Part of an email received by 37signals: “We intend to offer a success-driven set of services that allows our community the ability to get their ideas out there. I see your tools as a clear match for this audience.” Marcel wondered, “what does success-driven mean to him and what is the alternative to being success-driven?…who would claim that they are failure-driven?”

There was some debate about web app accessibility. Ryan said, “Accessibility is for documents…totally unreasonable to try and make a web app that works for blind folks…you’d never expect a desktop app to.” Jamis disagreed, “I would never suggest that BC and such ought to be accessible but there is a place for it.”

Jamis fixed a problem for a customer. The customer posted about it and put it this way: “…which the Jamis quickly took care of for me…” The Jamis said, “it’s not my name, it’s a title…I wear it with pride.”

Treehouse magazine interviewed Jason in the latest issue (Jason says the PDF is “just beautiful”). Sam liked this Daniel Burnham quote that Jason brought up in the interview: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.”

Ryan pointed to the Guy Kawasaki interview in Treehouse and said this show-me-the-real-thing quote is kinda get realish: “I want to see a demo. I could care less about all the lies you can tell me. I’ve heard them all a hundred times. If your demo entices me, then you can tell me your lies.”

Jamis realized he’s been with 37signals for over a year and received a round of chat applause.

Ryan placed an order for an espresso machine from Whole Latte Love. (Note: Why are coffee shop and hair salon names the only place where it is acceptable to make puns that are worse than those made by my dad?) After the order was placed, they actually phoned him to verify the different billing and shipping addresses. “So nice to hear from a human after ordering online,” he said.

We discussed the new enterprise features at MovableType. Ryan asked, “Man, why don’t they just make it fast instead?”

David was at Etech and said the multitouch demo was “SOO COOL.” Ray Ozzie’s demo about making copy/paste work on the web was “interesting.” Also: “There’s some interesting thoughts cooking here around APIs and microformats…I’m trying various experiments in Rails right now…To make APIs ‘first class’…Basically the (potentially ‘pipe’) dream of getting the API for free…We’ll see how it goes.”

Jason and Jamis discussed audio feeds of TV shows. Apparently ads rely on visuals more than programs do. Jason said, “I have XM Radio in my car and I can get CNN and MSNBC and ESPN TV stations, but of course they just play the audio. The weird thing is that the shows sound fine but the ads are really weird cause the ads assume you can see the TV too…but the TV shows work pretty well.”

We’re happy to see more people are starting to “get” Campfire. For example, this post at Agile Evolved: “I know you’re probably thinking ‘heck I could do that with IRC’, but no you couldn’t. Really you couldn’t, I’ve tried it.”

We’re still searching for the right analogy for why we don’t accept all feature request and why customers shouldn’t expect us to do so. My recent fave: “You can’t go into an Indian restaurant, order a hamburger and fries, and then get upset with them if they don’t give it to you.” Y’know, cows are sacred to Indians Hindus and simplicity is sacred to 37signals. Um, anyway…

David thought this “Web 2.0 Lottery Winner” post/image by Russell was funny. On the other hand, Ryan read the infinite scroll bar post at the same blog and said a scrollbar that doesn’t tell you how far down or up you are is “so, so, so wrong.” David agreed, “Yeah, scrollbar without feedback of position or size is not a scroll bar…it’s just next/prev without any scrollbar at all.”

The hectoring we get is balanced by nice notes like this (from the Treehouse/Wufoo guys): “…On a side note, without sounding too cheesy, I wanted to thank you for a few things. Last year, we saw you speak at SXSW on doing big things with small teams (or something like that), and the three of us were just guys who had really done nothing. We could program and design, but all of our work was done (and ruined) in the corporate environment. After that presentation, we decided to start actually doing something, and started particletree.com and a new software project that night. That site led to Treehouse Magazine. And last October, were accepted to Paul Graham’s winter founders program because he had seen particletree and Treehouse. Right now, we no longer work for boring corporations, live in Silicon Valley, and are about to launch Wufoo, our first web app. Basically, that speech altered the paths of our lives. So, I sincerely thank you.”…

…And support emails like this: “37 Signals Team: Nothing wrong - Just want to say: I love Backpack. With all the things going on in my life — I finally feel I got my shit together. Bravo — Great product. That’s it.”

And finally, we’re coo coo for birds! Jason shot a photo of this cool cardinal outside his place (top) and Jamis thinks he had one of these Hammond’s Flycatcher guys (bottom) at his feeder.