PC Magazine and Declutter It agree: Fight clutter with Backpack

In 12 Tech Tools to Clear Your Clutter, PC Magazine offers up ways to tidy up your tech life. The piece recommends getting started with Backpack.

Wouldn't it be great to get those pictures off your digital camera already? Scan that stack of business cards and get them into Outlook? Transfer videotapes and camcorder footage onto DVD so you can actually watch your home movies? Arm yourself with a smartphone and take your e-mail, calendar, and contacts on the go?...Here are our picks for the best stuff to get you organized—and maybe even help you stay that way:

Getting Started
A good way to get inspired to clean up is by making lists. Backpack is an incredibly easy-to-use, Web-based organizational service that's like having an online loose-leaf binder to use as you please, creating checklists, setting reminders, and embedding important files and links on the page. It's so straightforward, intuitive, and versatile it wins our Editors' Choice award.

Declutter It is Jennifer Chait blog's blog about organizing. She says, "I’m big time into simple living and getting back to a less over stuffed way, less commercial way of life, and instead celebrating a more family and people centered approach to life."

In I’ve Decided to Backpackit, she talks about how she's using Backpack to reduce the amount of paper she uses:

To give you a brief description of what this tool is all about, it basically is a way to keep yourself organized on-line. It’s a great way to reduce the amount of paper you use. I am constantly scribbling little notes to myself and when I am in “work mode”, my desk can look pretty scary.

With Backpack you can keep up with your schedule using their calendar and also use their pages to keep to-do lists, notes, ideas or whatever!

Do you want to fight clutter? Try Backpack.

Revixio, creators of CorePage, inspired and informed by Getting Real

CorePage is "an instant link page system." Its About page gives a hat tip to Getting Real:

We'd like to acknowledge the inspiration and information we received from a great web application development company called 37signals.

Many of us at Revixio have used their products for years and are unabashedly huge fans. We also read and recommend their book, "Getting Real" and adopted their iterative development process in the creation of CorePage. We built CorePage using Ruby on Rails, the open-source web framework that they pioneered. Finally, thanks to their CEO, Jason Fried, for his advice and inspiration.

We wanted to find out more so we asked David Peltz, Founder and CEO, of Revixio Software to tells how his team used Getting Real to build CorePage, "The Instant Link Page System."

It seems a little weird, frankly, to be telling the world how we read this great book about how to build a successful web application. After all, we're a group of four partners with a track record of building successful web applications, web sites and multimedia projects — for other people.

So, when the time felt right for these friends and former collaborators to form their own company, I, having recently read "Getting Real," proposed an unusual idea; "Let's not do it the way we've always done it. Let's try to enjoy the process and adopt the methods of an already successful company that we all admire, 37signals, and do it their way." As with many start-ups, most of us were going to be working on this project on a part time basis, at least initially, and those who were already working full time didn't relish the idea of simply doing more of the same work at night. So, once the other partners had their own copies of the book (we splurged on the paperback), and committed to it, we were on our way.

A look at the CorePage app.

Getting the most out of Backpack as a GTD ("Getting Things Done") solution

Brett Kelly, a programmer from Southern California, writes The Cranking Widgets Blog, a personal productivity blog that focuses on David Allen's Getting Things Done. He recently published a post about why he loves Getting Things Done with Backpack.

So, what does Backpack bring to the table that makes me so giddy? Well, several things, actually…

• Polish - Seriously, Backpack looks and acts just like you want it to. One of the driving concepts in the development process at 37signals is that you only include the features that you think most people will need. Obviously, there are tons of people who wish Backpack did [feature] - hell, there are a couple things I wouldn’t mind seeing in the next update - but they choose features to include and make sure they freaking work. And they do.
• The Free-form nature of pages - My Backpack is made up of many, many pages of lists - but there are also a growing number of pages dedicated to specific projects. For example, I’ve been invited to a special luncheon with the Internal Revenue Service in a couple of weeks, and they’d like me to bring along a few things (financial records and such). Before Backpack, it would’ve ended up with me emailing myself a pantload of PDF bank statements, then aggregating all of those emails under a specific gmail tag. Obviously, that would have gotten extremely unwieldy in short order. Now I have all of those PDFs arranged nicely on a few Backpack pages (where you can actually store the files, not just link to them), as well as notes about specific items, a picture of my daughter and a copy of the Gettysburg Address. You shove stuff on a page, drag it where you want it (including to other pages), there’s very little limitation on how you use it.
• Pages can be arbitrarily long - From what I can gather, there’s no set limit on the size of a Backpack page (well, except for the amount of data you’re allowed to store based on the plan you’re using). Using the previous example, I’ve got 38 PDF files on a single page as I write this. I’m pretty sure I could add another 50 and be just fine as cherry wine. I’m also not the least bit concerned with how long my lists get or anything like that, so even you mover-and-shaker types out there can rest easy knowing that you’re not going to “break” the Backpack.
• Each page has an email address - I have one page called “Inbox” where I send random thoughts, new inputs I receive while away from a computer, as well as messages sent from Jott (yep, Jott has built-in support for Backpack through it’s Jott Links service). The magic here is that my new “stuff” is now sitting a click away from the lists that manage the rest of my stuff. Hell, I can even *drag* it to the appropriate list. Freaking sweet.
• iPhone friendly (sorta) - While the default Backpack doesn’t have a special interface for the iPhone (and I’m sure this is one of the most requested candidate features), there are a couple of super easy tricks that allow you to reformat a Backpack page for easy iPhone viewing (without making it look wonky when viewed through a regular browser) and even change the WebClip icon for Backpack when you add it to the home screen.

