Basecamp has always had an "add 10 milestones at a time" feature, but the date picker wasn't the easiest to use. We had three pulldowns - one for year, one for month, and one for day. It worked, but it wasn't optimal.
Today we launched a nice improvement we think you'll like. Now just click a "Pick a date" field and up pops a calendar. Click the day and it's set. That's all there is too it. Faster, easier, more contextual, and more fun to use.
Thanks again for using Basecamp.
Today Basecamp suffered the worst outage / slowdown that it has had in a very long time. We're very sorry that this disrupted your day. We know that you depend on Basecamp and any downtime, no matter how rare, is a serious problem. That's why we want to share all the details with you, so we can be as transparent as possible and you can trust that we're doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again.
If you don't care about the technical details, the summary is that a server went down and our redundant backup server wasn't operational as fast as we expected it to be. No data was lost. We're making sure that both issues are taken care of and will not be repeated. If you do care about the technical details, read on.
It all started when we ran what should have been an innocent diagnostics tool to check the configuration of some hardware on the main database server. This tool wasn't so innocent after all and somehow managed to crash the server. (We're still investigating the root cause to find out exactly what happened).
This shouldn't have been a problem. We run a big, beefy slave database that's supposed to be ready at a moments notice. It has all the latest data, so even if the main machine is nuked out of orbit, we don't lose any customer data and can go straight back to trucking. Or so we thought.
The problem with this is that it's been way too long since we last had to failover to the slave server and in the meantime we've grown a ton. So while the slave database server has all the latest data and is just as beefy as the main machine, the read cache was cold because it's not being used to feed live requests. That means it has to build up the appropriate cache when we switched over to the backup server and that took way longer than we anticipated (last time there was much less data) and made everything painfully slow while it happened.
The solution is to make sure that the slave server sits with a pre-heated cache at all times, so it's ready to take over from the master immediately. There are a number of options available for this and we're looking at all of them to pick the best one.
Once again, we're really sorry for this. It was very painful to watch Basecamp be unavailable or slow for that long when we knew what we had to do to prevent this in the future. Please accept our apologies. Thanks for being a Basecamp customer.
This one's been a long time coming. It's been our top request for quite a while. Now you can add due dates to to-do lists in Basecamp.
We spent a lot of time working on the experience, the interface, and flow, and the speed of this feature. Countless variations and hundreds of little tweaks later, we think we nailed it. We hope you'll agree.
Here's a video showing you how it all works:
This is phase one of this new feature. We have some additional features rolling out for to-dos shortly. The next major feature will be showing dated to-dos on your Dashboard and Overview calendars. Currently those calendars only show milestones due in the next 14 days. Soon they'll show to-dos as well. We'll also be revamping and modernizing drag-and-drop reordering. We think you'll really like that as well.
So thanks again for your patience while we developed the due date feature for to-dos. We took the time to get it right. We think you'll agree it was worth it.
Thanks again for using Basecamp!
Correction: We recently posted an update from Research In Motion regarding an issue with BlackBerries and Highrise. Actually, the issue is with BlackBerries and Basecamp notifications.
Due to a recent change in the way BlackBerry devices handle (or rather ignore) certain "Reply-To" addresses, people are experiencing issues when replying to Basecamp notifications on a BlackBerry (i.e. the Blackberry incorrectly sends the reply to "notifications@XXX.basecamphq.com").
Research In Motion has acknowledged the bug and they said they are working on a resolution. For full details, read "An update from Research In Motion re: Basecamp and BlackBerry."
"10 Applications that can help you with Personal Information Management" [Frugal IT] investigates various Personal Information Management (PIM) solutions. Backpack is first up:
Backpack is a SaaS intranet for you or your business. You can store, share, discuss, and archive everything that’s essential for you or your team. “It adapts to how you see it fitting into your life, and it can bend and reshape itself to fit the application you use it for. Multiple pages with multiple levels of functionality within each page equate to an application with customization beyond that of all others. Think of it as a wiki, but overflowing with real-life usefulness and smooth interfacing.” – Mike Rundle
Try Backpack.
We just made it easier to move between cities, states, and countries when browsing Haystack. This is a subtle, but important improvement.
When you're in a state (California, in this case), you see a list of the top cities in that state below California. See the pink highlighted band in this screenshot:
When you're in a city (San Francisco, in this case), you see a list of the top cities and a link to the state under San Francisco. See the pink highlighted band in this screenshot:
And when you're in a country (the United Kingdom, in this case), you see a list of the top cities in that country below United Kingdom. See the pink highlighted band in this screenshot:
This really makes moving between cities, states, and countries a lot easier. You no longer have to go back to the main city, state, country listing page to navigate nearby locations.
Thanks again for using Haystack!
