CBS News Forums
Scott Schwartz pointed out some interesting copy at the CBS News site. This is the text that precedes the comments section of a story:

Now you’re in the public comment zone. What follows is not CBS News stuff; it comes from other people and we don’t vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

Simple and to the point. And here’s the Rules Of Engagement:

People who want to post comments on CBSNews.com are going to have to follow our rules. We know that not all forums are like that, but this one is.

There’s legal language nearby. Here’s the plain English: no libel, slander, no lying, no fabricating, no swearing at all, no words that teenagers use a lot that some people think aren’t swearing but we do, no insulting groups or individuals, no ethnic slurs and/or epithets, no religious bigotry, no threats of any kind, no bathroom humor, no comparing anyone to Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot. We expect heated, robust debate, but comments should be polite and civil. We consider this to be public space so behave and write accordingly.

Yes, what is not allowable is subjective. CBSNews.com absolutely reserve the right to remove posts we think break any of the rules or the spirit of the rules and we reserve the right to ban individuals from commenting. We will use language filtering programs to block certain words and we will use human editing too.

Comments should be limited to the topic of the original posting. This is not the place for private conversations, no matter how innocent.

We require everyone who comments to register and provide a real e-mail address. No exceptions. And posting comments is not the same thing as complaining to CBS News or notifying CBS News of a problem – legally, there’s a big difference.

Very important: if you see a comment that you feel is inappropriate, let us know by clicking on the “comment complaint” or “report this complaint” button.

As Scott says, “Legalese be gone. And they know Godwin’s Law to boot!”

Peerless Faucet instructions
François Beausoleil writes: “I just bought a Peerless faucet, and they have instructions on how to uninstall your existing one.” (Viewable at FaucetCoach.com.)

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

CSV2vCard helps import contacts from Excel into Highrise
Highrise imports contacts from Outlook and ACT but not Excel. But there’s a way around this: You can save Excel spreadsheets as CSV files (or get a CSV file from another unsupported source) and use CSV2vCard to make vCards, which Highrise accepts.

Publish your Christmas Wishlist at Backpack
“All I have to say is: wow. SO MUCH EASIER. All I do is e-mail everyone a link to the public page and boom, I’m done. I can even take pictures on my phone and e-mail them (and list additions) to the page and have it updated for me. Fan-freakin’-tastic.”

Subscribe to Basecamp project feeds via email with Nourish
Want to get a summary of your Basecamp projects emailed to you? Then check out Nourish, a newsletter service which allows you to take any RSS feed from content you publish (like a blog) and convert it into an automated email newsletter readers can subscribe to.

Nourish’s Basecamp theme

New 37signals Twitter stream
We’re experimenting with a Twitter stream: Twitter.com/37status. We plan on posting status updates for 37signals products, occasional links to interesting posts, and, well, we’ll see.

Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.

Chris asks:

What is your opinion of “stories” which some web development shops write? A Ruby on Rails development shop I have worked with writes a “story” about every piece of functionality they intend to develop. They use those stories to ensure all customer objectives are met. They’re similar to use cases (maybe identical!)... functionality represented as a sequence of simple steps in writing.

We believe in interface-first driven development, but when the UI or feature needs some further explanation we write a story.

A story is usually a paragraph or two. Sometimes it’s 5 bullet points. It’s not an in depth dissection of a feature, or a technical discussion of what needs to be implemented. It’s not a functional specification. It’s simply a general idea of what the feature is about and why it’s valuable.

For example, we’re working on some stuff for Backpack right now. One of the areas we’re looking at is making it more obvious someone changed a page since your last visit to that page. The story might go like this:

Right now it’s tough to know if a Backpack page has been changed since the last time you’ve seen it. If I’m sharing a page with Bob, and Bob adds a new to-do list or a note to the page, it should be clear to me the page has changed next time I visit that page.

This story may be enough to explain why the mockup we design has a yellow strip at the top saying “Bob changed this page. See the changes.”

The story serves to add some context. It doesn’t need to say exactly how to solve the problem, it doesn’t need to refer to specific design elements, and it’s not technical. It’s just a statement of why something is a hassle (“don’t know the page changed”) and a general idea of how we can make it better (“make it clear the page changed”).

