Archive for Screencasts
Introducing Highrise Integration: Get Basecamp & Highrise activity in one place with Periscope
January 15th, 2009 • Releases, Screencasts
Tags: announcement, basecamp, highrise, integration, Releases
Yes, it’s true: you can now see your Basecamp and Highrise activity, by project or case or all mashed up together inside of Periscope Gadget. For all of you out there that use both of these wonderful 37signals products and have been screaming for some sort of integration between the two: this one’s for you! I have to admit, I’m a late comer to the Highrise Bandwagon, but am a very happy one! Yes, it does get a little old checking the latest updates in both places, but now you don’t have to. Just setup the accounts in Periscope, pull up the gadget and let the integration love begin. You can filter by Basecamp project or Highrise case, or you can look at just a particular account… just as before.
You’ll need to find your Authentication token inside of Highrise and add that extra little piece of information to Periscope, but other than that, it’s dead easy. Here’s a specific page (with screencast) just dedicated to the Highrise API Authentication Token you should look at.
Look out for a demo of the features in a screencast soon! In the interim, login and see what this baby can do! Or, sign up…
Highrise Authentication Token (API) How To
January 15th, 2009 • How To, Screencasts
Tags: api, api token, authentication token, highrise, howto, Progress, screencast
For Periscope Gadget to work with Highrise, a step needs to be taken in addition to supplying your username and password. As with Basecamp, an API switch needs to be flipped. In this case, the Highrise Authentication Token needs to be copied from your Highrise account and inserted into the settings for Periscope. The Token is 40 characters long and hexadecimal (numbers & letters A through F) — it’s an easy copy and paste. As always, we try to be as careful as possible when storing your sensitive information.
Here are the steps you’ll need to take, or just view the screencast below:
- Login to your Highrise account using your customized URL. It’ll look something like http://your-account.highrisehq.com/
- Click on the “My Info” link in the top right hand corner. You’ll be presented with the “User Account” tab of your own account.
- Click on “Reveal authentication token for feeds/API” which will show you a yellow highlighted 40 character long hexadecimal string.
- Copy this string to your clipboard.
- Login to your Periscope Gadget account at http://periscopegadget.com/login using your Periscope email and password.
- Add a new account by clicking on the “Add” link, or click on any of the pencils to edit a Highrise account that has already been setup.
- Paste the token from your clipboard into the field labelled “Highrise API Token”.
- Save your changes — you’re done!
GMail welcomes Periscope Gadget
November 12th, 2008 • 2 comments Everything else, Releases, Screencasts
Tags: gmail, gmail labs, Progress, Releases
Wonderful news this morning: Periscope Gadget is now available in your GMail!
Thanks to Gmail Labs & the ability to add a gadget to GMail, you can now add a special GMail Edition Periscope Gadget to your sidebar in GMail. Periscope for GMail is now just one of the other ways to interact with Basecamp, in addition to Periscope for iGoogle, for the iPhone and for Google Desktop for Windows. Awesome!
You’ll need to enable GMail Labs within your GMail account (see the screencast) and also add the Gadgets for GMail extension. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need the Periscope for GMail gadget URL, which is different that the iGoogle URL:
http://ui.periscopegadget.com/gm/periscope.xml
It’s all detailed in the Periscope for GMail screencast — so have a look at it, and add Periscope goodiness to your GMail. No iGoogle needed.
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.
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.
Periscope Gadget on your Windows Desktop
August 31st, 2008 • Everything else, Screencasts
Tags: google desktop, screencast, windows
That’s right! Thanks to the wonder of Google Desktop Gadgets and its support for iGoogle gadgets, you can now also use Periscope Gadget on your Windows Desktop. Sorry Apple fans, for some reason this is not yet possible with the Mac version of Google Desktop. Perhaps it will be in a future release?
Here’s a screencast showing off very basic login and project list capability on a Windows desktop.
Update: the URL for the Windows Desktop gadget, pointed out in the comment, is http://ui.periscopegadget.com/ig/periscope.xml
Enabling API Access in Basecamp
August 31st, 2008 • 2 comments How To, Screencasts
Tags: api, howto, screencast
To allow Periscope Gadget to function, your Basecamp account needs to have API access enabled. This is really easy to enable and only requires you to log in to your Basecamp account and navigate two pages. I’ve created a screencast how-to, so have a look at that for reference as well. Here are the steps:
- Login to your own Basecamp account. Your URL will be something like http://yourdomain.updatelog.com/ or any of the 5 domains that 37 signals owns (updatelog.com, grouphub.com, clientsection.com, seework.com, projectpath.com) and you’ll need to use the username and password that you chose when you signed up with them.
- Click on the Account (Upgrade/Billing) tab.
- Scroll all the way down on the new page.
- Close to the bottom is a “Basecamp API” section. Click on the check box that is labelled “I’ve read and agree to the Basecamp terms of service…” — you should actually click on the terms of service and read them.
- Click on the button that says “Yes, please enable the Basecamp API for this account” — wait a few seconds, and voila! You’re done! Basecamp API access is enabled!
Also, be sure to checkout the screencast for a more visual walk through of how to accomplish the steps above.
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!
Periscope gets 2 new features
August 12th, 2008 • 2 comments Screencasts
Tags: beta, features, screencast
I’m excited to say that I just finished adding two new features to Periscope: color-coded by Basecamp Account author entries, as well as description preview when you hover on the icon.
Now all Basecamp accounts that you associate with your Periscope account are color coded, and when you view combined activity you’ll be able to quickly see which account the comments belong to. Also, instead of having to click on the message to see its entirety, all you have to do now is hover over the icon on the left hand side, and the message pops up. This is also true for all other items that have descriptions, like documents, to-do’s, comments and so on.
See the screencast for a better, visual description.
Introducing Periscope: A Sneak Peek Screencast
August 9th, 2008 • 1 comment Screencasts
Tags: beta, screencast
As Periscope evolves, the plan is to do as many screencasts as possible, with as much useful how-to information in them, showing off the cool little things it can do. This first screencast, though, is a sneak peek at the gadget as it stands right now, before there has been any real testing or public use of it. Feedback and comments appreciated, and welcomed!
