IT's recovering complexaholics

“We in IT are addicted to complexity. And our addiction to the complex, the expensive and the clunky is increasingly indulged at our own peril. That’s because business people have discovered that consumer IT is better than corporate IT. It has more features and is more responsive, easier to use, faster to install and a whole lot cheaper to operate.”

Chef David Chang on staying simple

“Chang opened Momofuku Noodle Bar in 2004 after having an epiphany: ‘Why can’t I cook something simple? I’m not an awesome cook—I just want to make noodles.’ MacFarquhar writes, ‘The idea of Noodle Bar from the start was to take the humblest meal—a bowl of noodles, a pork bun—and, with a combination of obsessive devotion and four-star technique, turn it into something amazing.’” [via JK]

The origin of the iChat UI

“The original 1997 sketch I made of a chat user interface based on speech balloons.”

People who are sleep deprived have no sense of their limitations

“For the millions of people who don’t get enough sleep because their commute to work is too long, or they spend too many hours at work, or they just want this lifestyle of go, go, go, it’s convenient to say, ‘I’ve learned to live without sleep.’ But you bring ‘em into the laboratory – and we have an open challenge to any CEO or anyone in the world, come into the laboratory – we don’t see this adaptation.”

How caricaturists draw the candidates

“Every four years presidential candidates are given satiric makeovers and in this spirit I asked four caricaturist/illustrators to describe the most critical feature needed to achieve the likenesses of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and whether or not a single pose best defines the candidate.”

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Extras
New tool lets you convert Basecamp projects to PDF reports
Export Reports is a third-party tool that lets you convert your Basecamp projects and information to a PDF Report that you can share, archive, or read offline.

Tips
Using rules in your email app to forward items to Backpack
“I create rules in my email client that automatically forward different items to my Backpack page. This is especially great for emails with attachments since the attached files are automatically placed onto the page.”

“Any thing emailed to my address & [email protected] automatically gets forwarded to my Backpack inbox, skips my Gmail inbox, and gets labeled ‘_ACTION’ in Gmail. I use this a lot; so do others. My supervisor, my friends, etc. can virtually place something in my Backpack inbox by emailing to that address.”

Thoughtful welcome message for getting clients started with Basecamp
David McDonald is a graphic designer who runs a freelance creative company designing print and digital publishing solutions. He recently wrote to us: “I just read the article on your blog: Social Signals uses Basecamp and GTD for project management and workflow and thought to send you the welcome message I put into all my new Basecamp projects for the benefit of my new clients.”

Case Studies
How indie filmmakers use Basecamp for producing movies
“The primary use for independent filmmakers and their complex film gigs is to use Basecamp for production. rāv design, a full-service video production and graphic design firm, loves Basecamp. ‘We used it to organize our 48 Hour Film Project. … [W]e were working with crew members from across the state who had never worked together, and in some cases never physically met before the shoot. We posted workflows, guidelines, rules and shared location scouting info all in an elegant location.’ For both clients and collaborators alike, how ideal of a work environment is that?”

Example “Backpack workflow for lightweight project management
When we were doing consulting, we had everything down to a science. Basecamp, while a great product, turned out to be too much of an app for our two man (and freelance designer) team. Here was our Backpack workflow for projects…”

Fancy time tracking software? Who needs it when Backpack gives you… Old fashion lists. Just keep track of your hours and add an item to the list at the end of each day.

Buzz/Press
Basecamp is a “tool you need to know about”
“With Basecamp, you can easily manage projects and your customers can sign-in and check the progress of your work. Basecamp allows you to keep track of To Do items or project milestones; share documents, images, and other digital files; and track time spent on various tasks.”

Subscribe to the Product Blog RSS feed.

What they don’t tell you about being an entrepreneur

“The Shakespeare quote is so powerful it bears repeating: ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt!’ Entrepreneurship is very, very, very emotional. The emotional rollercoaster is such a substantial part of the entrepreneurship. I haven’t seen any entrepreneurship textbooks address this extremely important issue. If you’re doing anything you’re actually passionate about, this is a necessary requirement. You have really high highs, and really low lows.”

We overdose on information because we are programmed for scarcity

“For most of human history, there was little chance of overdosing on information, because any one day in the Olduvai Gorge was a lot like any other. Today, though, we can find in the course of a few hours online more information than our ancient ancestors could in their whole lives. Just like the laser and the cat, technology is playing a trick on us. We are programmed for scarcity and can’t dial back when something is abundant.” [via GE]

Zappos talks about focus on customer service at SxSW

”#1 thing they focus on is company culture. Managers jobs are to inspire the Zappos culture. Empower people to make the right decisions for the company and customer — the reps make their own decisions. Have 5-weeks of training on company culture, taking calls from customers, and working in the warehouse. Then they start the job they were hired for. Put out a culture book, written by every employee, about what the Zappos culture means to them. HR does interviews for culture fit (a second round). This keeps the company culture, even makes it better.” (Another recap)

ReadWriteWeb: “SxSW: Lessons Learned at 37signals”

“This afternoon I attended Jason Fried’s presentation on ‘Stuff We’ve Learned at 37signals’...As a company I’ve long respected, it was interested to hear him discuss some of the things he’s learned developing 37signals.” (Another recap)

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

New Features
Basecamp: More storage space for the same price
We increased file storage space for Personal through Premium plans. Personal plans now get 1 GB (up from 250 MB). Basic plans now get 3GB (up from 500 MB). Plus plans now get 10 GB (up from 3 GB). Premium plans now get 20 GB (up from 10 GB)

New Highrise Feature: Bulk Delete
We pushed a new feature that makes it possible to delete multiple contacts at once.

