A moment of panic....

We recently had a Basecamp user call us with a hint of panic in their voice. They had been working with a consulting company that used Basecamp as the means for most of the communication with this person's company and as the mechanism to exchange all files that were deliverables as part of the consulting engagement. Well, as sometimes happens, the relationship wasn't quite working out and the man on the other end of the phone was desperate to get all of the data and files out of the Basecamp account before the consulting company was able to remove his access to the data. With Basecamp a company can grant access to a project to another company in order to collaborate on a project, this is typical for consulting companies to do with their clients. This man was looking to get a copy of all of his data and files for the work he had paid for over the past 2 years in order to have a copy of it all, as well as to have a record of communications in case the worst case should find the parties in court.

He was able to use Centripetal Retrieve for Basecamp to export all of the todo's, messages, comments, files, & writeboards from Basecamp and have a local copy delivered to his desktop via Dropbox syncing. He was so excited to have this done so quickly and seemed relieved to know that he had a copy of everything that had become so important to his business. They had been using Basecamp so extensively with this consulting company that they didn't even realize how important the data had become to them and he didn't want to risk not being able to access it should the relationship further sour.

Customer Feature Request Product Release

We recently released a number of features and bug fixes to our core engine which were primarily based on customer feedback for both feature requests and bug reports. We’re pretty excited to be hearing so much from our customers and we’re always excited to be able to release software that is directly driven by what our customers want. This latest release includes the following:

• A fix to the way that we name files and directories and syncing that up with the way that we link them in the html exports. The issue was that we had some casing problems where we linked to a lower case directory name when the directory was actually camel cased. This only caused problems for our customers who are on Unix based systems where directory linking is case sensitive. Having come from Sun Microsystems and working exclusively on Unix systems for years, I feel bad that this one was missed, but working on Windows these days made this one slip by us unnoticed.
• We had a number of customers request that we add author information to the html exports for messages. We had limited what we put into the html exports with an aim of getting them released earlier. We’re open to any other enhancements that customers want to see there.
• We discovered a bug on exporting Basecamp messages from projects that are in an archived state. This was causing us to not receive the message body and so we printed out an empty message body in the html exports. We poked around and figured out how to extract this information from Basecamp.
• A recent (unannounced & undocumented) change by the Basecamp team was causing us to hit a rate limiting threshold on the API access we make to backup user data. We put in some workarounds and fixes so that we won’t hit that any more. This was simply causing our service to continually have to wait for a 20 second timeout period until we could make additional requests. With these new fixes we are now able to complete backup jobs much more quickly.

Please let us know if you have any additional feature requests. We love hearing from our customers.

 

We’re working on some new account management features now as well as an integration with Highrise for backing up all of that data.

Automated Invoice Emailing

We've been working on lots of new features and have completed a piece of our billing system updates. This latest feature enables automated emailing of monthly receipts to the email on file for the billing contact. We've opted all of our existing customers in to this new feature which will begin on the next billing cycle for each customer.

Centripetal deploys update for unannounced Basecamp API changes

Today 37Signals made modifications to their Basecamp API which modified the way in which they limit the number if calls that can be made to their APIs. Our application has always been in compliance with their requirements and it was because of our strong logging and monitoring that we noticed the issue right away. Basecamp doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to announcing changes to their applications that impact other people that are dependent on it, so we put some extra effort into some mechanisms that would alert us of those changes. When they made these changes today we saw the issues in our logs and began investigating as quickly as possible. Once understood the change we implemented a work around that works with new rules, tested it and deployed it to our servers. Our system is back up and running and all Basecamp backup jobs that hit this error will be picked back up by our scheduler and rerun within 24 hours. We also alerted other Basecamp API users of the issue so that they could know about it as well.

When we originally were settling on an architecture for Centripetal Retrieve for Basecamp, these changes were one of the considerations that we took into account. We chose a hosted application model so that we could control the push of fixes as quickly as possible. Had we chosen a desktop application model that our users download and install on their system, our ability to fix issues would be drastically limited and impossible in most cases. The cloud based application model is one that has a lot of benefits for software vendors as well as customers alike.

Box.net Review

I recently signed up for the free "Lite" version of Box. I was given 1 GB of web-storage and a 25 MB file upload size limit. You can check out Box at Box.net. Box offers tools for securely uploading files to private and public folders that are then accessible for other contributors or embedded into your website for public access. You can also send to social media networks among a variety of other options.

The paid accounts at Box start at $9.95/month for individual users with 10 GB of storage and 1 GB file size limit, $15/user/month for business users (3+ users) with 15 GB of storage and 2 GB file size, and a variable pricing plan for larger companies, referred to as their Enterprise plan, with Unlimited storage and a 2 GB file size limit. Each paid plans offers a 14 day free trial. 

Wanting to just test the system out, I settled for the "Lite" version to dive into what Box has to offer me. After confirming my email address, Box directed me right away to starting the process of their product by creating a folder to be used to store my documents. 

I had the option of creating a private folder or inviting others to upload information to the folder I create. This would be very helpful if I needed people to submit documents to one central location that was easily accessible world wide. For now, I have decided to keep my folder private, but if I change my mind, it is fairly simple to invite collaborators to securely share files inside this folder. 

