Having created a Writeboard via Basecamp, can I find its password? I would like to be able to send the Writeboard’s URL (obvious to me) and password (not obvious) to people who are not listed on my Basecamp system.

This might sound a bit perverse, but I have a good reason. As a technical journalist, I often need to show a draft article to a bunch of people I’ve interviewed. Since this is usually a one-off process, I’d rather not enter their details into Basecamp. On the other hand, creating the Writeboard through Basecamp, as opposed to a stand-alone Writeboard, helps me keep Writeboards organised by client, so the companies I work for can easily see all the drafts relevant to them.

As a subsidiary question, is there a way to get Basecamp to show that a Comment has been added to a Writeboard? The only workaround I have found is to make a minor change to the Writeboard itself, delete the change, and save. Slightly closer integration with Basecamp would be nice.

For anyone who’s interested, a workaround is to grab the URL of the Writeboard and try to open it in a new browser window. At the login dialog, leave the password field blank and click “Sign in”. The resulting error message gives you the option of emailing the password to the creator of the Writeboard, in this case me.

Since the system-generated password is more secure (i.e. complex) than I would like for a one-off job, I’m experimenting with whether it’s possible to change the password and still have the Writeboard recognised by Basecamp.

Aha. You can’t change the password because that feature seems to be missing from a Writeboard that was set up through Basecamp.