Highrise: Improved import review and deletion
We pushed a new Highrise feature that makes managing previous imports easier…Now you’re able to review your last five imports and delete any one of those imports. This is especially helpful if you imported the wrong people or the data imported wasn’t what you intended.

Case Studies
Rails Envy team uses Backpack to organize its podcast
“For each podcast we set up a different page in Backpack with the title as the episode number. From there, we create a note for each story. We add these throughout the week or when we clear out our RSS readers. When it’s time to create the blog post about it, it’s really easy to go in and copy the headlines and URLs and paste them back in to Textmate (where we have snippets set up to make creating the blog post really easy).”

College senior uses Highrise to manage his job hunt
“Highrise has been the answer to my prayers. I took an hour or two and typed all those business cards into Highrise, and now everyone is searchable, and organized by company. I have all their contact information right there. In addition, the email dropbox feature lets me keep track of all my communications with them, so I can remember what I’ve said to whom. I also keep notes on people to help me remember them – ‘Steve looks like Ronald Regan’, ‘Rich loves the Saints’, etc.”

Buzz/Press
Apple profiles customer who saved $70k by using Macs and Basecamp
“The Mac and Basecamp have replaced $70,000 worth of Microsoft software and related equipment. ‘We pay a few hundred dollars a month for an unlimited version of Basecamp,’ says Carroll. ‘It takes care of Microsoft SharePoint server, Microsoft Project server and most of Microsoft CRM. We’ve replaced a solution that would have cost at least $70,000 to fully implement and would have required a full-time tech consultant.’”

Bigger isn't always better for business

“Americans think big. This has helped make them the most powerful nation on Earth, but bigger is not always better, either for our bodies or, I suggest, for our organizations. If I were to visit a symphony orchestra and ask them about their growth plans for the future, how would they respond? They would talk about their plans to extend their repertoire and to bring their work to new audiences, not about increasing the number of violinists…Why does almost every business that I know seek to grow in size, year after year, in fact, as if there were no limit? Why can’t they be content with doing more with less?”

Tech support “greatest hits” CD leaks

“When they say, ‘Your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes,’ that’s only partly true. They also record your calls so they can pass around recordings of the funniest ones. They actually gave me one of those “Best Of” disks at the end of my day in the call center. Herewith: a few actual calls from that disk or that I heard about from the agents themselves.”

Site shows you the $0.99 “Movie of the Week” on iTunes

“Every Tuesday iTunes offers a special rental price of 99 cents on a movie selection. This special price is available through the following Monday. We’ll keep you updated on what that movie is every week.”

droidMAKER: The inside story of George Lucas

“The inside story of George Lucas, his intensely private company, and their work to revolutionize filmmaking. In the process, they made computer history. Discover the birth of Pixar, digital video editing, videogame avatars, THX sound, and a host of other icons of the media age. Lucas played a central role in the universe of entertainment technologies we see everyday.”

Elaine St. James on the importance of imagination

“Einstein said, ‘Imagination is more important than information.’ I experienced this first hand after I canceled my magazine and newspaper subscriptions. I’ve never been much of a TV watcher, but I just kind of unplugged from everything. I found out that I could take the time at the end of the day to just sit and daydream, opening myself up to really thinking rather than constantly reacting. We all fall into that habit. We react to the things that are going on around us and feel there is a certain response or a certain expectation that we have to live up to—usually somebody else’s expectation. If we let go of that, we can really get the feel of how important imagination is in our life. It’s not that information is not important, but imagination is what we do with that information. We have to learn to take the time to tap into our own intuitive knowing.”

The secular Sabbath is a digital day of rest

“Thus began my ‘secular Sabbath’ — a term I found floating around on blogs — a day a week where I would be free of screens, bells and beeps. An old-fashioned day not only of rest but of relief.”

Behind the scenes of the old school HBO intro

The “It’s about time” clock
Dan McFarland writes:

I just saw this on about:blank and thought of you guys: The “It’s about time” clock

It’s a clock that just tells you “about” what time it is… “nearly 12”, “quarter past 3”, etc. Most people don’t realize they really don’t need any more detail than that.

The Paige Compositor
Khoi Vinh writes:

If you’ve never written about this before, this short case history of 19th century typesetting is a story tailor-made for the SvN audience.

The Paige Compositor.

