This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.
Today we’re thrilled to be able to announce a big new addition to Basecamp: You can now attach files and post comments on to-dos and milestones. Previously this functionality was only available on messages.
A green comment icon after a to-do or milestone means there are new comments on that item. A dark grey comment icon means there are comments on that item, but you’ve already read them. And if an item doesn’t have any comments, you’ll see an empty comment icon when you hover over that item. Clicking the comment icon will take you to the comments view for that to-do or milestone.
Deeplinking: A happy side effect
This new feature comes with a great side effect: You can now deep link to individual to-do items or milestones. Previously you could only link to a to-do list or the milestones section, but now you can link directly to individual to-dos or specific milestones.
Project management is communication
This new feature is directly in-line with Basecamp’s core premise: Project management is communication. Before you had to keep all your discussions in the messages section. That worked, but it required you to discuss one part of your project in another part of your project. Now you can have discussions about to-dos and milestones right on top of those to-dos and milestones.
We hope you love it
We’re really excited about this new feature. We think it’s going to help you get a lot more more out of Basecamp. Thanks again for your continued support!
Labor Day recently passed. That means you may have received a shared photo album from a friend or relative. You know the type: It’s usually dozens (or hundreds) of shots of vacation fun.
But you’re not into it. Now, it’s not that you don’t care; It’s fun to peek in and see what happened. But who wants to sort through a glut of 200 photos of someone else’s vacation (or baby photos or whatever)? What actually happens: You wind up deleting the email with the link and don’t even bother seeing any of them.
The power of editing
It’s about the power of editing. What if these people picked out the five best shots instead? The five photos that are the cream of the crop. The five that undeniably kick ass.
Then the whole thing shifts. Instead of it being a chore to see how their vacation went, it becomes a pleasure. It only takes a few seconds. Plus, that means they can just attach the photos to the email, instead of forcing you to visit (and sometimes register) at some random photo site. It’s only five photos, no big deal.
36:1
I had a photography teacher (Richard Stromberg at The Chicago Photography Center) tell me once that if you get one good shot on a roll of 36, you were doing good. That’s the ratio: 36:1. When you edit ruthlessly like that, you come out with great results. People think you’re better than you are. It’s not that you became a brilliant photographer, it’s just that you started exercising taste and restraint.
It’s one of the biggest challenges in the digital age: When you can bombard people with everything, it’s tempting to do so. That’s why taste, restraint, and editing are so important. Sometimes it’s about throwing out the 35 bad shots and revelling in the one great shot.
Omit, then submit
What you leave out is often what turns good into great. What you leave out is the difference between something that is either 1) never seen or used or 2) simple, clear, and actually digestable. It’s true for photography. It’s true for features in software. And it’s true for plenty more too.
P.S. Fun bit about Stromberg, the photography teacher I mentioned: He required all students to purchase a fixed 50mm lens for their camera. Students would invariably ask if they could use a zoom lens instead. His response: Every lens is a zoom lens. Just walk closer or further away to zoom. I always loved that.
Training and marketing as taxes
“Training is a tax you pay for a lousy hiring environment…Marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.”
-Robert Stephens of Geek Squad in A Geek’s Guide to Great Service
Complex UIs
“Why do software designers want their work to appear more complex instead of less? I just don’t get why they don’t get it.”
-David Pogue in It’s the Software, Not You
Choosing between safety and risk
“Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.”
—Abraham Maslow on 8 Ways to Self-Actualize
Launch quickly
“One reason to launch quickly is that it forces you to actually finish some quantum of work. Nothing is truly finished till it’s released; you can see that from the rush of work that’s always involved in releasing anything, no matter how finished you thought it was. The other reason you need to launch is that it’s only by bouncing your idea off users that you fully understand it.”
-Paul Graham in The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
Design languages that can grow
“The main thing Guy Steele asks during the lecture is ‘If I want to help other persons to write all sorts of programs, should I design a small programming language or a large one?’ He answers that he should build neither a small, nor a big language. He needs to design a language that can grow. A main goal in designing a language should be to plan for growth. The language must start small, and the language must grow as the set of users grows.”
