2011 Year-End Campfire Feature Blowout! Dec 16 2011
21 comments Latest by MartinD
All features must ship! There’s been some improvements to your 2011 Campfire lately, and it’s time you came on down and tried them out.
Per-Room Permissions

First up, we’ve added per-room permissions settings. Previously, permissions could only be changed on a specific person, and it was tedious to click around to each person once you added a room. Now, right after a room is added, you can immediately change who has access to it in one place.
Tons of Emoji

We’ve got some hot new imports: More emoji. “More” is an understatement. How about, 495 emoji? There’s an an entire cheat-sheet so you can educate yourself on proper Emoji usage as well.
New Sounds

There’s also been a few new sounds added lately. Try out ”/play secret”, ”/play tada”, ”/play nyan” at some point!
Animated GIF Thumbnails

One of my favorite parts of Campfire is how it plays GIFs. Perhaps this isn’t the most productive way to communicate, but it sure is awesome. If you upload a GIF to Campfire now, it will resize and animate the thumbnail as well. Pretend the above image is animated, I’m only good at finding GIFs, not making them.
We’re in Campfire every day at 37signals, and we love making little improvements to make your experience better. Hopefully these brighten up your Friday!
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21 comments so far
Andrew 16 Dec 11
oh great.. Emojis
Anonymous Coward 16 Dec 11
Oh Shit, really. Emojis.
Let the clutter in my chatrooms begin.
Adam 16 Dec 11
I like Campfire a lot, but couldn’t get our Windows team members on board with it because there was no good Windows client. Has anyone created a decent one yet? Flare was just way too buggy.
I, and my fellow Mac users, used Propane and were very happy with it.
@ggwicz 16 Dec 11
/play greatjob
Oleg 16 Dec 11
/play nyan is too damn short. Needs to be at least 5 minutes.
Rails Guru 16 Dec 11
This is great, but I am still waiting for the ability to do…
/play whoops
and hear “Whoops!” in a Danish accent like at the end of this video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=528BCJiRkks
Ben Tsai 16 Dec 11
@Adam our team uses Windows, and many of us use the kindling extension for chrome. In particular, it gives you desktop notifications.
Pascal Laliberté 16 Dec 11
Kitchen?
Does that mean you clever folks have appliances in the kitchen broadcasting to Campfire?
Adam 16 Dec 11
@Ben – That’s awesome. We will give it a try.
JM 16 Dec 11
:metal:
Hristo 16 Dec 11
Good one, Nick. I first blinked heavily and then hit my monitor laughing.
Matt 16 Dec 11
I wish Campfire would tell when someone is typing and who it is.
Sikachu! 17 Dec 11
And I have told you that, after Nick joined 37Signals, Campfire will never be the same again.
What’s next, Nick?
Jonathan 17 Dec 11
“One of my favorite parts of Campfire is how it plays GIFs.”
Um, really? Really? How 1990s!
Greg 17 Dec 11
Campfire feels so bloated and full of silly features. I was really hoping for something nice and simple that just gets the job done.
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JD 19 Dec 11
Greg, these features are completely optional.
We use Campfire to get work done every day at 37signals. Campfire is the lifeline of our company since many on our team work outside of Chicago. It allows us to feel like we’re working just a few desks over.
Campfire is also our watercooler. We’re human, and we like to have fun while working every now and then. We figured our customers like to have fun as well. That’s who this is for. If you don’t want to use emojis or animated gifts then you don’t have to.
Kurt 19 Dec 11
+1 for “Campfire telling when someone is typing and who it is”. This is the number one thing my students miss when we use Campfire for realtime Q&A sessions.
Hindi Shayari 19 Dec 11
I think such kinds of features should be optional. You can not use those features with restrictions.
Gerard Kelly 20 Dec 11
@JD Don’t forget: simply by offering a user the option of these features complicates things. I’m increasingly finding that the best software is one that gets the job done whilst offering the fewest options.
MartinD 20 Dec 11
@Gerard – spot on. Even more significant if that I am finding that I can, in most cases, do with fewer options than I think I need. KISS is most definitely the best way to approach software IMHO . I trust Basecamp Next (or whatever it’s called) is a lighter, faster, simpler and better integrated product….and not a feature rich landfill.
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