In the beginning we loved working with Basecamp. We were early adopters and Basecamp served as a point of differentiation between us and our competitors. Most of our clients loved the system purely out of the simplicity of the overall experience; however there has always been a small undercurrent of our clients who either are confused by it, find it to simplistic or hate something about the system.

… and this is OK, according to 37Signals.

37Signals has made it clear over the years that their products aren’t meant for everyone and some people will eventually outgrow their system, we’ll I guess we are heading down that path. Let me explain our experience with Basecamp, and I’d be interested in hearing who else has outgrown the software and why.

The Good

• The simplicity of use. I guess I can’t see why customers are confused by the system, it’s pretty easy to use.
• Lack of clutter. Visually, Basecamp is easy on the eyes which makes it more likely to stay up on my screen all day.
• I find the FTP integration useful because it allows us to store customer data on our own server where it’s backed up and portable.

Critiques which fall on deaf ears.

I would submit these ideas to 37Signals but after reading "Getting Real" I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to give a damn about what I have to say.

• The Dashboard. Interesting idea but it really falls short when you have multiple projects. Especially if your projects all follow the same general outline. For instance, if we have a Web site redesign project going for 4 clients then my Dashboard calendar is useless because it doesn’t clearly tell me which project a milestone is due for.
• Email flow and usage. I can’t tell you how many clients reply to the email which says "DO NOT REPLY". However, can’t 37Signals modify Basecamp to track and thread my messages. For instance, if I send an email to a client and cc a unique email such as myaccountid@basecamphq.com then Basecamp would permit us, and our clients the freedom to work from our email accounts, while Basecamp tracks the volley.
• The Calendar. Why on Earth does the calendar slide to the current day? To me this is a big break from common usage. My iCal on my computer doesn’t shift me to the current day, it stays on the week and highlights today’s date. Basecamp just removes the previous day and starts the 2 week calendar on the current date and time. Uh?
• Templates. If I have a new project I’d sure like to be able to apply a milestone template which dropped in default project goals. For us, the current "to-do" template is entirely useless.
• Milestones. If I set a milestone to be completed on Feb 7th, 2008 and it isn’t completed until Feb 14th, 2008 then why doesn’t Basecamp track the date it was completed and who checked it complete?
• To-dos. Where is the functionality of "Ta-Da-List" and why isn’t it used here?

I can keep going but I’ll stop here.

Now, the things which are a huge turn off.

• The lack of support and the general F-U attitude of 37Signals. We wanted to build a Basecamp Hours Widget and we found that the 37Signals team was both unresponsive and kind-of unfriendly when we tried to use their API.
• Their general attitude towards new features. Why not encourage feedback from the customers? I’d love to see the top 10 most requested features and 37Signals’ stance on why or why not those features would be integrated.

That’s the extent of my rant. I think 37Signals has also done alot of good for the Web-based software movement, and I don’t want to minimize that contribution. We are still using Basecamp as of today but the plans are in the works for a new system to replace it before the end of the year. I’m interested in hearing the experiences of other Basecamp users out there.

Every now and then I drift into the Google Labs to have a look at the current projects underway. This latest round I was intrigued by several cool projects baking in the Google oven.

Google Notebook

http://www.google.com/notebook

Pros: This is my favorite item coming out of the labs. Especially if you install the "My Notebook" toolbar for your browser. This way you can highlight and right click items on a Web page and save them to your notebook. It is sort of a glorified scribble pad of idea, text and links which you can search on later.

Cons: I haven’t found one yet, but let me keep working with it and I’ll be sure to find something it can do better.

Google Music Trends

Visit http://www.google.com/trends/music

Pros: The default listing isn’t that interesting but once you select a Genres or Country, then the list becomes a bit more interesting.

Cons: It’s just Google Talk participants so the data feeding into this is a bit suspect to say the least.

Google Trends

Visit http://www.google.com/trends

Pros: Presents a visual trend line on various search terms. The regions and cities is a useful subset of data which sometimes shows very distinct differences how users search.

Example: I used "web site, website" to see which term most people search on. Interestingly enough both terms have dropped in search volume from 2004 to 2008 however the news references for the terms has increased in the same time period. Plus, India much prefers the grammatically incorrect "website" whereas the French and Italians lean towards "Web site".

Cons: The news on the right seems a bit odd and out of place. I actually stumbled on two broken links during my short tests.

Google Code Search

Visit http://www.google.com/codesearch

Pros: If you are looking for code examples to steal learn and integrate into your project, this is certainly a good point to start from.

Cons: Just stay away unless your a coder.

Google Mars

Visit http://www.google.com/mars/

Pros: I think I found a real nice piece of real-estate once we find a way to get there.

Cons: For real? Why do we need this? And why does it wrap 4 times when you zoom all the way out? I’m still waiting for Google to drop a Martian into the map as an Easter egg.

Google Information / 411

Dial 1-800-GOOG-411

Pros: Uses voice recognition to locate businesses and then patches you right thru, and yes it’s free. They located "Imulus" in Boulder, Colorado just fine and on the first try. Not bad for a word which is hard to decipher with voice recognition.

Cons: Where is the residential side of this

Transit

Visit http://www.google.com/transit

Pro: Once you find a location which has public transportation the familiar Google Map interface is overlaid by transit locations which highlight when you select a schedule which is close to the time you wish to leave.

