Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / What do you folks use to visually collablorate online?

We also use WebEx. We used to use Microsoft Live Meeting, which used to be Placeware. There is also Gotomeeting which I’ve never used.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Off Topic - Need Opinions

(My apologies to any of you who read both this forum and the Highrise forum as this is posted in both)

Hey all -

You guys are the smartest people that I know so I’m going to throw this out there and perhaps ask those of you up on the Basecamp forum too.

I work in educational technology and I just started writing a technology blog (like the world needs another one – NOT) at the insistence of the Overlords at my day gig.

I will be talking about 37s too but one of the things that I’m doing right now is trying to answer some specific questions from teachers.

I got a question yesterday about how a teacher can make a really, REALLY easy website (they don’t have a lot of time and some of them are not super technical) for their classroom. They want it to be either really cheap or free. (I would assume they would be OK with ad supported because nothing is really free, everyone needs some kind of revenue stream) I would like to make them a list of less than 10 that I would feel confident about.

I’m personally a huge fan of Squarespace (http://www.squarespace.com) but I think that might be a little much for them.

So my question is: What are your ideas? I can talk about Google Sites. But I know that there are lots of other things out there. I’m thinking that Backpack might make an interesting classroom website. No reason it can’t right?

What do you guys think?

Thanks,

Cindy
http://www.extrageek.com

Topic: Feature Requests / Years in Messages

+1

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Problems with AOL and Dial-up?

Greg – I did a Google search on the forums and found very few references to AOL and nothing about this. I think support is your only option at this point but they will probably suggest that it’s up to her to migrate to something better. Fortunately, the cost of access is still coming down. Sorry about the lack of help for you.

If it is the browser, she doesn’t have to use AOL to browse. Once she is connected through her AOL account, she can minimize AOL and connect to the web by opening another browser. I do it at my sister’s house when I’m visiting to keep from killing anyone. But the dial-up thing, wow, yech.

Topic: Feature Requests / Comment on Messages by replying to Notification email

(me: geek wannabe)

Topic: Feature Requests / Comment on Messages by replying to Notification email

I reported a problem with search several days ago and it seemed to be fine after they fixed it. Now I’m not sure. In the meantime, you can use a regular Google search from the toolbar by specifying Basecamp as the site you want to search. You can also use a custom search engine I threw together that searches the current forums, archive forums and help here: http://tinyurl.com/24v6rk

But you don’t have to go to that page if you want to use it, you can make a Google module out of it and put it on iGoogle if you use that.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Strategic Partner Program

Melvin, I have absolutely no idea how you have time to run your own company, post a million times a day to this forum, flirt with me (kidding), and then want to start a partner program with 37s. Are you a vampire? Do you sleep? Can you see your reflection?

But seriously, if you ever do pull anything like that together, it would be interesting to know what you do with it. I don’t have time for any new projects right now, I just took on a new client along with my other regular gigs (plus I need to leave time for drinking beer) but I’m extremely interested in technology tools for small businesses and a more than a little smitten with 37s so if you need a branch office marketing arm in Portland, let me know.

(You know I’m messing with you, I adore you, of course)

Topic: Miscellaneous / Recent posts - forums not current?

Does anyone else think it’s weird that the ‘recent posts’ listed when you click on that link aren’t particularly recent? I guess you probably wouldn’t see if it you are using a feed but it seems to be stuck.

Topic: Tips & Tricks / How to use what to use...

So, I don’t think I’m the only one who is in this position so I wanted to bring it up and ask what other people are doing.

I’m forced (at gunpoint) to use Outlook at work. We are all required to use Windows computers with the Outlook Exchange server. So all of my day-gig related calendar items and emails are there. I live and die in email, I have several thousand emails in my inbox and those are just the ones that I have not archived. I have an excellent search tool (not Google, Copernic) and I refer to them daily.

I also have a regular life (such as it is) and a very small business of my own that keeps me very busy. I use Gmail for my personal mail and my business. My home page is iGoogle because I get a lot of email in those accounts too. I have started to use Highrise to run my business. Besides my constant whining about the calendar thing, I’m in love with Highrise.

We have started to use Basecamp at work and two of our departments use it constantly. I did a test run of it for my department and I want to implement it in the fall. I use it for my neighborhood association and it has saved our life.

My question is this: Does anyone have good Tips and Tricks for managing your life across these different tools? On any given day, I have 4 Basecamp accounts open, Outlook email, Outlook Calendar, 1 Highrise account, Google calendar for my home and business and Gmail.

