Earlier this month, 37signals added a One Bar feature to allow users of their Basecamp project management and Highrise correspondence tracking services to sign into both sites at once. Fortunately, after issuing a major update to Backpack, their wildly popular web-based PIM app, they have added Backpack to the One Bar signin. This will save some time and simplify switching between these services, and the only requirement of One Bar is an OpenID, an increasingly adopted service that allows you to tie website logins to one single ID and password for the ultimate in web security and convenience.

If you're a fan of 37signals productivity tools, as the DLS crew is, you may appreciate a newly added feature from the clever kids with the funny name.

Basecamp and Highrise now offer a single sign-on that allows you to eliminate one of those constantly open tabs we all live with, saving you precious RAM and system resources that can be put to better use. If they'd only add Campfire to the single sign-on party, we'd be ecstatic.

Okay, confession time. Despite being an early adopter for most things, I hadn't caught the basecamp train and got on board. Why you ask? I had no good use for it, though it is an excellently crafted application. I love software, and thus I checked it out, but for some reason I didn't see how its use would fit into my busy life, until now.

Becoming a self-employed web developer threw my daily routine out the window in a big way, and my preciously corporate sanctioned work-flow as well, giving me a new set of problems. One new problem I've had is process tracking, central information storage and updating, and project management. If this sounds like three problems, you're right, but they are tightly connected.

Having many projects and lots of information to track, share, and modify, basecamp handles with ease and makes me work less and takes care of these problems without taking too much of my time. I am finally "with it" when it comes to project management.

Developing software is no picnic (as you know), but now at least I know where the utensils are. Try eating potato salad without a fork, and you'll get the idea. If you haven't checked out basecamp (by 37 signals) it is worth it, there is a free account, awesome simple tutorial videos, and a great application to help you track life and work.

If you are with it, and use basecamp religiously (or casually), do you have tips for a basecamp beginner like me, or ideas to get more out of basecamp? We're all ears.

Highrise is an online contact manager built by the famous 37 signals, founders of the ever popular Basecamp project management tool. It was quietly launched yesterday to the public.

Highrise tracks leads, clients and vendors, allowing users to stay on the ball with who gets spoken to, when, and about what. This allows for members of a team to easily decipher the next plans of action. Notes, calls, and tasks can each have reminders set to them for easily remembering to follow up. When signing up for Highrise, each user will get a unique email address, when items are sent to this email, they will automatically become tasks, taking the extra steps out of lining up items to be completed. HIghrise is at its most effective when an entire company works with this online tool. Employees can share vendor, clients, lead, and co-worker information to see what has been previously communicated, and what was acted upon.

Rates vary with Highrise. There is a free plan with 2 users and space for 25 contacts which is great to try out the software and see if it could fit in with your current operation. Then users can choose to upgrade to a basic plan that allows for 400MB of file storage and 5000 contacts for $24/month. If that isn't enough, $149/month can get you unlimited users, 20GB of storage, and up to 50,000 users.

Highrise is a great compliment to the other online software packages that 37 signals offers, as data is communicated effortlessly between all of them.

During the six months I've been writing for Weblogs Inc, I've only met with coworkers twice. But that doesn't mean we don't communicate. Bloggers make liberal use of email, chats, and other tools to keep in touch with one another. But the truth is, there's a whole world of tools out there that are making it easier than ever for teams to collaborate on projects, be they websites, software design, or entrepreneurial ventures.

Alex Iskold at Read/WriteWeb has a great tutorial on using software to set up a virtual office. Some of the software is commercial, while other programs are freeware. And while Iskold gives his recommendations in each category, he also lists alternate programs you might want to check out.

The article covers communication tools (Skype), project management software (BaseCamp), presentation tools (GoToMeeting) for showing coworkers what's on your display, Calendars (Google), Code repositories for software developers (CVSDude), accounting software (Quickbooks), and a backup system (ElephantDrive).

What do you think? Do you work in a virtual office? How does it compare to your old office job? Is it easier or harder to get work done? How important are Web 2.0 tools to your collaborative efforts?

If you're a Basecamp user living in the Chicago or NYC areas, and if you have an interesting story to tell about the way you and your organization use Basecamp, then 37signals wants to talk to you. They're looking to shoot a series of interviews which will be promoted on the 37signals site, discussing how exactly you use Backpack. Who exactly are they looking for? Well:

"We're looking for customers from all walks of life and all industries. From educators to designers to writers to marketers to performers to lawyers to anyone who considers Basecamp an integral part of their business."

If you're interested, their blog post has the original announcement and contact information. No deadline for these interviews has been set.

Some people can't seem to get this idea out of their heads that gifts have to be something physical. When I began to think about the holidays this year, I thought about all the things I wouldn't mind having, and I thought of mostly physical hold-it-in-your-hand gifts I want. Most of the gifts I hope to get happen to be virtual. Here is a nice rundown of some of the things you might think about buying for your own geek (both virtual gifts and physical gifts):

• Flickr Pro account $25/year
• Basecamp accounts ranging from $12/month to $149/month
• Skype credit for free calls
• Any other kind of pro account or account upgrade your geek may want from an online service
  
• Anything from ThinkGeek.com (USB gadgets, like a rocket launcher or a bluetooth laser keyboard)
• iTunes prepaid music card (as big as you can afford find)
• World of Warcraft prepaid gameplay card (for any aspiring geeks who don't already play the game)

Now I know this list is not extensive or by any means complete, but that's why I need your help to complete it! Tell me what is on your geeky wish list this season in the comments below. What should be on this list? You tell me.

