Web consultant touts forwarding email into Highrise

In "Effective Websites: Forwarding Email As Convenient Means To Enter Data," web effectiveness consultant Alan Rimm-Kaufman touts the ease with which you can email into Highrise:

Highrise is a simple and elegant CRM system from 37signals.

With Highrise, you blind-carbon copy a special drop box, something like dropbox@999999997.rkg.highrisehq.com. The app does all the hard work, determining who you are from the dropbox subdomain, parsing the email to determine where to file it it the CRM system, and associating the message with the right people and companies and dates.

Forwarding an email is really simple. Bccing an email is really simple.

Learn more about how Highrise and email are best friends.

An example of how you can forward an email into Highrise.

Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products on August 15, 2008

On August 15th, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should upgrade to a newer browser:

Download Internet Explorer 7
Download Firefox
Download Safari

The Internet Explorer 6 browser was released back in 2001, and Internet Explorer 7, the replacement, was released nearly two years ago in 2006. Modern web browsers such as IE 7, Firefox, and Safari provide significantly better online experiences. Since IE 6 usage has finally dipped below a small minority threshold of our customers, it's time to finally move beyond IE 6.

What are the implications of this transition?

As of August 15th, 2008, future features and any improvements made to existing features may not work with IE 6. If you are using IE 7, Firefox 2 or 3, or Safari, you don't have to do anything — everything will continue as is for you. However, if you are using IE 6, and you want to make sure everything works, you will need to upgrade your browser to either IE 7, Firefox, or Safari. All of these browsers are free and all of them will deliver a much better overall experience. The web will be a lot better for you.

Special note for people using Basecamp with clients: If your clients are using IE 6 (you'll want to ask them) you may want to provide them some assistance in upgrading their browser.

Why are we making this change?

IE 6 is a last-generation browser. This means that IE 6 can't provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can't optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back.

Thanks again

Thanks again for your continued support. We look forward to dropping the rusty weight of IE 6 and improving the overall customer experience moving forward.

One of our favorite uses for Backpack: "How to" pages

One way we love to use Backpack is for "how to" pages that guide us through confusing tech waters. These tutorial pages mean we don't have to waste time relearning processes from scratch. Some examples:

How to change FTP server for existing files
How to checkout apps from the Subversion repo
How to create accounts for Basecamp and Backpack from the console
How to create File Attachments in the console
How to deploy to staging
How to failover to status.37signals.com
How to format dates with strftime
How to merge a branch into trunk
How to rebase in SVN
How to restart a stage on dev
How to run solr locally
How to setup a local nameserver
How to setup MySQL databases for local apps
How to setup the Unix programs required by our apps
How to test local apps in VMware

And here's a look at one:

Jamis put it together and this was the reaction to it (from a Campfire chat):

Ryan: Jamis, thanks much for that page. really informative and well put-together
Jamis: thanks RS! I'm glad it's been helpful
David: haha, I bookmarked that page! went back there a ton of times for the openbar reform. merged trunk more times than I'd care to remember.
Jamis: yeah, svn rebasing is so insane. Most of the reason I made that page was for me to refer back to :)
Ryan: what a great use of Backpack

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

ProofHQ and Basecamp: Offer your project team richer review and approval tools

ProofHQ integration with Basecamp explains how to add ProofHQ proofs to your Basecamp projects. (ProofHQ is a web-based design collaboration, proofing and approval tool for brands, agencies, designers, print and production.)

If you use Basecamp for project management you can now offer your project team richer review and approval tools using ProofHQ.

When you create a proof in ProofHQ you can add your proof to a Basecamp project and invite project team members to review and approve your proof.

ProofHQ will automatically create a new message in the Basecamp project that you have selected when you create the proof.

The message contains details about the proof and an embedded mini-proof. The mini-proof lets your project team view all the pages of the proof, zoom and view existing comments.

If your team members want to reply to a comment, add their own mark-ups and new comments or view details of the proof, they simply click on the "Full Screen" or "New Comment" button to open the full proof with all the functions.

If you create new versions of a proof, ProofHQ will automatically create a new message in the same Basecamp project and invite the same Basecamp project members to review the new version.

This page offers the following hi-res demo movies: "How to view a proof in Basecamp," "How to create a proof for Basecamp," and "How to setup ProofHQ to link to Basecamp."

Basecamp's clean print layouts

Did you know? Basecamp has clean print layouts so your projects look as good on paper as they do on screen.

