All posts by : Signal vs. Noise

1 of 29 | Product Blog update: Researching ancient texts with Backpack, leading martial arts site and Basecamp, writing a successful to-do list, etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Backpack Backpack helps researcher working in imaging of ancient texts “Where Backpack really shines is in its ability to share data. It lets me pull together notes, images, and lists to quickly share results with colleagues in a clean, professional layout. Since I work in imaging and visualization, galleries let me easily share images of all sizes with a small preview and some optional descriptive text, on the same page with any other information I want to get across. It’s only a short step up from there to have a page other people can readily collaborate on.” Basecamp [Case Study] Leading martial ar......

2 of 29 | iPhone 2.0: The glory wore off in wash - I can’t even begin to imagine the complexity of rolling out something as big as the iPhone 3G/2.0. You have to coordinate retail, marketing, web services, support, manufacturing, shipping, and many of other business and tech units months in advance. They all have to be ready by a a date determined by guesswork, pressure, and wishful thinking. Which means that you essentially have to make the call that the product is going to be done long before it actually is. For the iPhone 1.0 launch, that bet paid off. The software for the phone felt solid. Everything just worked well. Fondling with the phone for the first time was intoxicating. It just tasted so incredibly Apple. ......

3 of 29 | Product Blog update: Switching from Salesforce to Highrise, Outpost to bring Basecamp to iPhone, Backpack Journal is "fan-frickin-tastic," etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Highrise Why The Demo Coach switched from Salesforce to Highrise “To my surprise, Highrise turned out to be an amazing SAAS, which allows us to have basically the same functionality as Salesforce. The biggest differences to me is that the user interface is much more enjoyable to work with and the cost is a fraction of what I am used to paying for CRM.” Basecamp Coming soon: Outpost will let you manage Basecamp projects on your iPhone Outpost (coming in August 2008 from Morfunk) promises to let you manage your Basecamp projects on your iPhone: “Take notes away from the office. Delegate tasks from the train. Ch......

4 of 29 | [Sunspots] The thriving edition - Pre-release “blogger-bashers” are terrible predictors of a product’s success David Pogue: “Every now and then, a couple of messages come in that really irk me. These messages tell me how wrong I am about something I reviewed, which is fine — but they come from people who have never even tried the product. It was that way with the iPhone, in the time after it was announced but before it was available. “This will be the biggest flop since the Cube,” went the critics. “No removable battery? Nobody will touch this thing.” Etc. The blogs were full of this stuff. As it turns out, they were massively, humiliatingly wrong. Four million ......

5 of 29 | Fun with stats, the S3 edition. - Whenever I get the email from Amazon telling me that our monthly bill for web service usage is available, I take it as an excuse to spend a little while looking at our usage stats and how our storage needs have grown. When I started working at 37signals in October of 2006, we were using less than 1.5TB of disk space for customer data for all of our applications and were starting to get to the point where redundancy and backups were becoming a headache. Shortly after I started, we decided to give S3 a trial run with Campfire and we became believers pretty quickly. The fact that S3 is priced so reasonably (our last bill was $2,004.12) and the fact that it’s generally hassle......

6 of 29 | Product Blog update: convert Basecamp projects to PDF, email rules for Backpack, etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Extras New tool lets you convert Basecamp projects to PDF reports Export Reports is a third-party tool that lets you convert your Basecamp projects and information to a PDF Report that you can share, archive, or read offline. Tips Using rules in your email app to forward items to Backpack “I create rules in my email client that automatically forward different items to my Backpack page. This is especially great for emails with attachments since the attached files are automatically placed onto the page.” “Any thing emailed to my address & +action@gmail.com automatically gets forwarded to my Backpa......

7 of 29 | Product Blog update: Basecamp storage, podcast case study, Apple profiles a customer, Palm OS client for Backpack, etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: New Features Basecamp: More storage space for the same price We increased file storage space for Personal through Premium plans. Personal plans now get 1 GB (up from 250 MB). Basic plans now get 3GB (up from 500 MB). Plus plans now get 10 GB (up from 3 GB). Premium plans now get 20 GB (up from 10 GB) New Highrise Feature: Bulk Delete We pushed a new feature that makes it possible to delete multiple contacts at once. Highrise: Improved import review and deletion We pushed a new Highrise feature that makes managing previous imports easier…Now you’re able to review your last five imports and delete any on......