Things I have looked at:
1) Firefox Greasemonkey tabs for linking Highrise and Basecamp. But the Open Bar feature has made life much easier on that front.
2) iFrame Google calendar onto the Overview page of Projects (with the warning from 37s about this but it has worked great for me)
3) I know how to feed milestones into the Google calendar.
4) I have synced my Outlook calendar with Google using Syncmycal.
5) There is a very cool iFrame gadget for Google that will show your 37s pages on iGoogle if you are signed in to your 37s accounts. You can’t see the entire page but you can easily make the gadget window long so you can view a healthy portion of the left-hand column of what’s going on like tasks lists. Openbar lets you switch between pages even in the gadget. Unfortunately, the iFrame gadget works fantastic with Backpack and I don’t love Backpack. I like it but I have too many accounts for too many different things right now.
6) I have considered more than one monitor but the laptop that I have right now doesn’t support it and if they buy me a new one they are going to force me into Vista. Can’t do that yet, I have to up my meds first.

Even with all of that, things feel like a mess to me. I have stopped using Tasks in Outlook because people are putting them into the Basecamp accounts with my name attached. I don’t know the best way to track tasks for myself in my job or in other non-day job areas. I have considered somehow syncing tasks between the different accounts into Outlook or a PDA (God help me if I start going back to a PDA, I really will slit my wrists).

I guess there are three problems (only three?, no probably more):
Tasks are really the biggest problem since there are so many places they can be (and others giving them to me).

The calendar problem. I almost have it solved with syncing Outlook to Google but it’s still tough to figure out how to work with everything since I’m making events for myself when I’m in Highrise, I just have to keep more than one window open.

Documents and notes – OK, my work documents are up on the server but then people shove documents into Basecamp and email documents to you. You can’t really control that but how do you decide where to keep your documents and notes? I have lots of things up in Google Docs, which I love, but Google sucks for tasks and there isn’t any great way to organize notes (I like the Google Notebook but it’s not as easy to organize as notes attached to projects and contacts).

I’m not sure if I’m asking more of an information philosophy question or a tool question. I just want to know what your most clever tips are for managing the things you manage.

I love technology but sometimes it’s hard to sort out. I actually went to a paper address book at the beginning of this year (after 3 Tungstens) and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. I know it sounds weird but it’s the best technology for how I use it. No boot time, completely mobile, never goes down. I know, I should get two tin cans and a string, maybe a mule.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

Oh, it does work better! Thanks Mark! (and/or anyone who helped fix it)

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

Yeah, that’s what I thought he was doing. I couldn’t get it to work but I figured out why this morning. I was typing it up in the main URL box because I search for a lot of stuff just by going directly up there. But you have to be on the search page or in the search box on the toolbar. I like the gadget because it also searches the archives but his solution is faster and simple. I can see that I’ll be using both depending on what I’m trying to figure out.

You guys are the best.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

Benj, I didn’t understand your search text, can you look at it?

But you gave me a great idea. I made a custom search engine in Google for 37s Basecamp Forum, Basecamp Help, and Basecamp Forum Archives. I converted it into a Google homepage gadget:

http://tinyurl.com/2cbzvg

That should be interesting. I think I’ll try it for Highrise and perhaps a combo product one. If anyone doesn’t use iGoogle, you can go directly to the custom search engine at the link below, I just thought it would be tedious to go to another page:

http://tinyurl.com/24v6rk

Please feel free to jump in and change it/improve it or suggest refinements…I just did a few sample searches, my search for ‘Outlook’ was a big SCHWING! (Not Outlook itself, that causes shrinkage, just being able to see the discussions)

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Outlook 2003 & Basecamp via Google

Warning: Everyone – this is working fine for us but the 37s folks don’t endorse imbedding your calendar:

Sarah Hatter Administrator Please note: We do not officially endorse or support this option. There is a great chance that embedding a Google Calendar in your overview or message page will “break” your account if done incorrectly, so please take caution if you choose to do so.

Cindy – Sarah – I’m curious about this. We use it a lot and it’s been fine. Why would it break your account? The posting about imbedding has been on the forums for over a year now, has there been problems? I won’t suggest it anymore if there is. I’ve had good luck with it so far.

David Heinem…Administrator The problem is that if you enter your ifram HTML incorrectly, it’ll mess up all the other HTML on the page. And possibly cause your account to be inaccessible. So you just have to take great care when you’re playing with iframe HTML.

Topic: Feature Requests / Duration Calendar feature

Ah…we’ve been lucky on this front. I’ll be sure to post this warning in the other thread where I suggested this. Thanks.

Topic: Feature Requests / Duration Calendar feature

Sarah – I’m curious about this. We use it a lot and it’s been fine. Why would it break your account? The posting about imbedding has been on the forums for over a year now, has there been problems? I won’t suggest it anymore if there is. I’ve had good luck with it so far.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

Thanks Jason. I know that you guys are busy, you must read these things really fast.