We’re not big printers, but our customers tell us they are. They often have to print screens from Basecamp to take to meetings, present to clients, or prepare a report for their superiors. These print layouts are the perfect way to do it. See larger photo of an example print job.

Getting Real reader now "living in passion and designing a product that is actually useful"

A psyched Getting Real reader writes to tell us that the book has led to a new project in which he's "finally having fun writing software again."

I just finished reading 'Getting Real', and I have to say it's one of the best software reads I've come across in a long, long time.

I've been working on a project for the last two years that's so Not Real it's not even funny.  Every time a feature is even *mentioned*, my managers create a design document out of it and present that feature -- unimplemented -- to customers.  If we described all the features that my managers consider to be part of our product, it would probably fill ten or twelve hundred page tomes.  Yet, only about 50 pages are implemented -- and half-assedly, at that.

Even worse, my manager is obsessed with "Agile",  but doesn't seem to actually understand any of it even at the most basic level.

It's really demoralizing.

The only good to come out of this experience?  I decided start my own software company with a friend from college.  The idea we have is great (I think) and I'm finally having fun writing software again, because I'm writing it under constraints -- the constraints of my day job, and of real life.  Gone are my class diagrams, design documents, and long-winded e-mails.  I have arrived at a happy place of producing features and code, living in passion, and designing a product that is actually useful (or will be, I hope)!

Reading this book comes at the perfect time.  I don't know how I didn't find it before.  Thanks so much for writing it!

Thanks! Looking to get inspired? Check out Getting Real.

(Note: The author requested we keep him anonymous.)

CSS tip for customizing the appearance of Backpack pages

Brian Bailey recently posted about how he adds some CSS to Backpack pages in order to customize them. "Simply add a small amount of CSS to the page in the form of a note and you can change the formatting to meet your needs," he writes. Details below.

If you use Backpack, the organizing web tool and intranet from 37signals, you may sometimes wish you could modify the text on a page to fit a little more information on it. I have a page where I collect code snippets and terminal commands and the default font seems a bit large with so much content. Turns out there's an easy solution to this: simply add a small amount of CSS to the page in the form of a note and you can change the formatting to meet your needs.

I've known this was possible for a long time, but finally took the time to figure it out the other day. After a few experiments, I came up with a solution that works great for me. Those of you with actual CSS skills may find much to laugh at with this example - feel free to post improvements. Plus, there is much more that can be done once someone with design skills starts playing with it.

To do this yourself, just create a new note on a page with what you see above (I like to put the note at the bottom). As soon as you save it, refresh the page to see the changes. Feel free to experiment with the font sizes (just change 14px and 12px) and the title colors (color:brown).

Here are two examples, with the standard version first. Check out these ideas if you'd like to explore further. Enjoy!

#1: Before.

#1: After.

#2: Before.

#2: After.

Do you have a neat trick re: a 37signals product? Let us know.

[Case Study] Trigger brings Los Angeles and Shanghai offices together with 37signals products

Melanie Orndorff, Account Manager at Trigger, an entertainment marketing and interactive design company. She writes to tell us how the company unites its two offices, one in Los Angeles and the other in Shanghai, with 37signals products:

At Trigger, we design, develop, and deploy games, websites, and social media applications for clients such as Sony, Paramount, Fox, and Universal Pictures. It's fun work, and it can also be pretty hectic. We use a few 37signals products here at Trigger, but Basecamp and Highrise have proven most useful for our team.

Previously, we would send a huge volume of work assignment emails, project questions, and replies back and forth between our Los Angeles and Shanghai offices. Since many of our team members in Shanghai are not English-speaking, most of those emails would need to be read and translated before work could begin. It could get confusing, and somehow emails always seemed to get lost.

With Basecamp, our project managers in both offices (plus some team members in Portland, Seattle, and Las Vegas) are able to keep all of the communications in one place. Email volume has dropped, and team members are more informed. Because of this, we've been able to take on far more projects than we could handle in the past.

We love being able to discuss projects collaboratively between the offices. Because the messages are displayed in chronological sequence, we know that everyone has the most current information. When updates to work requests are needed, we can follow up with additional instructions and each developer and manager gets the info.

Learn how Trigger uses Highrise after the jump.

YouTube clips in Campfire

Fun newish feature in Campfire: Post the URL to a YouTube clip into your chat and Campfire will automatically convert it so a still frame from the video shows up:

Click the image and the video opens in a new window. So go ahead and get your "cats on a treadmill" on!

New Highrise Feature: Better contact filtering

We recently launched an improved contact filter in Highrise that is best demonstrated with a video. We hope you find it useful.