8 of 29 | Product Blog update: Webware 100, "a design freelancer’s best friend," Basecamp and GTD, Backpack reactions, etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Reactions to the new Backpack from around the web “I’ve always been a big fan of Backpack, but this is a whole new thing. If you’re part of organization that has always wanted a single place where staff and volunteers could share information, calendars, even reminders (including SMS), definitely give Backpack a try. I can’t think of better option, especially for churches and non-profits.” Basecamp is a Webware 100 finalist (again) From a list of thousands of nominees, Webware editors selected 300 finalists for the Webware 100 Awards — and we’re pleased to announce Basecamp is one of the finali......

9 of 29 | Ask 37signals: How do you make screencast videos? - Matt Radel writes: Hey guys, kudos on the new [Highrise] intro videos you just unveiled. Very well done. I’m going to be working on some for the new app my company just finished, and I was curious if you could drop any wisdom. I’ve got Snapz Pro and Final Cut Studio 2 at my disposal, but I’m really not sure where to start. Did you guys follow a tight process, or just kinda wing it? Any info you could give a would be screencaster would be swell. Thanks Matt. Here’s the process I used to create these screencasts: 1. Write the script. 2. Record the voiceover in Logic Express and export as MP3. Logic Express is helpful for moving tracks around,......

10 of 29 | Product Blog update: iBackpack, RunMyProcess, Ice Cube, etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: How Expekt uses Basecamp to manage one of the leading European online gaming sites “Late this summer I heard about Basecamp and 37signals. 2 months later our whole marketing department collaborates in Basecamp. Lost mails, confusion, and who’s doing what/when are no longer a problem.” Library professionals use Backpack for presentations (and more) MCLC Library Tech Talk, a technology interest group for the library professionals in Maricopa County, AZ, recently published a review/description of Backpack: “I use Backpack in particular to collaborate with colleagues on projects or presentations, and often use it t......

11 of 29 | What happened this morning? - All the 37signals properties were offline for two hours this morning between 10AM and 12PM CST (16:00 to 18:00 GMT) as our load balancer blew out and knocked out the network connection for all our servers. No data was lost and the machines all kept running, but they weren’t accessible from the internet. We’re very, very sorry for this interruption of service. While we were able to report on the progress of this interruption through our http://status.37signals.com (all the products and 37signals.com pointed to that site during the majority of the outage) that’s a small consolation when you want to access data stored on our services right now. It was just not good enou......

12 of 29 | Product Blog update: GR-FX case study, Highrise for internal staff, search Backpack with LaunchBar, etc. - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: What GR-FX, experts at Microsoft Access and Office, likes about Basecamp Garry Robinson and his associates at GR-FX are experts at Microsoft Access and Office development and XML file processing. They’re also Basecamp fans. Garry, who’s written a book on Access and a number of big articles for MSDN, sent us an email detailing how his team uses Basecamp. Use Highrise cases to track internal staff “We use our CRM software quite successfully to track our staff as well as our customers. Highrise by 37signals, has an option to create ‘cases.’ We use these ‘cases’ to keep notes on sick days, d......

13 of 29 | Letters from readers on great buildings, bad support, Getting Real with video games, etc. - The Guardian’s series on great buildings Scott Matthewman writes: In the UK, the Guardian newspaper has been bundling a free poster each day highlighting one of the world’s great modern buildings. They started with some of the most obvious, the Empire State, Sydney Opera House, etc. and today have included the 1930s-built Arnos Grove station on the London Underground. As well as including original design blueprints, the posters contain a wealth of information putting the design of each building into historical context, most of which is also online (there’s a Flash-based interactive presentation of some of the buildings in the series available from that ad......

14 of 29 | Latest news from the Product Blog - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Great Campfire tips (and more) from New Leaders “New Leaders is a team of designers and developers working all over the country focused on building high quality, Rails-based web applications for our customers. Talent knows no boundaries — we have team members that work from many different places and Campfire allows everyone to communicate on a regular basis. It acts as our virtual office and provides a centralized place for us to talk and make sure everything is on track.” Basecamp permission system improved We’ve made some significant, oft-requested improvements to the Basecamp permissions system. These change......

