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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Give a Laptop, Get a Laptop
Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
We’re heading into the final days of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative allowing you to purchase one XO laptop to donate to a child in another country and one XO for your own personal use. The combo deal runs $399 and the retail value of the donated XO ($200) is tax deductible.
This offer was initially set to run only for a week last month, but due to overwhelming demand, has been held over through December 31st.
As if the chance to grab an XO for yourself isn’t enough of a hook, there are a number of additional offers added to sweeten the deal, including a complimentary one-year subscription to T-Mobile’s HotSpot wi-fi access, a $360 value.
For more info, go to www.laptop.org.
Chip Kidd on The Amazon Kindle
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
In the vein of our initial impressions of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, Chip Kidd sums it up in one sentence:
I’ve been asked to comment on what effect I think this will have, if any, on book design as we know it. Here goes.
None.
(via A Brief Message)
Best Buy Gets Snarky Regarding the iPhone
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Though I don’t make much use of it anymore, I’ve been a member of Best Buy’s Rewards Zone program for a number of years, and as such, receive Best, their pseudo-magazine each year at the start of the holiday shopping season. The magazine typically presents relatively “fluff” pieces covering the latest technology and highlighting brands and models available in-store.
This year’s edition features a write-up on various smart phones, and has an interesting side bar (p. 77) on Apple’s iPhone. Of course, Best Buy cannot sell iPhones, as the device is still only available either direct from Apple (via their online or brick-and-mortar stores) or via AT&T Wireless. Given Best Buy’s iPhone status (i.e., on the outside looking in), it’s not entirely surprising the snarky tone they take in assessing the iPhone’s value (or in their words, lack thereof) to the business user:
“But iPhone is not as smart as Apple thinks it is. Most glaring is iPhone’s current lack of compatibility with push Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry e-mail, essential components for corporate adoption. And AT&T’s slow and erratic EDGE network cripples Web surfing and e-mail downloads … iPhone is packed with a lot of distractions. After all, who wants to work when you can watch a movie, listen to music, or surf YouTube?”
Of course, while the EDGE network “cripples” surfing and downloads for iPhone, it apparently is perfectly sufficient for other AT&T smart phones, such as the Blackberry Curve and Samsung Blackjack (i.e., those that Best Buy can actually sell).
It’s not that they’re not raising some valid points (e.g., Exchange support is a non-starter for a fair number of business users), it’s the way in which they’re doing it, which comes off as little more than a case of sour grapes to the informed reader.
Does the World Really Need Another E-Book Reader?
Monday, November 19th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
The e-book is something of a holy grail in technology development. As commentaries over the years have decried the death of the printed word (most frequently citing the declining subscription bases and sales of most major newspapers), the world seemed ripe for the introduction of a truly elegant e-book reader. Such an item would offer the ability to carry numerous volumes in a single device and would sport a visually satisfying screen and font rendering. It would look as good as a book, it would read as good as a book, and who wouldn’t want to simply download their next tome from the Internet?
Apparently, given the anemic sales of e-book readers over the years, not many people are interested.
Despite this, Amazon has taken the leap into this stagnant pool with the introduction of their Kindle e-book reader. The Kindle is actually a bit of a multi-function device, allowing for the downloading and viewing of a variety of content (e-books, PDF docs, images, etc), as well as playback of audio books (it’s apparently compatible with Audible.com) and subscriptions to blogs.
The device also comes with built-in EVDO access, free for the life of the device. Of course, you’re limited in what that wireless access can be used for (primarily downloading of purchased content from Amazon’s Kindle Store).
From a technological standpoint, the Kindle seems to be a significant step in the right direction for e-book readers. The downsides? Well, e-book reader sales have been anemic, and frankly, I don’t think this device is revolutionary enough to really draw in a great deal of new users. If you’re already a reader/purchaser of e-books, then the Kindle may well be the ideal device for delivering that content. But what about those of us that aren’t currently e-book fans? I just don’t think there’s enough of a hook with this device to draw “e-book newbies” in.
Plus, the thing really does look like it was designed 10-15 years ago. The best one-sentence review of the aesthetics of the Kindle actually surfaced on Twitter earlier today, from Portland-based designer Neven Mrgan:
“It looks like they yanked the top panel off a copier.”
Designing Email Marketing for Mobile Users
Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Tamara Gielen of BeRelevant!, a blog focusing on best practices in email marketing, cited a range of statistics on business-to-business (B2B) email in a post this afternoon. The item that really caught my eye was the following stat:”The percentage of business people who regularly read business emails on their mobile devices (keyword “regularly”) was 37%, up from 30% just a year ago.”This is a significant percentage to consider for anyone sending marketing emails to customers, clients, etc.
Much has been made in recent months in garnering across-the-board support for CSS standards in HTML (graphic) emails, but marketers need to pay just as much attention to the mobile user. While some mobile devices fully support and render HTML emails (the iPhone is one such device that does an excellent job of this), others are very spotty in their support for such messages (my last phone, a Blackberry, regularly chewed up HTML emails into an unreadable mess).
What’s the solution? Well, ideally, implementation of HTML and CSS support in mobile email apps. That however, is a bit beyond the control of Joe Businessman. What you can do, however, is make sure you’re covering your bases with not only the graphic/HTML versions of your marketing emails, but pairing those with plain text versions. Email marketing services such as Campaign Monitor support and encourage the practice of sending plain text versions with all HTML campaigns; the idea being that mobile users (and customers who elect, on for perceived security reasons, to block/not enable HTML emails in their mail app) will be able to view the plain text version. Granted, it may not pack the visual punch of your snazzy graphic-based email, but at least the core message is getting through, right?
Here at Bainbridge Studios, we’ve begun pairing plain text versions with clients’ HTML emails in a number of cases, and are in the process of updating our workflow to implement this practice across the board. Our goal is to send both HTML and plain-text versions of all customer marketing emails before the end of the year, and we’re on track to complete that transition.
We feel that’s the best way to offer full value to our clients for their email marketing practices and to insure that their messages are read by the widest audience possible.