Use Jott to transcribe a voice message and post it to your Backpack homepage

Jott converts your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments. You can even use it to transcribe a voice message and post it to your Backpack homepage. Full details and an example audio track at Jott.

You: Call 866-JOTT-123
Jott: Who do you want to Jott?
You: Backpack
Jott: Backpack, is this correct?
You: Yes
Jott: Beep!
You: Add Task to Home, remember to get lunch for the team.

Jott transcribes your message and posts it to your Backpack homepage.

If you're constantly on the go (or just prefer talking to typing), this sounds like a great way to get entries into Backpack via your phone.

(Note: If you're already a Jott user, add Backpack to your Jott links.)

How to use Fluid to "create a kick ass intranet app using 37signals"

"Create a Kick Ass Intranet App using 37signals" explains how to use Open Bar and Fluid to create "a stylish intranet app that lives in your dock, complete with all of your 37signals services."

The post explains how to set up Open Bar so you can switch easily between apps and explains the benefits:

Having all of these applications in place really creates a great intranet-type workflow. It’s helpful even when working solo but if you have a small team like me it really shines. I also noticed my people used the various apps a lot more once I introduced them to using OpenID to bring them together — as well as putting it all together in Fluid.app.

It then explains how to get the apps to live in your dock:

So we have our cool kid intranet setup with OpenID. Now we need to go download Fluid.app and turn this puppy into a desktop-like application. Fluid is an SSB (site-specific browser), which is basically just a web browser without all the extras and with a customizable dock icon (I would recommend grabbing these nice icons for use with Fluid).

It’s great for tabbing to your intranet window, adding a calendar entry, and tabbing back to Photoshop, to give a quick example. This is a process that just isn’t as exciting when you’re stuck in Safari.

AgileAgenda: a project scheduling application that integrates with Basecamp

Marc Hughes, owner of project scheduling application AgileAgenda, wrote to tell us how the app lets a user upload their set of tasks as Basecamp Todo items.

AgileAgenda is a project scheduling application that's designed from the ground up to make it easy to create a schedule for a project, and then make it easy to maintain it when things inevitably change. It integrates with Basecamp by synchronizing it's scheduled tasks with todo items in Basecamp so you can share what tasks people should be working on. When someone marks a todo item complete in Basecamp, AgileAgenda will take that information and update the schedule the next time it's synced up. Basecamp can help get things done, AgileAgenda will tell you when that will happen.

Read more about the integration.

Here's a look at the final Basecamp result from an export:

More images: A screenshot of AgileAgenda in action and one of the Basecamp export process.

FuelFrog uses Getting Real to keep things ultra-simple

FuelFrog is a a free application that allows you to easily track your gas mileage using Twitter. The site's "About" page explains how the app came to exist:

During lunch at a local mexican restaurant, the three guys that were to become known as the FuelFrog team decided to set for themselves a challenge: build a web application in less than three months. They're busy guys, so whatever they built needed to be simple. It also needed to reflect their values and be useful for many people.

By the time lunch was over, they'd settled on the idea: help people track their fuel usage. Within a couple of nights, they'd decided what to name it. A week later, sketches of the application's major pages and functionality were finished. Database schemas were designed and prototypes built. The momentum built over the following days and weeks, and nine weeks after that first lunch, FuelFrog was launched.

Brandon Milford, one of the app's creators, wrote to us to let us know that Getting Real had a big influence on them.

A couple of friends and I recently launched a free application that allows you to easily track your gas mileage using Twitter. It's called FuelFrog and after filling up your car with gas you simply text your miles, price, and gallons to your account with FuelFrog and we trend your gas mileage over time and give you additional insight into the amount you're paying for gas.

We built it by keeping things ultra-simple and released it with only the absolute necessary features. We even left out the ability to delete/edit your fuel records or the ability to recover your lost password. We launched the application three weeks ago and have spent nothing on marketing/advertising and currently have over 2,800 users. People really appreciate the simplicity and usefulness of the application.

In developing FuelFrog we took the approach of "just getting it out there" and have been rewarded greatly for doing just that. All the "other stuff" that "would be cool" can wait and our users like our application and trust that when/if we add those additional features we'll do it right. If we would have made the choice to add two additional features for example, that could have delayed the release by a couple of weeks and would have cost of literally thousand of users. I'm glad we didn't wait!

We asked Brandon which part of Getting Real had the biggest impact on their efforts.

