December 4th Basecamp Classic, Campfire and Highrise Outage
Basic Explanation Some background On Dec. 4 around 5:30 p.m. CT, a number of our sites began throwing errors and were basically unusable. Specifically, Basecamp Classic was briefly impacted as it was very slow. Campfire users experienced elevated errors and transcripts were not updated for quite some time. Highrise was the most significantly impacted: For two hours every page view produced an erro
Why I loved building Basecamp for iPhone in RubyMotion
It’s been over 8 months since our workplace experiment last July, when I got an entire month to buckle down and make an iPhone app. Last Friday, Basecamp landed in the App store. It’s been a long journey of simulator runs, device testing, and app crashes, but I’m convinced that I wouldn’t have been able to ship an iPhone app at all without RubyMotion. I’ve tried to jump into mobile development a f
Testing like the TSA
When developers first discover the wonders of test-driven development, it’s like gaining entrance to a new and better world with less stress and insecurity. It truly is a wonderful experience well worth celebrating. But internalizing the benefits of testing is only the first step to enlightenment. Knowing what not to test is the harder part of the lesson. While as a beginner you shouldn’t worry mu
Humans need to know why
When I taught programming at Sun (RIP), we called it the Why-Who Cares-So What? rule (a variation on the Five Why’s). You imagine the most skeptical coder challenging you after you describe a feature, approach, API, etc. but they don’t just stop with the first “why”. You answer it, and then they ask, “Who Cares?”, and when you answer THAT, they ask, “so what?”. When you have finished imagining thi
Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: GitHub
Below: Q&A with Chris Wanstrath, CEO and Co-Founder of GitHub. This is part of our “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud” series which profiles companies that have $1MM+ in revenues, didn’t take VC, and are profitable. Chris and Tom from GitHub have also answered reader questions in the comments section of this post. What does your company do? We offer public and private source code hosting to compan
Setting up a new machine for Ruby development
It used to be a jarring experience to setup a new machine for development, but progress has paved the dirt road into a silky smooth autobahn. These are the tools we use today: Homebrew: Remember how painful it used to be to get imagemagick installed? Now it takes about a minute. “brew install imagemagick”. Same story for git and other Linux dependencies. rbenv/ruby-build: We have some apps running
Exit interview: Jaiku's Jyri Engeström
“Jaiku was not much more than a year old when we were acquired. It was like hitching a ride on a firecracker!” says Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku. “I poured my heart and soul into designing the service with our small team,” he says of the microblogging tool similar to Twitter. “As a sociologist I was convinced microblogging had the power to change society (see Egypt) — and I thought we would
"Designing with Forces" – How to apply Christopher Alexander in everyday work – Signal v. Noise
A couple weeks ago I gave a talk at the MFA in Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. The video for the talk and Q&A session is online now. When Liz Danzico invited me to speak at the SVA, I thought it would fit the university setting to share some theory behind our design process at 37signals. One book that heavily influenced my approach to design is Christopher Alexander
Basecamp Launches (Signal vs. Noise)
37signals Mailing List Subscribe to our free newsletter and receive updates on 37signals' latest projects, research, announcements, and more (about one email per month). 05 Feb 2004 by Jason Fried Basecamp has launched!. Check out the site for a tour of the app w/ screenshots, example uses, and training info (including free Chicago workshops). And it’s free for 1 project plus a 30 day free trial f
Comparing apples and oranges in foreign countries
The US cover of Freakonomics is a play on the old “comparing apples to oranges” phrase: Well, it looks like comparing apples and oranges is a strange concept in many places. Check out the different analogies used on the cover (green egg yolks, banana corn, three headed scissors, etc.) from editions in foreign countries: (L to R: Chinese, Denmark, Estonia) (L to R: Indonesia, Norway, Hungary)
PRESS RELEASE: 37SIGNALS VALUATION TOPS $100 BILLION AFTER BOLD VC INVESTMENT
CHICAGO—September 24, 2009—37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1. Founder Jason Fried informed his employees about the new deal at a recent company-wide meeting. The financing round was led by Yardstick Capital and Institutionalized Venture Partners. In order to increase the value
Design Decisions: New signup form
Yesterday we launched the redesign of the signup form used by Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire. This is one of the last phases of the marketing site redesign project we started earlier this year. The new signup form design pulls from the look, feel, and language of the new marketing sites. The previous form, which pulled more from the previous generation’s site design, was dated and too
Open Source Icons
Over the past few months I’ve developed some icons for use on our marketing sites and newsletters. A few of these icons have made it into production. Some are simple and some are detailed. Most haven’t seen the light of day just because they weren’t a right fit for what we were trying to communicate at the time. I want to release the artwork for these icons as open source. They’re free for you to
StressEraser and SleepTracker: Tech that can make your life better - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
The method still works
While I might use some different language today, this technique I posted in 2004 (inspired by Alexander) is still a major help when I’m designing a UI with many elements to juggle. The reason I come back to it is that it helps me design with language first instead of empty templates. Too often a design starts top-down with empty content areas (maybe a main column and a sidebar) and then we fill th
Learning from failure is overrated
You’ve heard it over and over: “Learn from your mistakes.” Or maybe you’ve heard “fail early and often.” There are plenty of catchy quotes about failure. Most of them end with a clever little twist that makes it sound like it’s a good thing. Is it? I don’t understand the cultural fascination with failure being the source of great lessons to be learned. What did you learn? You learned what didn’t w
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