It seems to be Spring season for rich-interface technologies. Most trying to blossom with a story about how they’ll rescue developers from the perils of web programming and its dirty tech of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These stories are told with a shadow assumption that the only reason developers put up with this trinity of web specs is because of what they get back in form of ubiquitous distribution.

That assumption then leads to the fallacy that if only someone could come along and give us a competitive distribution story using more “advanced” and “rich” interface technology, they’d surely be golden. That all web developers are waiting on is someone to save them from the browser mess and deliver them the clean desktop-development experience of yester-century.

In the immortal words of Eric Cartman: Bullcrap.

As a web developer, I’d like to confess my deep appreciation of the restricted canvas that we get from the basics of the web. We’ve entered an era where the browsers are good enough, compatible enough, and, most importantly, our understanding of how to use what we got has been raised to a level where things are finally looking pretty good.

I actually find the development experience between a modern web-application framework, Firebug, and current JavaScript libraries more than just bearable, I find it downright pleasant. Even more so because it’s born out of the pragmatism of not needing to be perfect. It has evolved over a decade of experimentation.

On the user experience side of things, we’re not even close to tapping out the potential of HTML. The majority of web sites and applications still suck. And if most developers and designers can’t make a clean run with the training wheels and constricted playground of HTML, then we probably are in no rush to start playing with a Ducati on the Autobahn.

David Pogue, the New York Times: The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype.

Steven Levy, Newsweek: At Last, the iPhone.

Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal: Testing Out the iPhone.

Edward C. Baig, USA Today: Apple’s iPhone isn’t perfect, but it’s worthy of the hype.

All reviews are positive on balance. The negatives mainly coalesce around AT&T and EDGE as well as getting used to the keyboard. The keyboard gets better, EDGE does not.

The most surprising thing to me was how they all said the iPhone seems virtually scratch-proof. They’ve all tossed in their pockets, knocked it with change and keys, and keep it unprotected during the duration of their tests. And virtually no marks. That’s impressive. Some funky new materials or treatments perhaps?

Come on Friday!!!

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Amazon Web Services “success story” on 37signals
Amazon Web Services recently published a success story about 37signals’ usage of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

How a Masters student at Drexel uses Basecamp
“I’ve learned a lot just by interacting with the system and paying attention to what it does and how it does it. For me, being an aspiring systems developer Basecamp often makes me think ‘wow that’s really cool – i wonder how they do that.’”

Basecamp gets OpenID and “Open Bar”
Use the same login for Highrise, the Highrise Forums, the Basecamp Forums, and Basecamp. Plus you can use that same login at any OpenID-enabled site on the web.

Highrise has got your back in customer service interactions
Highrise is a handy way to keep track of all those pesky interactions with cable companies, cell phone companies, electric/gas companies, etc…Highrise makes it easy to remember whom you talked to and when. You’ll have a paper trail that you can refer back to at any time. You’ll be able to track all your conversations so nothing slips through the cracks. And you’ll be able to hold people accountable for promises that are made.

Insert “Update” tag graphic in Basecamp posts
Dave Rosen points out a neat little way to indicate updated content within Basecamp. When you’re typing a message/comment, just put “[UPDATE]” in there. Example: Basecamp turns your update text into a little tag graphic.

Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.

Photojojo

Jonathan Spooner writes:

was just over at Photojojo and noticed their cool solution for the forums and how to visually convey which threads are getting the most responses.

HP

Ricky Irvine writes:

I found this amusing OS selection menu on an HP product registration page. One Mac OS and sixteen Windows OSs.

Safeway

Jeff Miller writes:

I was shopping online the other day at Safeway.com and never finished my order. They just emailed a reminder to me letting me know that my cart still has some items remaining in it and that it has been set aside.

Have an interesting link, story, or screenshot for Signal vs. Noise? Contact svn [at] 37signals [dot] com.

Highrise was our first foray into accepting OpenID as a sign-in option. OpenID is a web-wide single sign-on service. You can find out more at the official OpenID site.

We then added OpenID sign-in to the Basecamp and Highrise forums. We also have OpenID running on an internal app. It’s easier to remember one OpenID than remember multiple usernames and passwords for multiple sites.

And now OpenID comes to Basecamp

Today we announce that you can use your OpenID login with Basecamp as well. This means you can use the same login for Highrise, the Highrise Forums, the Basecamp Forums, and Basecamp. Plus you can use that same login at any OpenID-enabled site on the web. Here’s how to use your OpenID with Basecamp.

OpenID enables single sign-on

Many people have multiple Basecamp accounts: One for work, one for personal, one for a volunteer organization they’re part of, etc. We’ve heard lots of requests for a single sign-on option: Log in to one Basecamp account and be logged into all your Basecamp accounts. OpenID and “Open Bar” makes this possible.

Open Bar

If you have multiple Basecamp accounts, and you use your OpenID to log into each account, you’ll see a thin black bar at the top of the screen. We’re calling this the “Open Bar.” In the example below I have four OpenID-enabled Basecamp accounts. I’m currently looking at the “37signals Extranet.”

The black Open Bar lists all your OpenID-enabled Basecamp accounts. The one you’re currently looking at is white and bold, the others are grey. Just click an account to switch to that account without having to log in. If we click on “400 North May” we’ll switch to that Basecamp account.

Open Bar will expand

Currently the Open Bar will only list your Basecamp accounts, but we have plans to add your Highrise accounts up there too. And once we move OpenID to Backpack and our other products you’ll have one-click pre-signed-in access to all the 37signals products you use.