Mac users: Create a Backpack Journal Dashboard widget using Safari's webclip button

Elaptics.co.uk has a blog post on rolling your own Backpack Journal Dashboard Widget using Safari's webclip button:

Safari on Leopard has an awesome, but probably somewhat underused, webclip button which allows you to grab part of a webpage and have it turned into a widget. And as all programmers know, the best code to write is no code. So I have grabbed the updating part of the page as per the widget described and also the team’s recent updates. As a double bonus, it updates the clips when you invoke Dashboard so you get the latest team updates straight away rather than what you’d normally be having to do is refresh your browser’s page yourself.

Ok, I’m blind, where’s this button?

Right here….

And this is what mine looks like on my Dashboard. The webclip widgets also allow you to put different frames around the clip, just flip it over and pick from the options. This season my two widgets are sporting the latest in Torn Edge and Glass themes fashion.

Do you have a neat tip for a 37signals product? Let us know.

"100 Useful Web Tools for Writers" includes Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire

100 Useful Web Tools for Writers [CollegeDegrees.com] is a list that "will help you with your career, your sanity and your creativity whenever your write." The following 37signals tools made the list:

Highrise: Manage all of your employers, vendors, designers and partners with this CRM tool.

Backpack: This 37signals tool organizes group calendars, announcements, files, task lists and more, perfect for writers who frequently work with or manage others.

Campfire: Another 37signals tool, this collaboration solution lets you set up secure chat groups where you can send and share files.

View the entire list.

Kidmondo uses Basecamp and Backpack to create online baby journal

Kidmondo.com is a unique online service for new parents that recently launched. Site creator Daniel Hallac wrote to tell us how he's been inspired by Basecamp and 37signals:

Kidmondo is a personalized online baby journal that helps parents to easily chronicle their child's life and share it with friends and family in a safe environment. Some of the tools we offer parents include, a online diary, photo & video gallery, growth & dental charts, medical & food journals, and an interactive timeline of the child's life.

The early reviews have been positive and many people have equated it to a baby blogging platform or even a baby Facebook. My response tends to be that I find it closer to a baby Basecamp. Basecamp --which we used religiously in the development of the product-- has been a constant inspiration in the design of the site. When we were stomped, we often asked ourselves, "what would 37signals do?"

We asked Daniel (pictured below with his son Davide) to tell us more about Kidmondo's use of Basecamp (and Backpack too):

How do you use Basecamp and why do you like it?
Kidmondo is an online baby journal founded by my wife, Carole and I soon after the birth of our second child. We couldn't find a compelling way to chronicle and share news about our kids with our family and friends, so we went ahead and built one. When we first came up with the idea, we started with another 37signals product you may have heard of, Backpack. Backpack to help us brainstorm and flesh out our ideas and the exact requirements for Kidmondo.

When it came time for the implementation, we switched to Basecamp to manage our engagement with Eastmedia Inc, the web development shop we commissioned to build the site. Luckily for us, Basecamp was also their recommended project management tool and the transition was a smooth one.

We picked both products because they just worked! My wife has a very low tolerance for complex tools and was able to quickly adapt and use it. It allowed us to concentrate on the work at hand and not have to worry about learning the idiosyncrasies of the product.

Which features do you use most?
I believe the message board were the most used tool and became the primary communication channel between us and the developers. Having all communications in a central and searchable repository really helped cut down on miscommunications. Funny story, during the project I was often away from a computer and commented that Basecamp really needed a reply by email function. Low and behold you announced this feature it a few days later. That soon became the most used feature!

Import RSS feeds into Basecamp with telegraph

Using telegraph you can import RSS or Atom information from other systems into your Basecamp account.

The app's creator Kasper Garnæs writes:

We're a small web development company and we use Basecamp as an integral part of our development process. To integrate content from other systems into Basecamp we've built telegraph:

telegraph is a web application which handles RSS and Atom feed subscriptions for Basecamp projects. Feeds are checked on a regular basis and new entries are automatically posted as messages when they appear in the feed.

Examples of items you might want to import:

• Updates to your source control system from Unfuddle or your Trac installation


• New bugs registered in your bug tracking system such as Porchlight or FogBugz


• Buzz about your project from the blogosphere using Technorati or Google Blog Search


• Relevant links from del.icio.us


• Any content you assemble using Yahoo Pipes or Dapper

Very cool. If you come up with a neat use for telegraph, let us know.

