Product Blog update: Fluid & 37signals, Jott & Backpack, YouTube & Campfire, etc. Jun 27
16 comments Latest by Jacob
Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:
Backpack
CSS tip for customizing the appearance of Backpack pages
“You may sometimes wish you could modify the text on a page to fit a little more information on it. I have a page where I collect code snippets and terminal commands and the default font seems a bit large with so much content. Turns out there’s an easy solution to this: simply add a small amount of CSS to the page in the form of a note and you can change the formatting to meet your needs.”
Use Jott to transcribe a voice message and post it to your Backpack homepage
Jott converts your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments. You can even use it to transcribe a voice message and post it to your Backpack homepage.
Highrise
New Highrise Feature: Better contact filtering
We recently launched an improved contact filter in Highrise:
Campfire
YouTube clips in Campfire
Fun newish feature in Campfire: Post the URL to a YouTube clip into your chat and Campfire will automatically convert it so a still frame from the video shows up:
Multiple products
[Case Study] Trigger brings Los Angeles and Shanghai offices together with 37signals products
“The best feature of Highrise, though, is the little line that appears after I’ve added a note, reminding me to add a follow-up task. I can’t think of how many times that’s prompted me to set a reminder for myself or schedule a follow-up with a client. When we’re busy, it’s so easy to forget to set a ‘next action’ that having it built-in is a lifesaver.”
How to use Fluid to “create a kick ass intranet app using 37signals”
“Create a Kick Ass Intranet App using 37signals” explains how to use Open Bar and Fluid to create “a stylish intranet app that lives in your dock, complete with all of your 37signals services.”
Got a web design project in mind? Find a web designer on Haystack. Browse by visual style, portfolio, budget, and geographic location.
Over 1 million people use 37signals' simple web-based software to collaborate on projects, track contacts, and organize their business with an intranet.
16 comments so far
Brandon Durham 27 Jun 08
[Case Study] Trigger brings Los Angeles and Shanghai offices together with 37signals product = “Sorry, the page you are trying to view is not here.”
Aaron Blohowiak 27 Jun 08
the Fluid link is also borked.
Joey 27 Jun 08
The Fluid “kick ass intranet app” link is broken, but here’s the article:
http://vocino.com/productivity/create-a-kick-ass-intranet-app-using-37signals/687/
Finally solved a problem I had with using OpenID to login.
Colin Devroe 27 Jun 08
By the way, team 37s, if you are using oEmbed for your YouTube implementation (which I think is great) you might be happy to know that Viddler also supports oEmbed and so this same functionality could be used for Viddler videos as well.
http://wiki.developers.viddler.com/index.php/OEMBED
Might be a pretty powerful way for teams to share screencasts or other videos between themselves within Campfire, Basecamp, etc.
Andrew Cornett 27 Jun 08
Thanks Joey!
ML 27 Jun 08
Links all working fine now. Thanks for the heads up.
Paul Wren 27 Jun 08
As of earlier this week, Jott had removed the BackPack link as an option on their website. I had already registered the link, and I can still send todo items to my Backpack home page, but I’ve been telling friends how cool this is, and they can’t sign up.
Any idea why Jott has removed the BackPack Link???
Peter Coopr 27 Jun 08
Why not just use the YouTube embed code? That way you can play it directly in the flow, you get the frame for free, and almost no development time would have been required. Interested in the motivation for this adjustment when the “getting real” way would have been quite a bit easier.
JF 27 Jun 08
Peter, embed code would not have been easier or better.
Embedding a video into a moving chat log is not the best way to watch a video. An active chat can move the video off the screen in 30 seconds—then you are chasing a moving picture up the screen.
It’s best to play a video in a fixed screen.
Peter Cooper 28 Jun 08
Thanks. A reasonable explanation! I guess not all chats move at a glacial pace and not all videos are short :) That said, if you click on the video once it starts playing, it takes you to the YouTube page in a separate tab.
Geoff 28 Jun 08
Cool YouTube feature, but you are using an old screenshot of the player controls. Compare your screenshot with any of the videos on the YouTube site (Like this one: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbxA8a_M_s)
Another suggestion would be to make the video image smaller, since you aren’t going to link off the page anyway, why take up so much space? (and while we’re at it, why have the controls there in the first place if they don’t work? Wouldn’t a simple ‘play’ button or link make more sense? Then it would be more compatible with other video sites as well as you could reuse the play button/link for any video, not just YouTube… but I digress…)
An implementation of ‘YouTube videos while chatting’ that I’m a fan of is the Gchat one – if you send a user a link to a YouTube video in a Gchat window (while in Gmail) you’ll see the video thumbnail with two links: One to play the video, which pops it up in a small player that is attached but above the current chat window (so it doesn’t move), and one that’s a link to the video’s page on YouTube.
Full disclosure: I work for YouTube/Google, so may be a little biased.
Matt 29 Jun 08
The Obama plug is sad.
Griff 30 Jun 08
Any word on Paul’s question about Jott and backpack? I have an account with both and would love to jott to my backpack, but I can’t enable the function in jott.
JF 30 Jun 08
Paul/Griff: I would recommend you get in touch with Jott to see why they pulled the page. We don’t have a formal relationship with them so I don’t have the answer.
Jacob 02 Jul 08
Is there any way to “set” the contact filter method as a default? Everytime I click on the contacts tab, i get a listing of both “people and companies”. This makes my list of contacts 2x longer. Is there a way to set a default filter to view the contacts list??
Jacob 02 Jul 08
Sorry, that last post about the ‘contact filter method’ pertains to Highrise.
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