Download Squad says Campfire is one of the 10 web apps you should be running on your Mac with Fluid. What's Fluid? A Mac app that can pull web applications onto your desktop and turn them into OS X native site-specific browsers.
Campfire, the popular team communication system from 37Signals, works so well with Fluid that 37S has released an official Fluid Icon for Campfire. Some great scripts, including Growl alerts when someone mentions your name in Campfire, can be found at Thoughtbot's blog.
Do you use Highrise to handle your task list? Do you have an iPhone? Then Bungalow may be for you...
Bungalow brings your Highrise task list to your iPhone so you can manage them on the go. Even if you are not connected to the internet you can tick tasks off, edit them and create new tasks with seamless background syncing when you're back online. In future releases of Bungalow we'll be extending it to handle other parts of your Highrise information. Get it now while the price is low and you'll get all the updates for free!
Lots of Haystack success stories are pouring in. And Download Squad just wrote about how Haystack helps web designers and clients find each other:
Early reports seem to be positive, with designers reporting they are signing new clients in short order. So if you're looking to advertise your design abilities, or if you're looking for a designer, give Haystack a look.
WiseClicker, a resource for small businesses and entrepreneurs, offers up this review of Basecamp.
As a reflection of 37Signals’ philosophy for product development, Basecamp offers functionality that is easy to use, avoids bells and whistles and focuses on communication and collaboration. It is more for users that prefer getting things done practically and don’t really care about the formal charting and reporting side of project management.
Rainn Wilson of "The Office" runs a philosophy/spirituality site called Soul Pancake. Nightline profiled Wilson and the site the other night. The bottom screengrab below shows the Soul Pancake team using Basecamp to manage the site.
We just added a new feature to Highrise. Now you can filter your tasks by category. To filter by category, go to the Tasks tab. If you have any categorized tasks, you'll see a pulldown with the categories you have used in the header of the page.
You can also filter tasks belonging to other people on your account if they have any tasks that are categorized and visible to you.
We hope this new addition helps you manage your tasks better in Highrise!
Jay Owen started Design Extensions 10 years ago (1999), while he was still in high school (17 yrs old). The company focus on small to medium sized businesses with web site design and graphic design services. Below he details how Basecamp has helped him grow his business.
How do you use Basecamp?
Before Basecamp, I did most of the work myself and could only juggle a few projects at a time.
With Basecamp, we are currently maxing out the 35 project account level (about to upgrade). We went from a 1 man shop doing under 50k/year to a 5 man shop doing over 250k/year. Basecamp allows us such flexibility and ease of communication, that we don't even have a physical office. Myself and my team work from home (or anywhere with a good wifi connection) and are able to seamlessly communicate with Basecamp and Campfire all day. Basecamp has become a key part of our business and helped us grow to where we are today.
Which features do you use most?
Milestones and Time are the two features we use the most. Milestones help us map out major assignments each day of the week for various members of our team. Using the Milestones overview page, we can easily take a glance at the company as a whole or individuals to see who is assigned what and we are on our schedule. The time tab lets us keep an eye on how much time is being spent on each project and account for it at the end of the week.
Tell us a story about a specific project/situation where Basecamp helped you out.
When I started Design Extensions over 10 years ago, our projects were managed via e-mail. This worked for a while but only allowed for so many projects to be managed at once. Even with a good calendar and organized network files, it wasn't ideal.
When we signed up for Basecamp, 5 years ago, we had no idea how much it would revolutionize our workflow and allow us to grow. With Basecamp, we are able to easily work with clients, employees, and contractors all over the world with ease. It's easy enough for newbies to pick-up quickly and has just the right feature combination to get things done - on time and in order.
Any tips or tricks for other customers?
Once a project moves from a production status to more of a maintenance/on-going project that may not be accessed on a regular basis, but we still want to leave active, we move them to the company "ZZ Maintenance." This helps separate the projects we are in and out of every day from accounts we might only be in once a month.
We are in Basecamp, Highrise, and Campfire every day. Highrise is for pre-sale or individual communications outside of an active project, Basecamp is for active projects, and Campfire keeps our team together in multiple locations.
Anything else?
We are often approached by other sites and services that claim to offer "more features" than Basecamp. What each of these companies fails to understand is that the joy of Basecamp is not that it offers more features than anyone out there, but that it does what we need to get the job done and nothing more.
The joy of Basecamp is in its simplicity and focus. Features for features sake are not a bonus, they are a burden. 37signals understands this extremely well and it shines in each every product produced.
We're constantly working under the hood to make our apps better. While we usually announce any major changes here at the Product Blog, there's a constant stream of little changes going on too. You can now follow along with everything that's happening at the Basecamp change history and Highrise change history pages. These pages will show you every little bug fix, tech note, update, and feature addition.
