It’s been a long time coming, but today we’re proud to officially announce the launch of the new Backpack.

Find out what’s new and give it a try. If you already have a Backpack account, just log in and you’re golden. If you don’t have an account, sign up for a free account and give it a shot.

This was a full team effort. Everyone was involved. We tore out the insides and rebuilt it from scratch. The UI is finally a modern 37signals interface. We’re very happy with the final product.

Thanks again for everyone’s patience and support during the development process. It took longer than anyone would have liked, but it was worth it.

AM yesterday: Press release issued: “Two years of 100-percent uptime at 365 Main’s San Francisco facility”...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 24 /PRNewswire/—365 Main Inc., developer and operator of the world’s finest data centers, has provided online retailer RedEnvelope with two years of 100-percent uptime at 365 Main’s San Francisco facility.

PM yesterday: 365 Main datacenter power outage brings down major websites

It seems that the Web 2.0 datacenter 365 Main, in the heart of SOMA, has lost it’s power. Sites that are affected include Craigstlist, Technorati, Yelp, Netflix, AdBrite and all Six Apart properties, TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox.

Spooky. [via Metafilter]

Side note: For a bit, The Six Apart Twitter stream was one of the only places information was available on the issue. Will we see more companies launch Twitter streams for “just in case” scenarios?

Some recent postings at the 37signals Job Board:

First Look is looking for an Amazing User Interface Designer / Engineer in New York, NY.

Red 5 Interactive, Inc. is looking for a Senior Interactive Designer in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Outside Line is looking for an Apache/MySql/PHP Developer in London, UK.

University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning is looking for a Programmer I in Lawrence, KS (Kansas City area).

Second Rotation is looking for a Senior Database Application Developer (Rails) in Waltham, MA.

Real Branding, LLC is looking for an Interactive Art Director in San Francisco, CA.

Curt Schultz Design is looking for a Web Designer in St. Charles, IL.

JB Scott Search is looking for a Diverse Interactive Creative Director in Minneapolis, MN.

WWF-Australia is looking for a Communications Manager – Online in Sydney, Australia.

Best Cellars

Best Cellars tries to demystify the wine purchasing process with a color spectrum for wine categories.

Best Cellars classifies its wines based on their taste and style, rather than grape type or place of origin. Our selections are presented in eight distinct style categories to help you choose the right wine for any food, mood or occasion…

Why have we chosen to categorize wine by style, using words, icons and colors? Because we want to make shopping for wine as much fun as drinking it. Because we think that it encourages you to try wonderful wines that would otherwise be overlooked on your way to Bordeaux, Burgundy, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. Because we believe that buying wine should be a multiple-choice question (rather than an essay test) where all the answers are correct. Because you know what you like, and we know wine.

Campaign Monitor

Really nice 2 minute demo of Campaign Monitor. Editing is very pro and whole thing feels more like an infomercial than a typical software demo.

I just noticed something really useful on the iPhone. If you click the Recents option in the Phone app you’ll see a list of recent outgoing, incoming, and missed calls. If you don’t recognize a number, tap the little blue arrow to go to the info page for that number. Below the number you’ll see the physical location of the number based on the area code.

That’s just plain thoughtful! I just love stuff like that. The little details that make you go “Ah ha!”

I didn’t recognize a call from 574 so I tapped the arrow and found out it was from South Bend, IN.

One of the top Backpack requests has been the ability to move data between pages. The new Backpack makes that possible.

It’s a drag

So how do you move items between pages? You just drag the item to a page in the sidebar. Any “unit” can be moved — a list, a note, a photo gallery, a file, etc. The unit will be dropped at the top of the page.

Drag to make a new page too

Another twist is that you can drag an element to the “Make a new page” button to create a new page out of that content. It’s really handy.

Watch

Watch a quick video demo of the feature in action. Things are slower than they normally would be since we’re running in development mode, but at least you’ll get an idea of what to expect.

Coming soon

The new Backpack is coming soon. Thanks again for your patience and stay tuned for more previews and the launch announcement.

[Fireside Chats are round table discussions conducted using Campfire.]

The latest chat is with three inventor/entrepreneurs:

Brian Crabtree of Monome (creators of the monome 40h).

David Rose, CEO of Ambient Devices (creators of the Ambient Orb and the Ambient Umbrella).

Nathan Seidle of Spark Fun Electronics.

Moderated by Matt (ML) and Jason (JF) from 37signals.