Once you go OpenID you won’t go back

I was a skeptic at first, but once I switched to OpenID I can’t imagine going back. Find out more about OpenID on our site or the official OpenID site. We hope you give it a shot. We think you’ll find it useful.

George Orwell: "Politics and the English Language"

“Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.” [tx B]

How uses, not innovations, drive human technology

“Carl Sagan once said, ‘We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.’ If he meant that we are unfamiliar with the principles on which the technology around us works, he was right—there’s an enormous gap between the knowledge of makers and the knowledge of users—but this is exactly as it should be. As users, we typically want our technology to be a black box; we don’t want to be bothered with adjusting it, monitoring it, repairing it, or knowing about its inner workings. A sure sign of the success of a technology is that we scarcely think of it as technology at all.”

Humane interface philosophy

“Setting the time on a wristwatch, for instance, shouldn’t be that hard; on old analog wristwatches, it basically involved pulling out a knob, twisting it until the watch showed the correct time, and pushing the knob back in again. But on newer digital wristwatches—ones that claim to be more powerful and feature-loaded than their analog counterparts—it involves pressing a series of buttons in a hard-to-remember, often unforgiving order. Most people dread setting the time on their digital watches, and for good reason.”

Video: David Byrne and Daniel Levitin conversation

The singer/songwriter/artist/author discusses music, science, memory, and more with the producer/neuroscientist. Fascinating discussion.

Are you climate friendly?

“Calculate the carbon emissions from driving your car, air travel, and the electricity used in your home or office or combine travel and power to offset events such as a wedding or conference. We’ll tell you how many carbon credits you need to neutralise your emissions and become Climate Friendly.”

We recently decided to stop diving in too deep on tasks right away. Instead, we’re going for four hour chunks upfront. We start work on a task and then, after the first four hours, come up for air.

Why? When you’ve done nothing, you don’t have a realistic view of what it’s going to take. But when you’ve spent days or weeks on something, you can get too invested. It becomes hard to change, admit you’re wrong, or that what you’ve been doing isn’t actually worth more effort.

Four hours lets you get your toes wet. Then you ask questions. Is this worth continuing? Are you on the right track? Is there a way to judo this? Should you bring in another set of eyes?

If it’s all good, then keep on going. But a lot of times this forced break can reveal hidden solutions and/or lead you in a different direction.

It’s easy to get excited about solving the problem at hand, even if the solution is complex. But then you can wind up spending way too long on a problem that’s just not worth it. Sometimes you’re better off restating the problem or even tabling it and moving on to something more important. The four-hour upfront technique prevents you from going too far in the wrong direction.

We’re working on an iPhone-optimized version of Ta-da List.

As I was working on some UI ideas, Ryan and I were talking about some of really cool things about designing for the iPhone.

I remarked that I loved the constraints. For example, we know the exact screen size/resolution, we know the exact typeface, we know how the face renders on the screen, we know the colors, we know the browser, etc.

Then Ryan nailed it: Designing for the iPhone is like a hybrid of print and web design.

The web we all know is rife with uncertainty. We don’t know the viewer’s screen size or resolution, we don’t know the gamma of someone’s screen, we don’t know if they’ve got a certain typeface and/or exactly how that face renders on in their browser, we don’t know the browser they’re going to use, etc.

But paper, on the other hand, is full of controls. Fixed size, fixed faces, fixed colors. What you print is exactly what someone sees (assuming you’ve done your homework on color and paper, etc).

So the iPhone is a weird mix. It’s the web, and things can scroll, and the data is pulled from remote servers, but it’s also a fixed width, a fixed browser, fixed typefaces, etc. It’s pretty cool and a really refreshing design exercise.

In other ways it’s also like going back to the early days of the web when people’s connections were a lot slower. The EDGE network and mobile phone latency emphasizes the need to keep page size down, images sparse, etc. It’s a return to the power of text, shape, color, and basic HTML.

I love it.

Chris Ware’s cover for “Candide” by Francois Voltaire (larger version).

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp wins in the Productivity category in the CNET Webware 100 Awards
Huzzah! Basecamp, is a winner in the Productivity category in the CNET Webware 100 Awards.

Add pre-built iCalendars to your Backpack Calendar
Did you know you can add pre-built iCalendars to your Backpack Calendar?...You can find a list of calendar options at iCalShare. Apple.com also has a list of iCalendars.

Basecamp gets a global iCalendar feed
Last night we just added a global iCalendar feed that contains all the milestones for all your projects in a single iCalendar feed. You can still subscribe to each project individually if you’d like, but if you prefer a more all-in-one solution, subscribing to the global feed is your best bet.

Pyro 1.6 is released for Campfire
We can’t run our business without Campfire and Pyro is our browser-of-choice when running Campfire. Pyro 1.6, the latest release, brings these great enhancements…

Room descriptions at Campfire
Campfire lets you add a description to your different rooms. This can be a helpful way to clarify the purpose of a room. You can also have some fun with this field. We like to fill the description area of our main chat room with quotes that are inspirational or educational.

Robby Russell explains how to use Highrise to organize customer contacts
Robby Russell’s review of Highrise (part 2) includes an in-depth example of how he uses Highrise to organize contacts. He takes us through the whole cycle: initial customer query > review in email program > forward to Highrise > schedule follow up tasks. If you’re looking for insight into how to put Highrise to work for your business, check it out.