First, a recent rave for the 37signals job board: In “Sometimes you really do get what you pay for”, Dark Liquid talks about its search for a Rails Developer…

I must say I am really impressed with the 37signals job board. After only 3 days, we’ve already had 4-5 applicants to our ad for a Junior Rails Developer. We’ve posted on pretty much every free ruby-related job board around and got nothing back at all, so in this case, it seems you really do get what you pay for.

And now on to some recent postings on the board:

Happy Cog Philadelphia is looking for a Front End Developer in Philadelphia, PA.

The Sherwin-Williams Company is looking for a Web Developer in Cleveland, OH.

Vimeo is looking for a PHP/MYSQL Developer in NY.

Homes.com is looking for a Web Designer in Tallahassee, FL.

Ham in the Fridge is looking for a Senior Designer in Minneapolis, MN.

National Council State Boards of Nursing is looking for a Webmaster / Designer in Chicago, IL.

Vulcan, Inc. is looking for a Sr. Quality Engineer in Seattle, WA.

Singapore Telecommunications Limited is looking for a Usability Engineer in Singapore.

Crate and Barrel is looking for a Internet Project Manager in Northbrook, IL.

JibJab Media is looking for an HTML Engineer in Venice, CA.

Smack, Inc is looking for an AJAX minded, front-end developer in Toronto, Ontario.

TIBCO Software is looking for a AJAX Web Development Engineer in Palo Alto, CA.

Environmental Working Group is looking for an Applications Programmer in Washington, DC.

Design Kitchen is looking for an Interactive Strategist in Chicago, IL.

Find your next job or find your next team member on the 37signals Job Board.

Thinkmetric
From: Eli Duke

i live in seattle and recently drove up to vancouver (bc) for a friend’s bday. there was a long line at the border check, so i got out of the car and took a few pictures. i thought that you guys might appreciate this one:

it’s simple, effective, and clever; and just the right amount of each.

—

Tax Preparation Software Pricing Comparison
From: Samuel Peery

I recently posted a tax software provider pricing comparison with some interesting results. I calculated and compared “out-the-door” pricing including both state and federal tax-prep and e-filing. I think you’ll find the results very interesting.

—

Talk to Wesabe
From: Siddharta Govindaraj

“Talk to Jason” at Wesabe

Hi! I’m Jason Knight, the CEO and co-founder of Wesabe. Every afternoon, from 12 to 4 p.m. PST, you can reach me directly at (800) 511-8544. If you have comments about our product, questions about how it works, or just want to chat a bit about what inspired us to create Wesabe, please give me a call. Sure, I could have an intern man the phones, but I can’t think of any job more important at Wesabe right now than talking to our new members and people who are thinking of signing up.

Very cool that you can talk directly to the CEO.

—

VC Failures
From: Ed Raynham

Thought you may find this interesting..

Venture Capitalists are usually quick to tell you about their successes but Bessemer Venture’s anti-portfolio tells you about the companies they turned down…apple, google, intel, paypal, ebay to name a few.

Refreshing to see a large company telling you about their failures rather than covering them up.

Continued…

Worldmapper features world maps re-sized according to different values, like wealth, carbon emissions, population, etc.

GDP Wealth

Carbon Emissions

Total Population

[tx Phil]

Top Gear takes the Bugatti Veyron to 253 MPH. What a machine.

Even if you’re not a fan of Stephen King’s fiction, his book on writing is filled with insightful advice on the craft. (Btw, it was also the inspiration for the title of the “On Writing” posts we publish here.) Some excerpts below.

Get the first draft done quickly…

I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any longer and — for me, at least — the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity.

On rewriting…

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Second drafts can only help so much…

“A movie should be there in rough cut,” the film editor Paul Hirsch once told me. The same is true of books. I think it’s rare that incoherence or dull storytelling can be solved by something so minor as a second draft.

Formula for success: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%...

Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggest cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings)...I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”

Continued…

Thank you
It’s been just over 36 hours since we officially launched Tuesday afternoon. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response. All things considered, the launch of Highrise has been our most successful product launch ever. Thank you!

Some early stats
Highrise is definitely getting a workout. Here are some early stats on the amount of data that has been added to the system so far:

• Over 150,000 contacts
• Over 15,000 notes
• Over 10,000 tasks

Another interesting stat is that 9% of the people signed up are using OpenID. Lots of early adopters on board!

