37signals' product blog announces features, changes, and news for Basecamp, Campfire, and their other products.
HN links it for product announcements, including the OpenID retirement post, which a commenter calls a well-written explanation of why to avoid OpenID.
Interestingly enough, I was thinking about how I would do a case study this morning and here's what I came up with:
* Tell a story. This would be in the form of an interview. Basic questions from my company and let the business do most of the talking. Get to the heart of how the person uses my product.
* Use basic data and charts.
- Show how the bottom line increased
- Show how productivity increased with the use of my product
- Show how my product improved conversion
* Let the person pitch themselves a little bit.
The best case studies are done by 37signals. I actually enjoy reading them and peeking into how other companies work. For example: http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2010/05/make-sport-fun-uses-basecamp-todo-list-templates-to-assign-tasks-to-freelancers.html
Twitter, Facebook, or even GitHub authentication is certainly de rigeur, but I must admit I thought OpenID had fallen off the radar and I haven't seen any interesting new projects supporting it lately. Even 37signals gave up on it mostly due to lack of use: http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2011/01/well-be-retiring-our-support-of-openid-on-may-1.html
Nothing against OpenID, per se, but it doesn't feel like it has taken off. Or maybe the big sites that are using it are just getting on with it AOK :-)
What's the likelyhood that an IE 6 users is also an early-adopting web-app user? I think it's very low, and certainly doesn't seem to bother 37signals.
http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2008/07/basecamp-phasin.html
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1072-apples-mobileme-drops-support-for-ie-6
The big issue I see is time vs. return. In most cases when you're a small team and trying to move fast, I believe the decision comes down to support IE6 or push iterations faster. I pick the latter.
I love the idea of that change history for each 37signals app.
We're trying to be very open with our own product, but often very small fixes or changes don't make sense as an announcement on the blog.
Does anyone know where Basecamp links to this change history page? The only link to it so far I can find is from their blog: http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2009/10/basecamp-and-highrise-change-history-pages.html
37signals also announced drag and drop file upload today, for their Campfire app (web-based chat), but it supports Safari in addition to Chrome and Firefox (3.5, instead of 3.6 as required by Google):
http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2010/04/new-in-campfire-drag-and-drop-uploading.html
Does anyone have an idea as to how 37signals solved it differently, with more browser support?
We have a whole weblog dedicated to talking about our product and calling out new feature launches: http://productblog.37signals.com/
Most people aren't that interested in just reading an infomercial, though. Lots of people are apparently interested in reading opinions and discussions about industry topics. Be they VC funding or whatever.