A PR firm wrote us a letter to win our business. It was signed by their Director of Business Development.

The letter detailed the awards they’ve won, the placements they’ve achieved for their clients, and the number of clients they’ve had that have been acquired or gone public.

It sounds impressive, but it all started with “Dear <No First Name>.” Whoops!

How to price a project

“I’ll say, ‘we worked on a project similar to yours and the final cost was [blank]’ I’ve had clients reply ‘that is [blank] times more than it would cost to do [blank]!’ The final blank often being some completely unrelated product relevant only to their business and impossible to compare other than on a pure cost basis. While other clients have said, ‘I don’t think you understand my project, because you are estimating far less than [blank].’ While this is very awkward part of the discussion it is almost always followed by candor. It’s as if once someone starts telling the truth, it opens a door that can’t be closed.”

Is there a secret that sets Stradivarius violins apart from the best instruments made today?

“Science has not provided any convincing evidence for the existence or otherwise of any measurable property that would set the Cremonese instruments apart from the finest violins made by skilled craftsman today. Indeed, some leading soloists do occasionally play on modern instruments. However, the really top soloists – and, not surprisingly, violin dealers, who have a vested interest in maintaining the Cremonese legend of intrinsic superiority – remain utterly unconvinced.”

John Lane: We have lost contact with the beautiful and our society is suffering as a result

“Why is so much modern architecture so nerve-janglingly awful, or just plain dull? What effect does this have on us? We live lives surrounded by functional objects bereft of beauty – when did you last see a house built by a mainstream construction company that was so beautiful that it took your breath away? Have you ever seen a mobile phone so exquisite that you will always treasure it? We have lost our way, and the effects of this separation are all too clear.”

Photos of breast-clouds (SFW)

“Mammatus Clouds, or ‘breast-clouds’, are fascinating formations in the sky, made mostly from the cumulus cloud base. Although they are not a sign that a tornado is about to form, they often accompany tornado-producing storms, or even may be direct byproduct of tornado activity – an aftermath of severe thunderstorms.”

Tim Gunn compares academia to working at Liz Claiborne

“I’ve been living in a rarefied bubble, really, for a total of 29 years. Because we were dealing with theory, we could write our own scenarios, where nothing ever fails and nothing is ever lost in the shipping process. It’s a very different universe.”

Simplicity: “The Ultimate Sophistication”

“Instead of focusing on adding features, design teams should focus on helping users find out what they really need before they purchase. When design teams understand that buyers want to avoid trade-offs, they can use this insight to their advantage…simplicity goes beyond the interface of the product to the decision process surrounding it. We want simple decisions as much as simple products.”

We’d like to get a nice digital projector to hook up to a laptop for presentations, etc. I started researching these and have no idea what’s good, bad, or other. This space seems so cluttered with so many choices, sizes, and brands that all sound about the same. We’d like to spend around $1000 or so. Does anyone have any recommendations based on personal experience? Thanks.

The job market is booming. Unemployment in the U.S. just hit a 6-year low of 4.4% and there are 150,000 applications chasing just 45,000 available H1-B visas. Whatever the reason, the waters are frothy.

The tech sector in particular seems bent on a hiring frenzy. Our Job and Gig boards are flush with calls for talent. Skillful Rails developers everywhere are reporting full calendars and are turning down offers.

It’s obvious things are a bit crazy at the moment, but that’s no excuse for the rampant, clueless behavior during the recent surge in recruiter activity.

I’ve been increasingly annoyed by the spammy, mail-merged, sugar-laced drivel that passes for “personalized” contact these days. The latest sample came from a major tech company that gave me this spiel:

A colleague here referred you to me as a great Engineer and I wanted to see if you might be interested in exploring job opportunities with us. We have a number of exciting projects in Software Development in locations throughout the world.