We heard you: Here come Cases for everyone
When we launched we only offered Cases on Plus, Premium, and Max plans. There was a fair bit of negative reaction to that decision. We hear you. So today we’ve made a change. Now all plans include some Cases.

• Plus, Premium, and Max continue to include unlimited Cases
• The new Solo plan (explained below) includes unlimited Cases
• Basic includes 5 Cases
• Personal includes 3 Cases
• Free includes 1 Case

These case numbers are for open Cases. That means you could have 12 cases on the Basic plan, but only 5 could be open at one time (the others must be closed). This is exactly how Active/Archived projects in Basecamp work.

We hope you like this change.

Don’t need to share Highrise? Go Solo for $29/month
Another interesting bit of feedback we received was that there seem to be a fair number of people who will be using Highrise on their own. They don’t have a staff, they don’t have co-workers. They are independent contractors, or freelancers, or contract salespeople, or real-estate agents, or 1-person business owners, etc. They want to get the most out of Highrise, but they don’t need a muti-user account.

So we’ve made a new plan just for them. The Solo plan. The Solo plan is basically the same as the Plus plan, except it’s only for a single user. You get 1 gig of space, unlimited Cases, SSL, 20,000 contacts, but only 1 user. If your company grows or you want to bring multiple users in down the road you can just upgrade to Plus and you’ll have up to 15 users.

More contacts on Free and Personal too
We’ve moved the free plan up from 25 contacts to 250 contacts. Personal also gets a boost from 250 to 500. We hope that helps free and entry level customers get more out of Highrise.

Did you go Plus too early?
If these subscription changes have you reconsidering whether Plus is the right plan for you, it’s easy to change. If you’re on the 30-day trial, you can downgrade (or upgrade) before the end of the trial and only be charged for the plan you’re at on the day of billing. If you already paid for plus by upgrading from free and would really like a refund for the difference between plus and the plan you choose, write us and we’ll give you a credit.

More disk space
We’ve also increased the file storage limits on all accounts.

• Max moves up to to 50 gigs (was 20 gigs)
• Premium moves up to to 10 gigs (was 3 gigs)
• Plus moves up to 3 gigs (was 1 gig)
• Basic moves up to 500 megs (was 400 megs)
• Personal moves up to 250 megs (was 200 megs)

Regarding integration and a Highrise API
For those asking about Basecamp/Highrise integration: We have some ideas. First things first. We wanted to get the Highrise basics right. We’ll be working on some integration ideas this year for sure. The Highrise API is also on the way. We’re excited to see what people can dream up. Stay tuned.

So there we are!
Off to a great start! Thanks again for the feedback, thanks for your ideas, and thanks for your business. We have some great stuff planned for Highrise. Stay tuned.

Are designers the enemy of design?

“Business men and women don’t like the term ‘design.’ I think they think it implies drapes or dresses. Even top CEOs who embrace design don’t want to call it that. They want to call it ‘Innovation.’ That has a manly right to it. It’s strong, techie. These folks are perfectly willing to use the word ‘vision,’ whatever the heck ‘vision’ is. They like ‘Imagination,’ whatever the heck that is. But they don’t like ‘design.’ Go figure.”

Typography in music notation

“Layout should be pretty, not only for its own sake, but especially because it helps the reader in his task. For performance material like sheet music, this is doubly important: musicians have a limited amount of attention. The less attention they need for reading, the more they can focus on playing itself. In other words, better typography translates to better performances.” [tx ML]

Southwest Airlines' chief apology officer

“He composes about 180 letters a year explaining what went wrong on particular flights and, with about 110 passengers per flight, he mails off roughly 20,000 mea culpas. Each one bears his direct phone line…[Years ago, the President of Southwest] learned that a law client who was promised something in two weeks but received it in one was vastly happier than a client who was promised something in one day but received it in four. ‘Under-promise, over-deliver’ became her mantra.”

Learning interaction design from Las Vegas

“Looking at the casino experience in particular you have the idea of tiered functionality. Anyone can slide a quarter into a slot machine and play without any knowledge or training. From there to the high-stakes poker game every level of the experience is really good and readily available. Each tier is its own rich experience. Yes, the high-stakes poker game is given special treatment, but the slot machine is the bread and butter of the casino.”

