Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

New features
Highrise tasks revamp and improvements
We launched a major revamp and set of improvements to the Highrise tasks feature. What’s new: 1) Setting tasks with dates/times is significantly faster, 2) iCalendar feed for dated/timed tasks, and 3) New tasks calendar layout.

New Basecamp Features: Reply to a message via email and more
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…Also new: a revamped message/comment screen and Clarified email notifications block.

New Highrise Feature: Advanced search
Now you can search contacts by city, state, zip/postal, and phone…Now, next time you head to San Diego on business, you can find all your contacts who live in San Diego. Or, if you want to find all the contacts you have in the near-north Chicago suburbs you can search by area code 847.

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

Backpack is “an invaluable tool” in fighting ADD
“I used to write this stuff down on post its, and carry a PDA or a binder with a calendar that I’d color code by hand with highlighters, as well as any important documents that I’d need to complete a project. Backpack has become a central repository for this information and has literally taken a load off of my back. My to-do lists, memos, projects files, address book, even things like the meals I’m planning on cooking for the week and my household budget are all in one place.”

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“I love that Backpack’s calendar is color-codeable.”

Rock band stays organized with Basecamp
“At this point, we’re almost finished with recording the album and we’ve been using Basecamp as a central place to discuss things like an album title and song order. Basecamp has provided the means for all of us to have a joint conversation even though we’re living in different locations and keeping very different schedules.”

Sundog Media uses Basecamp to handle growing design business
“We love the increased communication & ability to change persons working with a client without having to ‘download’ our brains to each other. We’re human & sometimes forget what we said. Basecamp has made it so we don’t!”

Tips and Tricks
Can I create sub-projects in Basecamp (i.e. a project within another project)?
“Question: Can I create sub-projects in Basecamp (i.e. a project within another project)? Answer: At this time, it’s not possible to create sub-projects in Basecamp. But there’s a friendly workaround that will allow this functionality: Create a new company and make it the “primary company” for the various projects you’d like to group together. Here’s how this works…”

Thoughtful welcome message for getting clients started with Basecamp
David McDonald is a graphic designer who runs a freelance creative company designing print and digital publishing solutions. He recently wrote to us: “I thought to send you the welcome message I put into all my new Basecamp projects for the benefit of my new clients.”

Buzz/press
Telegraph names Backpack #6 on its list of the 101 most useful websites
Telegraph.co.uk, “Britain’s No.1 quality newspaper website,” just published a list of the 101 most useful websites. #6 on the list: Backpack. The Telegraph site says, “To-do lists, notes, ideas and calendar. Excellent for juggling projects and much more versatile than a ring folder.”

Web designer finds Backpack addictive
“It was holding a high rank among the GTD crowd, so I succumbed. Then I found out, in my surprise, that Backpack works…Interesting links that pop into my screen while at work and need some “private” time: Backpack Inbox for later. Work todo lists and notes and drafts and mockups and files I want to share, @Work. Stuff that I wanna buy someday, an image gallery @Shopping. Blogs posts and drafts and ideas, @Blog…It’s not only the finished product, it’s the 37S way of thinking: declutter, simplicity, straightforward are some of the words that pop in your mind while using its products.”

Extras
Testing an e-mail interface for interacting with Basecamp
“It’s pretty basic at the moment, it lets you send messages to ‘[email protected]’ in order to add a to-do assigned to a specific person, or ‘[email protected]’ in order to add a milestone to a specific person. Also planned are adding messages, and adding files over e-mai’, adding general to-dos and general milestones and having it mail you a list of your to-dos and milestones.”

Mailplane now lets you send all outgoing email to Highrise dropbox
Mailplane, a Gmail client for Mac OS X, just got a new feature that had been requested by Highrise users: Auto-BCC. When turned on, all outgoing email is sent to Highrise.

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