Running The Ladder is the company blog of Bainbridge Studios, a tiny runt of a design practice based in lovely Tacoma, WA.
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Does Spam Really Work?
Thursday, January 4th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Eric Ogren of Computerworld detailed in one of his recent blog entries how stock market spam has exploded over the past two years, making up 15% of all spam messages (as of July 2006), compared to less than one percent of spam back in January 2005.
The reason behind this rapid increase? It works. To the tune of an average return of roughly 5.8% over just two days. Spammers buy up shares of penny stocks, distribute spam touting the particular company, then sell off their shares for a profit.
As hard as it may be to believe, there’s still a fair amount of folks out there willing to act on the investing advice of a complete stranger’s unsolicited email showing up in their inbox.
Pair these stats will Information Week’s recent analysis shows that 87% of all email is spam and you see why the trend continues; there’s still plenty of money to be made.
What’s the Worst Possible Way We Could Approach This?
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 | Tom Carmony
What’s the worst possible way you could approach a task? That’s an interesting twist on traditional problem solving and one that Cameron Moll suggests. Outlining the worst possible outcomes, scenarios, features, etc. of a project at its outset can give you and your team and unique roadmap of hazards to avoid.
Once you clearly understand what you don’t want the end product to be, you’re well on your way to effectively addressing the task at hand.
Mapping the Trends of 2007
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Jason Kottke has an interesting link up today for a series of visual maps (based on Subway maps), done by Information Architects, that are designed to show inter-relationships between companies and technology trends in the coming year.
Ideally, the whole point of utilizing any form of visual metaphor such as a map would be to make the information easier to take in and process for the end-user. Unfortunately, these visuals seem to miss that point entirely.
Click here to view the full Information Architects post » (via Kottke)
Welcome to the New Site!
Monday, January 1st, 2007 | Tom Carmony
January 1st has arrived and we’re officially launching both a rebranding of our company’s identity, as well as a brand-spankin’ new BainbridgeStudios.com. This is the first redesign/major update to the site since September 2005 and we’re quite pleased with how things are coming together.
What’s New
The biggest changes included in the new site are the completely updated Work section, featuring a wide range of recent projects never before featured on our site, as well as the relaunched blog. The previous edition of our website featured a blog that (sadly) never really found its legs and simply wasn’t a prominent aspect of the site. The new site prominently features regularly updated blog content, with the most recent post highlighted on our homepage and our six most recent posts linked from the footer of each page on the site.
Information Close at Hand
The expanded footer/lower third of each page on the site is another feature we’ve implemented in order to put some of the most relevant information and links close at hand. The footer includes easy access for clients to log into our Basecamp-powered Project Server, the ability for visitors to quickly sign up for our mailing list, as well as presenting our phone numbers on each page for quick reference.
A Work in Progress
With our promised January 1 target date upon us, we made the decision to go live with the site as scheduled. We’ve still got plans for some significant overall/expansion of the Services and About sections, adding additional information and building out a number of sub-pages within those two areas of the site. Those changes will be rolled out in the coming weeks.
We’re quite excited about the new site and we hope you are too! Check out our updated portfolio and drop us a line to let us know what you think about the new site. Finally, keep an eye out for some additional posts in the coming days that will further explore our redesign, rebranding and more.