BETA

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…

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.

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.

New look for the site & blog brings us another step closer…

August 16th, 2008 • Progress
Tags: 37signals, design, Progress, Releases, transparent

This morning I updated the look of both the main site and the blog. I’m going for as much overlap in their look as possible, so I did some CSS magic on the theme that I am using (which is Konstruktors‘ Sans-Serif Racer) which I absolutely love. Thanks Kaspars!

Also, I added global navigation that I think is pretty close to what you’ll see when Periscope goes live. Yes, you’ll be able to login to the site and configure some things like how many Basecamp accounts you have, what their URL’s are, your credentials for each one and more mundane stuff like changing your Periscope password, your personal details and more. I think I’ll do a screencast of this in the future, so watch this space!

Periscope has been in the back of my mind now for the longest time, so I thought I would share an early screenshot (February 2008) of the gadget. You’ll notice that in addition to the two tabs you may have seen in other screenshots and screencasts, there is also a “To-Do” tab. I originally wanted to put EVERYTHING I possibly could into Periscope, but quickly realized that I would never release a product if I tried that (thanks 37signals) — so, don’t be discouraged! To-do’s are something I’m thinking about, and something I will hopefully add in a later release. Just not now! I thought the screenshot was kinda cool to see how the gadget has evolved.