CEO suggests using Basecamp to encourage accountability and participation

Small Business Trends is a publication for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Zane Safrit, former CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, just published an article there called Time-Generating Resources for CEOs.

Today’s competitive pressures force CEOs to squeeze the most out of shorter and shorter time segments, those brief-fleeting moments in-between interruptions... want to share with you the resources I found over those 7 years that gave me greater amounts of uninterrupted time.

He leads with Basecamp as his first suggestion.

BASECAMP. It’s a wiki product offered and hosted by 37signals. First, what’s a wiki? According to Wikipedia (For this word, who else?), a wiki is a “collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.

I’d add it’s a one-stop resource for your projects, the to-do’s and timelines with each project, a place to document your meeting notes and expectations that arise from them. It’s a repository of resources and ideas and your own private brainstorming sessions. You add content to those ideas that progress. You delete those crushed by reality.

There are many wiki products. I chose Basecamp because it’s affordable (start with free), easy to use (key for both you as the CEO and your company), its features are constantly upgraded without interrupting my use, and 37signals, the company behind it, offer a host of complimentary services that integrate with Basecamp. It saved us hours of time and frustration, minimized disputes by documenting the conversations, encouraged accountability AND participation, rewarded everyone’s engagement with an easy means to participate in an open, transparent manner. I continue to use it today.

Read the whole article for more time-saving resources.

30 sleeps creator: "Getting Real has played an integral role in my pursuit of happiness"

Brad Bollenbach is applying the Getting Real approach to life hacking with his site 30sleeps.com. It's a site for people who want to change their lives, with the idea being that it's a lot easier to make changes if you take them one month at a time. Brad wrote to tell us more about how Getting Real has influenced him.

As an entrepreneur, writer, UI designer, and software developer, your philosophy of "Getting Real" is the motive power that's brought my business ideas to life. It's helped me make lightweight a lifestyle, and driven me to Get Shit Done (TM).

What's Your Problem?
Getting Real suggests building things that solve your own problems.

Almost a year ago, I asked myself, "What most frustrates me about the world?" The answer, for me, was that so many people seem to live at a fraction of their potential. This motivated me to build something that would inspire, educate, and empower people to change their lives.

I created a site called 30 sleeps, which is based on the idea of using 30-day goals (an idea I got from personal growth blogger Steve Pavlina) as a primary vehicle for personal change. Realizing my own shortcomings too, I knew this would be a great way for me to explore, decipher, and document the day-to-day problems that my own life presents, whether related to building meaningful relationships, breaking bad habits, or even figuring out how to set my hourly consulting rate.

A lot of people can identify bugs in their daily life, but stop short of authoring the patch. The Getting Real approach of building something that I want has imbued my work with a fire that is hard to light in any other way. And when you're building to change the world, that kind of passion is a nuclear weapon.

Embracing Constraints
I've had several business ideas in the past, none of which ever made it out of thoughtspace.

In starting 30 sleeps, I took a lesson from how you guys used constraints to drive the development of Basecamp. My primary constraint was a deadline: June 1, 2007. I made a commitment to myself that, no matter what, 30zzz was going live on that date. This gave me only a few weeks to get something running.

Tightening the noose forced me to start building something right away, even though I had only a vague idea of what I wanted the site to be. My first coding session involved literally opening up TextMate and just plowing. The UI went from nothing, to horribly bad, to ugly, to tolerable, to usable, to running in production.

Had I waited until I was "ready" to start this project, I'd still be twiddling my thumbs.

R.O.Why! Marketing saves money and time with Basecamp

Brian C. LeCount, President of R.O.Why! Marketing, Inc., emailed us about how Basecamp is saving his business hundreds of dollars a month:

I just want you to know that Basecamp is saving my business hundreds of dollars a month since switching. Used to use a huge, cumbersome, complicated and headache-producing project management & client collaboration software system that clients hated to use. And it was expensive.

And did I mention that we couldn't get clients to use it? It took a couple hours or more to set up a complex project. With Basecamp, I'm done - including milestones & tasks - in 15-30 minutes and every one of our clients uses it and loves it.

You guys have built a great little app that I'm finding isn't so little. Good stuff.

Oh, and now I'm using Highrise, and Ta-Da List, and maybe someday Backpack. Your tools are so simple they're addicting.

Thanks Brian!

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

Highrise "does all the hard work" parsing emails

Rimm-Kaufman Group, a search marketing and web effectiveness agency, recently published a post at its blog called "Effective Websites: Forwarding Email As Convenient Means To Enter Data." Part of the post discusses how easy it is to use the Highrise dropbox to send emails to Highrise.

With Highrise, you blind-carbon copy a special drop box, something like dropbox@999999997.rkg.highrisehq.com. Again 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.

