A cool tip on adding footnotes to to-do list items in Backpack.

Quoted: News, talk, opinions, tips and tricks about the entire 37signals product line. All in one place.

Quoted: Backpack and GTD

I use Backpack as a personal organizer and it appears to be getting a new refresh from the boys at 37Signals soon. I love how they preview their releases and gather feedback via their blog. I'd love to vet our product here at Amazon similarly.

The month's subscriber (not newsstand edition) has an article profiling 37signals. This is the link to the online version.

Quoted: 37signals isn't shy about dispensing one thing without charge: advice to small-business owners. On the company blog, Signal vs. Noise, Fried shares what he's learned about the art of streamlined teamwork with more than 65,000 readers. First, kill all your meetings; they waste employees' time. "Interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity," he says. "We stay away from each other as much as we can to get more stuff done." Use asynchronous communication and software instead to exchange information, ideas and solutions. Next, dump half your projects to focus on the core of your business. Too much time and effort are wasted on second-tier objectives. Third, let your employees decide when and where to work so they can be both efficient and happy. As long as their fingers are near a keyboard, they could as easily be in Caldwell, Idaho, as in Chicago.

37Signals released their new online contact management application today. Looks pretty nifty although a bit expensive for personal use.

Quoted: Highrise is a shared contact manager that helps you keep track of who you talked to, what was said, and what to do next.

I like the UI that 37signals has used to solve the "permissions problem" - AKA how do I let people know they have infinite permissions selections within a limited UI.

37signals takes a look at Amazon's design and generally comes away favorable (while still remaining critical). The discussion thread is actually quite high quality as well. This is all useful as I have been working on a large navigation project for Amazon since I came back.

Apple put out a small promo video featuring the gents at 37signals.

Quoted: Video about Macs for computer science and software development

An interesting post on keepin true to your initial user market rathert than "growing up" with them. Sometimes increasing feature-sets close you off to new users...