Getting Real, Writely and Basecamp

When I read the first few pages of Getting Real, touted as "the smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application" I admit I was skeptical. It sounded like a pitch, but I still kept at it. And reading it was well worth it, as it challenges some conventional assumptions we typically tackle web projects with.

37Signals, the makers of a host of very nice and usable Web 2.0 products, came up with this concept as they developed some of their own software. One of their products, I just had a chance to play with: it's called Writeboard and it's meant to share, edit, rollback, etc. web-based text documents to write by yourself or collaborate with others. I liked it, but I liked better another little app my friend Mat introduced me to a few days ago. It's called Writely, a product bought by Google a while back. There's a ton more of similar apps, like this post on Fifty Ways to Take Notes points out, but I haven't played with any other (yet)

To wrap things up in this post, I wanted to share one other nice product developed by 37Signals that I've only heard good things about: Basecamp, essentially a project management and collaboration tool. I still have to use it (I normally go either to the extreme of employing MS Project or Excel for my managing my projects), but from what I've read and heard about it, it's ideal for that "middle tier" type of project that is oh-so-common in the web industry.

Update (10/15/06): Ever since I wrote this post I've been using BaseCamp regularly for managing individual tasks (not part of the same project) among my team members and also for remove management of a project and in both settings I've found it to be an excellent tool.