A while back, I blogged about switching from a desktop email client to the Web version of GMail, or in my case, Google Apps. And after trying it, I could seriously never go back to a desktop client application.
Emails are at the very root of my professional life. It needs to be “in the cloud” and accessible 24/7 from anywhere in the world.
I don’t want to download them locally, update or troubleshoot a local application, and I don’t want a large overhead. And let’s face it; none of the email clients currently on the market can even remotely compete with GMail’s outstanding features like threaded emails, filters, labels and all those cools Labs features.
Unfortunately, this has also created a serious problem.
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Since a little bit more then a year, we were using the services of CVSDude (which has now become Codesion) for the SVN repositories and Trac instances of ImpressCMS. When we first created ImpressCMS, we were using SourceForge: for these things but at that time, SourceForge features were not meeting our needs. Plus, they did not have Trac. This explained our choice of using CVSDude.
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Since a few weeks, I’ve been seeing some weird borders in forms of some sites I’m using a lot, like Highrise and Freshbooks. At first, it only occurred in Highrise so I thought it might be a side effect of one of the updates 37signals are making every 2 weeks or so. I contacted them and they did not seem to have a clue what it was. Weird. If it was specific to Highrise, others would have reported it and 37signals would have fixed it. As it was not a biggie, I let it go.
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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…
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…
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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