From Growing a Language by Guy Steele [good coders code, great reuse]
Software stays healthy
“It can be hard for a business to stay ahead if its technology is falling behind. That is one reason that despite an uncertain economy, worldwide information technology spending is on track to reach $3.4 trillion in 2008 — an 8 percent increase over 2007, according to the research firm Gartner. Of all spending categories, software and services are set to show the healthiest growth — with projected increases of around 10 percent each.”
From In a Downturn, but Still Spending on Technology [NY Times]
Chicago-style software
“There’s the dot-com, Silicon Valley, blow-all-your-money-on-booze style. Then there’s the Chicago thing: Do something, do it well and be modest about it.”
-Adrian Holovaty from EveryBlock.com in Cyberstar [Chicago Tribune]
Get on with it
“Test just enough to know what your gear can do, and then get on with real photography.”
-Ken Rockwell in The Seven Levels of Photographers
Deleting code
“Abandoning a speculative peice of functionality just allowed me to delete 2/3 of this module’s code. I got all 37signals on its ass.”
-Mike McCaffrey
I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song ‘List of Demands’ to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’.
I think there’s an interesting point here: To create change, you need to reach out to those who don’t already agree with you. If you’re just having agreeable conversations with likeminded people, you’re probably not actually accomplishing much in the way of fostering change.
A common request we get from readers is to describe in more detail how our server infrastructure is setup. That question is so incredibly broad that it’s hard to answer it in any kind of comprehensive way, so I’m not going to try to. Instead, I’m keeping the general desire for more technical details in mind as I work through day-to-day issues with our configuration, and I’ll try to occasionally write about things that I think might be of interest. The topic for today is HAproxy.
Pablo Corral wrote me an email after I posted this tweet about managing on-again-off-again side projects.
I’m very curious about how to use Backpack to have a better experience on braindumps for side projects.
I switch a lot, and my side project sometimes is off for many days, and some weeks. Can you explain more about this?
It’s hard to find steady uninterrupted time for software side projects. Maybe you only have time on weekends or the occasional free night for your project, and sometimes weeks or months go by where you are too busy to sit down and make some progress. When you finally do find time to work, you can waste half of it just catching up on where you left off.
This has been a big challenge for me because one of my projects is a Rails app that supports registration and administration for a biannual retreat course. Four or five months may go by before I return to the app for another course, and with each course there are new bugs to fix or feature requests to implement. A couple years in this situation have helped me develop a system to manage my side projects with a minimum of headaches and wasted time.
My system is a one-two punch: Hosted version control plus a single Backpack page. These two are all you need to keep the state of your project off your brain and at the ready.
First punch: Hosted version control
Sign up with a hosted version control service like GitHub for Git or Beanstalk for Subversion. I advise using version control even for static websites.
There are two key benefits to hosting your source with these services. First, your source is independent of your work machine. If your machine crashes, you replace it, or even if you space out and delete some things you shouldn’t (that would be me), your code will always be safe and secure in the online repository.
The second benefit is an easy-to-read commit log. With one click you can visit a bookmark and see a timeline of changes you’ve made to the code in chronological order and in your own words. Just glancing at the commit log can be enough to jog your brain after a long absence and bring you right back into the project.
Second punch: A single Backpack page
I make a single Backpack page for each project with two lists and some notes. The two lists are ‘To-Do’ and ‘Debt.’
Our awesome systems administrator Mark Imbriaco participated in the first episode of the SA Pro podcast recently. You’ll hear Mark talk about how formal education is the only way to become a good sys admin and that Perl is better than Rails.
We launched it about 90 days ago and so far we’ve seen about 1000 new product signups referred by 37signals Affiliates. Basecamp leads referrals, Backpack is second and Highrise a very close third.
Some people are working harder than others. The top affiliate has potential earnings of over $1300 already!
If you’re an affiliate, thanks for representing our product to your clients, colleagues, friends, and family. If you’re not, please consider becoming a 37signals Affiliate today. It only takes 30 seconds to get started and there’s no cost to you.
