Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:
Highrise
A novel idea: Use Highrise to keep track of fictional characters’ lives
“If your story is very character heavy, keeping track of all the people in your novel, who they are, and how they interact will be vital to making sure the continuity isn’t interrupted. It may seem silly to treat your fictional characters as real people, but using an online CRM application like Highrise (which offers a free account good for 250 characters), can be a great way to keep track of the people in your book. Create an entry for each character and treat them like real people, attaching notes about their interactions, histories, and characteristics as you write.”
New in Highrise: Color coded categories for tasks and deals
“Today we released a new feature to better organize your tasks and deals in Highrise. Now you can set a custom color for each task category or deal category. For example, you can make your ‘call’ tasks red, your ‘followup’ tasks blue, ‘meetings’ green, or anything you like. Color-coded categories help you organize your work and add a touch of personality to your account.”
Basecamp
McSweeney’s iPhone app creator says Getting Real and Basecamp made it possible
“As McSweeney’s are based on the west coast of America and I’m currently living in Zürich, Switzerland we had a major time difference to contend with. We started using Basecamp that same day, and have used it ever since for everything from reviewing screen designs, to hammering the copy into shape in Writeboards, to keeping track of deadlines and development to-do lists. A second project also served as an excellent platform for our closed beta stage, giving our testers a place to collect the new binaries and leave feedback.”
Zendesk adds integration to Basecamp
“Here at Zendesk we use Basecamp to qualify, plan, assess and discuss the hundreds of feature requests we harvest from customers, stakeholders and of course ourselves. Some of these feature requests are spawned of support tickets. In stead of having a manual copy-and-paste workflow, we implemented a Basecamp Target that enabled us to create a message in a Basecamp project directly from a support ticket.”
Continued…
My wife and I are planning a redesign of our bedroom. We usually go for paint on the walls. This time, however, we are planning to use wallpaper. We found a company called Graham & Brown, and we decided to order some wallpaper samples before deciding on a final pattern.
My wife took a few hours to browse and add items to her shopping cart to review with me later. The next day we had time to look over her selections. Unfortunately all of the items in her cart had disappeared. She even created an account to make sure that the items in her cart would be saved.
She called Graham & Brown customer service to tell them about the problem. They quickly apologized and explained that the site had just launched. Their web team was working out some bugs, and they were glad to hear our feedback. Customer service also offered to send us the wallpaper samples that we chose free of charge. As we make our final wallpaper selection I’ll be happy to give Graham & Brown my business because of this great experience.
The 2016 announcement is just hours away. Will it be Chicago? Rio? Madrid? Tokyo? The favorites appear to be Chicago or Rio, but who knows. I’d like to see Chicago win.
As as Chicagoan, I’ve seen the campaign close up. A recent poll suggests Chicago citizens are about equally split on whether or not they want the games. The results show slippage from the 2-to-1 support found in an earlier Tribune poll in February.
I think this reveals a flaw in the local marketing of the games. And I think there’s a good lesson in all this: Chicago sold the features, not the benefits. Chicago didn’t tell its citizens why the games would be good for Chicago. Chicago didn’t lay out the lasting legacy of the games for the city. What’s really in it for us? Why should we really support it? What happens after they are over? 8 years of work for a few weeks of sunshine. Then what?
This is a bit of Friday-morning quarterbacking, but here’s what I would have loved to have seen: A campaign centered around Chicago 2017. Show us what the city will look like after the Olympics. Give us a reason to want the games for the decade after the games. Give us examples… If a kid’s 16 years old today, what will the city be like for her when she’s 26? How will the games make Chicago a better place for Chicagoans. Will it be a better place to grow up? Why? Will it be a better place to work? Why? Why would we want to put up with all the construction, traffic, congestion, and attention? Why will it all be worth it?
I do hope we get the games. I do think it will be great for the city. But I have a hard time communicating why. And if I can’t say why, I can’t tell other people why. Shallow support is barely support. That’s a problem.
The bad reasons — the reasons not to support the bid — are the easy reasons: Debt, higher taxes, corruption. A Chicago 2017 campaign could have given me the good reasons. They could have made the good reasons easier to remember and communicate than the bad reasons. I think Chicago 2017 would have put more people into the “I’m for the games” camp than just under 50% and falling.
Design Jobs
a la mode is looking for a Web Designer in Oklahoma City, OK.
INCISENT Technologies is looking for a Front End Engineer in Austin, TX.
The Garland Group is looking for a Lead Designer / UI Guru in Dallas, TX.
Citrix Online is looking for a UX Designer in Santa Barbara, CA.
SeamlessWeb is looking for a Junior Web Designer in New York, NY.
Sogeo Company is looking for a Senior User Experience Designer in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
View all Design Job listings
Programming Jobs
Boston.com / The Boston Globe is looking for a Programmer / Developer in Boston, MA.
Lumos Labs, Inc is looking for a Flash Developer in San Francisco, CA.
P’unk Avenue is looking for a PHP/Symfony Developer in Philadelphia, PA.
HUGE LLC is looking for a Ruby on Rails Developer in Brooklyn, New York.
VersaPay Corporation is looking for a Rails Programmer in Vancouver, BC.
MailChimp is looking for a Programmer in Atlanta, GA.
View all Programmer Job listings
Miscellaneous Jobs
Trek Bicycle Corporation is looking for a Web Producer in Waterloo, WI.
Weber Marketing Group is looking for a Associate Creative Director / Writer in Seattle, WA.
More jobs
View all of the jobs at
the 37signals Job Board. (The Job Board now has internships too.)
