New Highrise features: Quickcard, rename tags, bulk import delete, and more

Last night we pushed a few major improvements and new features for Highrise:

Quickcard

You'll now see a little contact card icon next to a person's name in the task list (tasks tab or the Dashboard). Hovering over that icon will reveal that person's contact information. You used to have to go to someone's page to see their contact info. Now you can just hover over the little card without having to leave the current screen you're on. We may implement the Quickcard feature in other places as well, but we thought starting with the task list would be a first good step.

Bulk import delete

You can now delete your last import. Just click the Contacts tab and look for the "Last Imported" filter. Click that and you'll see everyone from the last import you performed. A single click removes everyone. This is great for botched imports or for general mistakes that can happen when you import a large number of people. NOTE: You'll only see this link for future imports -- an import you made before this feature was launched will not be visible.

Rename a tag

This was a top request. You can now rename a tag. Click any tag then click the red "Rename tag" link in the blue header on the tag page. You can then rename the tag. The new tag will be applied to everyone who had the old tag.

Add contacts to a case without having to write a note about them

You can now add someone (or a company) to a case even if you didn't write a note about them. Just go into a case. click the "Add/remove" link in the "Contacts in this case" sidebar section. You can then search through your contacts and add someone. You can also remove them later if you'd like.

We really hope you like the Highrise improvements and new features. Thanks for your continued support!

Campfire keeps Eli Duke in touch with friends/family while in Antarctica

We were intrigued by Eli Duke's recent comment about Campfire at Signal vs. Noise: "Get this. I’m living (and working) in Antarctica right now, and I’ve been using Campfire to chat with my friends and family back home. I set up a time and people just show up and come and go and we have a great time with it."

So we decided to follow up with Eli to 1) learn some more about how he uses Campfire to stay in touch and 2) find out what on earth he's doing at the bottom of the world.

What are you doing in Antarctica?
I'm washing dishes for the National Science Foundation at McMurdo Station on Ross Island. I'm at the bottom of the barrel (and the world) and loving it! I'll be here for about 5 months (Oct - Feb) for the entire Antarctic Summer.

How do you use Campfire to chat with friends/family?
I set up an "Antarctica" chat room, turned Guest Access "on", and then sent the chat room URL to all my friends and family along with my chatting schedule (in 4 different time zones). For instance:

McMurdo Station, Antarctica -> Tuesday, 7am - 10am
West Coast, USA -> Monday, 10am - 1pm
East Coast, USA -> Monday, 1pm - 4pm
Granada, Spain -> Monday, 7pm - 10pm

Half my family and friends live on the West Coast, the other half live in the Midwest, and my sister is studying in Spain right now. It was so cool to be able to have a single meeting place for all of us. At one point 3 separate continents were represented in one chat room: I had just woken up, my friend in Indianapolis was eating lunch, and my sister in Spain was getting ready for bed.

What's better about Campfire than other options (IM, etc.)?
First and foremost, it is completely idiot proof and SO easy to use. I can't stress that enough. When people (mainly my parents) clicked on the URL for the chat room, all they had to do was type in their name and click "Sign In". That's it! They didn't have to download anything, they didn't have to learn how to use new software, they just typed in their name, clicked one button, and they were ready to chat.

Secondly, Guest Access! As long as that is "on", the chat room is there and it's always open. Each week when I sign in I see that lots of people have stopped by even when they knew I wouldn't be there just to leave me a message. Also, people frequently stay in the chat room after I leave and continue chatting without me.

Any tips or tricks for other Campfire customers?
I get a lot of repeat questions: what's it like down there? is it cold? have you seen any penguins? I uploaded a few basics pictures that answer some of those questions, and the links to those pictures stay in side bar at all times. So, whenever I get a repeat question, I just click and drag the link over to the text box and click enter. The picture pops up inline and it doesn't have to be uploaded again. Super duper simple.

Flare: A site-specific browser for Windows/Campfire customers

Windows users: You can now download Flare 0.4, the first self-updating, stable release of Flare, the site-specific browser for Campfire. Flare lets you stay logged into a room in your Campfire account and notifies you of any new messages.