I’ve wanted to redesign the Highrise sidebars for a long time. They’ve felt cluttered and messy to me, and as we add more features to Highrise the mess will only multiply. So I was glad to have the chance this week to redesign the sidebar modules. The visual side of the redesign was straightforward, but implementing the design in code required a few tricks. Here’s a look behind the scenes at the coding decisions we made for the new Highrise sidebars.
“Subjects” in Highrise
Which sidebar modules am I talking about? In Highrise you can keep track of People, Companies, and Cases. These all have the same basic code and UI. You can keep notes about them, set tasks for the future, and manage some common types of metadata. Since People, Companies and Cases share so much plumbing, we’ve abstracted them as subjects. A subject is anything in Highrise that you can attach notes and tasks to. When you look at a subject’s page, you see a sidebar with some modules for adding or editing metadata such as contact information, background information (a kind of static text description), dates to remember for that subject, and more. The screenshot below shows a subject page with the sidebar modules highlighted.
Redesigning the modules
Each module has a header like “Contact Bob” or “Dates to remember” and data below. In the original design, modules can be either “active” or “empty” based on whether they have any data in them. Empty modules have a grey header and an “add” link floated right. Active modules have a light blue header and an “edit” link on the right. We made this distinction so your eye would more easily catch active modules when you’re looking for information. The idea was good, but the original implementation looked messy with its mix of grey and blue, scattered red action links, and lack of separation between modules.
Wanna feel ripped off today? Sign up for an online virtual service that charges a one-time activation fee. It’s a special feeling to hand over $35 for nothing.
I’d almost understand if there was actual work involved. Or hardware was manually set up. Or someone had to climb some stairs and walk down a few halls to flip something on.
But to charge me $35 to “activate” my account by adding a few records to a few databases, well, that feels like… You know what that feels like.
Highrise Top magic site thrives due to Highrise and Getting Real
“The real crux of our system is Highrise. We use it in managing projects, production, post-production, and marketing. We use it to stay organized. We use it to manage our authorized retailer clients around the world. And we couldn’t breathe as well or sleep as well without it.”
Backpack All about tags in Backpack
A tag is a simple label or keyword you can use to categorize your Backpack pages any way you want. Then when you click a tag you can see all the other pages that have that tag. It’s a great way to keep your pages loosely grouped in ways that make sense to you.
Scottish wood floor company runs its business using Backpack
“Our first task was to store documents that we use on to our ‘Important Documents’ page. Traditionally these documents were stored on our company server but it was sometimes problematic accessing these via a VPN if we were working from home or abroad. Accessing them on the cloud via Backpack has simplified this task and we are now working faster and with less hassle.”
McKay Hardwood Flooring, a Backpack customer, installed the flooring throughout the National Galleries of Scotland.
Basecamp Embedding a tutorial video into a Basecamp project
“I used the same idea to embed our Camtasia videos into our Tutorials project… solves a huge issue for me since before I could only add a link to the video … I have attached a image of how it looks. It was a great help.”
The other day I went to sell some books at The Strand bookstore. They have a separate desk in the back for selling books. I brought in a bag and two clerks started sorting through them.
Then another guy lined up behind me. One of the clerks said to him, “You here to sell books?” He said, “Yes.” The clerk responded, “Wait in the line outside.” The guy went outside.
Thirty seconds later he was back. The clerk repeated, “Wait in the line outside.” The guy said meekly, “There is no line outside.”
The clerk sighed, looked at the other clerk, and sarcastically said, “There is no line outside.” The other clerk said gruffly, “If you can’t figure out the line, then you can’t sell books here.” The potential seller walked back outside meekly.
A minute later, a girl walked up with books. “Wait in the line outside,” said the clerk again. She walked outside. A few moments later, she was back. “What are you doing?” She said, “Selling books.” He said, “The line is outside.” She walked outside again. The clerks laughed. “Let’s see if the Mensa society out there can figure out how the line works!” And they laughed some more. As if both these customers were complete morons.
Lucky for me, I had arrived moments before these other two. Because I sure had no idea there was a place outside to wait in line. Or that “there’s a line outside” actually means “form a line outside.”