Programmer happiness is the most important factor in making quality software

“Code is meant to be read by humans first and computers only secondarily — in order to write software that addresses real human needs we need to approach the problem of software development from a more human perspective…Performance is cheap. On the other hand, creating, customizing, and maintaining huge (and hugely complex) bases of inscrutable software code is very expensive. There is increasing sentiment in the software world that we should be happy to take performance hits if it means the process of software development can me made more sustainable, pleasant, and simple.”

The advantages of closing a few doors

”’Predictably Irrational’ is an entertaining look at human foibles like the penchant for keeping too many options open…In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy.”

Video: "How to Speak"

“In this skillful lecture, Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers tips on how to give an effective talk, cleverly illustrating his suggestions by using them himself. He emphasizes how to start a lecture, cycling in on the material, using verbal punctuation to indicate transitions, describing ‘near misses’ that strengthen the intended concept, and asking questions. He also talks about using the blackboard, overhead projections, props, and ‘how to stop.’”

The power of micro-specialization

“Become the expert in what you do. Which means micro-specialization. Who is the single-best agent for condos in your zip code? Or for single family homes for large families? Who is the one and the only best person to turn to if you’re looking for investment property in this part of town? As I wrote in The Dip, you’re either the best in the world (where ‘world’ can be a tiny slice of the environment) or you’re invisible. This means being Draconian in your choices. No, you can’t also do a little of this or a little of that. Best in your world means burning your other bridges and obsessing.”

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Reactions to the new Backpack from around the web
“I’ve always been a big fan of Backpack, but this is a whole new thing. If you’re part of organization that has always wanted a single place where staff and volunteers could share information, calendars, even reminders (including SMS), definitely give Backpack a try. I can’t think of better option, especially for churches and non-profits.”

Basecamp is a Webware 100 finalist (again)
From a list of thousands of nominees, Webware editors selected 300 finalists for the Webware 100 Awards — and we’re pleased to announce Basecamp is one of the finalists. If you’re a fan, please go to Webware and vote for Basecamp.

“They call it Open Bar, I call it awesome!”
“You’ll see a change in your Basecamp like below, where my three accounts are listed at the top, and you can move between them seemlessly. They call it Open Bar and I call it awesome!”

A look at Abunga’s Open Bar.

DesignSessions calls Basecamp a design freelancer’s best friend
“One aspect users have described as a ‘godsend’ is the ability to merge time-tracking with project deliverables, allowing you to set up milestones and to-do lists for a project and time-track as you check tasks off your list.”

An update to the “People on this project” section on the Basecamp Overview screen
Instead of “last login” we now show “latest activity.” This way if someone logged in a few days ago, but just accessed a project a few minutes ago, we can show an accurate “few minutes ago” access in the list.

A Convergence of Convergences (sample above)

McSweeney’s collects convergences, “an unlikely, striking pair of images, along with a paragraph or three exploring the deeper resonances.”

How to become happier

“Happiness is not the shallow state of feeling pleased and chipper all the time. Happiness is the state of a human being that has achieved cross-level coherence within herself, and between herself and the people, challenges, and institutions around her. Happiness comes from between.”

Interview with book cover designer Peter Mendelsund

“One of the things that I find most people misunderstand about cover design on ‘the outside’ is that so much of what happens is determined editorially, or in a marketing meeting. You try your best, but at the end of the day, most things are not going to turn out the way you liked. That’s why it behooves one to do a high volume of work. The law of averages suggests that you’ll end up with something to be proud of amongst the dreck at the end of the day.” [via JK]

Paul Graham: Six principles for making new things

“I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems© that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.”

A bad business plan will trump good design

“I just think it’s odd — and slightly disingenuous — of the champions of design strategy to fall silent when it comes to the failure of a company that’s very good at practicing it. Surely, if the roles were upended here, if it was Yahoo who was the dominant player, we would be regularly extolling the virtues of Yahoo’s design expertise. Perhaps we can’t expect design to save failing companies, but if not then perhaps we should be more judicious in talking up how design can make companies successful, too.”

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

The Weekly Review offers tips on using GTD with Highrise
“The key with any GTD setup is to make sure your tool fits your working style. So far, Highrise works for me…You add each project as a person. That’s it. Then add the different tasks for each project. Each project will now have it’s own page where you can add tasks, notes, tags and summary information about the project. Each of these pages also has a timeline summary of activities that have occurred.”

Backboard is a new app that makes Backpack more Mac-like
Backboard is Lars Steiger’s new app which bills itself as “the far side of Backpack.” That means it gives Backpack customers a dashboard-like overview of tasks, the ability to edit and search them with a more Mac-like interface, and the ability to attach dates and priorities.

Script to import Salesforce data into Highrise
In “Salesforce to Highrise conversion successful,” Highrise Forum member mikesax offers up a conversion script that takes a Salesforce offline backup (what you get when you close down your account or you request it) and converts it to an Outlook-style CSV file that you can import into Highrise.

Export a Basecamp project as a PDF file
Terrence Ryan created Basecamp CFC so he could export an entire Basecamp project as a PDF file.