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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Links of the Week: May 30th
Friday, May 30th, 2008 | Tom Carmony
Good Products Don’t Make Up for Bad Service … But They Help
Skinnycorp’s Jeffrey Kalmikoff discusses ways to truly make amends with a disappointed customer by going the extra mile.
Life, Death and Twitter on the African Savannah
Masai tribesman Joseph Kimojino is using Twitter as one way of raising awareness for the Mara Triangle wildlife park.
Tool Kit
Paul B. Brown’s New York Times small business column.
Facebook in Real Life
A humorous look at how social networking behavior might play out in the real world.
You can see all of our recommended links on del.icio.us »
Revision3 Servers Brought Down By MediaDefender DoS Attack
Thursday, May 29th, 2008 | Tom Carmony
This is a bit outside our typical topical content here on A+E, but I wanted to highlight it anyway, as it’s a disturbing example of an attack on a legit new media company.
Over the recent Memorial Day weekend, Revision3, a company specializing in producing ad-supported video podcasts (including the immensely popular Diggnation, of which we are big fans), fell victim to a denial of service (DoS) attack that knocked their website, RSS feeds, email and much of their content distribution offline for most of the weekend. These type of malicious attacks are not uncommon, particularly against well-known companies.
What makes the story particularly disturbing is that, according to Revision3′s CEO Jim Louderback, the DoS attack was launched by MediaDefender, an anti-piracy group employed in the past by the RIAA, MPAA and other old media companies. The DoS attack was apparently targeted at Rev3′s BitTorrent servers (BitTorrent is a popular peer-to-peer content distribution protocol, often utilized to disseminate copyrighted material such as music, movies, etc.). Revision3, however, only distributed their own content over the BT protocol, so there was no clear reason why MediaDefender would choose to target them (BTW, such vigilante DoS attacks are illegal).
The story gets murkier as Rev3 has investigated and apparently the FBI is looking into the matter as well. Clearly, Revision3 has done nothing but distribute their own content over a perfectly legitimate content distribution network, so they should in no way have to fear being targeted by such old-media industry “watchdogs”. MediaDefender has clearly overstepped their bounds, targeting a legit small business venture, and one can only hope that they pay a price for that. FBI involvement in the matter is certainly a good first step.
Get the full story direct from Revision3′s CEO Jim Louderback here.
Apple Grabbing a Bigger Slice of a Richer Pie
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 | Tom Carmony
This item has been circulating online for the past couple weeks, but it’s worth highlighting here, as we’ve often discussed Apple products and software. Joe Wilcox’s May 16th Apple Watch column discusses Apple’s recent climb in market share for $1,000+ retail PCs (the vast majority of Macs, save for the Mac Mini, are priced above the $1,000 mark). In Q1 2008, Apple commanded 66% of the $1,000+ PC market (70% of $1,000+ desktops and 64% of $1,000+ laptops). Those numbers are pretty astounding, given how poor Apple’s overall market share had been at its nadir, but much of that surge has been recent: Two years prior (Q1 2006), Apple owned just 18% of the $1,000+ market.
Obviously, Windows machines still dominate in overall market share, particularly below the $1,000 mark, where Apple doesn’t really compete and where the vast majority of IT department purchases lie. But given the overall stagnation of the current PC market, the fact that Apple is able to generate such strong growth is really phenomenal, and speaks to the dominance in user experience (as well as an the introductory/halo effect of the iPod and iPhone.
(via Daring Fireball)
TV You Can’t Ignore – And an Awful Logo to Boot
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 | Tom Carmony
Chicago’s WGN, one of the venerable “superstations” left over from their mid-80′s heyday on cable television, has recently rebranded, with design work done in-house (with direction by Tribune’s Lee Abrams – and apparently inspired by Pink Floyd). Gone is the “Superstation WGN” moniker, replaced now by “WGN America – TV You Can’t Ignore”.
The name change and the tag line are fine, but the new logo? Ugh. Perhaps the outdated, 80′s/90′s feel of the branding was intentional, given that the bulk of their programming is syndicated reruns from those decades?
Fittingly, I suppose, the official WGN website still looks like it was designed in FrontPage in the late 90′s, and no one’s bothered replacing the Sun Microsystems favicon with a WGN favicon. Sloppy.
(via Brand New)
Spring Cleaning: 15″ MacBook Pro, 30″ Cinema Display and OLPC XO Laptop on eBay
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 | Tom Carmony
It’s been a busy start to 2008 for Bainbridge Studios, but one thing I’ve been meaning to do for weeks now is get some computer hardware up on eBay to clear out. Having recently switched to a new 2.4 GHz MacBook (Black) as my main machine, I’m selling my previous workhorse, a 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, along with a BookEndz docking station and my mammoth 30″ Cinema Display (the new MacBook can’t drive a 30″ at full resolution, so I’ve downgraded to a new 23″ Cinema Display).
I’ve got all three up now on eBay, along with the XO laptop we acquired from the One Laptop Per Child program’s “Give a Laptop, Get a Laptop” program back in December.
If you’re interested in any of these items, you can check them out now on eBay:
15″ MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD
30″ Apple Cinema Display
BookEndz Docking Station for 15″ MacBook Pro
OLPC XO Laptop
Update (5/28/08 – 10:15am PDT): The 30″ Cinema Display has sold, but bidding is open on the MacBook Pro and the BookEndz, and the Buy It Now is still in place for the XO.
Update (5/30/08 – 11:30am PDT): The OLPC XO Laptop has now sold.