If I had to visit [TripIt and Highrise] to type in my data, I would not use them. But because using them is so easy, I’m now a fan of both.

Learn more about how Highrise and email are best friends.

Derek Newman: Backpack calendar makes family planning "a lot easier"

In "My Tools, Techniques, and Ideas about Digital Learning," Derek Newman talks about using Backpack:

The other tool I use daily is 37signals Backpack application. This is one web application that is bound to grow and grow. Their homepage states that over 1 million people use their products to manage their lives. I use it to take notes on books, digital reading, and anything else that I want. We also use the calendar feature to coordinate our family. Having one central calendar the entire family can access and change makes our lives a lot easier.

See what other tools Derek recommends.

Going from "hi" to Highrise

Sometimes it's the little things in life. Etienne Segonzac sent us an email explaining one reason she likes Highrise: She gets to just type "hi" when forwarding emails to the app.

I know it's kind of silly but I just like my little story. See, my Highrise dropbox is under the name "Highrise". So every time I forward an email to my account I just type hi ! Mail completes the rest... It just feels great, I can manage the biggest part of my work with an application as simple as "hi". :)

For more on how to do this, check out the Highrise and email page at HighriseHQ.com.

Any little thing like this that you like in a 37signals product? Let us know.

[Case Study] Entrepreneur Mom uses Basecamp to manage all her client “schtuff”

Entrepreneur Mom Aliza Sherman Risdahl published a thopughtful post about "keeping track of client schtuff" with Basecamp over at "Work It, Mom!," a site where working moms connect.

I’m training all my clients to use Basecamp instead of sending me multiple emails so rather than sifting through Gmail to find the latest correspondence or searching my computer to resend a file that they don’t remember receiving, we can communicate through Basecamp and upload all the files related to a given project.

Here are the main features of Basecamp and how I’ve been using it:

Posting messages instead of all those emails.
The message board in Basecamp is like a Web-based forum. I post messages or ask my clients to post messages in their password protected project area. Then anyone on the team can make comments on a post that appear below the post. I’ve even gone as far as copy and pasting email correspondence into individual messages to put everything in one place for easy access.

To-Do lists designate tasks.
I love my paper to-do lists but when there are multiple projects and clients, paper is not a viable tool to share lists, assign tasks and check off completed tasks for everyone to see. Each time a task is posted and assigned, it is emailed to everyone assigned to the project so we are all in the loop. And seeing items the online To-Do list with a line through it as it is completed is rewarding.

Uploading files so everyone can access them.
How many times have I emailed a file to a client and they tell me they never got it? Or vice versa? Basecamp lets you upload PDF files, image files, word documents, spreadsheets - any file that is critical to our project. Anyone working on the project can download what they need when they need it.

Overview Dashboard gives project activities at a glance.
You can view a dashboard of all projects that highlights the most recent activities like a new message posted or comment added. Or you can view a dashboard for a particular project. Either way, you get a quick, easy-to-digest glimpse of what is on your plate and the status of everything in the works. I let out a big sigh of relief when I see this feature because it reminds me of what I need to know at any given time.

Basecamp uses screencasts (videos demoing how to use site features) for anyone using any feature for the first time. I found them to be so much easier to follow than reading instructions so I was up and running in no time at all.

I’m so picky about the applications I use. My truest test of an application’s worthiness is if I use something frequently. I’m using Basecamp daily and so far, all of my clients like it, too.

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

How to use an Access Database and VBA to work with Highrise (or other apps)

Garry Robinson wrote an article detailing how to use Microsoft Access to query and update web sites [Database Journal]. The application he uses in the demo is Highrise. Why? Because he loves Highrise:

In this article, I am going to describe how you can use an Access Database and VBA to manipulate a Web 2 application called Highrise, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool from the highly successful Web2 company, 37Signals. Why pick this online product? The main reason is that I love using it, it has a well-written Application Programming Interface (API) and it is free for your first two hundred contacts. Why might this be relevant and interesting to you, the reader? Because you will be performing these tasks on a database that is hidden behind the security of a website, something that has always been beyond the abilities of Access.

The reason I love Highrise, is that it orders my people specific tasks (e-mailing/calling) into a wonderful list of fuzzy dates comprising today, tomorrow, this week, next week, and later and fuses that with specific dates and times like 12-june-08 4pm (see the sample task list in figure 1). Highrise also keeps track of names, addresses, correspondence relating to people and companies in quite a versatile environment. Anyway, the functionality of the website is not important, what is important is that you can interact with the data in the Highrise website through the API by posting and retrieving XML. This allows you to extend the feature list of the online application and it allows you to merge information on a website with other applications on your desktop. More than likely this is going to be a Microsoft Access database if you are reading this article.

Read the whole article to learn more about using an Access Database and VBA to work with a web app.

Related:
What GR-FX, experts at Microsoft Access and Office, likes about Basecamp
ThickToast lets you view Basecamp data in an Access database

Basecamp helps "green team" save $2,000 a year and keep a zero carbon footprint

Martin Carrion, Manager at Creative Field Media, wrote to tell us about how his in-house "green team" uses Basecamp to stay green and save money:

We are a small group of companies and I run the graphic communication department (graphic and web design, web development, e-commerce and in-house printing). I am also part of the recently created green team inside of our organization and one of my initial tasks was to do an assessment in terms of our core processes and activities...

