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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Adam Lisagor on The Pipeline
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Photo courtesy of Lucius Kwok
Our pal Dan Benjamin, who continues to cement himself as a “Dick Cavett for the Internet Age” with his engaging Pipeline interviews, has a gem in his latest episode, talking shop with Adam Lisagor. Many people may know Adam from the hilarious You Look Nice Today podcast, but he’s now making a name for himself crafting memorable, one-of-a-time promotional videos for products such as Square and Flipboard.
Adam discusses his dissatisfaction with his previous work (doing graphics and visual effects for television and film) and what it was like for him to take the leap of quitting his job and venturing out on his own commercially. It’s absolutely worth a listen for anyone having done (or planning to do) the same.
Hear Adam Lisagor on The Pipeline »
Cheap plug masked as full disclosure: We designed the 5by5 Studios website.
UPDATE: Merlin Mann hits the nail on the head in his post about Adam’s interview:
“I don’t know how you could listen to Dan’s swell interview with Adam without feeling at least a teeny bit inspired. Inspired to pick your new projects more carefully, to dump the less gratifying old ones more buoyantly, to give your latest draft just one more line edit, to start noticing the well-disguised opportunities that are lurking in the shadows of inconvenience and loss—to at least briefly double-check that the trendline for whatever stuff you’re making that theoretically matters to you is moving in a sustainable direction you can be proud of.”
Seriously. Check it out. Now.
How to Give Yourself a Raise Without Losing Business
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
As a freelancer, you can give yourself a raise by increasing your hourly or per-project rates. This part is simple, but setting up the right preconditions for the change is a trickier process. How can you raise your rates while making sure you still get plenty of work?
FreelanceSwitch explores the topic in a well-written piece »
The Honest Truth
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | Tom Carmony
Everything takes three times as long as you think [to get done], plus meetings.
Merlin Mann, speaking the truth about client work at Phoenix Wordcamp.
2008 Macworld Keynote: The Small Business Perspective
Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | Tom Carmony
Yet another Steve Jobs Macworld keynote presentation is in the books and, as would be expected, the Apple faithful are all abuzz. As a major fan (and consumer) of Apple’s products, Jobs’ annual keynote is very much the equivalent of Christmas morning for (Mac) geeks. Present company included.
At the moment, most of the buzz coming out of this morning’s presentation is surrounding the new MacBook Air, Apple’s almost-but-not-quite-ultra-portable notebook computer. Weighing in at less than three pounds and barely 3/4″ inch, it’s clearly one sexy machine, and one that I’m sure will sell like crazy.
Sitting back and digesting this year’s event, I’m focusing on today’s announcements from the perspective of a small business owner; what did Steve Jobs unveil that we can really incorporate into our workflow to help us work better, faster and more efficiently for our clients?
Google Reconfigures Its PageRank Algorithm
Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | Tom Carmony
Google has apparently rolled out a fairly significant change to its PageRank algorithm, which is a major contributor to ranking websites in user search results. Changes in PageRank can cause significant alterations in traffic to some websites, and that appears to be the case with this latest change.
Lots of folks are weighing in on exactly what may be the specifics of the change in the algorithm, but right now it appears that sites most significantly hit are those that either: 1) sell text links to other sites; and/or 2) have a high rate of links between blogs/sites on the same network. For example, a number of prominent technology blogs, such as Engadget, are a part of large network of multiple sites and employ a large number of “cross-site” links on nearly every page of their sites. In many ways, this is a means of “beating the system” to improve Google search rankings, as Google’s search algorithm rewards sites which feature large numbers of incoming links (from other websites). It looks as if it’s now (more-so than ever) important that those links be from true outside websites (not other sites owned by the same company or apart of the same network).
This is clearly something that will most significantly impact some of the larger players in the blogosphere, particularly any companies whose revenue model is built entirely on Google ad dollars. Despite this, it should also be a lesson to smaller companies and websites that their search engine rankings can be impacted and that they should focus on developing quality incoming links to their site in order to best increase their search rankings. Relying on manufactured outside links simply doesn’t cut it any longer, and it shouldn’t. Good for Google for correcting this loophole in their algorithm.
(via Kottke)