Nearly 2 years ago already, I made one of the most important change in my work environment. I ditched Windows and went on Ubuntu. I still remember. A UPS guy knocked on my door to deliver this new Dell Precision laptop that I just bought 2 weeks prior. The first thing I did when I opened it was to insert the Ubuntu CD. I didn’t even boot once with the crappy Vista that came pre-installed with the machine. Read more…
Since the new 37signals ID 
has been implemented, the Basecamp integration in Springloops stopped working. I did not had much time to look into it and it was was not a high priority so I put it at the bottom of the pile. But recently we started a new project and needed to link its Springloops project with the Basecamp project. And we could not. So I had to dig a little bit into the problem. I explained the problem via email to the excellent Support team of Springloops and they answered me in 5 minutes. WOW! That’s a hot customer service!
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Earlier this week, when talking to my partner Réjean, I realized that we have been in business since 2003. It’s already been 7 years that the little project I started building Web sites with XOOPS was created. First known as InBox Solutions, then, when we incorporated, as INBOX International, we are now more then 15 people from all over the world, sharing a unique passion: the Web!
Much has been accomplished since 2003! We served hundreds of customers, got involved in hundreds of projects, did a lot of errors, and a lot of great things! But I have to say that 2009 marked a very important milestone in the development of our organization. For the first time in our history, I am finally able to focus less on the production and more on business development!
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Man! I don’t even have time to blog about the latest new feature of Highrise that a new one is launched already! It really seems that the New way of working at 37signals is paying off! Nearly 24 hours after announcing the all new 37signals Answers, a brilliant revamp of their customer forums, a nice new little feature has been introduced in Highrise: it is now possible to search for Cases or Deals in the handy sidebar search.
I personally use the sidebar search multiple times each day. It’s the first place I look when I need to find something. Previously, this search box was only looking for contacts but now, it also looks for cases and deals.
You can read the official blog post here.
On March 11th, I will have the honor of presenting the ImpressCMS Persistable Framework (IPF) at the first Confoo.ca Conference in Montreal. Confoo.ca is an evolution of the well known PHP Québec conference which I have attended each year for the last few years. This year, it will not be only about PHP, but also about Python, Ruby and Java. It promises to be another great success!
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Every other week or so, when I log in to one of my 37signals’s product account, I always get some nice surprise: new features, small or not so small improvements, always nice things to kick start my day with a smile! Last week, it was the Freshbooks gang who did this, but today, it was 37signals and their Highrise CRM product. They introduced 3 very nice new features, that, yet again, will make our life easier!
First, you can now notify people on your team when you add a new note to a contact. So let’s say you talked to a prospect and, of course, you are documenting it on your Highrise account, and you want a Project Manager to be informed that the deal is soon to be closed. Simply select the name of that person in the note’s option and you’re all set !
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People are getting more and more creative when it comes to fraud other people. And with today’s Web technologies, there are 1000 ways to lure people and try to hijack their accounts, stole their money, etc…
Today, I received what seems to be a normal email from Facebook. Someone named Linda asking if we were knowing each other:
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As I have discussed recently, one of the products we use at INBOX International inc. is Freshbooks. It manages all our invoices and our estimates with so much efficiency, it often hurts… Well, today, when I logged in on our account to prepare a new invoice, I just started to love it even more. They are now supporting multi-currency! It was only 5:17 AM and the Freshbooks gang just did my day!
When I discovered Freshbooks last year, even though they had an amazing product, one thing was missing: they did not support multi-currency. As an international company, we have to invoice our clients in different currency, mainly CAD, USA and Euros. So we had to have 3 different accounts to manage those different currencies. Which was a pain, but believe me, the rest was just simply amazing, it was worth the hassle.
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Recently, I have read a truly outstanding book called Crush It, from Gary Vaynerchuck. An excellent book explaining how to focus on your passion, cash in on it and create a true success. The concept seduced me right from the start as, since 2002, this is exactly what I’ve been doing! I found my passion (the Web) and I created a business with it called INBOX International inc. And nearly 8 years after its creation, INBOX is a team of 16 people from Québec, USA, Brazil, Argentina Colombia, Spain and England, with clients and partners all around the world. I have the extreme luck to wake up every morning to do what I like the most in the world (except for my family of course 
).
So, in his book, Gary Vaynerchuck explains that everything starts from your personal branding. Anyone can create its personal branding and cash in on t it. And, with todays technologies, it has never been that easy and that cheap to promote your personal brand in such an effective way.
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As mentioned earlier, I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala. Except for Firefox being unpleasantly slow, everything was great. But when I got back to work two days ago, I started to make Skype calls again. As friends and colleagues may know, 95% of my discussions with clients, INBOX team members, partners and friends are done using Skype. Either by old fashioned typing chat of by audio chat. And the audio chats are not only done with other people having Skype on their computers! All the calls that I make to mobiles or land phones are made through Skype. At 2.95 USD a month for unlimited Canada/USA calls, I have yet to find a better deal!
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