We are proud to announce the launch of our latest website design for Green•Go Technologies.

Green•Go Tech provides truly innovative roof and wall coatings, concrete conditioners, densifiers, decorative stains, and LED lighting solutions that are not only completely safe for the environment, but also last longer, dramatically reduce costs and outlast traditional products in every way!

The website was built on the popular WordPress CMS platform, which enables our client to update their own website at any time, using just a web browser and basic text editing skills. The theme was highly customized to match their coporate colors and create a fresh, light feel that is indicative of the company’s purpose, to help transition the construction industry from oil-based to superior green technologies.

Click here to learn more about the ground-breaking solutions from Green•Go Tech!

The good folks at Mozilla have announced that the latest version of their popular web browser, Firefox, will be available for download on Tuesday, June 17th.

The Firefox web browser is probably the best web browser available today, with built-in phishing filters to protect surfers from malicious or phony sites, standard-compliant support for the latest web standards (which makes the life of web designers SO much easier), and significantly faster browsing speeds.

In short, Internet Explorer should take a few notes.

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

UPDATE: Guinness bestows download record on Firefox

Perhaps even bigger news than the new 3G iPhone (which of course, I’ll be updating to, as soon as it releases) was Steve Job’s announcement of the much-improved online productivity suite, formerly called .Mac.

The revamped service, now called MobileMe, offers web versions of Apple’s email, calendar, address book, photo album and remote disk programs. Now, folks everywhere can begin to use Apple’s gorgeous applications, with having to switch to Mac, or even buy a new computer! This is simply ingenious.

Of course, if you already own a Mac, then you’ll be instantly familiar with the look and behavior of the online versions of these applications, because they are simply web versions of the exact same software you’ve been enjoying on your Mac—plus a few extra goodies thrown in.  AJAX goodness makes the programs function more like desktop applications than web sites, including drag-and-drop functionality.

Push email. Push contacts. Push calendar.
MobileMe stores all your email, contacts, and calendars on an online server — or “cloud” — and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. When you make a change on one device, the cloud updates the others. Your changes happen automatically, instantly, and continuously. You don’t have to wait for it or remember to do anything — such as docking your iPhone or syncing manually — to stay up to date.

With this functionality, along with embedded sharing capabilities, the iPhone/MobileMe marriage offers up a serious challenge to the antiquated Microsoft Exchange Server business solution. Goodbye, ridiculous licensing fees, specialized IT personnel and decade-old user interfaces! Hello, gorgeous, intuitive, web-based applications that don’t require a dedicated IT department!

MobileMe will cost $99/year when it launches, but I’d highly recommend the Family Pack, which costs $149/year, and features five licenses. Share the other four with friends and family and the cost per year drops to $30 per person, which is a great price for this productivity suite.

UPDATED! I just found out that you can buy .Mac right now from Amazon for just $69.99, and still get upgraded for FREE when MobileMe launches! Save $29.96 and get MobileMe… what a deal!

Click here to check out .Mac on Amazon for $69.99!

Or click here for the Family Pack for just $124.49!

I anticipate MobileMe will turn out to be one of Apple’s best strategies to date, and will be even bigger than the iPhone itself! Welcome to Mac, PC users everywhere!

This morning, Tom, the most senior—and helpful—AT&T Tech so far, came to the house and began working on my continuing problem with upload speeds. After nearly six hours, the problem is finally resolved!

Turns out, there was a mismatch of VPI/VCI cards on either end of my line. There was a 768 kbps card on one end, but a 512 kbps on the other end. The mismatch should have simply resulted in lower upload speeds altogether, but apparently they also use slightly different protocols, which resulted in abnormally high packet loss.

Here’s what I’ve learned through this ordeal:

1. Once you get past the first level of “script readers”, the level two support folks at AT&T are quite knowledgeable, attentive and friendly.
2. Contrary to the rumor mill, AT&T does NOT throttle upload speeds.
3. If you’re experiencing slow upload speeds and have eliminated line trouble, ask about your VPI/VCI card.

Now, I have no idea how the problem occurred in the first place, since I was getting great upload speeds up until two weeks ago. Apparently, somebody swapped in the incorrect card at some point. But, I’m back to my happy uploading self, and ready to get back to work. I’m sure my clients will be happy as well!

