basecamp

I like it when software-writers pay attention to the little things.

1. When changing credit card details in my Basecamp account, the system noticed that I also had a Highrise account and offered to update that at the same time. Thank you, 37signals.
2. When I installed the new version of OmniFocus, it pre-selected the option to delete the installer files once it was completed. Thank you.
3. When Miro TV updated itself to a new version, it re-started and continued playing the last video I watched from where we left off.

If I listed “Moments of Software Unjoy”, it’d go for pages…

In just two months, Twitter has become one of my core communication tools. Non-Twitter instant messaging and Facebook have all but disappeared from the mix. Here’s why.

Actually, before that… If you don’t use Twitter, or if you’ve taken a look but don’t “get it”, watch this 2.5-minute video Twitter in Plain English from those wacky Canadians Common Craft. Love their style.

OK, back?

Like the character in the video, I was sceptical about Twitter. Why do people need to know every little detail of my life? Who cares? I said as much to Perth’s Twitterati late last year. But then I actually tried using it — and I “got it” immediately.

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[Update 10 March, 1030 AEDT: I've written a follow-up article which, while bound to piss off a few people, explains precisely why I'm so concerned about this issue. There's also my first follow-up, written on the weekend.]

“Chalk and cheese” is how I’d describe two approaches to staff management I stumbled across this week. One treats staff as trusted contributors to a shared enterprise, the other as disposable work-droids from which you squeeze every last effort.

Jason Calacanis (pictured) has started various firms, including Mahalo, a “human-powered search engine”. (Don’t worry, I’d never heard of it either.) In How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips) there are some good tips — like outsourcing accounting and worrying more about good chairs than tables. But to paraphrase the bad ones:

• Hold meetings at lunchtime so people never get a mental break from work.
• Don’t provide phones so staff have to use their own.
• If someone shows signs of working hard, buy them a computer for home so they end up working nights and weekends too.
• Buy a good coffee machine — not because you’d like to give your employees good coffee, but to prevent them “wasting time” getting it from a nearby barista.

But that’s not the worst…

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I’m writing up my notes from today’s strategic planning session, and I was suddenly struck by the clarity of information design in Basecamp, our project communication tool. This really is one of the cleanest and most elegant user interfaces I’ve ever used.

Things of note about this screenshot:

• The content dominates the page, not some loudly-screaming logo or “web page header”.
• The hierarchy of the information is very clear. It’s immediately obvious which label is attached to which object, and what’s more important.
• It’s simple, easy on the eye — so you can work on this all day.

Which all makes it a fine example of Web 2.0 design.

Plus for some reason I really, really love the way the photos of the whiteboard make a lovely abstract pattern.