Budget tracking app creator: "I made a better product because of Getting Real"

David A. McClain just created Muffin, an app that aims to make budget tracking simple. He wrote to tell us how much Getting Real helped:

Dear 37signals! Thank you! I have a number of things to thank you guys for but top of my list today is Getting Real. You see, today I launched a web app (Muffin)! It's actually real, not a concept, not a limited private beta but a real living breathing product! And without "Getting Real" I would still be just getting started.

I'm just a guy with a regular day job who in fact has never written so much as a "Hello World" before now (but that's the subject of another thank you)!

Everything I did, every decision I made, every piece of code I wrote (or didn't write) went automatically through the "Getting Real" filter and I genuinely believe I made a better product because of it. And more fundamentally, I made something!

Thank you 37signals. Thank you for sharing. I hope someday soon I'll be in a position to help someone like you helped me.

We asked David if he had any words of wisdom for other readers:

Words of "wisdom": Don't let fear hold you back. I've let it hold me back from so much over the years. Making Muffin via Getting Real I think, not to get too psychological on you, is the mark of a real change for me. I've heard plenty of times that "you can do anything if you set your mind too it" and for me this book explained to me the "how".

Off the top of my head, one chapter that stuck with me daily was "Code Speaks". Code may speak, but I found myself really trying to listen.

The other thing I found myself really attached to was the idea of designing for the different states your app may be in. Specifically when there's no data to display, "The Blank Slate".

Thank you for taking an interest in my story. I feel about 37signals, the way most average American women feel about Oprah! So as you can image, to hear from you is a pretty big deal for me!

That's right, 37signals is the new Oprah! Heh. But seriously, thanks so much David and good luck with Muffin.

Virb can't imagine life without Campfire

'Round the Campfire is a post from Virb's Brad Smith (shown below) about how his team uses Campfire:

The Virb Team is comprised of 5 individuals superheroes...For the past few months, we have been scattered about (geographically speaking) more than usual. Between work and personal related trips, office power outages and a new baby, we've been forced to find a better way to keep productivity and communication unscathed; despite the thousands of miles between us.

Earlier this month I was in Chicago and had the chance to grab some dinner with Sarah at 37signals. We eventually ended up on the topic of project management. Go figure. Enter the conversation on Campfire. Being another product from the geniuses behind Backpack and Basecamp, I really can't say why I never checked it out before.

Now, let's hop in the DeLorean and zip forward a few weeks... **CRACK-CRAAACKLE-BOOM**

I honestly can't see how our team ever did without it. Campfire is open in a browser tab all day long. It's launched when the day begins on the east coast and isn't closed until the last left coast'er signs off in the evening. We fire-up iChat for group audio chats several times a day, but otherwise, no project communication happens outside of 'the campfire'.

Ye olde naysayers might think that the feature list for Campfire isn't the most robust; and I'd have to admit, I was one of them. Yet I've discovered that it gives me ONLY what I need. Nothing more, nothing less. All group conversations are logged and archived as transcripts. All file uploads are appended to the same daily transcript archives. There is a simple search feature for plowing through the archives. That same search has also made me aware that I use the word "like" a little too liberally. The tour of Campfire from 37S says it all. Like really.

If I step away from my desk, upon returning, I can catch up with the team simply by reading. Tis wondrous. The iPhone support is pretty frakking stellar, to boot. I was on a train to NYC a few weeks ago. Zipping down the tracks at 90MPH I was getting live status updates from the rest of the gang, just as if I was behind my computer.

Maybe your remote team uses it too. Maybe it just isn't your thing. My only point is that it works for my team! The end. Hell, some days it seems productivity is more solid when we're scattered about the land, versus sitting 5 feet from each other. Therein lies the application's true value.

Variety Club of Great Britain uses Basecamp to help disadvantaged children

For more than 50 years, Variety Club Children's Charity has been helping sick, disabled and disadvantaged children in Great Britain. They recently began using Basecamp and Chairman Len Keighley wrote to tell us how much it's helped:

Operating a Charity in today's business led environments is made more difficult due to the high interaction between Volunteers and Staff. Basecamp offers a quick, easy and structured way of handling this communication. It also has the added visibility of task scheduling and assignment, while providing team building capabilities. The central repository provided for not only communications but meeting minutes and documents also helps move the operation to a more paperless environment. All of which helped the North West Region of the Variety Club Children's Charity to move it's administration and communications into the 21st Century.

Thanks Len and thanks for all the great work you're doing! If you'd like to help the Variety Club Children's Charity, check out the site's Fundraising page.

Timetoast: Getting Real was instrumental in our development process

Timetoast lets you create timelines and share them on the web. Daniel Todd, the site's creator, wrote to let us know Getting Real was instrumental in his development process.

