1. http://trello.com

2. http://asana.com

Both companies are well funded (and founded by wealthy people), so I do not worry about the 'no money == no app improvement' case

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1edQuxclUs

On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984"

What Apple does is innovation. 37signals just makes things foolproof.

Goddamn, if I could say that about the apps I write, I could retire happy. Being “easy to use” is an amazing accomplishment for anything, especially project management.

Utility is far more valuable in many ways than entertainment.

Can't wait for the new updates

Adding to the above, I also assume they would be the first major app that would be fully acessible via the browser. Maybe 'kill' the need for the app store?

I look forward to what it would be.

We did something like that in mid-2000s as an Open Source project (http://openpsa2.org/). Never really caught fire with us, though. Business apps are a difficult area.

Open Source and Free do not work for serious businesses.

For open source, you want someone responsible. Except you have a strong re-seller and support program, I doubt it will work.

Free is an entirely different issue. A business will not want to be 'Gowallad'. i.e, Sell suddenly and say have your data and thanks for your time. We are shutting down next month. See thread discussing this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318458

When you create a company i.e charge money, businesses know you are serious and have someone to complain to. Then you have a higher chance of gaining traction.

That is probably a too extreme take on this as well. Open Source is a great "insurance policy" for companies, but not enough on its own. You also want a company dedicated to supporting and developing the software that your company uses so that you can have a proper contractual relationship into it.

For example, MySQL AB was running quite a good business supporting the freely licensed database for companies using it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL_AB

They're pretty successful with their belief so far and it's time to get more revenue from something new.

I've no issue with that - as your knowledge changes your opinions should be open to change. You could knock them for having strident opinions they later modify but I'd rather be grateful that they are willing to share and learn publicly as that way everyone has the chance to learn with them.

There are three major versions of Rails that are still maintained: 2.3.n, 3.0.y, and 3.1.x

http://rubygems.org/gems/rails/versions

> The tech and the design is all new, all fresh.

https://twitter.com/#!/dhh/status/144061889201188865

I agree that UI is really going to be the story. Customers don't need to care about what's underneath.

It is (MUCH) faster, got traction quicker, has a larger community and is definitely more flexible. Rails moved from Prototype for good with version 3, which was released a little over a year ago - it would make no sense for Basecamp to stick with prototype.

In both cases there's no physical product to unveil (one is a retail store that is too big to be unveiled and the other is a service with no real physical manifestation) so the graphical representation of the product is abstracted away to a logo which is being unveiled. Only showing a small (but identifiable) part of the logo creates a sense of motion, it tells a story. It communicates that there's something new and exciting going to happen very soon in relation to this well known logo. In my opinion this is a creative idea that indeed builds upon the old tradition of unveiling things but it also goes way beyond it.

Game changer my arse, it's about time they changed it!

Basecamp provided them with product/market fit - iterating on a successful business model in such a way as to gradually grow a profitable company might mean that they should no longer be considered a startup, but it's no less impressive.

Perhaps more importantly, for those of us wanting to build a company we enjoy working in that isn't trying to either (a) scale massively (b) sell (c) IPO they're a great reminder that such stories do exist.

Plus I think I rather enjoy the sheer chutzpah of their shameless self promotion, even if I do like to think that I've not entirely drunk the koolaid.

http://basecamphq.com/extras?cohort=Landing%20Headlines%20/%...

Maybe they just didn't need to change anything?

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I always felt I was going to go back in a year and it would be there. It simply wasn't.

So this really is for me an "about time" moment.

And honestly, it's not dumb enough. Email dominates the workflow of most businesses because that's about the complexity most users can handle, write mail, send button. I've seen people use Basecamp for weeks and still be confused by the fact that there's more than one tab.

So for their revenue stream of constantly revolving low-end users not changing much is the right thing to do.

(Jokes aren't only for Reddit, ya know)

Seems like different people will get a different read, for me it's a chance to participate on an exciting new product from well known developers and innovators. If I don't get in the first invites what's the problem?

I'll eventually make it in just a bit later.

http://blog.uber.com/2011/12/05/take-ubers-new-logo-for-a-sp...

Maybe 37signals are back to client-design work... ;)