“Facebook Sneak Preview” will show upcoming feature additions and changes before they go live

“My bet is that this is their response to the user backlash and protests last year after after Facebook made some fairly dramatic changes to the site. With the new group, Facebook can ease users into the new stuff, and also get their feedback before it goes live. It’s an easy way to build consensus and dissolve criticism before it gains any steam.”

Continued…

I’ve been doing 98% of our customer/tech support for about 3 years now and it’s time to pass the torch to someone who’s better at it than I am ;)

We’re looking for someone (Chicago based or remote—it doesn’t matter) who can head up customer support.

All email
We get about 125-150 emails a day from customers across our entire range of products. About half of them are really quick answers (under a minute with a standard response or FAQ link), another quarter are a touch more involved, and the remaining quarter can take a 5-10+ minutes each depending on the issue.

We’d also like this person to browse the forums for our products and pop in and offer a hand when people are stuck.

Passion wanted
We’re looking for someone who is passionate about 37signals, passionate about simple solutions to common problems, and passionate about helping people get back on track quickly. Strong writing skills and the ability to get to the point quick are a big plus.

Think you’re the one?
If you think you’re the guy or gal, please drop me a line at jason at 37signals dot com. Do me a favor and include “Customer Support Position” in the subject so I can easily corral these into the proper folder.

I can’t promise I’ll respond to each one, but I will review them and get in touch if we think you may be the right person.

Thanks.

Ring. It’s for you.

Ping. You’ve got mail.

It’s a new contact, a lead, a customer, a journalist. It’s someone saying something important you need to remember.

What do you do now? Where do you log notes from the conversation? Where do you put the contact information? Where do you set up your next action?

In Highrise.

The answer to the avalanche
So many people. So many phone calls, emails, notes, follow-ups, and tasks. Who’s this person again? When did we last speak? What did we talk about? Has anyone else in my company talked to this person? What’s supposed to happen next? Highrise is here to keep track of it all.

A personal assistant for everyone in your company
When you use Highrise, contacts and communication history can be shared across your entire company. No more “Jim has the client’s number and he’s out of the office today.” No more “I don’t know what Jane told the printer last week.” No more “Oops, I didn’t know you already called her back — I just did too.” With Highrise, everyone’s on the same page.

One history, many interactions
Highrise is your homebase for everyone that’s important to your business. It puts together all those little points of contact so you can see the bigger picture. It makes one history out of many interactions. Highrise helps you make sense of it all.

Not too little, not too much
Your address book doesn’t do enough. Traditional CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software tries to do too much. That’s why we built Highrise. It’s the just-right, more thoughtful way to keep track of the people, conversations, and tasks that are the lifelines of your business.

Highrise. Good business is about people. Keep in touch.

Excerpts from the Apartment Therapy book “The Eight Step Home Cure”.

Removing objects to gain breathing room…

Marre’s apartment, despite its severity, had a calmness and openness to it that my apartment lacked. Her apartment was smaller and yet it felt bigger. It was comfortable to sit in Marre’s kitchen, and people naturally gravitated to her apartment to talk. She was right. My apartment wasn’t carefully arranged, it was packed. There was no breathing room. It may have seemed functional, but it was crowded and required a lot of attention…I began to experiment with removing objects from my apartment. I got rid of a chair. I took out the drafting table. I threw out a pile of old, mismatched dishes and mugs. What began as a trickle turned into a torrent, and over the next few months I emptied half of my apartment.

Only a few elements should play a starring role…

A room stirs our emotions by leading our attention to a few strong elements, while the rest sit quietly in the background. Successful style is all about dramatic touches used sparingly. Most of the elements of a room should go practically unnoticed at first glance, while a few play a starring role, such as a vase of flowers, brightly colored lampshades or a commanding piece of art. If you have too many things jostling for attention, your home will be too busy and over stimulated, but if you don’t have any, your home will lack pizzazz.”

Balance is key…

Whichever type you identify with, the cure is balance. Whether warm or cool, you never want to change your basic temperament. It is who you are and it contains your strengths. Therefore, warm people achieve balance by “weeding,” since they have too much growing. Small things like cleaning out a closet, canceling a magazine subscription, or taking a load of clothes to the Salvation Army provide balance. Cool people achieve it by “watering and feeding,” since they don’t have enough growing. Their small tasks are buying flowers each week for the kitchen table, hanging curtains, and inviting a few friends over for a drink now and then. Both types should start slowly — a little bit goes a long way.”

Continued…