I think a lot of people who work in customer service make a similar mistake in laughing at customers or making fun of them behind their backs (PEBKAC comes to mind).
It can be a dangerous trap. Sure, any one customer might be stupid. But if multiple customers are repeatedly making the same mistake, maybe it’s not a mistake on their part. Maybe it’s a mistake on your part. If no one can figure out where to wait in line, maybe that’s a sign that you’re not doing a good enough job explaining it.
I’ve been poking around a lot of architects’ web sites lately and I’m thoroughly surprised at how bad they are. It seems almost without fail that they are either blowing my browser window up full size, asking me to read light grey 9px text, overflowing with obfuscatory flashterbation, teasing me with custom designed scrollbars that don’t behave as you’d expect, or asking me to evaluate their work based on postage stamp sized photographs. It really feels like 1998. I see I’m not alone in this observation.
Architects have so much to gain from the web. Big huge photographs of their work, clear statements of who they are and what they believe in, easily linkable and sharable portfolio pages, daily links of interest.
As it stands today, if you want to show someone an interesting piece of work you usually have to give them a step-by-step guide on how to get there: First go to the home page, wait for the countdown timer to expire, then hover over the logo, then grab a magnifying glass, then squint, then click the 4th tiny icon on the left (I can’t really tell what it is), then use that custom scrollbar that looks like an elevator, then take a screenshot, then pull that screenshot into Photoshop, then zoom in about 8 times so it’s all nice and big on your screen, then take about 10 steps back from your computer, then look.
I’m only half kidding.
Come on, architects, get with it! Anyone got any links to a great architect’s site that bucks this trend?
The first two Live shows were general Q&As. This time we’re going to narrow down the focus to chapter 13 of Getting Real: Promotion. Generating buzz, getting press, promotion without a budget, launch, etc.
Come armed with questions and we’ll fire back answers. We’ll see you tomorrow at 37signals Live!
But the real crime here is how terrible the original one is. Looks like a bunch of lawyers trying to figure out Quark. It’s tough to have much faith in your government’s ability to solve truly complicated challenges when it seems so inept at dealing with relatively simple issues. Hasn’t this been a known problem for eight years now?!
It’d also be interesting to see what ballots look like in other parts of the world.
For the unenlightened, Git is a distributed version control system that’s recently taken the software development world by storm. It’s what we use to manage all of our source code at 37signals. GitHub is an online service providing Git repository hosting and collaboration tools (we featured them recently on the Product Blog).
Darden Studio
Even though it works like typical lightboxes, the lightbox at Darden Studio (example) feels different due to design choices the firm makes.
The loading screen has custom typography centered on a black bezel:
And then check how using a non-browser typeface, including the x on the upper right, and the arrows in the lower right spice up the design of the lightbox itself.
Cymbolism Cymbolism is a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words. You can search for a word and see what colors people associate with it. The goal is to “make it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect.” Here are the results for the word spring.
I’m a big fan of swearing. Not in the derogatory, directed-at-you kind of way (“hey, fuck you!”), but as verbal marker to underline key concepts, create emphasis, and express passion. It certainly doesn’t work in every environment nor should it, but there are plenty were it does.
The first place where I’ve found it to be useful is between coworkers (“fuck, that’s awesome”). A team of British researchers found a while ago that profanity at work can help build solidarity and release stress. Couldn’t agree more. When people feel comfortable enough to let their emotions bare with the use of profanity, I’ve found the resulting atmosphere to be so much more relaxed and pleasurable. It’s not the profanity itself (although I adore “fuck” as one of the most versatile words in the English language), but what it says about the knitting of the culture.
The second place I’ve used profanity to great effect is at conferences where you feel you know the audience enough to loosen your tie and want to create a mental dog ear for an idea. Of all the presentations I’ve given, I’ve generally had the most positive feedback from the ones that carried enough passion to warrant profanity and it’s been very effective in making people remember key ideas (“they sell fucking shoes”).
It seems that profanity can work as a record button for the brain. It brings people to the edge of their attention as they’re trying to figure out whether they’re supposed to be offended or inspired. And then the content warrants the emphasis, the idea seems to stick better and longer and with more affection.
