Wed
Feb 15
2006
Campfire
by Marc Hedlund | comments: 3
Our friends at 37signals just launched Campfire, their latest product (following on Basecamp and Backpack). I've been testing this product with them and think it's a great one -- a fantastic tool for distributed teams (which is perhaps not surprising since they used to be an international company). Campfire is a tool for company or project chat rooms, with a lot of the add-ons businesses would like (SSL, access control, searchable/archived conversations, file upload, and so on). The way they've built it reminds me of the Rife persistent IRC log used by the Groovy open source project, which I found incredibly useful while I was following Groovy a while ago.
One of my projects -- covering three time zones -- has already adopted Campfire and we're expecting it to be very helpful. Worth checking out.
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Comments: 3
Marc:
Campfire is indeed cool but the incremental value as a stand alone app is quesitonable. I can understand its value as part of Basecamp. 37S folks are awesome, but they have to start integrating such application rather than bringing them out in pieces. A new application should have a clear new need, new market and a new pain point. Writeboard, Tada Lists and Campfire are features (big ones).
I am looking forward to Sunrise though.
With all such apps, you really have to use it to figure out if you want it or not. Sometimes I get really excited about an app and later find that I'm just not using it any more. Other times it takes a while for it to work into my routine. My enthusiasm about Campfire comes from having used a similar system and seeing how helpful it was -- much moreso than Skype or IM. If you agree, it's worth paying for; if not, then not. I'd encourage you to give it a try, though -- the Groovy project coordinated developers around the world using RIFE, and I can easily see distributed teams loving it.
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Kesey [2006-02-16 05:13 AM]
Skype does the same thing for free.