15 of 29 | Recent job board posts: Netflix, The College Board, Notre Dame, etc. - Some recent postings at the 37signals Job Board: Lucky Potatoes is looking for a Rails Programmer in the US. BatchBlue Software is looking for a Full-time Ruby on Rails Developer on the East Coast. jaxtr, Inc. is looking for a Director of User Interaction & Experience Design in Menlo Park, CA. Kadium is looking for a Designer in San Francisco, CA. University of Notre Dame is looking for a Web Developer in Notre Dame, IN. The College Board is looking for a Director of Content Strategy in New York, NY. Leapfrog Online is looking for a Software Engineer: Ruby or Python in Evanston, IL. NYTimes.com is looking for a Web Designer – Editori......

16 of 29 | Ask 37signals: What about research, interviews, and documentation? - Dennis Eusebio asks: Many design thinkers really advocate deep, rich design research. Its a lot of documentation, interviewing, meetings and even more documentation just to get to the planning/prototyping stage. After reading some of the literature 37signals has put out, it seems like you guys stray away from this workflow in general. What’s your general workflow like? Is it different from traditional design workflow? We conduct research all the time. But it’s a different kind. It’s important to know that research is guesswork. The further out you try to guess, the bigger your margin of error. Like you said, many people do research before they start building......

17 of 29 | Product Blog update - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Create an electronic invite with Backpack Niranjan V., President of Applied Materials Toastmasters, wrote us an email detailing how he used Backpack to create an electronic invite…”I was pleasantly surprised about how easy it was to use. The ability to embed Google Maps and add images (hosted on other websites) was very handy!” Basecamp Case Study: How Sounds are Active rocks Basecamp Chris Schlarb uses Basecamp to run his independent record label, Sounds are Active, and work on audio/video projects for clients. He’s also got a solo album coming out on December 4th on Sufjan Stevens’ record label As......

18 of 29 | Product Blog update - Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog: Amazon Web Services “success story” on 37signals Amazon Web Services recently published a success story about 37signals’ usage of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). How a Masters student at Drexel uses Basecamp “I’ve learned a lot just by interacting with the system and paying attention to what it does and how it does it. For me, being an aspiring systems developer Basecamp often makes me think ‘wow that’s really cool – i wonder how they do that.’” Basecamp gets OpenID and “Open Bar” Use the same login for Highrise, the Highrise Forums, the Ba......

19 of 29 | Red Hat: If we ship it, we support it - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 recently launched with a streamlined, cut-through-the-crap service-level agreement (SLA). The old version was seven pages, the new version is one page (competitor Novell’s is 36 pages). According to Red Hat, the new SLA eliminates legalese and offers “no questions asked” support on anything it makes. With one fell swoop of a presentation slide, [Red Hat vice president of support Ian] Gray took the nine-page document that accompanied Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and turned it into a one-page affair meant to simplify a customer’s service experience. “If we ship the bits, we support the bits,” he said. “No more legale......

20 of 29 | [Fireside Chat] Icon designers (Part 2 of 3) - [Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.] The Chatters Dave Brasgalla (Icon Factory) Brian Brasher (Firewheel Design) Jon Hicks (Hicks Design) Corey Marion (Icon Factory) Michael Schmidt (Cuban Council) Josh Williams (Firewheel Design) (Moderated by Matt and Jason from 37signals) Matt PROCESS: What is your basic method or workflow that you go through to come up with an icon? Tools, approach, etc. Josh Years ago, I did most of my icon work in Freehand, copying and pasting the final pieces into Photoshop. I moved to Illustrator about 3 years ago, and have never looked back. I still do some polish work in......

21 of 29 | Amazon goes UnSpun with Ruby on Rails - UnSpun is a new service from Amazon that puts workers from the Mechanical Turk and the UnSpun community at work finding the top, best, favorite things in any category. It’s also a Ruby on Rails application sitting on the Amazon.com domain. To be afforded that privilege at Amazon, you have to run the gauntlet of Amazon security and scalability requirements. Certainly not a trivial thing to do, but the Amazon Web Services team did it and now their Rails application is live. How’s that for fueling the rumor engine. ...