ML	for starters, explain to our audience what you guys do/make.
NS	SparkFun is a bit difficult to describe. We provide the widgets to the hardware world for creating prototypes. Before a new product is released to the consumer market, the company has to design the product. We product the parts to build the ‘mock up’. This spans hobbyists, research, and students. We see a lot of business from all markets.
NS	‘We sell the parts’ to build the mock up.
ML
NS	Ok :) That has nothing to do with a product prototype
NS	That was just for fun – to see if we could pull it off.
ML	ha, link up a better example.
NS	12 Channel Copernicus GPS Receiver
NS
ML	another fun one:
ML
ML	Picture Frame Tetris
NS	Actually, Tetris was really just an application of Brian’s work.
ML	what role do these “fun” ideas play in your company?
NS	We sell bits and pieces. Tetris was a demonstration of all these bits put together to do something interesting.
BC	monome is kelli cain and myself, we design adaptable hardware interfaces. our first device (called the 40h) is a grid of keypads with internal backlighting. the systems are decoupled, so it becomes a dynamic blank canvas. everything is open-source, community participation is highly encouraged, and we’re dedicated to domestic/sustainable production techniques.

Bemoaning feature creep

“The truth is, many consumers bemoan the incessant rush of innovation that pushes manufacturers to tamper with products the consumers feel are already perfect. Their grief is not just nostalgia. Drivers who miss the subcompact Japanese cars of yesteryear, and runners who yearn for the discontinued New Balance 855 running shoe with an anti-pronating roll bar, are victims of ‘feature creep,’ said Jon Linkov, a managing editor at Consumer Reports. This phenomenon, generated by market forces, media hype and twitchy retailers, creates a cycle in which products are constantly improved even if they don’t need to be…’[BMW] was a company that talked about ‘no cup holders. You’re supposed to be driving, not drinking in your car. Now they are power-everything, bigger, heavier in every way. They are these luxury tourers filled with leather and wood.’”

Michael Bierut radio interview

“In a world where a logo can induce epileptic seizures (as did the 2012 London Olympics logo), being a graphic designer involves a lot of responsibility. Graphic design expert and critic Michael Bierut joins us to answer your questions about logos, packaging, and fonts.”

“Dick in a Box” rush job

“The week of ‘Dick in a Box,’ the trio wasn’t even planning to do a short, but [Lorne] Michaels pushed them to do a musical parody because Justin Timberlake was hosting the show. (‘I gave them a direct order,’ Michaels says.) So they wrote, shot, and cut together the sketch between Thursday night and Saturday afternoon. A couple of months and over 10 million downloads later, [Andy] Samberg found himself singing a surprise duet with Timberlake in front of 18,000 screaming fans at Madison Square Garden.”

101 one-paragraph recipes that take 10 minutes or less

“The trouble is that when it’s too hot, even the most resourceful cook has a hard time remembering all the options. So here are 101 substantial main courses, all of which get you in and out of the kitchen in 10 minutes or less.”

Limiting emails to five sentences

“Every e-mail I send to anyone, regardless of subject or recipient, will be five sentences or less. Like a cinquain. Ideally, it would be a 160 character count like an SMS message, but since that would require an actual e-mail plug-in (viz. ‘work’), we’ll go with the much-easier-to-count concept of sentences instead.” [via DF]

Apparently all presidential candidate logos must use red, white, and blue.

2008 logos:

2004 logos:

I know, I know. Gotta look patriotic and all that. But isn’t there some virtue in standing out from the crowd?

When every candidate uses the same color scheme, it ceases to convey patriotism or “a stronger America” and starts to reek of bureaucracy, design by committee, fear of change, and politics as usual.

The last candidate to break from the r/w/b convention? Not surprisingly…

Logos from 4president.org.

The new Volvo S40
From: Régis Kuckaertz

Volvo has redesigned (sic) the S40 model, following a few — scandinavian — design principles:

1 Less is more
2 Treat everything like a piece of art
3 Form follows function
4 Redefine luxury
5 Never stop learning

Seems to be the perfect car for a designer!

Seagate packaging like Apple
From: Ross Hill

I just came across How Seagate learned to package like Apple. and thought you might be interested. A ‘corporate’ company jumping on the design bandwagon – with human copywriting.

“Crap” design regurgitated as “good” design
From: Yong Bakos

Check out the last half of this post from David Byrne, on design masters feigning crap design as style.

I guess at some point designers (and others) get bored with “good” design and the increasing ease of making tasteful design that looks more or less like everything else, which is exactly the point, and also not the point. At some point I guess people designing things want them to look tasteful so that they’ll appeal to a semi-sophisticated crowd. And now it’s pretty easy to do that. With computers, and under the influence of the wealth of slick packaging in the world, tasteful layouts are pretty easy to emulate. The general public is fairly sophisticated in their design sense these days — they “read” the language of design — but, it being a visual language, they are not able to articulate the “text”. But if as a designer you want to be really hip and to appeal to those who deem themselves above mere tasteful design, then you have to have to work a little harder. One way to achieve this ultra cool surprise is to look intentionally bad, but to drop little visual ironic winks into the mix so that the audience knows it’s not really buying a record by a crappy East German band.

So, over the years, every genre of crap design — East German products, tacky back of magazine ads recycled by Warhol or Lichtenstein, sleazy RnB and Rock and Roll record covers, amateur porn and scientific textbooks — gets regurgitated as “good” design. Everything gets mulched and reused. So how does anything truly new ever get created?