Hidden gems of the interweb

37 Signals

Having focused on the two big players in the market, there are still plenty more developers and businesses which offer equally useful or innovative services. Whilst a lot of them eventually get bought up by larger companies, there are still a few groups carrying the torch for the ‘indie web developers’ .

37 Signals is a small Chicago-based web-development team who has put together a group of applications targeted mainly towards businesses and online collaboration. Fees for the services range from free to $149 per month, with the company aiming to offer lighter software which won’t crash your browser like an oversized PDF every time you run it. Although it offers 5 different online applications at present, I will endeavour into a couple of them for now…

Writeboard is a very simple shareable text-editor application, aimed at allowing a group of users to collaborate ideas and notes onto one easily accessible document. Users can create a new board with simply an email address and a password they’re happy to share with other users. The ‘writeboard’ itself is very basic in design, and really sticks to the whole ‘bloat-free’ initiative of the 37 Signals products.

Formatting options are currently limited to the usual bold, italic, headers, lists/bullets and links options, although users can add images as well. As well as being able to edit the board freely, you can also refer to previous versions of the document if you perhaps need to check some information you’d previously deleted, or someone happens to sabotage your board, and you also have the option of exporting the file as a .txt or .html file.

Although Writeboard is an incredibly basic tool, I can see it having some purpose with a group of people who want to share ideas or notes on a particular project and don’t want to have to set up a server-based application or service to share simple notes and would much rather have everything stored online for easier access. After all, how many times have you found a snip of information on the net, only to realise you’ll have to open notepad or Word, save, then upload it to a suitable online storage account just to make a note of it?

Campfire is the name of 37 Signals’ group chat client, and again is primarily aimed at businesses who would like to participate in group discussions and file sharing without the need for additional software. Although similar to a common chatroom, Campfire gives users the ability to set up their own password-protected group, with varying levels of members and storage based on the package you chose, and then of course invite your friends or colleagues to the room. The ability to add extra rooms in one account is a neat one, and the interface keeps all the pages tabbed at the top, with some pretty animations to keep those who are easily-pleased interested.

Alongside the chat functions, users may also upload and share files if they wish, which will appear in the current chat window when done. The settings are fairly basic, with only a few colour themes allowing you to ‘mod’ the board slightly, and the focus has really been placed on keeping the service as simple and easy to use as possible. Whilst some might question why people won’t simply use online version of Live Messenger or Google Talk, Campfire is geared much more towards browser use and has a pleasant feel to it. As with Writeboard, there’s nothing overly special about Campfire, but there doesn’t need to be- it does the job well and doesn’t try and go out of its depth.

37 Signals has managed to put together some nice little applications here, and I can only hope it starts to expand its line-up to help business users who are often overlooked by the user-generated content craze that’s caused a surge in consumer-oriented web services. Don’t be surprised, however, if Microsoft decides it wants in on some of the action and build/buy similar services for Office Live.