What utter laziness. The only two words that are even attempting to be about me are as generic as they come: “Engineer” and “Software Development”. They’re even capitalized in a way that makes you think they came straight off the merge list with my email address. I can vividly imagine this:

The Washington Post got world class violinist Josh Bell to play his Stradivarius at a subway stop to see how commuters would react. Turns out they didn’t react much.

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run—for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

“At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off. But here, my expectations quickly diminished. I started to appreciate any acknowledgment, even a slight glance up. I was oddly grateful when someone threw in a dollar instead of change.” This is from a man whose talents can command $1,000 a minute.

The one group who consistently tuned in: kids.

The behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Perhaps related, there’s an interesting anecdote about how Bell started young…real young.

Bell is that he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.

His subway set began with Bach’s “Chaconne” (here’s a piano version) which he calls “not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history.” The article also quotes what Brahms said about the Bach piece: “If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.” [via JK]

Update: The author of the piece writes, “This story got the largest and most global response of anything I have ever written, for any publication…With little or no elaboration, more than 100 readers so far have told me that this story made them cry. It was not a reaction I anticipated, at least not so universally, and it has somewhat taken me aback. Can those of you who had this reaction try to explain it?”

One of the things that always gives us a good laugh over here is when people pull out the “real world” card.

As in “you don’t understand the real world” or “your products would never work in the real world” or “you’ve obviously never worked in the real world.”

It’s thrown around so often that it must mean something obvious. So, in 10 words or less, what does “real world” mean to you?

Sigh. Front page of the New York Times yesterday: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs.

The Blogger’s Code of Conduct has arrived to keep us in line. Look at the initial version of 102 words vs. the current version with 569 words. How big will it get?

I have tons of respect for Tim O’Reilly and I know the intentions here are good, but do we really need a policy document to tell us that death threats are bad? Do we need a manifesto to tell us that we have the right to restrict nasty comments on our own blogs? What will this code actually do anyway?

I hate the idea of an FCC-like mob of nannies determining which word are acceptable (see George Carlin). This document certainly isn’t that bad, but it’s a step in that direction.

Let’s rely on common sense instead of a code. Blog owners shouldn’t be held responsible for content written by site visitors. Blog owners should decide on their own which comments are acceptable or not. Let people post whatever they want and let blog owners delete whatever they want. If you don’t like that someone is deleting your comment, you can start your own site complaining about how that blog is suppressing you. If you don’t like what someone allows at his/her blog, don’t read it.

The web forces us to confront some ugly truths. We see humanity as it really is, good and bad. The same thing that makes the web wonderful is, occasionally, what makes it terrible. That’s the tradeoff we agree to when we get on this ride. And it’s worth it.

It’s like living in a city. You deal with a loss in civility. (Any girl who walks around NYC hears more offensive comments in a day than most bloggers hear in a lifetime). But in exchange you get the wonder of being in a thriving metropolis. The culture, the diversity, the excitement, the energy, and the vitality. Let’s not all move into a gated community just because there are a few bad apples around.

Did you know there are a lot of third-party products that integrate with Basecamp?

From time trackers to billing to mobile apps to widgets… And there are more on the way. Stay tuned!

You can extend your own product to work with Basecamp by using the Basecamp API.

Thanks to everyone who’s put in the time to make their product work well with Basecamp. Our customers really do appreciate it.

Making Every Pixel Count talks about the importance of photography at real estate sites. “It’s so important to have photos that are professionally presented,” says Rosalind Clarke, a senior sales associate with the Corcoran Group. “If things look shoddy or unprofessional, not only are buyers going to find the property unappealing, they’re going to associate you with being shoddy and unprofessional.”

A Realtors’ association survey found that when it comes to web features that buyers consider “very useful,” 83 percent cited pictures, 81 percent cited detailed property information and 60 percent cited virtual tours. (I bet the tours figure is low because few sites offer them. I’d much rather see a video walkthrough of a place than a couple of still shots.)

Below are some example photos (befores are first, afters are second) from the article and accompanying slideshow. They show the difference good equipment, a wide-angle lens, and a sharp eye for composition can make.