"Run your home more like a business" with 37signals tools

101 Tools to Run Your Home More Like a Business:

Home life seems to get more and more complicated as days go by. There are chores, paperwork, and lots of maintenance to deal with, but your home doesn’t have to take over your life. By using tools that streamline the work of businesses, you’ll find that it’s easy to get things done. Read on and you’ll find 101 tools that will make your home run like a business.

Included on the list: Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, Campfire, and Writeboard.

New in Writeboard: Email notifications

It's been a long time coming, too long actually, but we've finally added email notifications to Writeboards created from Basecamp and Backpack. You can now let people associated with the project in Basecamp or with the account in Backpack know that you've added a new comment or made a revision to a Writeboard.

Underneath both the new version and comment input, there'll be a set of check boxes for all the people it's possible to notify and you can just check off the ones you'd like to be alerted:

We hope you enjoy it. Sorry it took so long.

37signals products are "essential web tools for virtual students"

Three 37signals tools made the list at Ditch the backpack: 100 essential web tools for virtual students. Here's what the list is all about:

While learning at home offers great opportunities for working on your own time and schedule, it can also offer drawbacks when it comes to working with others or getting immediate help on a problem. Whether you need help, collaboration, or just want a little extra knowledge when completing your assignments, these web tools will help you find what you need. From note taking to researching to staying organized, the following resources will have you making top grades in your classes.

And here are the 37signals tools that made the cut:

Campfire. Set up instant chat rooms with your study group or classroom using Campfire and make communicating as a group much easier.

Writeboard. Create a web-based text document with this tool, then use it to either edit, share, or send yourself a text file of your document.

Backpack. This tool can organize anything from just your own studies to that of an entire class. Make pages, use calendars, post announcements, get email or text message reminders, and more.

See the full list.

Use Fluid to get your 37signals web apps on your Mac OS X Leopard desktop

Fluid lets you run any webapp as a separate Mac desktop application if you've got Leopard.

Are you a Gmail, Facebook, Campfire or (Insert Your Favorite Webapp Here) fanatic? Do you have 20 or more browser tabs open at all times? Are you tired of some random site or Flash ad crashing your browser and causing you to lose your (say) Google Spreadsheets data in another tab?

If so, Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) provide a great solution for your webapp woes. Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite webapps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any webapp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, and logical separation from your other web browsing activity...

How does it work?

Fluid itself is a very small application. When launched, Fluid displays a small window where you specify the URL of a webapp you'd like to run in a Site Specific Browser. Provide an application name, click 'Create' and you'll be prompted to launch the new native Mac app you've just created.

Use Fluid to run YouTube, GTalk, Flickr, Basecamp, Delicious, .Mac webmail, or any other webapp as a separate Mac desktop application.

Here are high res logos for Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire and Highrise to use with Fluid.

(If you're not on OS X, Prism does something similar for Windows and Linux powered by the Mozilla engine).

Basecamp: Writeboard comments now show up on Dashboard and Project Overview

Writeboard comments are a great way to offer feedback on a proposal, blog post, marketing copy, or anything else you might write in a Writeboard (see an example).

But there used to be a catch for Basecamp customers: Writeboard comments sometimes went unnoticed since you had to visit the actual Writeboard itself to see if anyone had posted a new comment.

No more! Now, any new Writeboard comments show up on your Dashboard and Project Overview pages.

When there's a Writeboard comment, you'll be in the know. We hope you enjoy this change.

Writeboard and Writeroom = distraction-free writing with version control

Writeboard and WriteRoom are a killer combo. If you don't know, Writeroom is a full-screen, distraction-free writing environment for Mac. When you use it, obstacles fade away. It's just you and your text.

Combine that with the version control of Writeboard and you've got a great writing platform. You have no choice but to write something or get up and do something else. And you've got an easy way to collaborate, track changes, and revert to earlier versions. Give it a whirl.

Use Basecode to easily format text

Looking for an easy way to quickly format text inside your 37signals' applications? Basecode is a Firefox extension that lets you easily modify (e.g. bold, italic, color, font-size, etc.) the text you enter inside our apps. (It now supports Basecamp, Ta-Da lists, Backpack, and Writeboard.)

Basecode is a simple to use Firefox browser extension designed to give easy access to the hidden formatting options available when posting messages and comments in Basecamp. Even better it adds a few extra features to Basecamp to make the day to day project management process even easier.

See all of Basecode's features. Oh yeah, it's "free as chips!" too.