Sliced Software

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Basecamp & Highrise

This is the first week I really made a conscious effort to start using Highrise, 37signals' new online contact manager. I could see right away the benefits of using Highrise in a multi-person company. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) it's just me. But I figured it would be smart to start keeping emails and notes about important conversations I have with people organized in Highrise, anyway. I started the week by adding some clients I have been dealing with lately. As the week progressed, I was so interested in using Highrise, I started to add tasks to people even though it didn't seem right. Why didn't it seem right? Well because when you click 'add task' from a contact's page in Highrise, the form has this title: 'Add a task about this person'. But the task I was adding was 'make the de/activate links on the members list use ajax so the page does reload at the top.' This task has nothing to do with the person, it had to do with the project the I was doing for this person. After adding more and more tasks, I began to realize that the title of the add a task form was perfect. It was really simple, but enforced the idea that this application is for managing contacts not projects. Probably why the default task categories are things like 'call', 'demo', 'email', 'follow-up', etc, etc. Another thing I noticed is that after you add a note to a contact, you are presented a link to add a task that references this note. Not many tasks, just one. I think this really goes along with the whole tasks 'about' people and companies. So after a week of Highrise, I feel pretty comfortable using Highrise alongside Basecamp. Unfortunately, I realized I think it's time for me to upgrade from the Personal account to the Basic account. Three projects really isn't cutting it these days.