As with any tool, it can certainly be misused and applied to the wrong audience. But you can cut yourself with a great steak knife too. Use profanity with care and in the right context and it can be fucking amazing.
I just noticed Apple changed the logout feature in the MobileMe app UI. It used to be a power button icon. Now it just says “logout.” Another triumph of clarity over cleverness.
Since reading that article and posting about it here, I’ve visited Stinesville, and even started on a quest to buy a historic property in my hometown of Placerville, CA. I’m far, far away from ever being able to buy a home of my own there, but it’s become a goal I’m tacking to the top of my list. Being the change you want to see goes far beyond politics and societal pressures, it starts with our consumption and our landscape and our luxuries.
The folks at American Bungalow were also kind enough to send over a PDF of the article for everyone to read. (Although you should still pick up your own copy!) Find it at Whole Foods or a Borders near you.
After wading through over 500 applications, meeting some great people, discovering some serious talent, and evaluating people on a variety of levels, we can finally announce our new designer. He’s Jamie Dihiansan.
Who’s Jamie?
First off, Jamie is a great guy. Kind, generous, curious, honest. We all get along well. He’s a good cultural fit. Without that nothing else matters. He’s also local which will be handy.
I’ve actually tried to hire Jamie a couple times before. Once about nine years ago when we first started 37signals (he didn’t want to leave the cushy confines of Big Agency life at Organic) and once a few years ago (we couldn’t afford him). This time the stars aligned.
For the past 7 years Jamie has been working at Crate & Barrel Online. First as a senior designer, later moving to the Senior Art Director role. He’s well steeped in designs that sell, clear communication, and understanding consumer behavior.
Why did we pick Jamie?
Part of the hiring process involved asking the leading candidates to redesign the Backpack home page in one week with no direction (we paid them for their time). We really liked Jamie’s take on it. It was the biggest departure from how we design our marketing sites today. It introduced some elements that we were hoping to see and surprised us with things we hadn’t thought of before. Down the road we plan on sharing all the designs submitted by the leading candidates.
We also picked Jamie because of his background, his artistic abilities (as much as I don’t like graffiti, I can see the art in Jamie’s work back in the day), and his approach to problem solving through design. He’s a clear thinker and an objective player. Good icon designer too. We liked all of those things.
We’re really excited
Jamie starts in September. We’re really excited to see his influence seep into our marketing sites and product UIs. The first major project will be reviewing our existing marketing/public sites and working on a universal redesign.
But there are serious drawbacks. Packing 40 hours into four days isn’t necessarily an efficient way to work. Many people find that eight hours are tough enough; requiring them to stay for an extra two could cause morale and productivity to decrease. As for saving on the cost of commuting, it likely isn’t true.
The article is right: More hours in fewer days is not an efficient way to work. That’s why this article misses the point.
The point of the 4-day work week is about doing less work. It’s not about 4 10-hour days for the magical 40-hour work week. It’s about 4 normalish 8-hour days for the new and improved 32-hour work week. The numbers are just used to illustrate a point. Results, not hours, are what matter, but working longer hours doesn’t translate to better results. The law of diminishing returns kicks in quick when you’re overworked.
Besides, very few people work even 8 hours a day. You’re lucky if you get a few good hours in between all the meetings, interruptions, web surfing, office politics, and personal business that permeates typical work day.
Fewer official working hours help squeeze the fat out of the typical work week. Once everyone has less time to get their stuff done, they respect that time even more. People become stingy with their time and that’s a good thing. They don’t waste it on things that just don’t matter. When you have fewer hours you usually spend them more wisely.
So don’t think 4 days means cramming the same amount of time a shorter week. Longer days isn’t the goal. Think 4 days means a shorter week with less time to get things done. And that’s actually what you want.
I often see people on forums telling complainers to shut up with the “vote with your wallet” line. How does 37signals feel on the matter? Is it better to have a vocal customer who’s willing to stick with the product despite a perceived shortcoming or would you prefer that such a customer move on?