Before Basecamp, we used to open a jacket folder for each project and put all the material inside of that folder, which basically means print everything, all the way from the initial job request, all versions, reviews, to the final invoice. I ran some numbers and I realized that we will save an estimated $2000 a year just in paper, folders and print related costs; but even more important than the savings is that we're adopting green practices and calculating the positive impact in the environment in doing that,. The end result of adopting a web-based application such as Basecamp in terms of the environment is: zero carbon footprint in terms of printing and transporting paper and printing consumables to our place, zero waste, and zero storage space and cost associated with that.

At any rate, we believe — as many others I hope — that the main force — if not the only one — behind a real change in making a contribution to the environment are businesses. And when you realize that adopting green practices makes sense financially speaking and also in terms of reducing or even eliminating your company contribution to pollute the planet, then you find that a change is possible and achievable.

Great to hear Martin. Keep up the good/green work!

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

New Highrise screencasts: Send email to a person page, create tasks via email, and import Outlook contacts

From Signal vs. Noise: We recently added a few new Highrise demo videos. Two of them show you how you can use your personal Highrise Dropbox email address and the last one walks you through the process of importing Outlook Express contacts into Highrise...

1. Send an email to a person page.
This video shows how you can use your dropbox to send an email to a person page in Highrise.

2. Create tasks via email.
This video shows you how to create a task by sending (or forwarding) an email to Highrise.

3. Get contacts out of Outlook and into Highrise.
Highrise lets you import contacts from a vCard file, Basecamp, Outlook, or ACT! This video shows you how to get contacts from Outlook Express into Highrise.

New Highrise Feature: File view

Last night we launched a new Highrise feature called File view. Here's a video showing you what it does and how it works. We hope you like it. Thanks again for your continued support.

How Doodlekit's two-person team was inspired by Getting Real

Doodlekit is a free online website builder that helps you build a personal or business website. One of the tool's creators, Heath Huffman, credited 37signals and our book Getting Real as inspirations in his post Doodlekit takes on Business 2.0.

One day we came across a blog post from a small internet startup company called 37Signals that changed everything. The blog post, How To Shoot A Bullet Through Your Startup, railed against Business 2.0.  It defied Corporate America’s view on how to run a web company.  It denounced the waste, bureaucracy, and mindset of these entities that limited others from pursuing their dreams.

We loved it.

37Signals explained that you could start your own Web 2.0 company with hardly anything down and just one or two people.  They had done all this themselves and had great success.   Ben and I raced out to their website and purchased their online book, Getting Real, that explained in more detail how to achieve this type of success.  We sat down and read the whole thing in one night...

The next day we started Doodlekit.  We scrounged up $300 each, grabbed an old refurbished PC from Ben’s basement, slapped in some extra memory from my old computer, and we were off ‘getting real’!

A year and a half later (just 4 months ago) we had our first major release of Doodlekit.  Since that time our membership base has increased to over 15,000 and our revenues have gone up 10 fold.  We have zero debt.

Most of our competitors are multi-million dollar startups from the Business 2.0 way of doing things.  Many of them still have yet to break even. We compete head-to-head with these companies and hold our own.  How?  Because Doodlekit is a much better product than what they offer...

We aren’t out to be the next MySpace or YouTube.  We aren’t measuring our success based on millions of dollars. We just want to make a decent living doing what we love doing – building websites!  Doodlekit and 37Signals has given us both this opportunity, and for that, we are very grateful.

Thanks for the shoutout Heath. Great to hear our ideas have inspired you and that it's all worked out so great.

Basecamp is a Webware 100 Award Winner (again)

Basecamp is a Webware 100 Award Winner (again) in the "Productivity" category. The Webware 100 is made up of the 100 best Web 2.0 applications, chosen by Webware readers and Internet users across the globe. Over 1.9 million votes were cast to select the winners.

Basecamp is a Web-based project management tool from 37signals. Groups can come together and work on large or small projects, sharing the same collaborative space.

It's essentially a mash-up of various productivity tools, including a to-do list maker, shared storage space, message boards, and calendaring. What has made it so successful is how it's been tied together. It's well known as a service that fits both personal and group organization into one handy tool.

Basecamp has several tiers of service, with varying degrees of shared file storage and active projects.

Here's the complete list of the Webware 100.

ProjectLocker, a hosted Subversion and Trac system, adds Basecamp integration

Just added to the Basecamp Extras page: ProjectLocker, a hosted Subversion and Trac system with source control, issue tracking, and Wiki.

ProjectLocker's Corregan Brown wrote in to tell us more:

Here's a brief summary of who we are and why Basecamp cares:

ProjectLocker has just added Basecamp integration to its product suite.  Subversion users who host at ProjectLocker can now:

* Send commit messages from Subversion to Basecamp as Basecamp messages.
* Create new ProjectLocker projects from existing Basecamp projects.
* Associate users in ProjectLocker with users in Basecamp, so that messages actually come from the committing user where possible.

