Topic: Feature Requests / Mobile Journal?

Definitely; frankly, an SMS gateway could be nice; it could be more broadly used for a variety of 37S apps, but mobile access takes more than email…

Topic: Feature Requests / Reminders via Twitter

Indeed, +1

Topic: Feature Requests / Wiki-style page creation

Generally speaking, is 37S phasing out Textile and other inline-syntax cues? I was under the impression they were, to avoid having to parse text…

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / newsroom sharing too many people

I’m sure you get this question all the time, but for people/organizations have have both (I do), are there any plans to be able to set accounts to interoperate? It would be nice if BC project messages could show up on one’s BP newsroom, etc.

I realise that one person may have access to 10 different BC/BP accounts, some of which are otherwise unrelated to each other. Given the move to OpenID logins, perhaps 37S might consider separating dashboards from the rest of the applications; people have dashboards, their shared OpenID credentials enable linkages to the various accounts they interact with, and the dashboards reflect all the various events they might see in all the various accounts they could visit.

Right now I use BC/BP in a home setting; I and my partner use it to manage our grad school and work obligations, life, etc. I am planning to start a company in the next 12-18 months, and would love to have 37S’ products at the heart of that operation. Given an eventual need to have different divisions use their own BC/BP accounts, I (at least) continuing to have personal ones, without a unified dashboard it will become very easy to lose track of events and messages…

Please consider some sort of application that would allow people to make sense of their 37S lives (and extra-37s lives, if possible!).

Thanks
-RS

Topic: Feature Requests / Multiple Users in a given Backpack account

I actually wasn’t intending to be insulting; I’m under the impression that they take the view that often customers don’t know what makes for a good product. Many very successful companies, that create great products and/or provide great services take this view; see Apple and their dislike of focus groups.

I fully concede that sometimes 37signals does take feature requests into account; my impression is that they generally view these sorts of submissions with skepticism. This hasn’t stopped me from posting suggestions, on the off chance that one of my wishes strikes them as a good idea.

Most of the time, there are work arounds. With Campfire’s lack of an API, and BP’s lack of multiple accounts, it’s virtually impossible to work around. BC/HR’s APIs provide the hope that if I really dislike a certain behaviour (or lack thereof) I can make my own workaround…

-RS

Topic: Feature Requests / Multiple Users in a given Backpack account

That doesn’t make sense; basecamp and highrise have single-account-owners with multiple user accounts. Your response is no doubt that these are business tools.

I’m sure there are business owners who might view backpack as the perfect tool for them. Create a Max plan, $25 per month/3000 pages/10 GB/multiple users allowed. Alternatively, if you want to charge by user, improve page sharing, allow accounts to pull their page allocations, and do it that way.

A third option is to fold backpack into one of your other products, but I’d imagine that’s even more unlikely.

I realise 37signals doesn’t feel feature requests are a useful source of input for the future direction of its products (in general), but this is really a rather important issue.

I’ve spent $225 so far on backpack; my monthly 37 signals bill is approaching $87/mo, and I’m asking to pay more.

At some point, it will be cheaper to commission a clone than pay $1044 a year without having any efficacy about the evolution of these tools.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Blocks order on new Backpack

I have 111 pages (I’ve been using this service for a while ;-) ) and, well, you embrace the good; Notes have lost their dates, which means lots and lots of entries whose worth are largely contingent on that information have lost all meaning.

BUT, I can craft truly versatile page-interfaces now. Every change brings positives and costs negatives.

I’m migrating most of my date-oriented notes to Basecamp (those that can be salvaged) and the few that I’m leaving in Backpack (because its interface and presentation make the most sense for that sort of data) are getting the date spliced into their text. I have to admit, I’m doing this on an as-needed basis. Perhaps that will be a reasonable option for you?

I know this isn’t the most helpful answer, but then, I’m not 37S. I will say, I re-evaluated my organisational “tool chain” if you would. I looked around for non-37S options to compare and everything I found was just awful. I can’t understand it; it’s not like 37S’ products don’t occaisionally “itch” (seem an imperfect fit) but all the others are just so much worse.

It’s baffling. Good luck w/ your rearrangement.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Textile Tables

No worries, and thanks for the quick response :-)

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Textile Tables

Hello all,

I think the new style implementation has removed the gridlines and whatnot from tables created using the pipe character; a page that had nice table on its front now displays the text w/o any visual separation from the surrounding text; the only indication that it is being treated as a table is that the font size is a touch smaller than the surrounding text.

This may be intentional, I don’t know. I realise that 37S has a somewhat skeptical view of Textile, and that it has proven to be a source of tech support headaches. I can sympathise with the desire to remove it all together, but please, if this is part of a plan to wean us off of Textile, please leave it as an enable-able option…

I don’t want a WYSIWYG editor, I just want my Textile! (...and those beautiful tables of yore, with the empty cells all greyed out… just visual bliss…)

-RS

Topic: Feature Requests / Multiple Users in a given Backpack account

First let me say, the new backpack is great, and I’m happy with the changes we see.

That having been said, Backpack is the most “family-oriented” of the various 37signals tools. The need for people to be able to collaborate more closely is, well, vital. Per-page sharing may be appropriate between siblings or friends, but for a couple it’s an aggravating speed bump.

There has to be some way to allow one account to support multiple users or multiple accounts to pool their resources. In an age with SANs on every street corner, flexible provisioning of pages/space between people willing to either share an account or merge seperate ones would be nice.

Topic: System Announcements / The new Backpack is live!

I agree, something I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time, and as always you all have pulled it off with your usual good taste.

I did have one question, perhaps I should post it under bugs; have the formatting results of the use of Textile (specifically tables) changed?