign is even better. It will be hard to top, but I’m sure those advertising gurus will find a trump.

I think I’ve got my hands on a few winners. I don’t know. I need to get the sites going though to find out. I think things go better if it is a collaboration with someone else.

The external dose of enthusiasm helps push things along. I’m actually pretty excited about one of the domains from today’s purchase since it is a collab. There are already multiple people who are going to be assisting by providing content plus I think there is a little bit of a chance at earning a few bucks off of it.

I’ll announce more about it when it officially launches.

I attempted an appeal because I think I know why it was cancelled. I figured if that was the issue it was no fault of mine. Someone didn’t like my content so theymaliciously did something to my site that violates the Adsense ToS.

I must admit, I was rather disappointed when I got back a response to my appeal. Google again did not explain why but they responded back with a friendly Dear John letter stating that my one and only allowed appeal was denied.

Google’s Adsense is the best known program for revenue. People like ShoeMoney show pictures of themselves holding a six figure monthly payout from Google. Google’s Dear John letter means that no matter how hard I work at this, I can never ever be a ShoeMoney. I guess I could post a picture of me holding a print out of my Dear John email from Google, but that won’t pay my hosting or domain registration fees.

I’m not a fan of Adsense anyways. The links/ad units are an eye sore and they aren’t very practical. I myself have only clicked on maybe 6 Adsense ads (not mine of course). I’m sure most of you out there in internet land are the same. Maybe I’m wrong. I must be. How else would Adsense have grown so large if the model didn’t work. What have I done? WHY GOOGLE WHY!?

I know the game has been out for a while, but up until a few weeks ago I had only ever seen commercials. For any of you out there who are wondering, YES. The game does look as good in-game as it does on those commercials. And the online play is like getting a hug from Jesus.

My only delima is that I don’t have the game. Oh, or XBox Live. Nor do I have an XBox 360. So as it stands, there is about $400 holding me back from permanently crippled controller hand syndrome. I’m searching for that $400 though. I will find it.

Do you play CoD:WaW on XBox Live? If so, let mek now and you can light me up once I finally get my account set up. If things go as planned, I should see you in about a week.

Until then, check out these sweet in-game videos from IGN: