campfire posts

Filed under: Design, Web services, Commercial, Web

Haystack helps web designers and clients find each other

by Jason Clarke Nov 3rd 2009

Haystack Finding a web designer is a terrifying proposition for many people. How do you find someone qualified? It's not like there's a directory out there that lets you quickly browse and compare examples of work from various web designers to narrow down your set of choices quickly, and can help you get in touch with the one you choose.

Well, actually, now there is. And if that sounds like a good idea, consider that last week 37signals released a new site called Haystack. 37signals is a well-known web development company that is responsible for the incredibly popular online project management software Basecamp, as well as a few other web properties you might know: Campfire, Basecamp, and Highrise, to name a few.

The thing is, 37signals wasn't always an online service provider; at one time they were a web design firm creating client sites, so they know the difficulty web designers go through to attract clients. 37signals also takes pains to understand the difficulties users face, and have applied that approach to building a directory to help clients easily find web designers (and web designers easily find clients).

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.

Tags: 37signals, basecamp, campfire, client, design abili, design-abilities, DesignAbili

Filed under: Weekend Review

Download Squad Week in Review

by Brad Linder Apr 12th 2008

Been so busy waiting for your American Airlines flight to actually take off that you haven't had time to catch up on the week's other news? Wait, that doesn't make sense. You've had nothing but time on your hands. Aww, whatever. Here are some of our favorite stories from the past week. No excuses necessary.

Flickr launches video uploads

We've been expecting Flickr to add a video upload feature to the online photo sharing site for some time now. But we never would have guessed that when it finally arrived, Flickr users would be limited to uploading videos of 90 seconds or less. Flickr's justifying the move by saying the clips should be seen as long photos, not YouTube-style content. But that hasn't stopped Flickr traditionalists from forming and anti-video group and starting a petition asking Flickr to withdraw the feature.

Organize your music collection with TagScanner

Have a few thousand music files scattered around your hard drive and need a good way to organize them? While iTunes, Windows Media Player, and several other music players will help you edit your music's metadata to add things like artist names and song and album titles, TagScanner is probably the easiest music tagger for Windows we've ever seen. And it's free to boot.

Tags: amic-email-backup, campfire, email, flickr, google-app-engine, huddlechat, office, rickroll, smsofficer, tagscanner, thinkfree, triggit, video

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Web services, Google, web 2.0

HuddleChat is dead, long live Campfire

by Brad Linder Apr 9th 2008

That certainly didn't take long. Just a day after going live, HuddleChat is no more. HuddleChat was a web-based multi-user chat room utilizing the new Google App Engine. It bore a striking resemblance to Campfire, a similar application from 37signals. The main difference was that Campfire used a freemium model (free for up to 4 users, fee for more users), while HuddleChat was completely free.

Now, technically, there's nothing wrong with developing an application that looks and feels a lot like a competing application. After all, is it surprising that two web-based multi-user chat rooms are going to look a lot alike? You have a chat window, a message window, a friends list window, and so on. It all seems rather obvious. But while Google App Engine is open to anybody (or at least the first 10,000 users to sign up during the beta), HuddleChat was actually written by two Google employees during their free time. And that made it hard to see as anything other than a direct strike at 37signals' Campfire. It sort of screamed "Hey, we like your product, now we're going to clone it, make it free, and drive you out of business!"

Needles to say, 37signals wasn't very happy to see HuddleChat, and now there's a message on the HuddleChat web site explaining that the application has been removed. So now if you want a multi-user, web-based chat room with transcripts and file uploads for team meetings or group chats, it looks like you'll have to stick with Campfire. Until someone else comes along with a free clone.

Tags: campfire, chat, group-chat, huddlechat

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Web services, Google, web 2.0

HuddleChat: It's like Campfire, but free

by Brad Linder Apr 8th 2008

A lot of folks say that Google's new App Engine is basically a free clone of Amazon's Web Services. And they're pretty much right. So we probably shouldn't be surprised to find that some of the applications already making use of Google App Engine are free clones of other popular programs.

HuddleChat is a web-based mult-user chat application built with Google's App Engine. And it's almost identical to Campfire, a chat application from 37signals. But while Campfire provides free chat rooms for up to 4 users, and charges a fee for rooms with more users, HuddleChat lets an unlimited number of users chat for free.

The interface is pretty slick and offers a bunch of features that make it ideal for virtual team meetings. Chats are automatically archived, and you can upload files like images which will be displayed in the chat. They're also saved on a Transcripts & Files page. You can invite any user by sending out an email from the site, or you can share the room's URL. Best of all, users can sign into a chat room using their Google ID. So if you already have a Gmail, Google Calendar, or Picasa account you don't need to sign up for a new account to use HuddleChat.

Predictably, the folks at 37signals are less than pleased with HuddleChat.

Update: Astute blogger Emily Price noticed that there's at least one important Campfire feature missing from HuddleChat: Search. Which is kind of funny when you consider the fact that HuddleChat is hosted by Google and was developed by two Google employees.

Update 2: HuddleChat is dead.

[via Web Worker Daily]

Tags: 37signals, campfire, chat, huddlechat

Filed under: Internet, Macintosh, Web services, Freeware

Pyro: Desktop Campfire client for OS X

by Jordan Running Apr 13th 2006

37signals' web-based business chat app Campfire has taken off pretty quickly, to the point that some folks are creating dedicated apps to work with it, like Pyro. Pyro is an app for Mac OS X whose creators describe as a "site-specific browser," meaning it's a desktop program that wraps around the web-based app and provides additional OS integration. Specifically, Pyro gives Campfire its own OS X Dock icon which displays the number of unread messages in your Campfire chat and bounces when new messages arrive. It also has a tabbed interface so you can remain connected to many Campfire chat rooms and switch between them easily.

Tags: 37signals, campfire, dock, mac, osx, pyro

Filed under: Business, Internet, Productivity, Web services, Commercial

37signals launches Campfire: "Easy group chat for business"

by Jordan Running Feb 16th 2006

37signals, creators of web-based business software Basecamp and Backpack, have launched Campfire, their latest online collaboration tool. Campfire is a web-based real-time chat service for business use. Campfire advertises itself as a solution superior to IM in a number of ways, including permanent URLs for every chat (no fiddling with invites), reliable web-based file transfers, transcript searching, SSL security, and of course the ability to use it in any browser. Campfire is a subscription service that costs between $12 and $49/mo. depending on how many rooms you're going to use and how many people you want to chat with.

Tags: 37signals, campfire, chat, im

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Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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