HOW’s 2006 Business Annual (subscribers and the newsstands should be getting it soon) features an 8-page spread on 37signals.

The piece talks about our beginnings as a design consultancy, then on to Basecamp, Rails, Backpack, Campfire, etc. We also talk about Less, our culture, Getting Real, working remotely, why we believe in the power of small, etc.

We’re really happy how the article turned out. Big thanks to Lisa Baggerman Hazen, the Chicago-based writer and web designer who penned the piece. Lisa was great to work with. Check out her extensive design and writing portfolio.

So, thanks again to HOW and Lisa for the piece! We really do appreciate it.

It’s a rare occurrence that I decide it’s absolutely must-have time for a new t-shirt. Come to think of it, it’s pretty rare I decide it’s must-have time for anything. Well, perhaps milk and detergent.

But most everything else I buy happens through accidental shopping. And spending two hours getting to and back from a mall is rarely a scenario that I consider worthwhile. Especially not since getting there often means getting disappointed that they didn’t have anything I wanted anyway. And it’s not just malls, but any congregation of shopping destinations clustered for accidental discovery.

So here’s what I’d like instead. I’d like for every brand in the world to get smart like Threadless. To put every product introduction on an RSS or Atom feed with big, beautiful pictures, and a straight link to BUY. Just like Threadless’ Weekly Announcements.

I’d love to be able to get a brief introduction to all new games from Xbox.com. New pictures from any Puma Speedcat color combinations. Highlights of new taste combinations from Naked Juice. Straight from the manufacturer.

Please. Help me help you. You want my money, I want your new good stuff. Let’s make it happen, m’kay?

This is a fascinating look at how one man has demonstrated that he can lift a 22,000 lbs concrete pillar upright and move a barn over 300 ft on his own just using a few basic elements (and no modern technology at all). [via jk]

Stuff like this is so inspirational. It encourages you to look at what you’ve got, where you want to go, and give it a try. Chances are you can do it if you embrace the constraints and force yourself into a creative solution. It reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Lexus is well known for pushing the technological envelope in their cars. Radar cruise control, automated parallel parking (you control the speed and it does the steering), the industry’s first eight-speed automatic transmission, and so on.

But now the Lexus LS 460 can monitor your own body temperature and adjust the cabin temperature accordingly. A little too clever maybe?

Can a computer really know better than you how comfortable you are? Lexus is betting on it.

For a limited time, when you upgrade your Basecamp, Campfire, or Backpack account from either free to pay, or from pay to pay, you’ll save $10 on your first month if you enter code 37SVN into the coupon code box on the upgrade screen.

To upgrade, log into your account, click the account tab/link, and click the upgrade button under the plan you want to upgrade to.

Note: We can not apply this coupon to past upgrades or upgrades today before this was announced at 4:30pm CST. And we can not apply the coupon if you forget to enter it or if you enter it incorrectly. So if you want $10 off your first month be sure to enter it correctly.

We hope you enjoy the savings and our products! Thanks for your business.

Some recent gigs from the Gig Board. Gigs postings are $100 for 30 days.

Lead Developer for SMS-based application in Washington DC. Budget is $10,000 and the time frame is 4 weeks.

Experienced ExpressionEngine developer needed. Telecommute OK. Site needs to be live by Christmas 2006.

Freelance Interactive Producer/Project Manager needed for creating a CRM package for a high-end/luxury brand in NYC. Time frame is about 8 – 11 weeks.

Build a web/mobile app. Telecommute OK. Preference for rapid development environ like Rails and for open source solutions.

Graphic designer for series of Logos. Telecommute OK, budget is negotiable.

Kickass WordPress Theme Developers wanted for ongoing blog development projects (sometimes video blogs for entertainers, sometimes corporate blogs—it varies), we need designers who can take our wireframe sketches from concept to implemented WordPress theme. Telecommute OK.

Need help with a project? Looking for a freelancer or contractor to give you a hand? Need some temporary work? Post an ad on the Gig Board and find the right match. It’s only $100 for 30 days. And if you are looking to fill a full time position, the Job Board may be right for you.

In part two, the design gurus chat about what they’d be doing if it they weren’t designing, letterpressing, time management, influences, and moodboards/comps.

On the 5th anniversary of the iPod, Steve Jobs talks with Newsweek about the iPod’s cultural impact.

Steve nails the money shot with this answer:

QUESTION: Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?

ANSWER: In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

What an answer. With a subtle style all his own he’s saying Microsoft = Cold tech and Apple = Humanity. MS scares her away, Apple gets the girl. That’s a sharp, clear, and powerful distinction. Whether it’s true is up to the customer, but Jobs understands how to bait the hook like few others.

Our friends and fellow Chicagoans at Threadless finally got their Chicago media due in this long piece in the Chicago Tribune Magazine [registration may be required]. It’s about time the Chicago press noticed a few dropouts in their 20s selling nearly $20,000,000 worth of T-shirts on Ravenswood Avenue.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt our PR when we go to speak and stuff like that to say, ‘Yeah, we turned down Target. We turned down Urban,’ ” Kalmikoff says. “But honestly, a little bit of it was laziness. We were like, ‘Well, who’s gonna fill out all this paperwork? I’m not doing it. Are you gonna do it?’ It just sat for like two weeks. Then we’re like, ‘Just tell ‘em no.’ We couldn’t take the time away from our client work for our side project to be filling out the paperwork to get into Target.”

I love it. That pretty much sums up Threadless to me. They do it their way, they have fun doing it, and they do it better than anyone.

Some of the activity this week at our internal 37signals Campfire chat room:

Pragmatism source
David: “My pragmatism just comes from a tendency to give up really easily ;)”

Vox.com’s status screen
Jason noted Vox.com has a status screen set up for when the site is down.  It read, “15 mins of ‘scheduled maintenance’.” David: “We should have that too.” Ryan: “Totally makes it look like they are on top of shit. Stuff could be breaking every other day and the site still makes it look like they are all over it.”

Chicagoing
The torch/skyline logo for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid got a thumbs up…

...and so did the way Chicagoist includes the weather over its skyline image.

But thumbs down to the White Sox for selling the start time of games to 7-Eleven (“Sponsorship deal calls for White Sox to begin games at 7:11 p.m.“). I hear the next step is to sell home plate to Bennigan’s.

Plane info graphic
Jason pointed out this great interactive info graphic of the plane crash involving a Yankees pitcher.

Clever job post title
I got a kick out of this clever “made ya look” job post title: “StyleFeeder is looking for a @job = (‘designer’, ‘info architect’, ‘css’, ‘xhtml’);. See more on the Job Board.”

Dyson vac cleans keyboards
Jason: “OK, now THIS is a great idea. Check out the Combination Accessory Tool video. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? That’s smart.”

Logitech MX Revolution mouse
David: “Btw, bought this mouse. First new mouse in 8 years ;) It has a very interesting scrollwheel. It’s free-range so you spin it away and it keeps spinning. So it’ll keep scrolling until you stop the physical spinning. Totally rocks for long pages. It has a 3 button on the side as well as two additional direction buttons that I bound to desktop switching and a 4th button underneath the scrollwheel for lookups— got it bound to Dictionary.app.”