The actual solution is presented in the interface design. We may go with a yellow strip or some other notice. We don’t know yet. We just know it should be clear and obvious. The rest happens as we toss around some design ideas.

We’ve definitely found stories to be handy summaries of big picture ideas. But it’s still the interface that drives almost all of our development.

Got a question for us?

Got a question about design, business, marketing, etc? We’re happy to try to provide some insight into how we’d tackle the problem. Just email svn [at] 37signals dot com with the subject “Ask 37signals”. Thanks.

Neil Wilson asks:

’”Get Ink” is the fundamental marketing mantra. You guys are natural self-promoters. What do you find is the best way of getting your name in the frame?

10 ideas that come to mind when I think about ways to get people to notice you/your product:

1. Provide something of value. The first step is recognizing that marketing is asking for someone else’s time and attention. You need to provide something worthy of those valuable commodities. So keep your message brief and interesting. When you educate or entertain other people, they’ll pay attention. If you bore them, they won’t.

2. Know your hook. Imagine you are a reporter who wants to write an article about your company. What’s the hook? What’s the angle that will be interesting to someone who normally wouldn’t care about your software? We’ve got a lot of mileage in the press out of staying small and focusing on “less.” What’s unique about your story?

3. Stand for something. Know and expose your company’s philosophy and mantras. 37signals started with a manifesto back when we launched as a design firm. Even though it’s from 1999 and our company has evolved a ton since then, you can see the seeds of many of our current ideas there. That sort of belief foundation will help guide you (and others) to your story.

4. Get your face out there. It’s tempting to think you can do it all from a keyboard. But emails are a poor substitute for real, face-to-face interactions. Go to conferences and meetups, take someone you admire out to lunch, etc. It’s ok to “network” — just don’t be a douche about it. Which leads to…

5. Try to build real, sustained relationships. Actually be a friend instead of a guy trying to get something. Keep your interactions human (a sincere, honest note will go a lot further than a buzzwordy press release). Seek out ways to help others. It’ll all come back to you.

6. It’s the message, not the amount you spend on it. Companies that spend tons of ad/PR dollars to convince people their products are worthwhile are like guys who spend lots of money on gifts and dinners to woo a woman. What kind of relationship are they really building? Successful customer relationships are like any other long-term relationship: They start with a foundation of communication and showing you care about the other person.

7. Give stuff away for free. (I don’t think this contradicts the previous point but maybe?) People love free. Offer a free version of your product, provide coupon codes, etc. Whenever we include a coupon code in a newsletter, there’s a big uptick in upgrades.

8. Ride the wave. Seek momentum and ride it. Is everyone buzzing about the iPhone? Then make an iPhone app. Are people interested in rapid development processes? Then blog about building your app in, say, under a month. Find out what people are talking about already and then figure out a way to get in the picture.

9. Be in it for the long haul. Recognize that promotion, like other aspects of building a company, takes time and effort. If you’re starting from scratch, you have to claw your way up. It’s uncanny how many “overnight success stories” you hear about are actually people who busted their asses for years to get into the position where something might take off. Don’t expect instant recognition.

10. Be undeniably good. Steve Martin was on Charlie Rose last week. At the very end, he gave his advice to someone who’s trying to make it in any field: “Be undeniably good.”

When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them — And nobody ever takes note of it ‘cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script, here’s how you do this — But I always say, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” If somebody’s thinking, “How can I be really good?”, people are going to come to you. It’s much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.

That’s some good advice. Go out and make something that kicks ass and people will notice.

Related: Check out the “Promotion” chapter in Getting Real.

Got a question for us? Please send it along to svn [at] 37signals dot com and use the subject “Ask 37signals”.

Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft provides an interesting look at how Google develops new apps.

Grand Prix, the company’s new iPhone app (screenshots), took six weeks from conception to launch. This excerpt mentions one of the company’s favorite mantras: “Nothing speaks louder than code.”

Early this month, Google released new cellphone software, with the code-name Grand Prix. A project that took just six weeks to complete, Grand Prix allows for fast and easy access to Google services like search, Gmail and calendars through a stripped-down mobile phone browser. (For now, it is tailored for iPhone browsers, but the plan is to make it work on other mobile browsers as well.)

