Last week we pushed an update to the Basecamp help section. The goal was two fold: 1) Make it easier and faster for people to find answers to questions they had and 2) Make it easier on us by reducing the need for people to contact us directly for help.

The old help section looked like this. A list of common general FAQs at the top, a few other help links below those, and then a long list of common FAQs for each section below.

Based on the type of support requests we were getting it became obvious people weren’t looking below that initial list. We had to do something better.

Carlos Segura, the man behind T.26 and 5inch, and one of the original partners at 37signals, has quietly been sharing his car obsession with the public. Car lovers everywhere should be thankful.

Cartype is a growing collection of everything car. There are plenty of car sites on the net. Plenty of sites that cover one brand or provide lots of stats like Edmunds. But Cartype takes a different approach.

Besides the standard car photos and info, Cartype spews car logos, company logos, dealer tags, concepts, people parking like idiots, interesting signs, and more.

If you are looking for the standard car site content, the car section has subsections packed with info and photos for current cars, topless cars, supercars, hybrid cars, wagons, classics, comebacks, ugly, cars not coming to the US (interesting), and more.

Yes, the type on the site is a little small, and some things are tough to read, and it may not be comprehensive in the way Edmunds or Yahoo Autos is, but it’s a lovely and unique obsession. If you love cars, do check out Cartype.

Veer is looking for a Web Designer in Calgary, Canada.

Campaign Monitor is looking for a Designer and Customer Service Legend in Sydney, Australia.

TIBCO is looking for a Senior User Interface/Experience in Palo Alto, California.

Netflix is looking for a Senior Web Designer / Art Director in Los Gatos, CA.

Boston.com is looking for an Application Developer in Boston, MA.

PayPal is looking for a Javascript Guru in San Jose, CA.

One of the benefits of sharing an office with Coudal Partners is that I get to read trade pubs like Nation’s Restaurant News while I’m having lunch. Coudal has food industry clients so they get food industry news.

I like reading industry trade pubs from industries I know nothing about. It opens your eyes to all sorts of new things. I find articles about trans fats, point of sale displays, digital menus, seasonal high-margin menu items, restaurant designs, premium vs. standard items, romaine salads vs. spinach salads, and fast food kitchen automation fascinating. I really do.

While I was paging through the paper today I spotted an ad for McCain’s Sweet Classics. These tiny “desserts by the bite” help “turn a $1 coffee into a $3 dessert.” The full ad spread makes sure you can tell that these tiny desserts fit neatly near the edge of a saucer with a cup of coffee. I fucking love this idea.

I’ve got a sweet tooth, but I don’t like ordering a 1/2 pound slice of cheesecake or a 6” tall piece of pie for dessert—especially after plowing through the huge portions that are so popular at restaurants these days. Give me a couple of small cookies or a tiny piece of cake or a little brownie and I’m more than satisfied. I suspect I’m not alone.

Ordering dessert also comes with a dose of guilt. McCain Foods knows this too. They know a little dessert is an easy sell when a big piece of pie could turn someone off completely.

McCain cites a survey that says 82% of casual dining customers said they were too full to order dessert. That makes sense, but I bet a good chunk of that decision has to do with the perceived dessert size. They are too full to order a massive piece of cake, but they’d probably enjoy something 1/8 the size.

That ties nicely into their “turn a $1 cup of coffee into a $3 desert” angle. Give the customer the option to have just a little dessert and the restaurant can extract some easy incremental profits. Instead of “just a coffee” the restaurant has the opportunity to value-add the coffee with a bit of dessert for only a couple of bucks more. It’s likely an easy sale and a win-win-win for everyone.

While this isn’t brand new thinking (mochi or biscotti or a piece or fruit come to mind), McCain is revitalizing it. And it’s a great example of offering less to create more value. More cake, more pie, more dessert isn’t an easier sell. Less is. I think they’ll benefit hugely from it. It just makes sense.

It’s easy to focus exclusively on gas mileage when making an environmentally conscious car choice. But there’s more to the story.

CNW Marketing Research Inc., an Oregon-based auto research spent two years collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage. They call it a dust-to-dust analysis of the environmental impact of a car.

You may be surprised if you thought hybrids were the obvious winners.

The Honda Accord Hybrid has an Energy Cost per Mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18. Put simply, over the “Dust to Dust” lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50 percent more energy than the non-hybrid version, CNW claims.

And you may do a doubletake after reading this:

For example, while the industry average of all vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005 was $2.28 cents per mile, the Hummer H3 (among most SUVs) was only $1.949 cents per mile. That figure is also lower than all currently offered hybrids and Honda Civics at $2.42 per mile.

Basically, when considering all relevant variables such as materials, fabrication, plastics, carpets, chemicals, shipping, and transportation, gas mileage turns out to be significantly less relevant than many people assume.

I recently discovered Vinnie’s Sub Shop. I’m still partial to Bari down the street, but Vinnie’s is a worthy choice. They put this homemade basil oil on the subs that is just perfect.

I was in there a few days ago for a late lunch around 2:45. I didn’t see the hours posted so I asked the woman behind the counter when they closed. She said, “When we run out of bread.”

