define: Jared Barden

Ever noticed that some companies like to tell you to, “search for us on Yahoo! and learn more…” ? That seems like a risky strategy to me, and here’s my reasons why.

1.) Why not just send the person right to your web site? If you’ve ever read Don’t Make Me Think , this will make sense. Basically, you want to decrease the number of steps for someone to accomplish the action you want them to take, and you want to make it as easy and “thoughtless” as possible. Sending them to a search engine, telling them to search, and then hoping they click the link you want them to, seems to not follow the “Don’t Make Me Think” mantra.

2.) You increase the risk of competition.

Case in point, Pontiac did an ad a year or two ago, where they told you to search on Google for them. Well, the competition got smart and bought Pay Per Click ads for that term and got some great branding and exposure out of Pontiac’s ad.

Also, what happens if someone gets their page to rank higher for the phrase you’ve suggested to the TV viewer? Then you’re kind of stuck.

Or what happens if someone decides to Google Bomb the phrase you’ve targeted in your ad? Granted, Google has gotten stricter on this practice, but you could still use your PPC ad to get negative press out their about the competition.

Just seems like it would be easier to send the person right to the page you want them to go to. However, lots of companies take this, “search for this and click the link” kind of approach, which just seems like one too many steps to me, but maybe I’m just lazy when it comes to my surfing behavior.

We just returned from Williamsport, where we watched Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled, with our friend Mara.

I didn’t know too much about the movie, but I did know that it was supposedly in support of Intelligent Design, and I like Ben Stein, so I figured it would be a good time.

I was definitely not disappointed. Well, at least not totally. I was kind of hoping Ben would take more of a side/stand than he did, but that is his prerogative.

I won’t really get into the whole Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate, because for me there isn’t much of a debate. I believe in Intelligent Design, but I also further believe in Creationism. Do animals/species evolve over time? Sure they do. It would be silly to think otherwise, but did we all come from single-celled organism in some cosmic soup? Highly unlikely.

What I wanted to touch on were some of the explanations offered by prominent Evolutionists as to how life might have begun.

1.) Molecules attached themselves to inorganic crystals and somehow formed life.

Wow. That’s about all I can say on that one. I’m pretty sure that takes more faith than believing that God created life.

2.) There is a possibility of an Intelligent Designer out there, but it must have evolved from somewhere, and then evolved enough to create life in our own universe.

Another far-fetched one it seems. And this was mentioned by one of the world’s foremost Evolutionsts - Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion. Frankly, that explanation seems a little delusional to me, but that’s just me.

No matter what you believe on this issue, I hope we can all agree that debate should not be stifled, as is apparently happening in academic institutions at all levels across this country. That is truly a shame. Voices from both sides of the aisle should be heard, and then people should be able to make their choices from there.

Something always puzzles me about the credit card scanners at our local Wal Mart. In fact I’m not even sure if that’s the correct term for them, but for the purpose of this post, it will suffice.

What always gets me is that the scanner knows when you’ve swiped a debit card, and it proceeds on accordingly. However, when you swipe a credit card, you are prompted to let the cashier know that you swiped a credit card.

I always hate saying, “hey that was a credit card.” I don’t know why. It just seems awkward and unnecessary to me. My goal in checking out is usually to check out as quickly as possible, and having to take that extra step, even though it seems small, seems unnecessary to me in 2008. Seems like we should be able to make a scanner that doesn’t require letting the cashier know that you just used a credit card.

I also learned a couple new things about credit card scanners this past week.

1.) Apparently they are a pain to use for left handed people. Never really thought about that before, being right handed and all.

2.) What happens to the copy of your signature that is entered into the system and shows up on your receipt? I would like to think that Wal Mart wouldn’t use my signature for nefarious purposes, but you never know.

Credit card scanners at Wal Mart - one of the great mysteries of my life.

The definition of greed was on display over the last couple of days in the form of the Boston Red Sox players.

A little background on the story for those of you who aren’t sports nuts. Boston is playing their season opening game in Japan, which is a huge deal, due to the popularity of baseball in Japan, etc. etc.