ProjectLocker offers safe, secure, and accessible Subversion hosting and Trac hosting for software development teams of all sizes.  ProjectLocker facilitates teams working together the way that they want to work, using either Trac's built-in functionality or providers such as Basecamp for project management.

Plans start at $2.50/month.  You can find out more at projectlocker.com.

The Basecamp Extras page has more tools that integrate with Basecamp.

Computerworld: Don't miss out on Highrise

Computerworld.com published a list of 11 sites not to miss. On the list: Highrise.

Highrise keeps track of your relationship with your customers, providing a place to track and share their contact information, background notes and records of interactions.

Highrise is an online CRM tool. Basically, it's an easy-to-use database for contacts, reminders and notes. Because it's online, you can share it across your company or team anywhere there is access to a browser.

Highrise offers a free account for up to two users that can store 250 contacts, a Max account at $149 per month for unlimited users and 50,000 contacts, and several levels in between. You can even forward e-mails to a drop box associated with your account, and Highrise adds it as a note on the sender's or recipient's contact page, along with any attached files.

See the full list.

Improved Backpack Calendar Reminders

By popular request, last night we pushed an update which allows you to notify everyone, select people, or just you via email/sms of an event on the Backpack Calendar. Prior to this update, everyone in your account was notified on every event. That lead to a lot of unnecessary notification.

Notify me

Notify everyone

Notify just some people

We hope you find the improved notification system useful.
Thanks for your continued support.

[Case Study] Chi-Town Daily News uses Highrise to manage newsroom

In "No Casual Operation: Inside a Citizen Journalism Newsroom" [Poynter.org], Geoff Dougherty, Editor of Chi-Town Daily News, talks about using Highrise to manage his newsroom.

Managing three dozen inexperienced journalists who work remotely to cover a city like Chicago is no easy task. We've had to think carefully about developing procedures to make sure that people and stories don't fall through the cracks.

A big part of that system is Highrise, Web-based software that was designed for customer-relationship management. It has turned out to be unexpectedly well-suited to managing a newsroom.

While many volunteer-driven organizations run on a casual, catch-as-catch-can basis, we needed to keep everyone in our office updated on what our volunteers were doing -- who was looking for a story, who was supposed to be filing this week, and who needed a phone call to make sure they were still on board.

Highrise enables us to collect contact details on our volunteers in one location, assign the volunteer to an editor, track stories to completion and send automated reminders when deadlines are missed.

When a prospective volunteer contacts Frank, he schedules a meeting to explain how the program works, sets the volunteer up with a username on our content management system, finds out what she's interested in covering, and assigns her to one of our two editors. He also tags volunteers by neighborhood in Highrise, which makes it easy for us to match writers with breaking news or other coverage opportunities.

Frank creates a Highrise task for the editor, who then follows up with a phone call or e-mail suggesting a couple of story possibilities to the writer. We've found that covering a meeting is a great first assignment for our volunteers, most of whom have no prior journalism experience or training.

Because the meetings occur at a fixed time and location, they eliminate the possibility of procrastination. The meetings, and the resulting stories, follow a predictable format, so we can provide some tips and and examples to the writer before she arrives at the meeting.

And because we're familiar with what usually goes on at those meetings, we're in a good position to spot accuracy problems in stories about them.

Many of our story ideas are drawn from an online civic calendar we created to keep track of the thousands of Local School Council meetings, community policing gatherings and other neighborhood events that occur in Chicago every year. The calendar is searchable by address, so it's easy for editors and writers to find upcoming events in a particular neighborhood.

Once we've talked over the story with the writer, we use Highrise to track deadlines and progress. Highrise allows us to automatically store e-mails to our writers with their other details, so we can instantly pull up someone's profile and see what he's working on and what kind of progress he's making.

Our system also allows us to follow up with writers who, for whatever reason, have missed a deadline or disappeared from view. After two or three attempts at contact, editors assign the writer back to Frank, who follows up to find out if the volunteer is still interested in working with us.

As we fine-tune this system and expand our volunteer network to cover the rest of Chicago, we're looking to sharpen our ability to respond to breaking news.

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

[Case Study] Baltimore Sun uses Basecamp to manage "a million moving parts"

Tim Windsor, General Manager of The Baltimore Sun's online division, wrote to tell us that "Basecamp is a beneficial infection."

So we brought Basecamp in to the interactive creative department.

And then we introduced it to the product development team. Where someone from IT saw it and now is asking where to sign up.

Basecamp is a beneficial virus. Once it's unleashed on an organization, it's bound to grow and replicate.

Below, Thom Smith, Director of Design & Development for The Baltimore Sun, answers questions about how his team uses Basecamp.

How do you use Basecamp?
My Department operates as a mini creative agency within the greater organization of The Baltimore Sun Media Group. We do design and development work for clients both internally and externally. This work spans most media and includes: web sites (big and small), banner ads, e-mail newsletters, admail, video production, logos, illustrations, print ads, tradeshow signage, etc. This keeps us pretty busy and we use Basecamp to manage all of our projects from start to finish.

Which feature(s) do you use most?
Milestones and messages are the most important tools to us. The ability to assign those to members of my team is extremely helpful as well.