22 of 29 | Fireside Chat: John Maeda and Diego Rodriguez - [Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.] The Chatters John Maeda Diego Rodriguez (Moderated by Matt and Jason from 37signals) Topic: Simplicity In this chat, the participants discuss John’s new book The Laws of Simplicity, teaching, TiVo, iPods, cars, Japan, and more. Sample quotes John: “I find that MIT students are a bit too smart. In my courses I try to make them ‘dumber’ in a sense.” Diego: “I don’t think individual human beings are as actualized in complex, mystifying systems as they are in simple, intelligible systems.” John: “Companies selling less simply need to market more.̶......

23 of 29 | How to shoot a bullet through your startup - Are you thinking about starting a company in the web space? Step one, don’t listen to Business 2.0 and their How to build a Bulletproof Startup nonsense! They’ll tell you that you need to burn between $1.6 and $4.5 million to get to launch. They’re wrong. They’ll tell you that working on a prototype is about drawings and photoshop abstractions, that you need advisory boards, big staffs, and a huge lawyer tab before you get to building something real. They’re wrong. The web is no longer a category that’s useful to lump together with all other sorts of businesses. Prudent advice for getting ready to produce real widgets is likely to be exactly the op......

24 of 29 | Rails 1.1: Loaded with 37s extractions - Rails 1.1 is alive. It's a huge update, the biggest yet, with more than 500 fixes, tweaks, and features from over 100 contributors. It's also a triumph of extractions. Most of the blockbuster features started life in 37signals applications. A rundown: RJS - JavaScript written in Ruby: We initially extracted the Ajax support in Rails from Backpack. It was the first application that I used the send-HTML-instead-of-data approach to Ajax, which became the foundation for the update mechanism in Prototype. But as we increased our appetite for Ajax with Campfire, we needed more. RJS was extracted from the work to make all the JavaScript code in Campfire beautiful. Polymorphic associations/join......

25 of 29 | Announcing the Basecamp API - Today we officially introduce the initial release of the Basecamp API (implemented as vanilla XML over HTTP). The API allows programmers to access/read/write Basecamp data from third-party systems like OS X dashboard widgets, Yahoo/Confabulator widgets, web sites, back-office systems, billing systems, other web-based/desktop products, and more. The API is available to all Basecamp customers — from the free 1-project plan to the Premium plan. To enable it for your account, log into your Basecamp site, click the Account tab, and scroll down to the API section. We’ve set up a forum for the API so developers can share tips, tricks, and help one another implement apps that use ......

26 of 29 | Andrew Hunt: "Leave room for emergence" [a Getting Real excerpt] - Andrew Hunt, co-founder of The Pragmatic Programmers, on why you should leave room for emergence. Emergence is one of the founding principles of agility, and is the closest one to pure magic. Emergent properties aren’t designed or built in, they simply happen as a dynamic result of the rest of the system. “Emergence” comes from middle 17th century Latin in the sense of an “unforeseen occurrence.” You can’t plan for it or schedule it, but you can cultivate an environment where you can let it happen and benefit from it. A classic example of emergence lies in the flocking behavior of birds. A computer simulation can use as few as three simple rules......

27 of 29 | Bottle cap photography and other Swissmiss links - This nifty adapter can transform a soda bottle into a monopod (they say tripod but that means three legs, no?). A nice and tiny solution for when you need to take a night shot or self portrait. Found it via Swissmiss, a cool design-centric blog by Tina Roth Eisenberg, Swiss designer gone NYC. Also there: image transfer tutorials, cool fabric collages, scanned images from old books, and more catnip for designers. ...

28 of 29 | The password problem - It’s easier to keep keys in your pocket than in your head, and every new web service adds to the burden. Endless signups, login screens, and memory massages are major roadblocks to the happy, web-based future that is otherwise on schedule. So what’s been done And what can we do...

29 of 29 | Web services are going lowercase - While the big boys are repeating the complexity game of the last decade, web services in the wild are happy as a lowercase term. The new wave of Web 2.0 applications are targetting the simplicity of vanilla XML over HTTP first and keeping SOAP and XML-RPC as a “possibly, maybe”. But we haven’t completed the move downhill. While HTTP is a great protocol for web services, it’s surely not the only one. At least not if the term steps beyond its literal bindings. What we’ve seen with Backpack is that regular folks are using email as that magic glue to string applications together. Using macros, using application scripting, using all the productivity enhancers that doesn’t necessarily require “r......