Cons: The city availability is pretty limiting, especially in the US where the coverage is scattered and seems to defy logic. For instance why would they have coverage for Grand Junction, Colorado rather then Denver, Boulder or even Colorado Springs? Sorry, no New York or Chicago either.

It’s not hard to be a fan of Mozilla – they have some great products, offer some great resources like the Mozilla Development Center, and supports Web standards in general.

Here are two projects that Mozilla heads up but haven’t received as much press as some of their other efforts, probably because they are still under development.

XULRunner. The best introduction to XULRunner may be Wikipedia’s: “XULRunner is a runtime environment developed by the Mozilla Foundation for providing a common back-end for XUL applications.”

XULRunner is my personal favorite of upcoming Mozilla projects. It will allow developers to use XUL – Mozilla’s “XML User Interface Language” – to build cross-platform (desktop) applications that can do all sorts of cool things. XUL should be a technology that comes naturally to most Web developers.

While XUL provides the framework to build the applications themselves, XULRunner will provide an easy means of installing, removing, and upgrading these applications. In sum, XULRunner (with XUL) will make it easier for developers with certain skill sets to deploy desktop applications. Here’s a list of some XULRunner applications.

Prism. Mozilla describes Prism as one of, or a result of

“a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur.“

To summarize: Prism will help bridge experiences of desktop and Web applications. It will allow users to run Web applications directly on the Desktop, fully integrated into the desktop itself, wither the user is running Linux, Mac, or Windows. Prism also wants to let Web applications use features of the user’s environment or hardware – such as offline data storage and graphics cards.

I’m pretty excited about these projects and look forward to observing the development of these applications as they more forward.

Let me get this out of the way right now: I haven’t balanced my checkbook … ever.

However, recently after entering the stage of “real life” I thought it might be beneficial to start: budgeting my finances, tracking my credit cards, and generally trying to not get myself into horrendous debt. After coming to this conclusion I started looking for realistic ways to track my finances. Particularly ways that would take as little effort as possible.

Now, there is good news for someone in my shoes. First, there are about 10,000 programs available to do finances on the computer. Some are web based and some require a software installation. However, I have yet to find an online based finance tracking system (such as Mint) that doesn’t scare the hell out of me. This is because they require you to enter in all of your online banking information, including: usernames, passwords, account numbers, and bank security questions (i.e. an identity theft’s wet dream). Okay, so online money budgeting (as of now) is out of the question.

That leaves me to the software side of things, here’s my ideal goal for such a piece of software:

• Fast transaction entering. Preferalbly the ability to pull it from the web, but otherwise accept transaction importing via QIF or CSV files.
• Tagging. A must for working with purchases that belong in multiple categories (i.e. a dinner might be classified as: entertainment, drinking, a gift, and food).
• Fast searching. I don’t want to scroll through thousands of transactions to find what I did on January 10th, let me see that instantly.
• Bill tracking. I need to know what bills I have coming up and how much they are. Preferably I would like to have reminders that take me directly to an online payment site.
• Quick budgets. It’s nice to see a three month graph of my spending, but what if I want to see individual transactions and how I am stacking up for the current month’s budget? I should have this option.
• Security. I want to make sure only I can work with my finances.
• Usability! If the app is slow, the keyboard short cuts suck, or things are hard to find, I won’t ever use it. This app has to be easier to use than my iPod.

After doing a bit of research I came to the conclusion that there are no apps that do everything I want (particularly the online transaction gathering). However, there is one that comes damn close: Cha Ching. Cha Ching is a $40 app that is exactly what you would expect from a group of indie OS X developers. It is simple and intuitive. The application itself is just what I need, something that I can import transactions into and spend less than 5 minutes using per week. It does tagging that is inexplicably easy, not to mention it allows organization via smart folders. Meaning I can create dynamic (self-updated) groups of transactions based on price, tag, date, name, etc. What this means is that within seconds I can know exactly how much I have spent on gas for the month, or just how many transactions have taken place with the word “liquor” (hey! it’s just an example) in the title.

There is room for improvement with Cha Ching. For instance, it’d be awesome to be able to put a web address for online bill payment into each reoccurring bill reminder. Further, global search could work a bit better. Not to mention a find and replace function for transactions (imagine doing a find for the title “diamond shamrock” and globally applying the “gas” tag to it). Still, that said I am extremely impressed with Cha Ching and I hope it will be the answer to my finance tracking. I’ll check back in a few months and let you know how things are going.

Back in November the Rocky Mountain News posted a story that a potential big player has purchased the old StorageTek facility in Broomfield. The rumors in the story claim it would either be Apple, Google or eBay. Any of these three selections would be incredible for the Denver Metro region and especially good for the Technology sector in Colorado. While I’m a major Apple fanboy I’d have to say my vote and hopes are for Google.

Why Google?
I’m hard pressed to see why the other two would move to this area. What reason would Apple have for opening an office on 50 + acres of land in Broomfield? I can’t find one. eBay is certainly a possibility, especially if the work with nearby Level3 for closer ties to Level3’s network capabilities / backbone. As for Google; the Front Range is loaded with data storage and GIS based companies and very talented engineers. I could certainly see a situation where Google could be setting up to make a major push into the online data storage market to compete with companies such as EMC. A location in Broomfield, Colorado would allow the facility to be centrally located in the United States, it would give it a great backbone next to Level3 and it would pull from the existing local talent pool of excellent engineers.

That’s just my 2 cents.