We create a new project for each of our clients. Then we break down each job into its component parts. Each of these deliverables is a milestone assigned to a member of my team. They get their instruction in the form of a message that is associated to the milestone. These details are added by our traffic coordinator who works with our clients to assess needs.

We also use the file upload tool to share large files, like video, for our clients to proof. It's so much easier than trying to get them to use ftp.

Why are you a Basecamp evangelist?
We love Basecamp because it's so simple. It takes very little time to learn and is easy to teach to new employees and clients. It's also extremely flexible. The tools are useful and intuitive, so regardless of the type of business you're doing, you can adapt Basecamp to suit your needs. That's why I've reccomended Basecamp to so many people. There are many units in our corporation who use Basecamp now and as more people are exposed to it, they see how it could be a good tool for their own departments.

Tips for getting the most out of Backpack on the iPhone

Just Another iPhone Blog recently posted "Tips and Tweaks Make 37signals’ Backpack A 'Must Have' iPhone Application." It discusses using iBackpack to make your Backpack pages look nice on your iPhone and also links to a Forum post that shows how to add a custom Backpack icon to your iPhone home screen.

I came to Backpack to solve a specific work issue/need but am finding it to be an incredibly powerful and useful web-based application. I now use it to communicate with my colleagues and reduce the amount of “telephone” we play when information is incorrectly transmitted. I use it to collect pictures, manage a to do list, store files and documents for easy access anywhere anytime. I used it to collect ideas, information, slides and random thoughts as I prepared a talk I gave at a conference last week. Best of all, it is not only powerful but it is easy to use. In fact, it is the first time I pushed my colleagues toward a new technology that they did not initially curse me about.

The problem is- while Backpack’s pages are fully accessible from an iPhone or iPod Touch they are a bit too difficult to manipulate easily.

Fortunately, some incredibly smart folks have created some amazing “add-ons” that make Backpack one of the most iPhone-friendly and powerful applications around.

Justin Michael at violetpixel.com as created iBackpack. iBackpack is code that optimizes Backpack pages for viewing and use on an iPhone. He has posted screen caps on his site that show the difference...

Justin’s code make each page easily accessible, fully readable. It makes adding, editing and changing the information on a page a breeze. It makes Backpack one of, if not the, best iPhone organizational tools around.

But that left an additional issue. Once I optimized my pages using iBackpack I created direct links to some of my most-used Backpack pages on my home screen. They work great but look downright ugly.

Luckily Grettir Asmundarson at tinypineapple.com created a lovely little iPhone icon and has shared it with anyone who wants it.

Now Backpack works great AND looks great on my iPhone. It has become my most important organizational application in a short period of time and I have no doubt that will only increase as 37signals and other creative folks find new and powerful uses for it.

How do you add that custom Backpack icon to your iPhone home screen? Grettir offers step-by-step instructions at the Backpack Forum.

[Case Study] Shaw Builders creates multimillion dollar homes with Basecamp

Bob Moore commented at Signal vs. Noise about how Shaw Builders, his home-building company, uses Basecamp.

We use Basecamp to help manage the complex process of building custom homes. We work with a wide range of talented architects, interior designers, engineers, landscape architects, masons, electricians, plumbers, HVAC contractors. Our clients range from Wall Street Exec's (super type A's) to Hollywood celebs. If they actually had to take the time to "learn" how to use Basecamp, they wouldn't use it. Sometimes a simple tool can solve a wide variety of major problems and Basecamp does that for us.

We followed up with Bob to learn more about how his team uses Basecamp.

How do you use Basecamp and why do you like it?
We're a high end custom home builder with a staff of around 50 people. This includes office personnel, site project managers, lead carpenters, finish carpenters, masons, cabinetmakers and laborers. A typical project is in the area of $ 3 million to $ 8 million dollars. We normally have 4 to 5 projects running at any given time. Each project has it's own dedicated project manager who has P&L responsibilities for their project. The project team also includes architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, interior designers, landscape architects and sub-contractors for HVAC, electrical, plumbing, etc. There's a ton of information to manage and track. This is where Basecamp comes in. We use it to track project to do lists, project milestones, Project logs, Builders Reports and photos. We post photos almost on a daily basis. The architects and homeowners love the fact that they can check on the project from anywhere in the world.
 
I'm a huge fan of hosted applications. Fewer management headaches for me! I like Basecamp because it's simple for everyone to use yet powerful enough to allow us to do the things we need to. For example, I use Google's Picasa to post our photos and link to slideshows right from Basecamp. I haven't run into a lot of limitations. Our customers range from the hyper Wall Steet type "A"'s to Hollywood artists and celebrities. If they felt at all intimidated by Basecamp, they wouldn't use it. We haven't run into that.

Backpack is "killer" according to Business II Business

Blair O'Neil, co-owner of Integris Marketing, recently named Backpack the featured business resource at the Business II Business networking group's site.

Backpack now comes in a multi-user version that really makes this tool more like an powerful, on-demand, simple to use, Intranet for small business. You can create as many users as you like (price varies with number of users) and each user can have their own calendars, effectively creating an online sharable calendaring system. The newsroom feature is a like an activity dashboard that also keeps group messaging tidy...