A note for non-geeks and newbies: if you want to get something like a pro account from an online service for your geek, you don't have to know how to use it, find it, or anything. If you know they want it, either enlist a geeky friend to help you in the process or simply write the name of the service on an index card or print it out all pretty like. Wrap it up to give to your geek, trust me they won't care what the gift card looks like, depending on the gift. Oh, and you get extra points if you write the message on the card in binary. I remember when my wife wrapped up a brochure for high-speed internet in the early days...best gift ever. See what I mean?

In my ongoing search for the ultimate software system for use with the Getting Things Done methodology, I've recently come across a real winner. Tracks is a web application that was built from the ground up for the purposes of implementing a GTD system. Written in Ruby on Rails, Tracks offers the familiar Projects and Contexts organization system made popular by David Allen's Getting Things Done system, coupled with the sparse graphical design and easy functionality made popular by well-known Ruby on Rails applications like Backpack, Basecamp and Ta-Da List. Now I should mention that Tracks is not affiliated in any way with 37 Signals (the maker of the other three web applications I mentioned), but it's clear that the Tracks developers are inspired by what 37 Signals have done. Plus, I'm sure it doesn't hurt that Rails was released by 37 Signals as a framework with which to get productive with Ruby very quickly.

The installation of Tracks is unfortunately not for the faint of heart; if you're someone that would shy away from installing a web server on your local machine, or don't have access to a Ruby-enabled web hosting account, installing Tracks probably isn't for you. If you are, there are a number of sets of instructions available.

For the rest of us, our best bet is to find a hosted solution. Since Tracks is by its very nature multi-user, it appears to have been a relatively straightforward task to build a hosted solution, and allow users to pay a monthly fee for access.

My favorite of these hosted offerings is called GTDTracks. GTDTracks is extremely affordable, at $1.49/month, and they offer regular backups and upgrades. I'd much rather about getting my stuff done than messing with upgrading a web application that I know very little about, so this option appeals to me a great deal. Plus, they take care of what is arguably my biggest fear with online hosted services, which is the question of how to get your data out if you decide to move on to something else. GTDTracks has a policy of allowing users to cancel their account at any time with no penalty (so you're not on the hook for more than a buck and a half at any given time), and you can take your data with you, exported as a plain text file that can be imported into another installation of Tracks, or simply mined for the data it contains.

Using Tracks is very straightforward - simply create Contexts and Projects as needed, then create Next Actions (essentially tasks) and associate them with the project and context they relate to. Due dates can be set through a convenient calendar widget. One nicely done element of the application is the Done page - one way to get inspired to get things done is to see what you've already accomplished. The Done page shows items that were completed in the last 24 hours, last 7 days and last 28 days, as well as a link for everything older than that.

Online Software

As much as I enjoyed writing part 1 of this series about software you can use for GTD even while offline (I've had a soft spot in my heart for offline-capable software forever), I have a feeling that part 2 is what many of you are waiting for - and the question you'd like answered is "how do you implement GTD using online tools, preferably free ones?".

Well, there are quite a number of online options, but in my experience I've found that there is no "all-in-one" solution like Outlook for managing your personal information online. So rather than give a few options that aspire to all-in-one status (none of which I could find myself currently using), instead I will give you what I consider to be the best-of-breed web based services, and how I go about integrating them into a Getting Things Done personal system.

37Signals' Basecamp is pretty slick, wouldn't you agree? Tablet PCs, in their own right, have quite the slick factor as well. Wouldn't it be cool if someone, say a small software company called Luckymonk, came up with the idea of combining the two, say with a product called Scout? It sure would!

While Scout isn't quite ready yet, Luckymonk offers a preview screencast of everything that will be possible once it's released. As an added bonus, the company will be releasing their Basecamp API wrapper for .NET 2.0 as well. For now, however, you Tablet PC owners will just have to bookmark Luckymonk's Scout product page under 'ToDo'.

Our favorite Web 2.0 company, 37Signals, must be working overtime these days.  They have announced the availability of an API for their popular Basecamp project collaboration product.  With this API, Basecamp users will be able to unleash their creativity in developing OS X dashboard widgets and Yahoo! widgets, or just generally hooking up Basecamp to all kinds of external systems.

Not to rest on their accomplishments, the crew over at 37Signals also signalled that calendaring will soon be added to Backpack.  For Backpack fanatics, this was the most requested feature on the popular list tracking web site.  Some would even say that calendaring is the missing link on Backpack.

While all this is exciting, it does make us wonder when we can expect Sunrise, their CRM application?

Hi, my name is Jason, and I'm a shortcut key addict. I'm also a fan of good user interface design, which is why I have had a love/hate relationship with Basecamp. For such an insanely useful site from a group of guys that value usability, it drives me crazy that there are no shortcut keys to navigate within Basecamp. Or at least there weren't.

To solve this problem, a Greasemonkey script for Firefox has been developed called Quickcamp. The site for Quickcamp looks as if it is a property of 37 Signals, but they make it extremely clear in big red letters that they are in no way affiliated.

[via Lifehacker]

Few small software companies have the big following enjoyed by 37signals, the company behind the web-based productivity tools Basecamp, Backpack, and Ta-Da List. Now they're preparing to launch their newest product, Writeboard. As usual, they're being a bit cryptic about what, exactly, Writeboard is for, but this old blog post bills it as "a collaborative text editor that's tailored for editing smaller 'chunks' of text" with a focus on versioning. Sounds a lot like a wiki to me. A blog entry from Tuesday, however, adds to the intrigue by describing it as "the 'app-less' web app," apparently eschewing the staples of web apps like... navigation? Clearly they're up to something interesting, but will it be good? You can get on their announcement list by entering your e-mail address at the Writeboard site.