Gadgetopia

Basecamp API: The Basecamp API has landed. The API allows programmers to access/read/write Basecamp data from third-party systems like OS X dashboard widgets, Yahoo/Confabulator widgets, web sites, back-office systems, billing systems, and more. The API allows Basecamp to integrate with a variety of other products and systems. Prepare for some ...

If you use Basecamp, there's an upgrade coming on Saturday that includes this little tidbit, that's actually wicked huge. I'm surprised it took this long. [...] the long awaited Basecamp API. I anxiously await the XUL interface.

The Building of Basecamp: A 1-day workshop on the building of a real-world web-based application: Joe and I are heading to Chicago to attend this workshop next week. We'll report on it after the fact and tell you how it went. Immerse yourself in the hectic process of concepting, designing, ...

Open and honest communication: Interesting comments from the creators of Basecamp on their users' tendency to try to hide things from others. One of the things that has surprised me most when talking with customers who use Basecamp is how many people work in a culture of fear, deception, and ...

Basecamp: Web-based Project Management, Client Extranet, Project Site System: 39signals has finally released their online project management system. This has been in the works for years, it seems. Basecamp is a simple, hosted web-based service that lets designers manage projects and quickly create client/project extranets. It lets you and your ...

Support Ticket Add-on for Basecamp: This is the first app I've seen come out of the Basecamp API. Project Detail Systems is proud to announce the launch of BCTix.com, a Support Ticket Add-on for Basecamp. We believe that this may be the first product built exclusively for the Basecamp API. ...

Basecamp: Web-based Project Management...: I got a private invite to this, and I signed up for the free, single-project package. It seems solid. The interface is very clean and intuitive. Basecamp is a simple, hosted web-based service that lets you manage projects and quickly create client/project extranets. It lets you ...

Rails: So what was the biggest shock of the Basecamp seminar? Finding out that it was written in Ruby. Yeah, that's right that Japanese language that you thought no one was using. They've apparently put together a Web development framework for it which they're releasing to open-source. Rails is ...

I've been putting off posting about The Building of Basecamp because I was trying to get my hands on a picture. Neither Joe nor I thought to bring a camera, and the workshop was the first thing we did in Chicago, before Joe bought a disposable to shoot this ...

David Heinemeier Hansson has published the first release of Rails, his MVC implementation for Ruby. Rails is the system David developed to power BaseCamp, the 37 Signals project management app. David had previously released Active Record, his O-R mapping layer for Rails, which is the slickest method of database access ...

IMified: Familiar Productivity with Instant Messaging: This is pretty cool, and it's related to a post I have in my head about how a return to the green screen command line interface may help some Web apps. There's a lot to be said for proficient use of the command line. ...

Simplicity: This is a good essay that's a huge counterpoint to the "embrace limitations" philosophy that 37 Signals started pushing a few years ago when Basecamp came out. I think what Joel is saying is that you need features, but they need to appear simple to the end users. And ...

Ruby Book Sales Surpass Python: I always thought that a good way to gauge adoption of a language is by the amount of space its books occupy at the local Barnes and Noble. This is sort of the same thing. While I was looking at the data, though, I noticed ...

If you've used Bloglines lately, you've met the Plumber. The Bloglines Plumber is what you get on Bloglines when they have some sort of technical error, down for updates, or etc. The Plumber is interesting, because he isn't just an error message. He puts a human face on the ...

Here's a quick little graph showing how traffic has increased over the last eight months. Click the little image (or here) for a much larger version. The trendline tells the story we've solidly doubled page hits. And this is just to the HTML pages God (and Webalizer) only ...

In the comments on Deane's latest bit of Spolsky-worship, I had postulated that, given the idea that thick clients for the web can provide a better experience, and Firefox's increasing market share, 2006 could become the year of XUL. There was a great link posted on digg this morning that ...

Sunrise: 37signals' CRM tool for small business is coming soon: A couple of weeks ago, 37 Signals announced their new CRM tool. Sunrise is a CRM-ish tool for small businesses. We're aiming to change the small business CRM market with Sunrise in the same way we changed the small business ...

We talked about this film way back when Project Aardvark was announced. Fog Creek Software had an idea for a piece of software, and they recruited four college students over the course of one summer to build it. And they filmed them doing it. (They may claim to have made ...

I'm writing this from the second floor of the Apple store on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. We spent the day with the guys from 37 Signals at The Building of Basecamp Workshop. I'm on a little iMac, and I have to admit it's impressive...the store, I mean. Everything is ...

Well, here we are at #4,000. This puts us just 1,000 posts away from our stated goal of 5,000. Along with the 4,000 posts, we have 6,050 comments as of this writing, and that's very cool. We appreciate all the interaction everyone has with the site. Interestingly, we hit 2,500 ...

Extreme Machines: World's Fastest Elevator: I was watching a great History Channel series on skyscrapers which included a sidebar on the elevators at one of the world's tallest buildings: Taipei 101. The 1667-ft., 101-story building has 67 elevator units, including two that service the 89th-floor observation deck and qualify as ...

I love Movable Type, but using WordPress on my personal site has highlighted two annoyances with the MT editing interface which are real problems. Rather than just being annoying, they really have an effect on the quality of writing and categorization. Semi-WYSIWYG editing. In WordPress, you can "Save and Continue" ...

The big limitation of Web apps is that you're at the mercy of the user's browser. It may behave like you want it to, or it may not, but there's no doubt that it limits how complicated and functional a Web app can get. In a browser, remember, your page ...