Just wanted to let you know I launched my one-man web app today and Getting Real was instrumental in my development process. It helped me focus and not get distracted by petty details or wander from the path to my goal.

 The app lets people create interactive timelines which they can add to their blog or website. It was built on a $0 budget during evenings and weekends. It's also a Rails app (incidentally my first production Rails app).

We asked Daniel to tell us more. Here's what he had to say:

How did Getting Real Inspire you?
Getting Real was inspirational to me because it was clear that 37Signals ate their own dog food on this one. Authoring the book was obviously approached in exactly the same way as they would approach a new web application, and it shows. The book is concise, to-the-point and remarkably fluff and waffle free. Not a single page was wasted. I'd like to continue translating that philosophy into my own projects.

Any favorite advice from the book?
Coming to the realization that adding features doesn't necessarily add value. Work on features that add minimal value is a complete waste of time and only serves to distract from the important issues at hand.

It's all too common for books to advise their readers to keep things simple, without detailing how to do so. It may seem trivial to many, but it's actually surprisingly difficult to implement consistently in the real world.

This was especially key for Timetoast as one man app. Every new feature would result in my already limited resources being tied up for a couple of days. It really had to be worth that investment, but often wasn't.

Any advice for people who want to start Getting Real?
Uhm... reading Getting Real would probably be a good start!

I think if you want to start getting real, you need to redefine your concept of project success and go from there. You'll begin to understand why the traditional ways of developing an application rely too heavily on the end product and not on how you're actually going to get there. You'll find yourself dropping features and watch in horror as your app turns into a jumbled-up mess that doesn't do any one thing particularly well, but lots of things badly.

Thanks Daniel and good luck with Timetoast!

fixx is a new bug tracking and issue tracking system for software teams that integrates with Basecamp

There's a new Basecamp Extra on the block: fixx, a bug tracking and issue tracking system for software teams made by hedgehog lab.

fixx integrates with Basecamp by allowing you to import your existing projects, milestones and users. This allows you to kick-start your usage of fixx and re-use existing project information, without having to spend your valuable time replicating data that you already have in use.

Further integration is planned for 2.0, with the ability to post release notes to Basecamp and updating your Basecamp projects with time tracking entries from fixx.

Try fixx.

Mailmanagr allows you to send e-mail messages to various categories within your Basecamp projects

Mailmanagr for Basecamp is now open for general use:

Mailmanagr is an e-mail interface for the popular Basecamp Web-Based Project Management system.  Whether you’ve got clients who are having trouble breaking the e-mail habit, or if you’re just looking for a solution for when you’re using your mobile phone, Mailmanagr fits the bill.

The signup email has some additional details:

Mailmanagr, in it's current form, will allow you to send e-mail messages (complete with attachments) to various categories within your Basecamp projects. You can set up an e-mail address for each category, or just set up an "E-mail dropbox" category, and create an address for that. The decision is yours!...

You can use Mailmanagr in a number of ways, here's a few ideas:

1. Create an imaginary user (mine is called Dave Helper) and set that account up with e-mail addresses. Then you can just "forward a message to Dave", and he'll post it for you.

2. Create a single catch-all category (I've used "E-mail Dropbox") and forward messages there.

3. Create addresses for each individual category on every project.

Signup for Mailmanagr.

Launch: Announcing the new 37signals Affiliate Program (with recurring income)!

We've got a very exciting announcement today. We're launching a new 37signals Affiliate Program. This one pays cash and there's a twist we think you'll really like. Read all about it at Signal vs. Noise.

Provide Campfire-based "Live Support Chat" with the flip of a switch using new Zendesk widget

Zendesk has put together a simple integration to Campfire so help desk agents can set up support chats with their customers/end-users.

Mikkel Svane, CEO of Zendesk.com, emailed us to let us know:

The integration is pretty basic, but people can expand it any way they want to. Zendesk is also integrated to time tracking service Harvest, and we're currently designing integration paths to both Highrise and Basecamp.

We asked Mikkel for more info and here's what he had to say:

Zendesk is for customer support what Basecamp is for project management. More than 1800 organizations have signed up for the service, and several have asked for a "live chat" feature in our product. Instead, we have used the widget interface that Zendesk provides to build an integration to Campfire.

The sample integration is very basic but Zendesk clients who embed the Javascript widget in their help desk are now able to provide "Live Support Chat" by the flip of a switch. Provided they have a Campfire account. End-users' help desk credentials are automatically transferred to the chat session.