So, I went up to the first forum that I read in the morning ‘How Do You Use Basecamp’ and just picked out random words from the first 15 posts – Ticketing, Messages, Consultant, Projects, Writeboard. Even though searching for those words can bring up a few results, none of them show the current discussions in that forum.

It’s weird. I hope the beastie boys can fix it. It would save you guys a lot of work doing Whak-A-Mole on duplicate postings.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

M&M, I understand. Thanks for explaining. I was getting my panties in a bunch.

Thanks David. The two examples that I gave in my post seem pretty obvious to me unless you are getting a different result.

I can’t find anything on a search for ‘Outlook’ and there are dozens of postings. Also, regarding the current cagefight about FTP access – after reading the comment about ‘FTP access has already been covered in previous threads’ I went to look for those postings (I don’t need FTP, I was just interested in the discussion) and when you search for ‘FTP’ you get a thread about thumbnail images.

I’ll try a few more newbie type searches and post them here.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

OK, I’m lost. Sorry, I’m not enough of a hipster to understand so you’ll have to break it down for me.

1) Why is it pure comedy?
2) Why would I be the one to contact Beast when 37s is utilizing a tool/vendor that isn’t working? (assuming that you actually think it’s not working, it doesn’t seem like it is to me) Doesn’t 37s have the a) relationship b) leverage c) technical chops to talk to their forum provider about a problem?

I can certainly post up to the Beast forum but one look up there tells me that the super geeks probably aren’t going to give a rat’s a** about what I think. They don’t know me and I’m not that technical.

I was just concerned about not being able to find things that had already been posted since us new people repeat a lot of things up here. People are pretty patient for the most part but there is the occasional snip about it.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

Thanks Mike.

Topic: Miscellaneous / Search Forums

I was curious about something. As a new person to the forums I try to be very, very careful about posting on topics that have already been covered but I’m finding, to my dismay, that the search function in the forums doesn’t give me very much to help me cover my a** on that issue. As nice as people have been to me (and they have been VERY nice) I know that it’s tedious to answer the same questions over and over again and sometimes makes people impatient.

For example, if I type ‘Outlook’ into the search, I get nothing. If I type ‘Outlook integration’ into the search. I get nothing. In a recent discussion on the boards about the FTP thing, you said to the new guy “This has been covered before” but if you type ‘FTP’ into the search, you get a discussion about image thumbnails.

Please don’t interpret what I’m saying as having ANYTHING to do with the current discussion of the FTP issue, I realize it’s not about seach and I’m not involved. All I’m saying is that it’s really hard for a new person to know what’s been covered if we can’t find it and I try really, really hard.

I’m always upset to find something I’ve asked that has already been answered and it has happened more than once. I don’t like to garbage up the boards with duplicate posts.

Does anyone else have this problem or have any thoughts on this?

Topic: Feature Requests / Duration Calendar feature

Mandrews -

It’s not a perfect solution but you can show a Google calendar (or other calendar) on the front page of one of your projects by embedding it into the overview page. I’m not exactly sure how you would get the exact result you are looking for. Perhaps by having people using individual calendars copy over vacations etc onto the master calendar. Sharing and copying events between Google calendars is pretty easy. You could also sync the Google calendar with their local calendars but you would have to figure out a way to leave out events that you don’t want to show on the master. Here is the posting that I saw:

Saw this on the Backpack forum (credit goes to macqueenorama).
You can get Google Calendar (or any calendar) onto your Overview page.
1. In Basecamp, choose a project, and click SETTINGS
2. Paste this code into the OVERVIEW PAGE ANNOUNCEMENT field:
<iframe src="YOUR CALENDAR" url here s></iframe>
(adjust the height and width as you see fit)
3. Make sure you click the checkbox for “Yes, display this announcement on the overview page”.
You’ll then see your calendar (and interact with) on the Overview page.
Neat.Last edited by kagudesu (2006-05-07 06:38:18)

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Outlook 2003 & Basecamp via Google

Sorry JS, didn’t mean to sound snotty. I get annoyed at vendors that post to threads without identifying themselves (not talking specifically about 37s forums, just a general peeve)

I’m a huge fan too. My job forces me to use Outlook so I have to find ways to get around the limitations, too many to list.

Topic: Tips & Tricks / BaseCamp Outlook

+1

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Outlook 2003 & Basecamp via Google

Maseratij -

Do you have a relationship with Plaxo besides being a customer? Just curious. Your posting seemed really ‘off’ to me.

Cindy

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Outlook 2003 & Basecamp via Google

Venera -

Yes, I saw your previous postings (it’s always good to disclose your relationship with the company in the thread that you are posting in). Most of us that own small businesses thought that your pricing was out of our reach. The new pricing looks better. I’ll just have to decide if I want to pay every year for something that I just got for $25. The extra functionality might be worth it. I’ll have to review the software before making a decision.

Cindy