Grand Prix was born when a Google engineer, tinkering on his own one weekend, came up with prototype code and e-mailed it to Vic Gundotra, a Google executive who oversees mobile products. Mr. Gundotra then showed the prototype to Mr. Schmidt, who in turn mentioned it to Mr. Brin. In about an hour, Mr. Brin came to look at the prototype.

“Sergey was really supportive,” recalls Mr. Gundotra, saying that Mr. Brin was most intrigued by the “engineering tricks” employed. After that, Mr. Gundotra posted a message on Google’s internal network, asking employees who owned iPhones to test the prototype. Such peer review is common at Google, which has an engineering culture in which a favorite mantra is “nothing speaks louder than code.”

Some other interesting bits: Since Google moves so fast, people are routinely offered jobs there without being told what they will be doing.

Another draw is Google’s embrace of experimentation and open-ended job assignments. Recent college graduates are routinely offered jobs at Google without being told what they will be doing. The company does this partly to keep corporate secrets locked up, but often it also doesn’t know what new hires will be doing.

Christophe Bisciglia, a 27-year-old engineer, qualifies as a seasoned veteran at Google, having worked there for four years. Mr. Bisciglia has done a lot of college recruiting in the last two years and has interviewed more than 100 candidates. “We look for smart generalists, who we can be confident can fulfill any need we have,” he explains. “We hire someone, and who knows what need we’ll have when that person shows up six months later? We move so fast.”

About “The Whale Hunt” interface (by Jonathan Harris)

“The Whale Hunt website was developed as an experimental interface for storytelling. Given an epic real world story, with lots of content and lots of metadata, how can the narrative be faithfully retold? The project presented a number of interesting design problems, including: how to present a large set of photographs (3,214) online while keeping download times relatively brief; how to express both the topography of the entire narrative and the ways in which any single moment fits into that narrative; how to extract and reveal the many substories occuring within the context of the larger story; how to convey the many feelings experienced on the hunt (boredom, fatigue, curiosity, excitement, exhaustion, sublime beauty); and more generally how to restage an epic real world experience on the Internet.”

Tracing business acumen to dyslexia

“It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought. The report found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.”

Building a blue collar web business

“Simple e-commerce sites in small niche markets that only have a market potential of a few million dollars is not the arena for the Dagny Taggarts of the world. Most big thinkers are sitting the whole day in coffee shops trying to napkin-scratch the next wave of social bookmarking or envisioning how blogs will work in Web 4.0 on the hopes that it gets bought up by Google even though it never brought in a dime of revenue. There’s something very traditional, almost blue collar, about building a commerce site and trying to make money the old fashioned way by selling goods for a little more than you paid for them.”

Billboard uses “audio spotlight” to talk to passersby

“The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an ‘audio spotlight’ from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before.”

Some recent activity at the internal 37signals Campfire chat room.

New feature at Amazon

Jason F.	Neat new feature on Amazon…
Jason F.
Jason F.	"Most Helpful" good and bad review
Mark I.	I noticed that the other day. Amazon felt like it didn’t change much for a long time, but over the past several months they’ve made a bunch of nice tweaks.
Jason F.	I like their redesign.
Mark I.	Just renewed my Amazon Prime membership the other day.
Mark I.	It’s such a no-brainer.
Mark I.	I ordered four gifts for my kids the other day, one at a time and didn’t worry about bundling the purchases up to save shipping.
Mark I.	That’s the one feature I really want that they won’t give me: the ability to filter results by Prime status.
Jeremy K.	Mark – you can limit Seller to Amazon.com
Mark I.	I didn’t realize that.

Full Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in 37signals.

EVDO

Sequoia
Sequoia, the guys who funded Apple, Google, and YouTube, have a no-frills site. It stands out from the typical flashy, fancy, or salesy VC firm site.

1-800-GOT-JUNK
Vincent Hubert writes:

Have a look at the bottom of the page here: 1-800-GOT-JUNK

You want to have a clue on how much clutter you have? Just click on the truck ratio, and you will see the amount of junk it represents.

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.

This is the fourth in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots shown are from real usage and were taken during one week in September.

This time we’ll take a look at how we use Campfire to help us write copy for our apps, marketing sites, blogs, etc.

Collect ideas for copy
Jason asks for suggestions about a blog post he’s writing. Ryan, Mark, and Sam offer up some ideas.

Suggest a copy change
Jason suggests adding a message to an app that says, “Upload photo, one moment…”