Flare's features:

• Stay logged into your favourite Campfire room in the background - even between reboots.
• Quickly switch between open rooms using Ctrl + the room number
• Be notified of new messages with a preview.
• Tray icon changes colour to show new messages have arrived (in case you miss the preview)
• Request your password through the app if you've lost it.
• Run multiple copies of Flare keeping you logged into many different rooms at once.

When new messages, pastes, files or users arrive you'll be notified with a semi-transparent message preview...

...and if you miss the preview, Flare's icon will glow orange until you next view the window.

Update: Looks like the server for Flare is down at the moment.

Are you also reading Signal vs. Noise?

You already know this Product Blog is the place to turn for news on 37signals products. But did you also know that Signal vs. Noise, our company blog, serves up a daily dose of our thoughts on design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and lots more? It was recently ranked #1 at a list of the top 100 user-centered blogs. Grab the RSS feed and see why over 78,000 people have already subscribed.

Element Fusion uses Basecamp to manage its line of web-based products and client projects

Tim Wall, Director of Product Marketing for Element Fusion, says, "Basecamp is truly at the center of our business operations." He sent us a note describing how the company uses Basecamp:

1) New projects - As new business comes in, we setup these projects in basecamp and use the system to initiate communication with our new clients. We post milestones, communicate via messages, post design comps for review ... etc. At any given time we have between 50-100 of these active new projects at work within Basecamp.

2) Ongoing services - Many of our clients continue to utilize our services beyond an initial project. In this situation, the client is able to initiate communication through Basecamp. We maintain over 300 open projects for ongoing services.

3) Internal management - We have two dedicated project managers and a team of ten developers. We use basecamp to schedule all milestones, track all time, and facilitate all communication internally.

4) Product development - In addition to professional services, we also develop a line of web-based products. This is where Basecamp really helps us

We followed up with Tim to find out more...

--

How do you use the product and why do you like it?
We love Basecamp because it does exactly what we need it to do without all of the bloat of other software. Also, it has proven to be robust enough to handle the growing needs of our business even as we maintain a large project load.

We run between 50-100 new projects at any given time and use the system to initiate communication with our clients, track milestones, and present design comps and other work for approval. We also maintain over 300 ongoing services projects in which our clients are able to initiate communication with us whenever they have need of our services.

Our two dedicated project managers and ten developers utilize Basecamp extensively to communicate, track milestones and track time for professional services. Plus, we also develop a line of web-based products and Basecamp really helps us keep our eye on the bottom line as we have developers working on both billable client time and internal products time.

Which features do you use most?
The critical features to our business are messages (including attaching files to messages), milestones, and time-tracking. We couldn't exist without them.

What did you use before and why did you switch?
We used the phone and email for communication, but it wasn't centralized or team-based, it was just one to one. We used Excel to track projects and milestones, and we used a custom app we built for time-tracking.

Without a doubt, the primary reason we switched was to enable team-based, centralized communication. This revolutionized our process.

Get specific: Tell us a story about a project or situation where the product helped you out.
One unexpected way Basecamp has helped us has been in front-end sales. Our sales team demonstrates our "project portal" to prospective clients during the sales process and it has really turned out to be a major selling point. Clients are very impressed with the system which reinforces our commitment to communication and customer service. So, Basecamp adds practical value to our company which, in turn, drives revenue to our business.

If anyone out there has not considered using Basecamp as a selling point for their services, we highly recommend it.

Element Fusion Project Portal (click for larger version)

One year in Basecamp with Seventh Degree and Full Sail

Basecamp customers Seventh Degree, a web consultancy based in Orlando, recently posted a quick video that shows one year worth of messages for a project:

We've used Basecamp to manage the Online Classes project for Full Sail. The collaboration has been awesome between the IT, Education, Curriculum departments and many others. The video below shows about a year of use of the messages tab of the LMS Development project, one of over a dozen other projects related to this same effort.

Watch the video here.

Downtime explanation

At around 7:40pm CST November 12, our products, forums, and email support systems went offline. The downtime lasted approximately 2.5 hours. The good news: No data was lost.

