BETA

Forgot your Periscope password? Password reset now live

December 27th, 2008 • How To, Progress
Tags: password reset, Progress

I’ve received a fair number of password reminder or reset requests lately. To help speed things along, I’ve added functionality now that allows you to reset your password. Remember, we store a one-way hash of your password (combined with some other goodies) so we’re not able to remind you of your password, since we don’t even know! If you have forgotten your password, just go to the password reset page, enter your email address, and we’ll reset it for you. We’ll then send you an email with more instructions…

Mini Messages Now Live

December 26th, 2008 • 1 comment Progress, Releases
Tags: affiliates, holidays, mini message, Progress, referrals, update

This is a fairly small update in terms of a feature set for Periscope Gadget, but it is an update nonetheless. I’ve added mini-messages to both the iGoogle and Gmail gadgets which now let me communciate with users directly within the gadget. It’s an unobtrusive little yellow bar at the top of the gadget with a link to more information for whatever is being communicated. And, ofcourse, there is a little red x that will let you close the message indicating that you no longer wish to see it. If there’s something new that pops up, it’ll come back with the new message. You’ll never see more than one message at a time at the top. You’ll start to see the messages just as soon as your local cached copy of the gadget gets replaced by the new updated version from the Periscope Gadget server…

I’ve also added some affiliate love for Basecamp, Highrise and Freshbooks in the side bar of the blog pages for those of you that may not be familiar. Click on the referrals and if you sign up as a result, it helps feed my kids. So, thanks!

And finally, happy holidays to everyone!

Added reCAPTCHA to signup

December 1st, 2008 • Everything else, Progress
Tags: captcha, recaptcha, spam

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving! And, to those of you outside of the USA, hope you had a great weekend.

I was looking at my Periscope admin panel this morning and I noticed a really weird trend: firstname same as the lastname in registrations, concatenation in the names themselves where it didn’t make sense, and the same domain name for email addresses: @inmail24.com.

So I did a little investigation to see if these were genuine registrations since there was no use of the gadget at all for any of the usernames. Turns out they are forum spam bots that somehow found their way into Periscope Gadget.

As a result, I’ve added a reCAPTCHA challenge-response on the signup page: I have to believe that this will reduce those silly critters.

Screencast: Add Basecamp accounts to Periscope

November 1st, 2008 • Everything else, How To, Progress, Screencasts
Tags: add account, feature, Progress, screencast, ui, update

If you’ve logged in to your account on the Periscope Gadget home page recently, you will have noticed that the look has changed and a new feature has been added. I moved the information around a bit on the My Account page so that it made more sense to me and so that it was a little cleaner. Hopefully, you’ll agree.

I also added the ability for any beta user to now add a second and a third Basecamp account to Periscope on their own. When you log in it tells you exactly how many accounts you have left to add, and clicking opens up the New account block. Punch in your Basecamp details, hit Add account and the new account will show up on your list of accounts on the right. It will also be immediately available to your gadget, so a gadget refresh will result in the new account showing up there as well. Be sure to enter your credentials carefully, or you will run into issues displaying the data!

Checkout the screencast for a full demo of the new layout and account functionality.

CMS Wire posts about Periscope, writes honest, detailed entry

October 28th, 2008 • Mentions, Progress
Tags: Mentions, Progress, transparent

The folks over at CMS Wire posted an entry about Periscope last week. Somehow, we missed it. Note: please let us know if you’re writing something about us, we’d love to know and also let our users know about what’s being said, good, bad or otherwise. If nothing else, we’ll link to you :)

They make some excellent points, especially with regard to usernames and passwords — the more people who use Periscope that know about what is and isn’t stored, the better — and also offer up some kind words for us. Thanks, guys! And the post certainly goes a long way in educating readers about the facts.

Full Gadget Tour Screencast with Functionality Showcase

October 24th, 2008 • 2 comments How To, Progress, Screencasts
Tags: functionality, preferences, Progress, Releases

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now: a screencast of someone (me) using the gadget, attempting to show all the functionality the gadget has at this point. This means a few things… firstly, that the screencast is loooooooong: around 11min. It also means that it runs the risk of being boring and of having you lose interest. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good idea to do it anyway, so enjoy.

In the screencast I go through filtering by project, by Basecamp account, what each of the tabs does, submitting time with descriptions, starting and stopping the Periscope clock, as well as the preferences tab. I haven’t really pushed this tab very much but I hope to be putting even more things in there that will make Periscope even more useful. Right now you can control the number of items displayed as well as “compact edition” visibility — checkout the screencast, you’ll know what I’m talking about. (Compact edition was inspired by Rob Colburn’s note to me about a quick CSS hack that Gmail uses to do the same thing. Thanks Rob!)

Full screencast.

Preferences, Time Tracking & Hotlinks

September 22nd, 2008 • 1 comment Progress, Releases
Tags: beta, features, Progress, Releases

Just a quick note for those of you that are paying attention: last night I deployed some new features:

• a new preferences tab: lets you control the number of items being displayed on the recent activity or recent time tabs. More control over other aspects coming here in the future
• updated time tab: visual layout is now different than the sneaky-peaks that you’ve seen before. Save your description and time to Basecamp from within the gadget
• timer and controls available in the top right hand corner of every screen

A more in-depth post to follow, and special updated news for the Beta group as well.

Periscope supports Open ID

September 5th, 2008 • Progress
Tags: login, openid, password, username

Just in case you were having trouble logging in or were just wondering if you could use your Open ID with Periscope… the answer is: you can! Just log in to your Basecamp account and under the “My Info” link you’ll see information about what username and password to use with third party applications like Periscope. Configure those in your Periscope account and you’re set. There’s also a more detailed description in the Periscope Gadget Help Center.

Beta closed, live announcement list open

August 28th, 2008 • Everything else, Progress
Tags: beta, Progress, transparent

I’ve had more than enough interest in the gadget (over 150 of you subscribed) and it feels like the right amount to move forward. So, I closed the beta signup on the main page and opened an announcement list subscription that you can be notified when Periscope goes live. Don’t worry beta users, you will be notified too!

So go on over there and signup for the announcement if you haven’t registered for the beta.

Periscope Gadget is iPhone Friendly! One more screencast…

August 22nd, 2008 • 2 comments Progress, Screencasts
Tags: beta, Progress, screencast

Greetings! I just finished some tweaks to make Periscope Gadget even more accessible. Thanks to Google’s wonderful iPhone accessible personalized homepage, you can now take Periscope Gadget with you, on your iPhone! Sure, it’s not an iPhone Web App or native iPhone App, but if you need quick and fast access to get your Basecamp fix, then this is the thing for you! Everything you’re used to in the desktop version is on your iPhone!

Go ahead, watch the screencast! And stay tuned… big things happening next week!