Page Dividers are one of the useful new features coming soon to the new Backpack.

Divider, not a uniter

Dividers are literal: They divide the page into distinct chunks. A dividers draws a grey line across the page. You can label the dividers anything you’d like. You can have as many separators on a page as you’d like and you can put them anywhere you want.

Here’s what they look like

You’ll see I’ve created dividers for each city I’ll be visiting on the trip. “Portland” “Seattle” and “San Francisco.” I also included the dates I’ll be in each city for reference.

Really flexible

Simple dividers give you a lot of power. Things you may have stored on multiple pages can now be put together on a single page. They are also great ways to set up time periods on a page. “January” “February” “March” etc. Or, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, etc. The options are plenty.

Coming soon

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

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

A script that emails log files to your Highrise dropbox for easy backup checkup
Ross Belmont has rigged up a backup solution using the UNIX philosophy of employing many small tools, each perfectly suited for its job. One of the tools he uses is Highrise. He has the script e-mail the contents of the log file to his Highrise Dropbox so he can access it easily. “So far, this has worked without a hitch, and I feel much better having my files backed up everyday,” he says.

Create Backpack reminders via e-mail/SMS
Here’s how it works: Type “call aunt betty sat aft” into a new text message. Send the message to “[email protected].” This can be any e-mail account you have that supports POP3. The software Ross wrote picks up the message and sets a Backpack reminder for Saturday at 2pm with the text “call aunt betty.”

TrailGuide puts Basecamp on your mobile phone
TrailGuide provides mobile access to your Basecamp projects through an optimized mobile application and secure web server. With TrailGuide, the Basecamp experience has been adapted for efficiency on the phone, so you can see more of the most important things on screen quickly and easily.

Ta-da List named one of the “Top 10 best apps for the iPhone”
We recently announced the launch of Ta-da List for the iPhone. Today MacNN named Ta-da List one of the Top 10 best apps for the iPhone.

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An open letter to people who wear those Bluetooth headsets that blink:

In case you haven’t noticed, your eyes are actually located in front of your ears.

So that blue light that blinks incessantly can’t actually be seen by you. The rest of us, however, do see it. And it annoys us. Stop.

“But how else will I impress the ladies?” you ask. I suggest purchasing some of those rims that keep on spinning after you stop.

Wow. This has been a long time coming. It’s time to finally begin building up to the launch of the new Backpack.

We originally hoped to have this out at the end of 2006, but a variety of circumstances pushed it back and back and back. Technical challenges, strategy changes, and the launch of Highrise all played a part in the delay. We apologize. We learned our lesson about pre-announcing releases that aren’t truly right around the corner.

Familiar yet all new

One of the challenges of developing the new Backpack was to maintain familiarity yet make the product feel brand new. While the standard tools remain mostly the same, the experience of interacting with the tools is all new. It’s something you’ll feel when you use it.

Anywhere

The first major change we want to preview is the “items anywhere” feature. The current version of Backpack segments the page into fixed compartments. To-do lists always at the top, then notes, then files, then photos, etc. Not anymore. the new version allows you to put anything anywhere. A file on top of a list. A list below a note. A photo gallery at the top of the page, etc. It’s up to you.

Same content, different order

To illustrate, here’s two screenshots of the same content in a different order.

Coming soon

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

Some recent activity at our internal 37signals Campfire chat room:

When we launched the 37signals Open Bar a few weeks ago it only supported Basecamp accounts.

That was then, this is now

Now the Open Bar includes your Highrise accounts too. So now you have single sign-on for both Basecamp and Highrise accounts. Log into any one of your accounts and you’re logged into all your accounts.

Access to multiple accounts via a dropdown

We made some changes with this recent push. First, if you have multiple accounts under a single product you’ll see them listed in a dropdown menu when you hover over the product name (see below).

Helpful delay

Second, we added a little delay on hover so the menu doesn’t drop down when you trail over it while reaching for the Back button or any of your browser shortcuts.

Smart bar

Lastly, and most useful, we made Open Bar smarter. Now it remembers the last place you were when you left one account for another. This means when you return to the previous account you were using it will drop you right back where you left off.

We hope you find it useful

We’ve been loving the Open Bar. We hope you love it as much as we do. Backpack is the next app to be added to the Open Bar. Stay tuned.

Just this morning I noticed something new at Amazon.com. If you click through to these coffee pods or razor blades or dishwasher detergent you can subscribe to have them auto delivered at specific intervals. I suspect they will be rolling this out for a variety of “repetitive staples.”

Very smart retailing. Amazon seems to be on a roll lately. And this time Wall Street thinks so too.

Grid-it notepads are a series of notepads based on the layout grids of famous publications: “By moving the grids from the backround to the foreground, and divorcing them from their content, we pay homage as well as render the invisible visible.”

Some of the choices: Die Neue Typografie, Le Modulor, The Gutenberg Bible, and The Guardian. The Art Director’s Club awards site offers an up-close look at the pads. Couldn’t find a place to purchase though.

The Art of the Grid site also includes a collection of quotes about grids. A sampling:

Slimmy
The funny copy for Slimmy explains it is not for people with a “George Castanza wallet.”

STYLE WARNING: This wallet is not a magic trick.

If you have a “George Castanza wallet,” with over 10 credit cards, pictures of distant relatives, and 5 years of financial records, you WILL NOT be able to magically conceal the same contents in the Slimmy.

The Slimmy experience is about security, comfort and minimalism. Carry only what you need so that you are less exposed to theft, less emcumbered, and look better…

A Slimmy can help, but you have to want to change.

Mosso
The Mosso Story talks about how the company’s founders decided to scratch their own itch.

We were a two-man operation: a graphic artist and a web developer. Everyone said that for the sites we wanted to create, we really needed to get our own server and spend the time to manage it. But to us, that was as crazy as saying that to sell t-shirts online, we had to spend our time driving a Mack truck doing the deliveries. There had to be a better way to host our projects. Right?

We started Mosso because we knew there were others like us: other web agencies who wanted to promise their clients that their websites and email would work—always work—without being the ones responsible for all the technology.

The OS split for visits to BasecampHQ.com, (the marketing site, not the actual app).