I really think it’s killer when combined with Basecamp. If you use multiple offerings from 37signals, one tip I would suggest is to get an OpenID and use it to log in to your accounts and then you will have the ability to jump back and forth to all of your accounts from a simple dashboard interface.

Try Backpack today.

New project switcher in Basecamp, bigger file upload limit, and more.

Last night we launched a new feature that makes it easier to switch between frequently accessed projects. We've put together a little video tour to show you how it used to work and how it works now.

This release also includes the following improvements:

• People using Basecamp file storage can now upload files up to 100 MB each. Before the limit was 30 MB.
• When you're inside a project you'll see a printer icon in the right corner of the screen next to the Search tab. Clicking that icon will give you a print-friendly version of the page you're currently on.
• We've made some of the text links at the top of the screen bigger so they're easier to see/click.

We hope you'll find these improvements useful and thanks again for your continued support!

Example Basecamp welcome messages from R.BIRD and Koke Creative

Below are a couple of Basecamp welcome messages used by two different design firms. Each welcomes clients to Basecamp and encourages them to use it as their first point of contact. We've left the textile formatting in place.

R.BIRD
R.BIRD is a team of brand consultants with 25 years of experience in packaging design and branding. The company's founder Richard Bird recently sent us the standard Basecamp welcome message template the firm uses. Note the clear explanation of why Basecamp is superior to just sending a regular email.

Welcome!

Welcome to [RBIRD.projectpath.com] where R.BIRD shares important communications and assets for client projects.

* *post new "messages":link *
* *add comments*
* *upload "files":link *
* *talk "live":link *
* *check "to-do lists":link *
* *review "milestone dates":link *
* *collaborate on "writing":link *
* even *subscribe via "RSS":link *

*Security*
Information available here is only accessible by individuals granted access through unique login and password. All communications and file transfers are secured by SSL encryption.

*Your Login*
Keep your username and password in a safe place. You will need them to sign in to the site *and, again, to confirm your identity when accessing files* that may be posted here. (Note: your login and password are case sensitive)

*Think RBIRD.projectpath.com FIRST*
When you use RBIRD.projectpath.com:
* you can notify your entire project team
* there is a shared record of your communication
* all of us at R.BIRD share responsibility for your message
* the possibility that your message is missed is virtually eliminated.

*When you use Email:*
* only one person might receive and read your message
* your teams and colleagues may remain in the dark
* there is no record of your communication, except in your own Email out box
* there exists the possibility that your message may be missed.

RBIRD.projectpath.com is a wonderfully successful addition to the R.BIRD suite of project management tools. *Please use RBIRD.projectpath.com as your _first_ point of project communications with R.BIRD.*

For Team Leaders

If additional members of your team need to be added to this project site, simply provide contact information. For convenience, you can "use this form to provide new or updated contact information.":http://example.wufoo.com/forms/project-contact-form/

Richard adds, "I copy project-specific links into the 'link' references. The template even includes an online form that we all use to add new users."

Koke Creative
Jeff Koke at Koke Creative also sent along his welcome message (after the jump).

[Case Study] Author and conflict resolution consultant uses Backpack as "business home-base and sanity tool"

Tammy Lenski uses Backpack to run her conflict resolution firm, Tammy Lenski LLC, and manage client and business projects. She recently released a new book and Backpack is the foundation for her marketing campaign and virtual book tour. Below, she answers a few questions about her use of Backpack.

How do you use Backpack and why do you like it?
My business is a full-service conflict resolution consulting firm for individuals and organizations. That means I offer a mix of services from speaking engagements to seminars and one-on-one coaching to professional mediation. I also blog about conflict resolution at Conflict Zen and about running a conflict resolution business at Mediator Tech. My business is mobile, so I go on-site with clients and use my home office on days I'm not traveling.

Backpack is my business home-base and my sanity tool to manage it all. It's set to load when I open my browser each day because I do almost all my administrative work from Backpack. I love that I can access my project files from any Internet-connected computer and from my iPhone. And I love that everything I need for a client or business project is in one place. When I'm busy or on the road, that helps keep me organized so I can give my full attention and energy to my clients.

Which features do you use most?
I use the Lists and Notes sections every single day, because Backpack is my hybrid GTD/project management tool. I use the Dashboard to keep me focused on big business goals and major goals for the day, and create pages for everything from my annual marketing plan and website updates needed to business projects and travel itineraries. I also use the forward-email-to-Backpack feature to make sure that the most important exchanges about a project are also in the same place as other project files and notes.

What did you use before and why did you switch?
I used a combination of online task lists, Google home page, and Google docs before Backpack. It always felt cobbled together and I wanted a "one-stop" experience for my projects and business planning. I value elegant simplicity -- that's the way I work as a consultant and coach, and it's the way I want to navigate my own work -- and my prior system certainly wasn't elegant or simple! Backpack is. I don't want tons of bells and whistles I'll rarely use, I want a few key features done really well.

Highrise tasks revamp and improvements

This weekend we launched a major revamp and set of improvements to the Highrise tasks feature.