Click here to read Part One of this tale.

The AT&T repairman just left, after nearly 2 hours of further troubleshooting. He said he’s never encountered an issue like this. Not reassuring.

He replaced the modem, the card at the hub, and completely changed the line from the box at the front of the subdivision to the hub. Same speed results after each change: 5,100 Mbps download, still less than 100 kbps upload.

He has now kicked this issue up to the “LightSpeed guys”, who handle connection issues from there to the main central hub.

I’m becoming more convinced that this is a case of “bandwidth throttling” and nothing to do with cabling. I also find it interesting that no one else in the neighborhood is reporting a similar problem. Guess I’m the only one in the neighborhood who UPLOADS files. Hmmm.

I decided to blog about the drama I’ve been experiencing with my newly-installed AT&T DSL, mainly so that I could have a record of my current situation. In my experience, things that begin as minor technical annoyances can escalate over time to the point where you find yourself asking, “How did I get here?”

So let me begin at the beginning. I was an early adopter of cable internet, one of the first in our neighborhood to have it installed, in fact. In those days, Time Warner was king in Houston, and we were all very happy. I enjoyed better-than-advertised download speeds, and uploading files was at least somewhat faster than the alternatives.

As a web designer and graphic designer, I upload files constantly. Whether I am sending a print-ready PDF to a printer, or uploading PHP files and graphics to my web server, my work depends on decent upload speeds.

Fast forward to last year. Comcast took over all of Time Warner’s Houston assets, and things got ugly very quickly. Their tech support was an absolute joke, and after months of unresolved service issues and being treated like an incompetent idiot, I reluctantly decided to switch to AT&T DSL.

For the first two months, things went very well. The download speeds were not quite as fast as the Roadrunner service, averaging only 5,100 Mbps. But the upload speeds were WONDERFUL… 600-700 kbps, nearly double what I was getting on the the “new and improved” Comcast network.

Then about 10 days ago, I noticed that it was taking longer for my files to upload. Uploading a 1 MB file now took 3-5 minutes, which is an eternity in web design hours. A quick speed check revealed the following:

Repeated speed tests, using several different services confirmed the slow upload speeds. The plan I am on with AT&T promises 6Mbps download and 768kbs upload. We’re nowhere close to that!

My Mac is set to backup nightly to an offsite disk, part of my .Mac service. That backup has failed the last four nights, timing out somewhere during the process.

This morning, I have spent a total of three hours on the phone with four different tech support personnel. We have “power-cycled” everything in the house repeatedly. I think they even had me turn the microwave off and on again. We’ve tried every trouble-shooting technique in their “script”.

The modem configuration page reveals 6,016 kbps downstream and 800 kbps upstream, although “real-world” speed tests tell a much different story.

Currently, I have a 50-ft. phone cable plugged directly into my phone box outside, and connected directly to the modem. Took one of my three computers—a different computer than the one on which I first experienced the problem—and plugged it directly into the modem. Exactly the same speed results.

So we’ve got another tech guy coming out tomorrow. I’ll post the update.

With a fresh 2-year commitment to this product, I’m really hoping to get this resolved. I can’t afford to spend hours of billable time waiting for uploads to complete.

Ayone else had a similar experience? Is AT&T practicing bandwidth throttling, akin to what got Comcast in hot water a few months ago? I don’t use P2P services, and almost all of my file transfers are conducted via FTP, with the exception of the aforementioned Apple .Mac sync services. Am I being “throttled?”

More tomorrow.

LeftLane is proud to introduce our newest client, Green•Go Technologies. The company specializes in the distribution of “green” construction technologies, including innovative lighting solutions, roof, concrete and wall coatings that are not only environmentally responsible, but also far superior to their traditional counterparts.

The leaf icon in the Green•Go logo is not only instantly familiar, but also incorporates two contrasting colors to suggest the transition from oil-based products to greener technologies. The use of lowercase and hand-lettered fonts combine to create a friendly and accessible image for the Texas-based company, where the obvious play on words in the company’s name has been warmly received.

Check out the Green•Go website, also designed by LeftLane!