Pyro 1.04b for Campfire is out Jason 26 May 2006

10 comments Latest by Alan

Pyro, the browser built for Campfire, is now at version 1.04b. The update includes support for Growl (huh?) and various other bug fixes. Thanks to MK&C for the continued development. MK&C also develop Knox which lets you store your files in encrypted, secure vaults and/or backup your personal vaults to your iPod or you business vaults to the company server. It’s great Mac OS X software.

10 comments so far (Jump to latest)

matt Carey 26 May 06

Growl support is a great addition — I cannot do without it for giving me a heads-up on new emails, RSS feeds etc

jerome 26 May 06

Yeah growl is great, always awesome to see another application support this method of notification.

Andy 26 May 06

So do you guys use Pyro for your internal discussions, or do you still run Campfire over Safari?

eboss 26 May 06

Great !

Would you do that for Basecamp ?

I’m tired of having my BC window closed because of accidently quitting (or tab-closing) Safari or Camino.

matt ell 26 May 06

now if only Pyro could do multiple campfire domains at once…

Ken Rossi : CivilNetizen.com 26 May 06

Is there any ETA for a PC app? A Basecamp app window wouldn’t be bad either……

David Woodward 27 May 06

I tried out Growl for a few months. I deleted it because I found that it always interrupted the elusive “flow”. I really do not think that anybody needs to be notified “right now!” when they get a new e-mail. Especially by a semi-transparent window that pops up directly in front of what I’m working on. So in the end I prefer more discreet methods of notification, like a number on the Dock icon. So the Growl support doesn’t matter to me. But I updated to the newest version anyway. Its nice if Safari or Firefox (DeerPark) crashes, it doesn’t take out my Campfire session.

Puzzled Reader 31 May 06

So this is better than running and IRC client because why?

Wasn’t the main argument for using Campfire ‘it runs in a web browser, no extra software necessary’?

Enlightened Reader 10 Jun 06

Puzzled Reader — You didn’t get the memo. We switched the koolaid a couple weeks ago. Drink the new stuff now.

Alan 11 Jun 06

Campfire simple doesn’t need Pyro, AT ALL…

…IF…

…you are using it like a phone call*. Otherwise I think Pyro fills a small but fiercely painful gap in Campfire.

(*I’m on the phone, I can lean away from the handset to grab a pen (5 seconds), no worries or I can explain I need to answer the door (60 seconds), again, no worries).

But *I* use (or would *like* to) Campfire differently for the great majority of my Campfire-time. I want to type some stuff even when someone is not there, then read some stuff when they got around to checking and typing back at me.

Ok, no worries, Campfire’s great at this insomuch as it maintains content brilliantly (unlike usual IM chat clients).

BUT. I have Campfire uses that are really pretty low frequency, yet important and I hate having to make myself go visit each campfire room to see if there is content there for me to comment on. And as currently a Windows user, Pyro is not there to help me.

Campfire should include either RSS monitorability (did I make that word up?) or (heaven-forbid this suggestion ;-) email-alerts to new content.

I think the existence of Pyro is evidence that this need is real.

I’ve raised this issue, by email, with some of the 37ers and quite rightly they defended the usual use of Campfire as not needing alerts as one is usually using it interactively and if you’re not, surely you should use email etc. But this is not the case if one is part of a loosely coupled social or work team and each person might drop in at any time to scribble some stuff. In that scenario, large tracts of the campfire scrollable content are ‘X entered the room’, left, ‘Y entered the room’, left, etc, etc as people have to go check if there’s stuff to read.

Pyro is great for Mac folks. My comments here are, I am sure, a lot less pressing(!) than adding the calendar to Backpack, but, I suspect that I am part of minority of users who would like this facility and so politely ask that it be considered. Thanks in advance.