I created a folder called: Newsletters. When I'm not working for Centripetal Software, I work at a Preschool in the Bay Area. Part of my job is to create our monthly Newsletter. A program like Box would be very helpful for me even at the basic free version. Now I can upload my Newsletters here, invite the school director, board members, or other teachers to view my document, and/or send in contributions to be considered for publication.

As you can see from the screen shot below, I have different and easily understood options to explore after uploading my April Newsletter:

If I don't want to invite collaborators to directly view this folder, Box offers a great option of creating a specific email address for every folder I create. I can then share that email address with anyone, and all they have to do is send an email to contribute information to my folder. Box also creates both an embeddable link to the folder for your website, or a direct link, depending on how you want to share your information.

If I were to upgrade to a different level of Box, I'd have more options on file storage size, file controls, faster uploads, security options, etc. 

Box works with a variety of operating systems, including a Box app for the iPad. I viewed and tested Box in Safari on a Mac OS X operating system. It works on FireFox as well, however, I was unable to find other information on the site about what other Web browsers and systems it works in.

You can link your Box account with a variety of resources. For example, link your account to FedEx office, and send your documents directly from Box to be printed and shipped, or link your account to Twitter, and have updates to your Twitter account when you create a folder for the public eye. The list of applications to integrate to your Box account is impressive and provides tools for many different social and business networking options. 

I was very impressed with Box and think it's a great tool for individuals and business to look into to manage their important documents and files. It's easy to set up and use and I think a worthwhile tool for companies and individuals to look into.

Written by: Kjaere Friestad

Centripetal Software

Community Manager

Fun Product Overview Video

We've been working with Splainers for awhile now on the completion of an animated product overview video for our Centripetal Retrieve for Basecamp product. It's finally done and up on our website, but I thought I'd throw it on the blog as well.

Protecting my critical business data in Basecamp

Centripetal Software specializes in building products to backup business data from online applications. One thing that we have been finding is that many of our customers are moving to online, cloud based, business tools like Basecamp and Highrise partially to get away from managing the infrastructure and all of the IT type of services that go along with running a data center. These customers picked Basecamp and Highrise because they were great tools that also had a stellar track record with availability, reliability and data protection. Many of them came to Centripetal Software to backup their files, Writeboards and data from Basecamp as an added layer of security because they are trusting Basecamp with some of their most critical business data. It's just makes sense for them to keep redundant copies of that data on their own computers.

One Centripetal customer recently said something that is typical of what a lot of customers have been saying:

"I’m looking to back up our Basecamp data because, even though I think 37signals and Amazon/S3 are two extremely solid companies and I fully trust them, I still need to protect our critical business data that exists solely on Basecamp.  I need redundant copies duplicated to our local servers somehow.  The other angle is Basecamp project archiving, we need to remove large projects from Basecamp to clear room for new ones. We mostly use the Files tab, in fact. Having everything automatically pushed to our Dropbox account is a huge help."

Centripetal customers are saying that they fully trust Basecamp, 37Signals, and Amazon S3 with their data, they are not backing up their data because they are afraid of 37Signals or Amazon screwing up. Instead this is an extra layer of security for people who want to stay in complete control of their data.

We recently completed a customer testimonial video with one of their customers that talks about this added layer of backup that people are looking for.

An extra layer of security for people who want to stay in complete control of their data

Here is a quote I got from a customer that is really typical of what I've heard a lot of customers tell me:

"I’m looking to back up our Basecamp data because, even though I think 37signals and Amazon/S3 are two extremely solid companies, I still need to protect our critical business data that exists solely on Basecamp.  I need redundant copies duplicated to our local servers somehow.  The other angle is Basecamp project archiving – it’s a real pain to pull a large project OFF of Basecamp (to clear room for new ones) since they don’t (yet) offer any sort of mass Files export.  We mostly use the Files tab, in fact.  Having everything automatically pushed to our Dropbox account is a huge help."

Our customers are telling us that they fully trust Basecamp, 37Signals, and Amazon S3, they are not backing up their data because they are afraid of them screwing up. Instead this is an extra layer of security for people who want to stay in complete control of their data.

Announcing New, Lower Pricing for Recurring Basecamp Backups

We heard it loud and clear from many of our customers that we hadn’t gotten our pricing quite right yet. We talked in detail to some industry experts, a number of current customers as well as lots of people who tried out our products but didn’t sign up for a paid plan and we think we have a set of prices for our monthly recurring plans that are in line with the service that is being offered. All new customers will be given these new prices, and all of our existing customers will also get the new pricing on all upcoming bills. Check it out and let us know what you think:

Automate Basecamp XML and HTML Exports for Free

We have recently been testing our new HTML export functionality for Basecamp data with our higher level plans. It was met with a lot of enthusiasm from our customers that were on those plans. We’ve now completed rolling that out to all of the plans including our free trial and our always free plan. What this means is that anyone can automate the export of all Basecamp data from your account and get it in both XML and HTML formats and have it delivered directly to you. Are you sick of going in to your Basecamp account when you think about doing a backup of your data? Are you afraid you might forget to do a backup that you might need? Do you wish you could request a data export in both html and xml and not have to choose one or the other? Would you rather just have your data delivered to your computer and not have to go and download something after it has run? Well our automated data export functionality does all of that for you. We even have plans that will get all of your Files and Writeboards at the same time.