Basecamp and Backpack
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
You know that Dyson vacuum cleaner ad, when James Dyson says in his plummy accent, ‘I just think things should work properly,’?
The folks at 37 signals agree. Usability consultants who took the plunge into making things (rather as I’ve done, being a ‘content guy’ or consultant on sites, who now finds himself responsible for the whole thing), they make things that work. Brilliantly.
I’ve been using their project management tool Basecamp for a year or so now, and it makes running a web design job (and keeping my inbox orderly) so much easier. And it makes me look good, too, which doesn’t hurt.
It’s much less complex than MS Project, for example, and doesn’t have the giant feature list of expensive collaborative work environments. But it has the stuff you actually need, and they’re very straightforward to use. So messages, to-do lists, milestones, comments, file uploads - all the stuff that would be handled in a rake of emails and half-scribbled notes are all in the one place that everyone can get to.
So now I’ve just signed up for their personal product, Backpack. It’s looser and more flexible, and so can be put to all sorts of uses from simple list making upwards. I’m imagining it as an outboard brain - a place to stick notes, files, lists and all sorts of other stuff. I’ll let you know how I get on.
And although the internet is full of bloggers and journalists (including Salon and the New York Times) singing the praises of theses products and the company that makes them, I’d like to point out (in a prissy way) that I knew them before they were famous. I’ve been reading their Signal vs Noise blog for a good long time (and even listed it as a valuable resource on the iQ Content site last year sometime).