Supposedly a deal was struck that the players, coaches, and staff would receive a $40,000 stipend (more than yours truly makes in an entire year) to make the trip to Japan. I have no complaints with that fact. We live in America. We all enjoy the benefits of capitalism. If someone wanted to pay me $40,000 for a trip to Japan, I would most likely gladly accept.

Apparently MLB reneged on part of their deal, and they were only going to pay the coaches and staff a measly $20,000 for the trip. Now, it wasn’t right of MLB to back out on their part of the deal, but come on people, you’re getting paid $20,000 to go on a trip to another country to take part in a GAME.

But, all is not lost, a deal has been struck, and Boston will be making the trip to Japan, and all is right with the world. Or something like that.

A post I recently wrote about the test of Google Health drove some unexpected traffic to my blog from an unexpected source - none other than Google itself.

The following is one of my “Jedi Web Geek” tips on how to drive some traffic to your site from the world’s biggest search engine.

The steps are pretty easy.

1. Read a blog post on one of Google’s many blogs.
2. Write a post on your own blog reflecting on the post you’ve just read. Write it as soon as possible after reading the post.
3. Wait to show up in Google’s “Links to this post” section of their post.
4. Hopefully get some unlikely traffic to your site.

It really does work. See the “Google Wants Your Medical Records?” link in the screenshot below? That link points to this site, and has driven some traffic over the last couple of weeks that I wasn’t expecting when I first wrote the post.

Give it a try. You just might get some unexpected results.

Danielle and I were reading through the story of Moses the other night, and a couple of things really stuck out to me that I either hadn’t read before or just never really noticed.

1.) Moses changed the course of history.

You might say, “well yeah, Jared, we know that.” I’m not talking about the plagues and leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Don’t get me wrong, that was a miracle, but there was another moment where Moses was used to change history.

The back story…Moses has been on Mt. Sinai meeting with God, receiving instruction on all sorts of different subjects for a long period of time. The Israelites left in camp become restless, they ask Aaron (who, by the way, is supposed to become High Priest) to build them a god that they can worship, Aaron complies and builds the golden calf. Moses hears the sound of the Israelites throwing one wild party, and God becomes extremely upset, and rightly so. Can you imagine being miraculously led out of Egypt, and then complaining that Moses hasn’t come down from the mountain, so you want to worship the golden calf that “led you out of Egypt?” A little crazy, right?

Anyway…God is so incensed with the Israelites that he decides to burn them up. Moses asks God to spare the Israelites in Exodus 11:13-14 (The Message)

Stop your anger. Think twice about bringing evil against your people!

And God did think twice. He decided not to do the evil he had threatened against his people.

Just goes to show the effect that someone cane have when they truly connect with God and ask Him to make a difference not only in their life but in the lives of people important to them.

2.) God uses imperfect people.

I thought it was quite ironic that God still allowed Aaron to be priest after this little episode. Because, while Aaron is busy building the golden calf, Moses is receiving detailed instructions regarding Aaron’s priestly duties. Yet, God still allowed him to serve as priest, despite his playing a part in the Israelites’ sin.

It’s encouraging to know that we serve a God who can work with imperfect people.

3.) The whole sacrifice system must have been a mess.

When you read about all the different sacrifices that had to be performed daily you start to realize that it must have been a big bloody mess, between the slaughtering, removing of certain organs, etc. etc.

Thankfully, Jesus performed/was the ultimate sacrifice during His death on the cross so that we could be right with God without all the mess of animal sacrifice.

It appears that after Yahoo! rebuffed Microsoft’s $40+ Billion hostile takeover bid, Microsoft might be taking another route to acquire the company.

Apparently Microsoft is considering a proxy fight to gain control of Yahoo! Apparently they really don’t want to take “no” for an answer.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo! seem to have a way to go before they can really compete with Google in terms of search, where Google, according to Hitwise, holds approximately 66% of the U.S. search market share. Putting Yahoo! and Microsoft’s share together still doesn’t even equal half of Google’s. Talk about dominance on Google’s end.

