37 Signals: Highrise

Yesterday I wrote about Basecamp and how I am using that in property management, so now I want to talk about Highrise, a CRM web app that my company uses as well. We began using this for the same reasons as basecamp, we need a collaborative workspace for contact management.

One of the more important parts of what we do is logging our interactions, and this makes that much easier. I can leave notes on each contact that are shown by dates, create tasks off of those, and forward emails to those contacts. It is all a pretty sweet system.

There is a lack of integration between Basecamp and Highrise that really needs to be addressed, but it is not that big of a deal right now. I rarely use the email forwarding feature, and I really do not know why. I guess I have not made it part of my routine yet.

37 Signals: Basecamp

I recently decided to use Basecamp with my company, and though you can go to their forums and read about how people are using Basecamp I thought that I would talk about it hear briefly.

This (for those who do not know) is a project management online application, with collaboration features (less complicated than I made it sound). Before you post a comment telling me of free options and the like, I tried them, they did not fit my needs as well as this does.

We decided on this, not because we are “web workers” or even work from home. We all are in the same office with a couple of exceptions. We are a property management company, and we really on a group task list. We use a mix of Macs and PCs and must access task lists on both. We have no need for shared calendars, but milestones, notes and tasks are a must.

Send file via BT, shortcut.

A worthy link from Michel’s Exhaus Blog.

shortcut is cmd + shift + B for those who don’t want to link over.

1080i Camcorder & Macbook Pro

This past weekend I spent my time enjoying Las Vegas, for my older sisters wedding. It was a great time had by all. My good friend went down with me for the task of videotaping the wedding as well as the events leading up to it and after it. A documentary of sorts.

I knew a few of things going into this:

1. My Friend would not bring his Mac.
2. He would be using my Sisters camera.
3. I would need to download all video to my Mac before leaving Vegas.

Also the video camera in question was a Canon 1080i HD DV camcorder (or something along those lines), very nice, and very high quality. Through the entire weekend my friend shot roughly 150 minutes of HD video.

Long Break

It has been spotty posting as of late, I apologize for that. I am looking to get things going once again. I have a bunch of software to share with with, some tips, and my usual analysis as well.

I am going to try to resume the one post per day, if there is anything you would like to see please email me.

Regarding the OS X Delay.

I am really bummed. I was looking forward to this, and the iPhone, would have been an awesome month. Now sadly it will be just a sweet month. This is what you get when you announce a date rather than just surprising people.

For a good analysis read Daring Fireball’s piece.

Vista: an Annoyance

Well so far nothing about MS Vista has annoyed me to much (putting aside the fact that Windows in general annoys me) until recently I encountered how it “sleeps” or goes into “standby” in Windows speak. What bugs me is how horribly slow this process is.

Now before I had Macs I never used this feature of Windows, even with my Laptops. I always used Hibernate or Turn Off. None of this Standby crap. Main reason being I always heard it was crap. Well I have Vista on my Mac Pro, not a slow machine by any standard. It is on a SATA II 7200rpm HD.

The other day I was not feeling well, and rather than restart back to OS X like I normally do, I left Windows going while I took a nap. (again this is Boot Camp not Parallels). When I woke up I walked over to the machine and the screen was off.

Joost

I just got me beta copy of Joost today I have played with it a little. I am going to post up a full review when I have spent more time with it, but in the 30 minutes that I played with it during lunch today I have have discovered this:

-Very nice interface, clean front row style, I like it.
-Choppy playback, I have yet to have smooth playback.
-Content is varied, but lacks depth. ONly 25 channels, something for everyone.
-Fast install, but slow operation, GUI feels sluggish even on my Mac Pro!

That is it for now, stayed tuned for a more full featured review.