The first thing I’d say is this: It’s tough to be 100% happy with anything. Sacrifices rule the day — each person needs to figure out where their limits are. So if it’s one thing that’s really bothering someone, maybe they can find a way to adapt (or we can find a way to improve). But if it’s one thing after another, maybe that product just isn’t a good fit for that customer.
The second thing I’d say is this: You can learn a lot from a vocal customer. Even customers who continually bash your company or your product have value. So the goal shouldn’t be silencing them, it should be listening to them. You don’t have to do anything they say, but being aware of what they’re saying can give you insight into a perspective that you may otherwise not have had.
We hope you’re happy here
What’s most important to us is that people who use our products are happy using our products. If someone is unhappy with our products, we’d love to hear why. Maybe we can make them happy. But maybe we can’t — that’s certainly possible too.
So if we don’t think we’ll be able to make them happy, and they’ve found another product that makes them happier, we encourage them to use the other product. Sometimes we’ll even recommend an alternative if we can.
Don’t fight a losing battle
At a certain point there’s no sense in trying to make someone happy who you can’t keep happy, and there’s no sense in someone suffering endlessly when they constantly run into things that don’t work for them. If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit. Luckily there are a lot of choices, different approaches, and alternatives out there. Choice is on the side of the consumer.
Be honest up front
This sometimes comes up in pre-sales emails. People will ask us why our product is better than this or that product. We may riff on the fundamental advantage of simple, focused tools like ours, but then we’ll say something like: “There’s really no way for us to tell you what’s best for you. We encourage you to try all the products you’re considering. That’s the only way you’ll ever know for sure which product feels right. We hope it’s our product, but if it’s not we understand.”
Some salespeople may say that’s a terrible strategy, but we prefer to give the most realistic answer, not the “obviously we’re the best no matter what” answer. Because in the end, what feels right is what works best. Comparing products by comparing features isn’t really an effective way of making a decision. You have to compare the experience and you can only compare the experience by trying the products.
So yes and no
So, yes, I do encourage people to vote with their wallet, but at the same time I don’t encourage companies to chase all wallets either. Every wallet isn’t going to be a good fit in your pocket.
Basecamp [Case Study] Marketing firm BKWLD loves Basecamp because it’s “intuitive, easy to use, and easy on the eyes”
“Private messages and to-do lists were a godsend for one client. This was a particularly challenging project for an extremely difficult client. Private messaging in Basecamp gives us control of our client’s perception of their project, while still allowing us to be explicit with its nitty-gritty parts all in one convenient place. Sometimes the work gets a little ugly, but keeping a professional facade is extremely important to some clients. Basecamp accommodates this nicely.”
Backpack “Backpack has changed my life”
“I’m able to use this extremely affordable system to manage small projects, allow people to collaborate, image files, create lists, assign tasks, edit and share calendars and more…I think this is an excellent solution for small companies and start ups.”
Highrise How do I build a bulk mailing list in Highrise?
You can do this by giving each contact you want on the mailing list the same tag and then exporting the list…Click the “Tags” tab and click that specific tag to bring up all contacts on your list. Then click the “Export” link in the sidebar. Choose the format you want and save the list. You can then import this list into the application that you use to send group emails, create mailing labels, etc.
Multiple products Less Accounting, more Basecamp and Highrise
“Accounting sucks. Less Everything makes it suck less. Our flagship product, LessAccounting.com was built with ease-of-use at the core of the accounting software, which caters to small businesses and freelancers. The app just got even better by integrating with Basecamp and Highrise to make importing contacts ridiculously simple.”
Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Sarah Hatter, Ryan Singer, Sam Stephenson, and Jamie Dihiansan in Chicago, Matt Linderman in NYC, Mark Imbriaco in Wake Forest, North Carolina, Jeremy Kemper in Pasadena, California, Jeffrey Hardy in Ontario, Canada, and Mr. Jamis Buck in Caldwell, Idaho.
to get that clear, Fraiser Crane sound.)
After wading through over 500 applications, meeting some great people, discovering some serious talent, and evaluating people on a variety of levels, we can finally announce our new designer. He’s Jamie Dihiansan.