It will be interesting to see how this whole situation plays out and what kind of competition can be put up against the mighty Google.

Apparently the much-rumored Google Health is going to enter testing soon with a group of patients from a clinic in Cleveland.

I’m not sure what to think of this program yet. I don’t really like the idea of any other company having access to my health records, but let’s face it, how do we know who has access to our medical records currently?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the Google, but the amount of information that they possess is somewhat scary when you step back and think about it. The thought of them having access to my medical records seems just a little much for me. However, the blog post does note that you will have access to your records through a secure API (Application Program Interface - aka. “nerd stuff”). So, it’s hard to say how much access Google will actually have to the records.

Either way, it seems a little scary and “Big Brother” to me.

Here are a couple of shots that Danielle snapped this weekend of our Patriot.

Danielle recently wrote about the latest addition to our family - our 2008 Jeep Patriot.

Here’s how it came to be a part of our family.

Danielle used to drive a white 1994 Ford Explorer, that, while it served her well, was definitely on its last legs. A few months ago it began making weird grinding noises, and it felt like it was going to die at any moment.

Around that time we started talking about replacements for Danielle’s car, but we weren’t terribly serious. I did some research online, and I ended up at the Jeep site, where I saw the Jeep Compass.

On a whim one night we decided to stop at our local Chrysler/Jeep dealer to take a look at the Compass they had in stock. When we got out of the car we were approached by a salesman. The conversation went something like this.

“Do you offer special financing on the Compass?”

“Well, you know you can only get the better interest rate if you have good credit scores.” (said in a rather condescending voice)

“Oh…ok, well, can we test drive it?”

“Well…this car is ALMOST sold, so I’d really rather not have you test drive it.”

At that point, we said, “thanks,” and left. The whole experience was a real turnoff for us, and we vowed not to purchase our next car from that dealer.

Fast forward a few months, and Danielle’s car is really on its last legs. After trying to sell it at our house and my in-laws’ house, we finally end up selling the car to Danielle’s uncle.

Fast forward another couple of months, and we were back to the research stage of looking at cars. I went back to Jeep’s web site and noticed the Jeep Patriot. A couple of things caught my eye immediately about the vehicle.

1.) I liked the boxy look of it.

2.) It had 4 Wheel Drive.

3.) The price was good for us.

4.) It met Danielle’s criteria of holding two kids.

We talked about the car, and it didn’t really go much further than that.

In the last couple of weeks we started getting more serious about purchasing a car, and we found a black Patriot at Calkins Motors in Troy, PA through the Jeep dealer inventory search.

Last Saturday we went to Calkins to test drive the car. When we arrived the salesman was genuinely nice to us and seemed interested in us. I asked what specials they offered, and he listed them, and proceeded to tell us which he felt was actually the better deal in the long run. We then asked to test drive the car, and he said sure. He grabbed a plate and the keys, and the next thing we knew, we were buzzing down the road, determining if this was the car for us.

Of course the salesman (Bob Morgan) wanted to put us in the car that day, but we wanted to think it over and crunch the numbers (the really fun part). We thought it over, and decided we could afford the car.

This last Monday we went to the dealer right after work to pick the car up. I was amazed at how smoothly the whole process went. Not having ever bought a car before, I wasn’t sure how you got the insurance, and the license plate, and all the things that go along with buying a car, but Bob had everything taken care of for us. The whole experience was really a delight for us, and we feel confident that we made a great decision by purchasing from Calkins.

It’s funny how everyone has opinions when it comes to cars. They go something like this.

“You never buy a new car. You ALWAYS buy used.”

“You never buy a used car. You ALWAYS buy new.”

“You never pay the sticker price on a car.”

And the list goes on and on. I’m happy with the way we purchased our car, but we do thank our family and friends for all of their input.

We got home with the car Monday night, and we couldn’t be happier with it.

And now, a picture of our, “new baby.” Or at least what it looks like (minus the silver trim) on the Jeep web site.