Recently, I upgraded the family computer from Windows Vista to Windows 7. How I could go nearly 2 years without throwing that computer out the window is a complete mystery to me. The computer is a nice HP dual core with 2 Gb or RAM. And while Vista was on it, with no applications running, CPU usage was always at least 60% and so was the memory used. Opening any applications would take a minute or so. Really, I was that close to actually rip my arm off and beat this computer to death with it.
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Lately, a few people have been asking me how to format messages and writeboards on Basecamp. As you may know, Basecamp supports Textile formatting which is a wiki-like format. It allows to easily format messages and Writeboards. You simply need to learn a few basic syntax elements.
I have found two interesting cheat sheets explaining the syntax you need to know to be able to quickly format text in Basecamp. I’ll give you the link at the end of this post, but, for the sake of “getting things done” 
, here is what I think you need to know. In fact, I use Basecamp on a daily basis and those are the only elements I’m using, 99% of the time: displaying links and lists.
One of the tool I’m using nearly every day is Webex. 
It’s an online conferencing tool which, in our line of work, is essential! Since we have clients, staff and partners everywhere in the world, what would we do without web conferencing! I’m currently using both Webex and GoToMeeting, which are the 2 main players in this market. First one is by Cisco, second one by Citrix. I like them both, with a little preference for GoToMeeting, which is a little bit simpler for clients and a bit more user friendly.
But GoToMeeting has one main issue: it does not work on Linux… And, I can not go back to Windows for my main desktop OS, I would go crazy! So I use Webex on a daily basis, and once a week I use GoToMeeting for a conference I’m doing with people at ImpressCMS which needs to be recorded. I have to do this on my wife’s laptop though, as she has Windows .
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I like the Wordpess tag cloud. It’s nice to see with a glimpse of an eye, the topics that are most discussed on one’s blog. However, my very good friend and SEO guy James Morris told me many times to NOT USE the tag cloud unless it’s modified to add the nofollow attributes on links.
I started looking for a solution and find this one. A very interesting solution. Jan has made a patch to edit the Tag cloud widget to add an option for nofollow tag. Unfortunately, his change was not accepted by the WordPress team because average user would not understand what the nofollow setting does. Which makes sense by the way and explains why WordPress is so great. They always ensure that by default, an average user will understand what he sees. I like that. And anyway, plugins exists specifically for that reason: adding extra things you need! Read more…
Take a good look at our current site http://inboxinternational.com because very soon, you will never be able to see it again! That’s right! After months of efforts we are only a few hours away to reveal our brand new flagship web site! In french, we would say that we were suffering from the syndrome of the “coordonier mal chaussé”. A literal translation would look like “a shoemaker with very old shoes”!
Yes, I know it, our current site is old, it’s not that pretty, frankly, it’s far more Web 1.0 then 2.0 . But you see, our problem is the love of our client. We love them so much, that they are always more important then our very own web site. And it’s normal! Without clients, you don’t need a web site, as you’ll be running out of business very soon! Read more…
As I discussed in a recent post, I had to downgrade to a previous version of Subversion to make it compatible with Subclipse in EasyEclipse. Everything worked perfectly. However, the day after, Ubuntu proposed me some packages to upgrade. I accepted without thinking. Then, the problem I had with Subclipse got back… Of course! In the system upgrade I just did, Subversion package was upgraded to the latest version. Back to square one! Read more…
During the summer 2008, I read a book that changed the way I was developing and doing business. This book was Getting Real by 37signals. It was a quick and fabulous reading going straight to the point: getting things done! Cut the bullshit, stop wasting time on things that don’t matter, start wasting valuable resources on things that may or may not happen, focus on the important things that do make a difference and get the things done!
Then, few months ago, I read that they were preparing a new book which was to be called REWORK and to be released in March 2010. Well, I did not wait long and got my pre-ordered copy right away from Amazon! And now, I can’t wait to read it! Read more…
Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), I had a very annoying problem with a key feature of my development setup. For the last years, I have been using EasyEclipse for PHP. It’s a great Eclipse distribution already configured with some useful plugins depending on the language you are developing in. The one I use is obviously aimed at PHP developers. I was using EasyEclipse back when I was on Windows, and then on Ubuntu 8.04 and now on Ubuntu 9.10. But since this last change, I had problems with the SVN integration inside EasyEclipse (Subclipse). For some reasons, I lost all SVN features inside some projects, but not all.. Read more…
Since we started INBOX in 2003, we got to try many different tools to manage our projects and develop Web sites. We did a lot of trial and errors but we ultimately found the perfect setup for us: Basecamp and Springloops.
People reading this blog already know I’m a 37signals evangelist, so no surprises that we are using Basecamp at INBOX. But really, I’m more of a “what’s-the-best-tool-to-get-things-done” evangelist. What do we want to accomplish, what do we need ? Then let’s find the best tool to do it. This is why we use Basecamp and Springloops. And you know what the best thing is ? Springloops can talk to Basecamp! Read more…
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