Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:
Great Campfire tips (and more) from New Leaders
“New Leaders is a team of designers and developers working all over the country focused on building high quality, Rails-based web applications for our customers. Talent knows no boundaries — we have team members that work from many different places and Campfire allows everyone to communicate on a regular basis. It acts as our virtual office and provides a centralized place for us to talk and make sure everything is on track.”
Basecamp permission system improved
We’ve made some significant, oft-requested improvements to the Basecamp permissions system. These changes should speed up your workflow and make giving/removing access to collaborators simpler, easier, and more consistent.
Use Basecamp as a sales tool
Basecamp customers often tell us the product is a great sales tool for them. Some pitch potential clients by showing them Basecamp and how they use it to collaborate effectively. Others go ahead and set up a client project before they’ve even won the account; Showing a live, functional project site helps build momentum and gives a leg up over slower-moving competitors. Basetwo Media goes a step further: The company’s new site promotes Basecamp as part of its marketing strategy.
BiggerSmall says Campfire leads to fewer meetings
“We just opened a second office of our small business IT support company, and it’s about 2000 miles away from our first office. The first thing you notice when you do this is that you have to really make an effort to keep communication flowing and keep a sense of being “one team”, which is critical to our service model. Campfire makes this a lot easier to do.”
How Backpack reminders can keep your email inbox uncluttered
“I have a lot of tips and tricks for using reminders and “e-mail this page’ in combination with Gmail. I like to keep a clean inbox (per Mark Hurst and Merlin Mann), so I use Gmail’s search feature almost every day. Here’s a typical reminder: Follow-up with Mark ‘[ Subject of Mark’s e-mail ]’ or Post content for Client A ‘[ Client A’s e-mail request ]’.
Those reminders may come back to me tomorrow or 2 weeks from now, but I know to search gmail for the subject listed in the reminder. Plus, I get to archive the e-mail immediately and not look at it everyday. I also abandoned the Outlook to-do list when I started using Backpack.”
Snooth uses Highrise to run the world’s most comprehensive wine database
“Snooth has a multi-location team (New York, Boston and Belgrade) and Highrise allows simple multi-user access. Highrise contains all our company contacts – each tagged. We cc the dropbox on all (well, most) correspondence so copies are electronically filed by contact. This is a big, and unexpected, feature for us as it makes finding the odd email simple. Highrise also makes it simple to oversee the flow of information across the whole organization.”
Justin
on 11 Dec 07Very happy to see the basecamp permission improvements. Now I can stop making almost everyone an administrator…
adi
on 11 Dec 07good job!
Azarrio
on 12 Dec 07It’s been a long time since you’ve made any improvements to Basecamp. So I’ve had my chance to switch over to another tool. I use Wrike and I’m so happy that at least someone out there was able to develop a tool with smart user permissions. I’m sorry guys but the collaboration scheme in Wrike seems to be much better – here’s the proof http://www.wrike.com/blog/11/5/2007/User_rights_in_Wrike
ML
on 12 Dec 07It’s been a long time since you’ve made any improvements to Basecamp.
Not true Azarrio. We’re constantly making changes and improvements to Basecamp. You can stay up to date on the latest changes at the Product Blog.
Christopher Hawkins
on 12 Dec 07I suspect Azarrio is astroturfing.
I’m curious about Basetwo Media using Basecamp as a selling point. Basecamp is available to anyone who can pay the monthly. There’s literally no barrier to entry. So how strong of a selling point can it be? For example, in a competitive bidding situation, any of Basetwo’s competitors could offer to run the project off of Basecamp too.
I suspect the real advantage is in the WAY they use Basecamp, setting up the project beforehand (in sales they call this the presumptive close). But even that can be easily duplicated by a competitor. Where’s the real sales advantage to Basetwo Media?
This discussion is closed.