I said “Oh yeah?” She said “Yeah. We get our bread from the bakery down the street early in the morning when it’s the freshest. Once we run out (usually around 2 or 3) then we close up shop. We could get more bread later in the day, but it’s not as good as the fresh baked bread in the morning. There’s no point in selling a few more sandwiches if the bread isn’t good. A few bucks isn’t going to make up for selling food we can’t be proud of.”

I just loved that. Authentic, genuine, passionate, opinionated. Freshness determines when they lock the door, not a little plastic sign with some numbers on it. The food version of context over consistency (context as in variable good bread inventory, consistency as in a steady closing time).

Today we have some exciting Basecamp API-related announcements.

Blinksale, a web-based invoicing tool from the creative minds at Firewheel Design, now integrates with Basecamp.

Now it’s super-easy to import client names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses directly from Basecamp in your Blinksale account for painless invoicing. Simply add your Basecamp account details to your Blinksale Settings page, and we take care of the rest.

Harvest (a web-based time tracking tool) + Basecamp = easy like Sunday morning.

If your organization currently uses Basecamp in conjunction with Harvest for time tracking, things just got a whole lot easier. Harvest admins can now avoid any form of double-entry when it comes to setting up users, clients, or projects. Simply pick the people or projects you’d like to import from Basecamp and you are ready to go. Imported users will receive an automatically-generated Harvest welcome message along with their temporary password.

Phonified has just released a beta mobile version of Basecamp. Phonified Basecamp currently supports Nokia S60 (Series 60) phones, Blackberries, and Palm Treos running PalmOS.

Phonified Basecamp is an application that allows you to access your Basecamp account from your mobile phone. You can download a copy of your To-do list to your phone and update information without having to use a computer. You can also check milestones and configure an alarm on your phone when a milestone is upcoming. Phonified Basecamp lets you read and edit messages and comments, and even upload and download attachments all from your phone. For Premium and Max account holders, you can track time conveniently from your phone as you start and complete tasks, rather than having to remember and update information later.

Headquarters is the first Basecamp widget for the Yahoo Widget Engine. It’s read-only at this time (you can’t modify your Basecamp data). It looks like this:

And our friends at FreshBooks also recently announced that Basecamp integration is coming soon.

It’s really exciting to see rapid uptake and third-party integrations via the Basecamp API. Check out this list of the most popular Basecamp integrations and add-ons. We’ll continue to add to this list as more integrations and add-ons hit the market.

Thanks to all the developers for spending the time on these integrations!

The waiting is the hardest part / Every day you see one more card / You take it on faith, you take it to the heart / The waiting is the hardest part (Tom Petty, The Waiting)

On a daily basis Comcast reminded me that the waiting is the hardest part.

I have a Comcast DVR. It recorded on time, the menus and interface were decent (I prefer TiVo’s UI, but Comcast’s is fine), and it was reliable.

But it was slow. Click fast forward and it felt like there was a 1-2 second delay. Hit stop and wait another 1-2 seconds. Sometimes more. The waiting killed the convenience. It was a frustration machine.

However, I just noticed that Comcast updated the software. Thankfully this happened behind the scenes so I didn’t have to do anything. Now menus selections are sharp, button clicking is crisp, and things happen when you ask them to happen. The experience is finally satisfying. The experience is what I’d expect.

Speed may have more to do with experience than anything else. Google knows this and thankfully Comcast finally gets it too. I applaud Comcast for spending time refining their existing product to make it faster instead of spending those resources on adding more functionality.

It’s rare that software gets faster with each release. Photoshop, Office, Quickbooks—these products seem to slow down with every new release. It’s nice to see Comcast bucking that trend.

So take a look at your own product or service. How can you make it faster? How can you reduce steps to the final outcome? How can you refine the experience to make it less frustrating? How can you make speed your newest feature?

This afternoon, the 1,000,000th person will be added to Basecamp. The account that registers this 1,000,000th person will be given a $500 credit towards their account. If that person isn’t part of a paying account, we’ll give the credit to the closest paying account over the 1,000,000 mark.

Last year Dion Hinchcliffe predicted that “37signals Will Cross The 1,000,000 User Mark” in 2006. We’re thrilled that Basecamp alone has passed this mark. Add in a few hundred thousand from Backpack, over 100,000 from Campfire, and a few hundred thousand from Ta-da List and we’ve got 2,000,000 in our sights next year.

A few notes about these numbers: 1) They represent all accounts, not just active accounts. We’re just counting raw numbers right now. 2) Some people may be counted twice. One person with logins in multiple Basecamp accounts is counted for each separate account. 3) These numbers group together paying and free accounts. We don’t share the number of paying customers we have. 4) These numbers have not been audited—we’re just running some simple DB queries to pull these numbers out.

All that being said, we’d like to thank everyone that made this possible! Special thanks goes out to our paying customers—thanks for trusting us to provide you with simple, focused tools that help you make your own business or team more profitable and efficient.

We’ve got some great stuff planned in 2007. We’re hard at work on it right now. Stay tuned, we think you’ll like it!

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