We apologize for the downtime

We're deeply sorry for the downtime. We understand you rely on us to be reliable. We apologize for letting you down on this occasion. We will be reevaluating our disaster preparedness in response to this situation.

Here's what happened

At about 6pm CST, Rackspace, our primary data center provider, experienced a significant "power event" which ultimately included a dual cooling system failure and multiple transformer shutdown.

Here's the chain of events as reported by Rackspace:

1. At approximately 6pm CST a traffic accident caused damage to a power transformer which provides utility power to the Rackspace data center in Dallas, TX.

2. Power automatically switched over to backup generators without disrupting service for any customers.

3. When generator power was established two chillers within the data center failed to start back up.

4. Utility power was re-established through a secondary utility source.

5. As a result of temporary data center temperature increases, Rackspace proactively shutdown a number of customer servers to protect them from overheating around 7:40pm CST.

6. As of 8:45pm CST the chillers were back up and running and we are operating on generator power throughout the data center. Servers are being powered back up as the temperature drops.

Our servers began being restored at approximately 10:15pm CST.

Thanks for hanging in there

Will be using this situation as both a wake-up call and a learning experience. While our systems are engineered to chug through major failure, this "perfect storm" chain of events beat both our set-up and our data center's sophisticated back-up systems. We will work hard to further diversify our systems in order to make any future downtime event like this even more rare.

We apologize for any inconvenience this downtime caused your business. If you feel you were significantly impacted by this downtime, please send an email to support and we'll credit you for the downtime.

Inspiration for customizing the colors on your Basecamp account

It's easy to customize the colors on your Basecamp account. Just click on the "Settings" tab and then click the "Color scheme" link in the light blue bar at the top of the page. There are some presets that you can choose from or you can select "Custom" and create your own palette (your company's colors perhaps?).

If you're looking for some color inspiration, check out COLOURlovers.com which breaks down interesting palettes by HTML color codes (you can also download as a palette for Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.). You can view the site's top palettes of the month. Color Inspiration from the Masters of Painting features palettes from Da Vinci, Picasso, Monet, etc. Other idea starters: Colors of the Top 20 Magazine Covers, Autumn, and Color in Science: Microscopic Photographs.

Related: Color Palette Generator lets you enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image. DigitalColor Meter, a built-in utility in Mac OS X, lets you identify the HTML colors of any image or screenshot on your computer. Happy color hunting!

Highrise refinements and improvements

Last night we pushed a series of refinements and improvements to Highrise we think you’ll like. They're little things, but they make a big difference.

1. The daily digest email that lists your tasks for the day now includes contact information. So, if you have a task about John Doe, John Doe’s contact information will be included in the email as well. This means you can print out your daily task email and have your tasks and all related contact information on a single page.

2. We’ve added a “Skype” option to the phone number data type. Skype numbers are automatically linked up in the contact information sidebar. Clicking a Skype number will dial the number if you have Skype installed on your computer.

3. You can now enter the “About this person” text as part of the new person creation process. You’ll see the field when you click the “Add contact information” link.

4. You can reveal more of the “About this person” text in the sidebar without having to go to a separate page. Just click the “Read more” link and 600 characters will be revealed. If there’s more text after that, clicking “Read more” again will take you to the complete text on another page.

We hope you find these tweaks useful. We're working on some more stuff we think you’ll like. Stay tuned and thanks again for your continued support.

Metafilter thread on "stable, private chat rooms" points to Campfire

In Stable, private chat rooms..., a Metafilter poster asks for help...

Let's say I have a small group of people -- 10 and under -- and I want to provide a stable, private chat room that participants can enter and exit at will. Let's further say that I would want whatever software that provides this to account for different technical skills (no command-prompts) and when everyone leaves the room it isn't taken down needing to be recreated again in the future? Proprietary software is fine. For Profit software is fine. (Free is better!! ;-)

The comments come pouring in: "How about Campfire?...seconding campfire...Campfire sounds exactly what you want...Campfire, absolutely...Campfire was my first thought...etc."

If the scenario described above sounds familiar, then check out Campfire.