A novel idea: Use Highrise to keep track of fictional characters' lives

HOW TO: Write a Novel Using the Web offers a toolkit for using the web to write a book. Highrise is suggested as a way to track the "lives" of all your characters.

If your story is very character heavy, keeping track of all the people in your novel, who they are, and how they interact will be vital to making sure the continuity isn’t interrupted. It may seem silly to treat your fictional characters as real people, but using an online CRM application like Highrise (which offers a free account good for 250 characters), can be a great way to keep track of the people in your book. Create an entry for each character and treat them like real people, attaching notes about their interactions, histories, and characteristics as you write.

Put your Highrise Dropbox address in the BCC field automatically in Mail.app

Want to put your Highrise Dropbox address in the BCC field automatically in Mail.app?
Easy Automatic Highrise Dropbox in Apple Mail offers a hack that will make it so (requires messing with Terminal.app so "buyer beware"):

1. Open Terminal.app
2. $ defaults read com.apple.mail UserHeaders
3. If nothing shows up, you don’t currently have anything set and you should be golden to move to the next step.
4. $ defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"BCC" = "dropbox@YOURDROP.highrisehq.com"; }'
5. Restart Mail.app

That’s it. From now on your email should be automatically BCC’d to your dropbox address and you should get a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Have a neat tip related to a 37signals product? Let us know.

Convert password protected RSS feeds to emails with Feed My Inbox

Want to get your password protected RSS feeds (from Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, or wherever) delivered via email? Benjamin Stangland, Operations Manager at Weber Marketing Group, offers this tip on converting password protected RSS feeds to emails.

I found a free solution that will convert password protected rss feeds to emails that I just wanted to share with you guys. Since this might help other 37signals customers.

Converting password protected rss feeds seems to be a challenge but www.feedmyinbox.com works.

You have to place your username and password into the feed line itself however.
https://[username]:[password]@[domain]/[path]

We use this all the time with Highrise and love it.

FYI: An email will be sent to you each time the feed is updated, but no more than every 24 hours (to cut down on inbox clutter). Whether there is 1 post or 10 posts to the feed in a 24 hour period, you receive them all in one email.

Have a good tip related to a 37signals product? Let us know.

View your Highrise tasks in your Backpack Calendar (or any other calendar that accepts iCal feeds)

Did you know you can view your Highrise tasks in your Backpack Calendar (or any other calendar that accepts the iCal format)? First, go to your Tasks page and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see a link that says, "Subscribe to your iCalendar task feed."

Copy this link and then add it to your calendar. If you're not sure how to add an iCal feed to your Backpack Calendar, follow the directions at this Backpack FAQ.

Tip: Using “Dates to remember” in Highrise to track “Member Since” dates

Mark Bottita, Publisher of Elder Forest Publishing Group, on how his team uses the "Dates to remember" feature in Highrise:

Highrise helps Elder Forest Publishing Group track supplier relationships

37signal applications do a great job of making our “Member Since…” dates readily accessible. But most other suppliers do not. By using the “Dates to remember” section of Highrise to list these dates, as well as dates for planned future upgrades, we keep everyone informed of what our history and future plans are for all apps/products being utilized across any particular supplier.

In this age of flexible supply chain networks, it is important that all six divisions at Elder Forest Publishing Group have quick access to this information. And we can now do this for each supplier right on their contact page.

Thanks for a great suite of productivity tools, and much continued success for 2009 and beyond.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Video: How to attain inbox zero with Highrise Tasks

How to use Highrise Tasks to "snooze" emails and keep your inbox empty.

More info at Signal vs. Noise: How to attain inbox zero with Highrise Tasks.

Highrise and ScanSnap document scanner beat "The Pile"

Going inbox-zero on your paper mail, an old post at Signal vs. Noise, talks about the joys of getting organized using the Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner, a shredder, and a solo Highrise account.

The beauty of the ScanSnap is its utterly brain-dead simple mode of use. You feed it a document, click the scan button on the device itself, and a PDF lands on your desktop. No continuous configuration, just one-click-straight-to-PDF goodness.

After the document is PDF'ed, it goes straight to the shredder. No clutter, no pile, just the pleasurable sound of paper I don't have to worry about any more.

The final step is upload to Highrise. I have contacts for all the major bills I pay. So one for AT&T, one for People's Gas, and so on. They're all aggregated by the bills tag, which with the new tag streams allow me to see everything going through. I also have accounts for all the major service providers I use. There's one for the lawyer, one for the mechanic, one for the doctor.

With the rhythm of "document goes in, follow-up task is set, and paper is gone" I've finally been able to beat The Pile and achieve the same level of inbox-zero zen that I have for Mail.app.

ScanSnaps at Amazon.

Highrise tip: Assign "Later" tasks a specific date/time so they pop up again

Heavy users of Highrise tasks may notice that the "Later" bucket can become a wasteland if you overuse it — tasks wind up going in there and then the list gets so big you stop really processing the individual tasks. Worst case scenario is you tune out the "Later" bucket completely.

Well here's a simple tip to help you get "Later" tasks back on your conveyor belt: Assign them a specific time. Doesn't really matter when — it can be any random time in the future. The goal here is just to get the task to pop up again so you're reminded that it has to be done. That way it doesn't just lie there with your other "Later" tasks forever.

It's easy to do. Rollover a later task and click the "Change" link that pops up to its left. You can set a specific date/time and then you'll get a reminder that you've got to get it done.

It's a simple technique that can really help get "Later" tasks back on your plate.

Use Soocial to sync Highrise contacts with other devices and applications

Want to sync your Highrise contacts with your phone or Gmail or some other address book/device? Tony Mars of Mindovo tips us to Soocial.com, which aims to link disconnected address books to each other. A change in one place result in a change in all your connected devices. Tony uses it as a way to sync his Highrise contacts to his iPhone and says, "They're still in beta but we are one of their testers and so far it works like a charm."

Newsberry, a service to send and track email newsletters, integrates with Highrise

Want to send out an email newsletter to your contacts in Highrise? Check out Newsberry, a service to send and track email newsletters that syncs with Highrise. "Highrise integration" [Newsberry Help section] offers more details.

With Highrise Sync enabled, Newsberry will automatically sync contacts in Highrise to subscribers in your list. All changes in your Highrise account will be visible in your Newsberry contacts list in which you enabled Highrise Sync...

If you check "Enable Highrise syncing" checkbox and click the "Sync accounts" button, your contacts list will be synchronized with Highrise. If any information is updated within your Highrise account (contacts added, updated or deleted) the updates would be visible in your Newsberry list (in approximately 3 hours). After syncing, you will be redirected to a page where you can manage subscribers and you will see the Highrise contacts and regular contacts.

Highrise contacts are marked with the Highrise icon and cannot be edited. You will see a note that Highrise syncing is enabled next to the green icon.

Learn more about how Newsberry integrates with Highrise at the Newsberry help section or read the Newsberry blog post announcing the integration.