It goes without saying that the widget can easily be extended. If for example you only want to provide live support for registered users, want to publish support conversations in your forums or want to provide 1-on-1 chats.

We ourselves have deployed it in our own help desk to demonstrate the functionality and gather some feedback, and we are considering integrating it directly in our service.

Zendesk widgets are well suited for 3rd party integrations. We have a Harvest integration that is slightly more complex, and integrations are coming to a lot of other services, including Highrise and Basecamp.

Developers: Check out the integration widget code.

Jason Stirman: "The Getting Real philosophy is a big part of why my apps have had such great success"

Jason Stirman, the man behind ohdontforget.com, recently wrote us about his new project, Mobaganda. He describes it this way: "If Evite got real.  No crap.  No bloat. Heck, even no signup or login!"

In the email, Jason said Getting Real helped shape his philosophy on creating apps:

Thanks for changing my mindset on how I develop apps.  I really believe the getting real philosophy is a big part of why my apps have had such great success.

Thanks!

We followed up to learn more about how Getting Real has inspired him.

That's all it does?  Awesome.

I am sick of web apps, but I build them for a living.  I'm sick of registering, filling out profiles, managing accounts, making connections, trying new stuff and ultimately, looking for value.  I can't build that stuff anymore, I just can't.  I read "Getting Real" as I was learning Ruby on Rails, in hopes of finding a new mindset for approaching my job.  I found a new mindset, and a renewed passion for solving problems online.

I have since built a few apps with the Getting Real philosophy, some featured on the NBC Today Show, TIME Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Call For Help with Leo Laporte, Techcrunch, Nickelodeon, The Kim Komando Show and more.  I'm no expert, but here's what I know; Getting Real not only had a great deal to do with the success of my apps thus far, but also made building and maintaining them a real pleasure.

My most recent endeavor, Mobaganda - Propaganda For Your Friends!

Imagine if Evite got real.  Take away the bloat and clutter, take away the registration and login process, take away the clumsy address book, take away the cheesy themes, take away the spammy emails... you see what I'm getting at?  I was a frequent Evite user, but never enjoyed my experience, so I thought, I wonder what Evite would be like if it "got real"?  Mobaganda was born that night.

I started with the user experience, literally sketching out what steps would be needed to create an event, invite your friends, and see who's coming and who's not.  I also thought about new and simple features that I wish Evite had, like a global email address alias to fire off a quick email to the attendees, an rss feed, etc.  From there the code flowed naturally.  Disclaimer, I built Mobaganda with Google App Engine, which, for non-system-admins like me, enabled me to work faster, and get realer.. that's right, I got "realer", look it up.

Since launching Mobaganda one week ago, over 1500 events have been created and Google recently selected Mobaganda as an App Engine "Editors Pick"!  I get emails daily asking for this feature, or that feature.  All good ideas, but if I implement all of them, I will have rebuilt Evite!  So, instead, I step slowly and carefully, with an open mind and nimble fingers.

Campfire "indispensable" for Gizmodo team

Writer Addy Dugdale (Associate Editor of Gizmodo) is bornrich.org's Cool Geek of this Week. In the profile, she describes a typical day at work at Gizmodo. It includes a healthy dose of Campfire.

Wake up sometime between around 8am and plug straight into my laptop. Eat breakfast, go through the feeds, find stories and write them up–in the case of breaking news, as quickly as I can. We have a web application called Campfire in which we post links to the stories we’re going to write about, so that there’s no confusion as to who is doing what. We also use campfire to crack jokes, hurl insults, flirt, flatter and threaten the other members of the team. It’s the closest we get to an “office” with the editors spread all over Europe and the US. At the moment we have two in Spain, one in Portugal, one in Chicago, four or so in NY, and three on the West Coast, so Campfire is indispensable.

As fans of Gizmodo, it's great to hear Campfire is an indispensable ally to the team. Keep up the good work guys!

Productivity blogger calls Backpack "insanely easy"

Charles Gilkey writes Productive Flourishing, a blog devoted to "all things having to do with flourishing" (i.e. it covers creativity, time management, GTD, personal development, personal productivity, etc.). The site recently asked the question, "Is Backpack Worth the Time and Money?" The answer: Yes!

Backpack proved to be that integrated solution.

Calendar sharing is also a huge feature for me. I’m horrible at telling Angela what I’m doing, even though I often put it in a calendar. My old DotMac service automatically updated her computer when I made changes - so when I no longer had that feature, there was considerable tension as my shifting schedule changed and I didn’t tell her. Having your spouse cook a meal because it’s her turn only to tell her way too late that you’re going to stay late for work causes considerable frustration.

