37signals Product Blog

Real estate project manager advises using Basecamp to get staff on the same page

Real estate project manager Susan Helmer (below) offers up "Skills to Become a More Effective Manager":

You lead work projects and in order to successfully bring your projects in on time and on budget, you need your staff on the same page with you. A great way to do this is with real time collaboration. You should have a shared calendar, task list, reminders, a way to organize documents, and a journal. I am a big fan of the 37signals Basecamp project management tool. The Basecamp tool becomes even more powerful when used with the other 37signals collaboration tools - Highrise for Contacts and Backpack Organizer. Online project management and collaboration tools make it easy to organize projects around your team.

Read the full piece.

PCTechTalk.com takes a detailed look at Highrise

"Highrise: CRM With 37signals’ Simplicity" [PCTechTalk.com] offers a thorough look at Highrise and says, "If you’ve ever thought that you’d like a better solution for managing your customer info, definately give Highrise a try."

Beyond contacts, deals are Highrise’s second major focus. This is where you can add information about proposals for jobs your company is bidding for, and obviously works best for firms that do individual jobs for clients. Highrise lets you enter the bid value, add tasks related to the project. This is a great way to keep track of who’s involved with a project with Highrise’s great contact management. Even if you’ve won a bid, you can still use your deal page to keep track of the ongoing project. Whenever you receive emails about the project, you can forward them to your unique email addresses generated by Highrise for each project, and they’ll be automatically added as a note.

Read the full piece.

Game design studio calls Basecamp "Project Management Software without equal"

Reality Blurs is a game design studio founded in 2004 by Sean Preston. Recently, Preston offered up his "dirty, little secret" for project management: Basecamp.

I began searching for Project Management Software and I looked at a number of programs which don’t bear mention. Most of them were overly complicated, had too much overhead or not enough, or would not prove worth it in the long run. I could master them. I’ve had to do it in the past, but I couldn’t expect anybody coming on board to have an obstacle in the path of creation. Project Management Software needs to facilitate the work process, not suffocate it...

My quest eventually brought me to Basecamp and I fell in love. This is the online Project Management Software without equal. It allows projects to be set up, workflow templates to be created with lists of to-do items, an excellent messaging system, a way to tag entries, and a great way to upload files (both drafts and art) into their respective projects, and it has a change management system so the various iterations can be centralized in case a file is corrupted or it is necessary to compare or roll back to a previous version. I loved all these features and after giving it a test-spin, I was hooked. The whole team was hooked. It’s easy and intuitive and it resides securely in the cloud, so files can be accessed anywhere, anytime as needed. This last feature alone made us wave good-bye to Dropbox in the rear window. Is it really as good as I’m saying? Yes...

This looks like a paid endorsement, but it’s not. I truly believe in what these guys have come up with. This has enabled us to more rapidly deploy and grow the Reality Blurs brand than any other tool we’ve used. For those who’ve asked how I manage to get things done, and there have been a number of you who’ve emailed me in the past asking how I do it, now you know my dirty, little secret.

Read the full piece.

Bringing Aristotle and Stephen King together at a Backpack page

Fun idea for a Backpack page: a collection of your favorite quotations. You can even make it public and share it with the whole world. For example, here's Jason Fried's favorite quotes at Backpack. A sampling:

Betty Reese
If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.

John Rawls
The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.

Aristotle
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Stephen King
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Learn more about sharing pages in Backpack.

Why Ta-Da List is Dan Sullivan's "employee of the month"

Dan Sullivan makes websites and considers Ta-Da List his "employee of the month."

Many times I do web work that might not be noticeable to my clients at first glance. I might spend a day setting up Google Analytics, installing WordPress plug-ins, optimizing the graphics they gave me so they load faster on the web, fiddling with DNS, proofreading their past blog posts for typos or editing them to enhance their SEO. At the end of the day, my client might ask “What did you do on my site today?!” and all I have to tell them is blah blah HTML blah blah CSS plugin conflict blah blah blah.

Enter Tadalist.

I can make a checklist in English and share it with my client via email. They can get in to see it, edit it, and watch progress via RSS or by returning to the list. They can add to the list without setting up a user account & password! Now if my client wonders what is going on today, or how much is left until launch, all they have to do is check the tadalist. It also has a sweet looking iPhone interface, so its worth adding to your homescreen.

Be sure to email it to yourself before you share it as a backup, and good luck keeping a clear and open communication with your clients. They’ll thank you for it!

Nomad brings Basecamp to the BlackBerry PlayBook

Nomad brings Basecamp to the BlackBerry PlayBook. The Nomad site says, "Optimized for the PlayBook, Nomad provides easy access to all your Basecamp projects in a simple native application." You can access one project for free or use the Pro Version (unlimited access) for $9.99.

Learn more about Nomad.

Writeboard hits "the perfect spot" between features and simplicity for collaborative writing projects

In "Writeboard: Wikis That Actually Make Sense," Matthew Guay of Appstorm says, "37signals hit the perfect spot between features and simplicity with Writeboard, and whenever I need to do a collaborative writing project, it’s always my first choice."

After trying to use wikis for one too many group project that fizzled out because of poor tools, I set out to find something easier to use than email, copying a Word file back and forth, or the dreaded wiki that no one could figure out. Enter Writeboard. This simple online text editor takes the pain out of collaborative writing, and is as simple to use as Notepad or TextEdit. It’s a solution that almost anyone can instantly understand and start using without any learning curve. Keep reading to see why Writeboard might be the perfect solution when wikis fail.

Read the full piece for more details on using Writeboard.

Marketing agency lists tools to keep you organized

Marketing agency True Hero asks, "As business grows, client lists expand, taxes are due, and calendars filled up, how do you keep organized?" The answer is a list of tools to keep track of people, places, and things — and Highrise, Basecamp, and Backpack make the cut.

1. Highrise is Customer Management, Assistant, White-Board, Email, To Do all in one. TrueHero recommends Highrise to all our clients. It’s a one stop place for answers when responding to sales managers, accounts and reps. Each user can see who talked to the client last, when and what was discussed. Schedule a meeting, Task or Follow-up by Company, Brand or Client. You don’t have to bother Bob on his vacation for Client X’s info – it is right there in Highrise. Easy, efficient, and effective. Love this tool and it’s inexpensive...

3. Backpack is part of 37signals like Highrise. If you have the $99 package, Highrise, Backpack, and Basecamp is included. No need for Google Calendars – Backpack has a group calendar. A great alternative to mass emails, notifications and group organization. The 37signals tools work well together – one place, one app, easy.

The rest of the list includes tools like MailChimp, Mint.com, and Quickbooks. Check it out.

A reviewer lists favorite quotes from REWORK

Todd Zeigler (right) of The Bivings Report just read REWORK and says it "includes tons of little nuggets of wisdom that are useful to anyone trying to run a business." He then shares quotes that he highlighted as he read the book.

“Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something.”

“When you don’t know what to believe everything becomes an argument.”

“Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.”

“Whenever you can, swap ‘Let’s think about it’ for ‘Let’s decide on it.’ Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.”

“The longer something takes, the less likely it is that you’re going to finish it.”

More quotes highlighted by Zeigler.

Paying in advance

If you’d prefer to simplify your billing, you can pay for 37signals products in one lump sum. We’ll then pull from that credit instead of charging your card every month. We’ll email you when your balance runs low so you can recharge it.

To set up lump sum payment, click the “Account” link at the top of any screen. Then click the link for lump sum payments.

You’ll still get an invoice each month. When your lump sum is running out, we’ll send you an email to let you know.