Jorge Arango

Testing Campfire, the newest tool from the good folks at 37signals. Looks like a productivity booster for my team. However, I have a couple of questions/comments:

• How do we export our conversations if we decide to leave? Basecamp has this option, why not include it in Campfire? Update: Transcripts can be saved as HTML.
• Speaking of Basecamp, why isn’t Campfire integrated into Basecamp like Writeboard is? I suspect that it’s more a decision driven more by business than functionality concerns (“it’ll make more money rolled out as a separate product”). Campfire would be much more useful to us as part of Basecamp than on its own. Update: may be coming later this year.
• I believe I heard Jason Fried state in a podcast something along the lines of “all of our products will have a free base version.” This is not true of Campfire: there is a 30 day free trial, but after that you gotta pay. I don’t mind paying for a great tool, but it’s interesting that Campfire seems to be flouting the traditional 37s account plan structure.

Initial conclusion:We’re gonna test Campfire thru the 30 day free period. It may be useful enough that we add it permanently to our arsenal. However, the lack of an export feature and integration with Basecamp are real downers for us.

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Jeffery Zeldman, on the Web 2.0 hype:

To you who are toiling over an AJAX- and Ruby-powered social software product, good luck, God bless, and have fun. Remember that 20 other people are working on the same idea. So keep it simple, and ship it before they do, and maintain your sense of humor whether you get rich or go broke. Especially if you get rich. Nothing is more unsightly than a solemn multi-millionaire.

To you who feel like failures because you spent last year honing your web skills and serving clients, or running a business, or perhaps publishing content, you are special and lovely, so hold that pretty head high, and never let them see the tears.

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My team and I fall in the latter category, although I can’t say we feel like failures. That said, the temptation to “productize” the tools we’ve developed in-house is strong: the costs are minimal, and there are potential gains. Regardless of the hype, there will always be a place for solid products that serve a clear need and place the interests of users first.

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