Backpack stepped in quite nicely there, as well. Now when I update my Backpack calendar, she gets an RSS notification that I’ve done so.

But I gained more than those two features. I also really started using the Reminder feature in Backpack, as well. I schedule reminders for important things to remember, and I can set it so that it reminds both of us or one of us. For instance, she had surgery last Thursday, and the doctor informed her that was not to take anti-inflammatory meds for one week prior to her surgery. Rather than try to remember that, I just programmed a reminder that emailed us one week prior indicating that from that she wasn’t supposed to take anti-inflammatory meds during that period. Simple and efficient.

I’ve also been continually using their Pages feature in many different ways. One time I used it to keep a rolling ToDo list for things I needed to do during Annual Training. Another time I used it to keep track of the wines that we like. Another use has been as a shared project tracker. It’s really so easy and modular that you can use it for about whatever you need.

Rarely have I used a product that was so easy, and I dare say fun, that it encouraged me to use it more. Backpack does that to me on a daily basis.

Mad Mimi uses Campfire for customer support and also digs the "Basecamp Vibe" (i.e. beauty, economy, and simplicity)

MadMimi.com is a Brooklyn-based startup providing "a uniquely simple, powerful email marketing service." They utilize Basecamp and Campfire for in-house collaboration on development projects and as their main platform for customer support. Gary Levitt, co-founder of Mad Mimi (that's him in the picture to the left, along with his wife, Leah, also a co-founder), tells us more below.

How we use Basecamp and why we like it
Well we must have referenced Basecamp a hundred times during the conception of Mad Mimi. So to say we like Basecamp is a bit of an understatement. Basecamp helps us handle project collaboration effortlessly. But our affinity goes deeper — Basecamp's simplicity was a muse for us, in that it triggered a shift in our mindset which lead to the creation of our product. Others can debate the logic of this, but to our minds, when you cross Basecamp simplicity with email promotion, you get a fresh, functional alternative to the bloated, template-based services that are currently leading the market. You look at all the reasons why industry leaders are predicting that Mad Mimi will topple the current dominating players in the email marketing industry, and many of those reasons can be credited to the influence of 37signals' products.

In terms of how we use Basecamp, it's interesting. Before our success in email marketing, we were just another New York music production company. At the time, Basecamp let us exchange music files in a cool way. As artists, we were taken in by what we all called the "Basecamp Vibe," which meant beauty, economy, simplicity. As a company, we had to promote ourselves with email, and we hated the web based apps we found — they were charging quite a lot for the pleasure of using the same tired, dated templates. So driven by necessity, and inspired by the "Basecamp Vibe", we put together (collaborating with Dave Hoover and his team at Obtiva Studio) a new way to design, send and track our own e-promos. The software was so effective it became our company's main focus, and that's when we brought in big guns like Tobie Langel to bring it to surprising new levels. What's interesting is that we used Basecamp for managing the collaboration of our team in Chicago, Utah, Switzerland, South Africa and New York in developing our software. In short, Basecamp is a muse...that we use.

Which features we like most
Some months it's one feature, some months it's another. It's a constant process of discovery. For a long time we stayed away from the To-Do lists, and favored only messages. But now To-Do's are a daily routine. There's a tremendous gratification in crossing off tasks and having that "wow, look at what I accomplished" feeling.

What we used before switching to Basecamp
Before Basecamp it was an endless swarm of disorganized emails. I just remember a lot re:re:re:re. There were phone calls, conference calls, cell phone headaches, and the time-eating in-person meetings. Our feeling is face-to-face should be over a relaxing lunch, not over papers. Basecamp actually saved us time, and we were able to enjoy more of those lunches. We used Google Docs on occasion before we switched. Basecamp is more fun, easier, nicer to look at, and seemingly bug free. We still use Google Docs for various odd tasks, but coming back to Basecamp is like coming home to a comfy arm-chair or an old pair of jeans.

How Basecamp helped us out
Well, to begin with, Basecamp helped us out with EVERYTHING. We went from technological imbeciles to technology newbies in no time. Basecamp is much more than a simple app. It was our ENTIRE BUSINESS. Our offices, our conference room, our file cabinets, our calendars, our traffic department, our bulletin board, our lounge, everything. Our team was based in five different cities, so we have to credit Basecamp for taking Mad Mimi from infancy to the launch of a groundbreaking product.

Learn how Mad Mimi uses Campfire for customer service after the jump.