Running The Ladder is the company blog of Bainbridge Studios, a tiny runt of a design practice based in lovely Tacoma, WA.
So what's the deal with the fish?
Browse by Topic
Recommended Reading
Flickr at the Office
Latest via Twitter
RSS Feed
subscribe to the rss feed
First Verizon and Sprint, Now AT&T: Vonage Faces Another Patent Infringement Lawsuit
Saturday, October 20th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
The major telephony players continue to pile on Vonage, the seemingly lame-duck leader in U.S. VOIP (Voice Over IP) service provider. After losing a patent infringement case to Verizon and reaching a settlement with Sprint Nextel, Vonage is now facing another round of litigation, as AT&T filed a lawsuit Friday alleging infringement of a number of their patents related to accessing IP phone networks with traditional telephones.
In many ways, it’s a shame that Vonage continues to get beat down by the larger phone companies. While some have offered competing VOIP services, in most cases they’ve not offered the competitive pricing and feature lists that Vonage brought to the table (which isn’t entirely surprising, as VOIP technology is a direct challenge to their established land-line and cellular businesses).
As a small business, we’ve found great value in many of the services Vonage offered. Bainbridge Studios’ primary phone services have been provided by Vonage since early 2006 and the flexibility they offered, including the ability to manage voicemail and call logging via a web-based dashboard, the flexibility to offer additional phone lines in multiple area codes and email notifications of new messages are all features we’ve made great use of.
Given their increasingly rocky standing and the non-stop barrage of litigation, we’ve begun seriously considering alternate providers for our phone services. Whatever alternate provider we ultimately choose, it’s unlikely to be one of the traditional phone companies, as they simply don’t seem willing to offer the same kind of value and service options that Vonage has. And that’s a shame.
Majority of US Homes Now Have Broadband
Thursday, June 7th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Om Malik cites results from a recent Leichtman Research Group report on Internet access in the United States, which, for the first time, suggests that the majority of Americans now have broadband/high-speed Internet access in their homes.
Pairing that with the availability of broadband access in many work places, 72% of US Internet connections are now broadband.
So what does this mean?
From a design perspective, it offers us increased flexibility with regards to expected bandwidth and the amount and speed of content that we can present. Does it mean we should throw image optimization and careful, lightweight page coding out the window? Certainly not, as those remain hallmarks of quality design. What it does suggest, though, is a continually increasing flexibility for delivering more rich-media content to end users. While it’s still important to consider the end user connecting to your site from a 56K AOL dial-up account, you can rest assured that such bandwidth constraints are being less significant in the process of designing and delivering content on the web.
Microsoft’s Silverlight and True Cross-Platform Compatibility
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Much has been made this week of Microsoft’s announced “Flash-killer” browser plug-in and development platform, Silverlight. To quote Redmond, “Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.”
Their early demos look impressive, and most interestingly, heavily promote the software’s cross-platform compatibility. Unlike previous Microsoft efforts (Windows Media Player, I’m talking about you), Silverlight is (purportedly) designed to run seamlessly on the Mac’s Safari and Firefox browsers (not just Windows platforms). TechCrunch’s Nik Cubrilovic provides an excellent overview.
While that all sounds well and good, real world performance may in fact be another matter. ClickZ News documents their attempts to get the plug-in successfully installed on a number of their Macs, with little luck and also reported that Microsoft’s WMV demo video wouldn’t even play in Windows Media Player for Mac (they had to revert to the excellent open-source program VLC to get the demo to play). Conversely, we were able to install Silverlight and play a range of demo content without issue on one of our Intel-based Mac’s here in the office.
Some major media players (including CBS, Netflix and Major League Baseball) have already signed onto the new platform. It’ll be interesting to see how Silverlight’s market penetration spreads in the coming months, as compatible content begins to appear, as well as what effect, if any, it ultimately on Adobe’s Flash.
Digg Users Revolt
Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 | Tom Carmony
There’s been an incredible user revolt unfolding at Digg.com today. The whole mess started around the issue of a cracked HD-DVD encryption key (which is a necessary component for copying HD-DVDs) which was linked via Digg from a number of websites.
Digg, along with a number of other major sites (including Wikipedia, Google and others) were threatened with a cease and desist order to remove the offending code from their sites. While other social news sites, including Slashdot and Reddit, did not comply, Digg not only began removing posts and comments referencing the encryption key, but also soon began deleting the accounts of users that had posted the code.
For those unfamiliar with Digg, it’s essentially a socially-driven news site, where members submit links to Digg, which are then dugg up (voted for by other users) or dugg down (voted down or rejected by the users). The most popular items make it to the Digg homepage and generate a ton of hits for many websites, if a particular site ends up linked via a story on Digg.
In their own words, “Digg is a digital media democracy. As a user, you participate in determining all site content by discovering, selecting, sharing, and discussing the news, videos, and podcasts that appeal to you.”
Unfortunately for Digg, their users have taken their democratic right to protest and, for all intents and purposes, brought down the site tonight (or at least overrun it). Responding with anger, frustration and cries of “censorship” over 1) Digg’s bowing to the pressure of the HD-DVD camp, while other sites did not; 2) deleting user accounts; and 3) evidence that HD-DVD has sponsored Digg’s wildly popular Diggnation podcast, the user base began posting hundreds of stories about the encryption code, with thousands of users digging them until the entire homepage of the site was overtaken. As of this evening, the entire “Top 10 in All Topics” and every newly popular item shown on the Digg homepage was related to the Digg/HD-DVD controversy.
It will be particularly interesting to see how this plays out in the coming days. I’d imagine there will be at least a small minority of voices that say this was really simply a case of ‘cyber-vandalism by a bunch users with nothing better to do’, but they’d be wrong. This was really the first example, at least on this large of a scale, of a truly grass-roots cyber-protest. Chances are, it won’t be the last. When sites such as Digg, which is entirely dependent on user-submitted and user-created content for its very existence, take action that alienates that user base, they may well be in for a ride they weren’t expecting.
Don’t Forget Your Macworld Bingo Cards
Sunday, January 7th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
TUAW points out a pair of sites offering MacWorld Bingo cards. Yes, you too can eagerly await Tuesday’s announcement of upgrades and new Apple products by playing along with your own bingo card.
Be forewarned however, that printing and filling out one of these will clearly brand you as either a complete Apple fan-boy or, at minimum, someone with far too much time on your hands!