Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Campfire
New in Campfire: Conference calling
Every so often we want to take a particular conversation to a conference call. Sometimes voice is better than typing. So now we just have to click a single link and everyone gets a phone number and PIN code to call in. We can have a quick call and then get back to work. Campfire also uploads a recording of the call back to the room for a record. This is especially useful for anyone who missed the call. You can delete the recording if you’d rather not have it stored permanently.

Cd-conference-3

Highrise
Rooftop app brings Highrise to Android phones
Rooftop, an Android App from Staircase “brings all your Highrise contacts, deals, cases and tasks into an easy to use Android application.”

New in Highrise: Now your Dropbox can attach an email to multiple people
When you bcc: an email to your Highrise Dropbox, and you add multiple people to the “to:” field, Highrise will now attach the email to all the people, not just the first person listed in the “to:” field. Highrise will also add a line (in italics) at the top of the email inside Highrise listing all the contacts in Highrise that received the email.

New in Highrise: Bulk tagging, permissions, delete, and more
1) Bulk tagging, permissions, and delete. 2) Import from Excel. 3) Set permissions when uploading. 4) We’ll help find contact photos for you.

Highrise helps church track resumés and find new Pastor
Greg Davis recently blogged about the tech tools (including Highrise) he used to help with the Pastor search at his local church. He includes a good tip for anyone who needs to track resumés or rate people in Highrise: Create tags for 1-star, 2-stars, 3-stars, etc. and label each candidate. Then you can easily filter the choices.

Assigning Tasks in Highrise
Highrise Tasks are a great way to keep track of what’s on your plate. You can also assign tasks to other people on your team. To do that, select a user’s name from the “Who’s responsible” pulldown menu.

Who's responsible

Use tags in Highrise to organize people YOUR way
Highrise tags allow you to organize people around keywords that make sense to you. For example, you could add a tag called “Lead” and then tag everyone who’s a lead as “Lead”.

Tags

Backpack
“Help me leave the country” Backpack page leads to a carefree honeymoon for web app developer
“Another use for Backpack is management meetings. We meet once a week and have a Backpack page where the managers tick off deliverables from the following week and assess the week ahead. It’s not terribly formalised at this level, but it gives us a quick idea of where we’ve been and where we’re headed. Anything that makes a meeting more enjoyable is a plus.”

Reveille lets you send as many Backpack event reminders as you want, when you want
“The Reveille team uses both Backpack and Basecamp to keep schedules organized and wanted a simple way to see all calendar and task data in one place.”

Reveille_hashtags

New in Backpack: An easier way to add events to the calendar
Before you had to add events in the sidebar. Now you can just click on any day and an “add an event” box pops up right there. You can also edit items this way too – just click on an item and you can edit it right in place. This is a big click/time saver. You can also add notes to events. This is especially helpful for including an address or phone number or anything else that you might want close by for the event.

Backpack-cal-addanywhere

New in Backpack: SMS events to your calendar (experimental)
If you have a Plus or higher account, you can now SMS events to your Backpack Calendar. Click the Calendar tab at the top of your Backpack account, and then look in the sidebar below your calendar list. You’ll see an SMS icon with a link. It’ll look something like this:

Sms-pin

New father: “Backpack has changed my life and made the work/family/life stuff so much easier to manage”
“The first day I created the Backpack account was one of the most productive-feeling days I had in months. I quickly set my wife up with an account. In the days following we’ve found so many uses for Backpack. My wife has the great idea of setting up a work schedule calendar, so now we know who’s working when, and who’s watching the boys. Amy also setup a babysitter calendar, so we both know when we have friends and family over for an afternoon, or an evening out. For work, I’ve setup a page for each client and keep track of todos, client emails, notes, etc.”

Basecamp

Design studio uses Basecamp to bring together collaborators in London and Italy
“Basecamp really helped us communicate in the early days of our business when we had collaborators both in London and in Italy and needed to share what everyone was up to. It allowed us to be on the same page with the way projects were going, edit proposals for clients and share files.”

Multiple products
Populi: “Campfire has all but replaced the reply-all email noise that used to plague the office”
“Campfire is where we discuss a lot of the stuff that’s going on in Basecamp and Highrise. If someone has a question or issue or idea that’s worth the entire company’s feedback, it goes there first. Also, it has replaced internal email for sharing links (work-related and otherwise). For our internal discussions, it’s so much better than what we did before—reply-all emails, individual chats, meetings and mini-meetings—that it’s hardly worth comparing them.”

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