Josh Barsch founded StraightForward Media in 2001 after a brief career in print journalism. He now lives in the sticks of western South Dakota with his wife Christina, daughter Mia, son Ezra, two dogs Velvet & Holly, and cat Chanceux, all of whom he loves dearly. And four nameless hermit crabs, for whom he feels nothing.
Products to Avoid: Zonbu
By Josh Barsch
Unless you’re particularly interested in green computing (i.e., computers that don’t use much energy) or the Linux operating system, you probably haven’t heard of Zonbu, a small computer company in California that sells ultracheap laptops. I came across them in one of the tech/business magazines I read (can’t remember which one) and was intrigued by their unique proposition. At the time, they sold one product — a tiny CPU that was about the size of the Bible that the Gideons leave in every hotel room. It didn’t run Windows (great for security!), but its system emulated Windows for the user (great for usability!). It came preloaded with about 20 open-source alternative programs, so you could pretty much do any sort of basic computer use that you wanted to do (email, Web browsing, word processing, etc.). Its operating system supposedly updated itself, there was some online storage that came with the package, and it was only $99. You had to pay $14.95 or something like that per month for their online updates/no-hassle service, etc. Oh yeah, and it’s also apparently very earth-friendly, uses a tiny fraction of the power that a normal machine uses, is a “zero-emissions” computer, and …
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Do you still love me when I cry?
By Josh Barsch
It’s official: my daughter is the Queen of Devastation.
The fistful of people out there in the world who know me extremely well would all probably agree that I’m someone who, for the most part, doesn’t take personal criticism very seriously. The words of others just don’t bother me much, even if they’re really, really nasty words that are intended to be hurtful. I admit it: there is a little dollop of arrogance about me that insulates me from this sort of thing, and it’s a very simple system. Here’s how the system works: If someone who doesn’t know me decides to tee off on me (usually this happens in print, rather than in person), then my natural reaction is: Why on Earth would I care about the opinion of someone who doesn’t know me? I mean, thousands of strangers could be cursing my existence behind closed doors at any given moment, and what’s to be done about that? Just because I happen to hear or read the comments of one of those strangers is no reason to get myself in a twist.
But if it’s someone close to me letting me have it, then in most cases, they’re probably right …
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Illegal Immigrants: Join the Army?
By Josh Barsch
I am not an avid follower of politics; most politicians are professional liars and panderers, and I don’t like devoting much time listening to people who, at best, are telling me what they think I want to hear, and at worst, are lying right to my face. Still, I do occasionally get what seems to be a good idea, something perhaps worth writing down, even. Personally, I would fall on a sword before I ever ran for office, so on the off chance that I do incubate a workable and helpful idea, I guess I should blog it so some future politician can use it and swiftly take credit for thinking of it first.
If you pay any attention whatsoever to the outside world, you’re probably well aware that:
a) the U.S. gets a great deal of new, illegal residents from Mexico (and other countries, to be fair, but primarily Mexico) every year. Roughly, from what I read, it’s about a million people per year. A lot of attention is being paid to the issue right now, since it’s an election year. And,
b) We’ve got a shortage of men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces. We’ve raised the age ceiling on …
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Starbucks Revamp Plan: Thumbs Down
By Josh Barsch
Last week, Starbucks’s again-CEO Howard Schultz announced quite a little rejuvenation plan for the ailing coffee franchise. I am a huge Starbucks fan myself, so I was frankly pretty disappointed in how toothless the proposal really was. I was expecting some major customer-friendly stuff, but here’s the five-point initiative we got instead (this is straight from a Starbucks press release):
— A proprietary and revolutionary in-store Clover(R) brewing
system that delivers the best cup of brewed coffee available
anywhere;
This is actually the smartest of all the intiatives they put forth, because it actually focuses on the reason that I and most of their millions of customers patronize the place: the coffee. What the press release didn’t say is that the new super-premium coffee will cost $2.50, which is $1 more than their already-spendy coffee costs. Still, though, folks who are rolling through Starbucks every day are spending a lot of discretionary income as it is. Will an extra dollar a day make or break these customers? Probably not. However, the economy is getting rough, and you’ve got to think …
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A&E Intervention: Entrepreneur vs. Alcoholism
By Josh Barsch
I am a huge fan of the show “Intervention” on A&E. It’s not that I like watching other people’s misery — I hate that part, actually — it’s just that it’s a weekly reminder of just how wrong things can go for you if you make certain poor choices in your life. And if you have children, “Intervention” is the world’s best instructional program about the multitude of different ways you can screw up your kids for life with behavior that spirals them into addiction later in life. You name it: physical abuse, neglect, absence, infidelity, emotional/verbal abuse, divorce, estrangement, death of a friend/family member — all of this stuff can rocket a kid into a life-consuming addiction later in life.
Pleasant thought, eh? Not at all, and my wife can’t stomach the show at all. But the misery and sadness is exactly why I watch it — to keep myself in check. Anyone who reads this blog with even semi-regularity knows that I am a father first and everything else comes second, and if watching some gut-ripper stories on shows like A&E give me regular encouragement to center my own life and doings around the well-being …
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The new design launches!
By Josh Barsch
Josh here, announcing the at-long-last redesign of our site. Let’s face it — our old site looked pretty dated. I’d like to say we let it get that way by being hyperfocused on doing a great job for our customers and losing site of our aesthetic well-being — and there would certainly be some truth in that — but I’m the boss around here and I’m supposed to look after that sort of thing, and I let it go way too long. Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments section (although I’m guessing there won’t be many, since this blog itself is one of the new features of the new site).
Speaking of the blog, I think it’s one of the most important additions to the new site. I’ve got all kinds of stuff to say — much of it, but not nearly all of it, about advertising. I’ll do my level best to categorize my posts appropriately so that you don’t have to read my rants about topics you aren’t interested in. But I will be spicing it up a bit with non-PPC-related stuff, because I’ve done PPC for almost 7 years now and am …
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Do People Really Click Those Google Ads?
By Josh Barsch
It’s a crazy world, this one we live in, isn’t it? “Why yes it is, Josh,” you say, “but what makes you say so on this very day?” You’re in luck, because I feel like elaborating.
You’d have to be living in a cave if you hadn’t heard about Google’s astronomical rise to the top of the business world over the last few years. The company’s stock price hovers between 1 and 2 zillion dollars per share, giving it a market cap of (roughly speaking) several hundred jillion dollars. To put that in layman’s terms, Google is worth more than Germany, New York City, Saturn, Brad Pitt, Lindsay Lohan and the Church of Scientology combined. But enough with the hard-and-fast numbers. My point is: Google is phenomenally successful. They are doing something very, very right.
Even more remarkable than Google’s success is the fact that all of that money comes from essentially one source: those little blue (or sometimes white, and recently even yellow) ads that appear every time you do a search. The ones that say “sponsored links”. That’s right: Google is a one-trick pony. All of those jillions come from people around the globe doing Google searches, seeing one of …
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