Setting tasks with dates/times is significantly faster

Clicking the "Set date/time" link results in an instant display of a calendar. Previously it would take a couple seconds to display the calendar. It's a subtle change, but we think you'll love the speed increase. It really makes setting dated/timed tasks a whole lot more pleasant.

iCalendar feed for dated/timed tasks

By very popular request we now provide an iCalendar feed to your dated/timed tasks. If a task has an expressly set date/time (April 9, 3pm, for example) it will be included in the feed. General events (this week, next week, later) will not appear in the feed. You can access your own iCalendar feed by clicking the Tasks tab and clicking on the "Subscribe to your iCalendar task feed" link at the bottom of the screen.

New tasks calendar layout

We've redesigned the tasks calendar layout. You'll see this if you click the "Set date/time" link. It's cleaner, clearer, and generally modernized. We think you'll like the changes.

Auto email/sms reminders for untimed "Today" and "Tomorrow" events

Prior to this update, events marked Today or Tomorrow without specific times didn't send email/sms reminders. The result was missed tasks. So now, if you don't set a specific time for an event, and you mark it "Today" or "Tomorrow" Highrise will automatically remind you. Today reminders are sent 3 hours from when you create the task. Tomorrow reminders are sent at noon.

We hope you enjoy the improvements

We're really thrilled about these improvements. We hope you find these changes as useful as we do. Thanks again for your continued support!

New Basecamp Features: Reply to a message via email and more

This weekend we pushed live one of the top Basecamp requests of all time, plus some other related improvements.

You can now post comments to a message via email

Prior to this update, you had to log in to Basecamp to post a comment on a message. We sent you an email notification, but replying to the message required a log in.

Now you can just reply to a message or comment notification by email and your comment will be posted to the project.

At the top of new message and comment notification emails you'll see this:

--- Reply ABOVE THIS LINE to post a comment to the project

Anything you type above that line will be posted back to the project as a comment on the message. This is especially useful if you're on a mobile device (Blackberry, iPhone, etc) and you want to reply without having to log into Basecamp over a slow internet connection.

Note that you can only reply to the message in plain text -- images or files attachments in your email will not be posted to the project. If you need to upload a file in your reply you'll still need to log into Basecamp.

Project updates on every email notification

UPDATE: We have pulled the feature for now. It will make its return in another form down the road. Thanks for the feedback.

People have been asking for a way to stay better connected to their Basecamp projects without having to log in (or check RSS feeds as RSS feeds are too techie for many people). As mentioned above, this is especially useful for folks on mobile devices.

To these ends we've added a footer at the bottom of every email notification that includes the latest changes to the project. This is the same data that's displayed on the Overview screen inside the project. The information is listed at the end of the email so if it's not useful to you it won't get in your way. But if you are curious about what's new in a project all you have to do is scroll down the email and check out the last 25 updates. A direct link to the overview screen is also provided. It looks like:

A revamped message/comment screen

We recently launched a message board in our Backpack intranet product. The messages screen layout inside Backpack was preferred to the Basecamp messages/comment screen layout. It was cleaner, tighter, and comments didn't wrap under the avatars. So with this release we've moved the Backpack messages layout over to Basecamp. We think it's much improved.

Adding files to messages/comments is faster

Attaching files to messages/comments requires fewer clicks now. It's subtle, but saved clicks add up. We think you'll notice the improvement over time.

Clarified email notifications block

We've also clarified the email notifications block when posting a new message. Better wording and clearer instructions make it more obvious what happens when you post a new message or comment.

We hope you enjoy the improvements

We're really thrilled about these improvements — especially emailing-in comments. We hope you find these changes as useful as we do. Thanks again for your continued support!

[Case Study] Swimming pool company uses Backpack to track equipment, send reminders, and more

Stephen Sowa owns a small commercial swimming pool company based in Addison, IL and he uses Backpack to inventory equipment, send reminders to contact clients, and more. Stephen tells us more:

How do you use Backpack and why do you like it?
One very frustrating thing we run into is one of our clients calls us to get a piece of equipment fixed, but they do not know the specifics on that piece, i.e. heater, pump, filter.  

We used to either rely on memory, or we would have to wait until the engineer got back to us with the information.  Sometimes they would give us correct information, but most of the time not.  So we would have to drive to the facility and gather information.  Sometimes we would have to tear apart a pump to see if the updates had been done, because this dictates which parts we need.  As you can see, we would waste a lot of time just gathering information when we could be repairing.

Enter Backpack. I use Backpack to inventory all their equipment, model numbers, serial numbers and any odd parts that facility has.  Now when a client calls us all we need is what that piece of equipment operates.  I then can log into Backpack via my Blackberry and get all the information I need to pick up parts on the way to the job site.  The minimal amount of money we pay for Backpack has returned itself many times over in productivity.

Which features do you use most?
I use the reminders a lot.  I have all my families birthdays in there.  I also use it to remind me to contact customers.  When customers shut down their pools for the winter and I know I need to contact them well before summer starts to quote them on something, I set a reminder.  I also use them to remind myself to shop around for insurance, and I upload the contact information into it own file.  Now I know when I need to start making calls and where they are at.

I also use linking.  Any project I have going on I put it on my front page and then create a link to the file. This way I don't forget about it, and I don't have to wade through my pages sidebar to find it.