First let me say I’m a huge fan of Barack Obama, so much so that he’s the first candidate that I’ve actually donated to. Lately however I’m starting to get annoyed with his campaign’s lack of appreciating my privacy.

I made my donation to the Obama campaign early on in 2007 and I received a auto-generated email thanking me for my donation; mechanical but nice touch. A bit later another email came into my inbox from David Plouff - Obama Campaign Manager filling me in on the latest happenings. Then Jon Carson the National Voter Contract Director, then from Barack himself asking for donations.

A couple of points. Just because I donated doesn’t mean I wanted to receive 3-4 emails a week. Give me the option to OPT-IN after my donation but don’t assume I want to read pages of propaganda each week. They’ve sent over so many emails that I no longer read them, they are flagged for SPAM at this point.

I still wholeheartedly support Obama but I’d really appreciate it if his campaign learns to respect email marketing best practices.

Many who work with ASP.NET have issues with it in some way - and eventually write a blog post sharing their annoyances with the framework. These blog posts are littered throughout the internet. This post is my submittal to the fray; although I’m not the first to point out the issue I have a gripe with.

I appreciate innovation, and there is plenty of it in the .NET framework. In many ways it is a joy to work with. Classes are intuitively named, it is very performant, and it is clear that Microsoft really does value developers in its .NET ecosystem.

But for ASP.NET, it seems Microsoft tried to port its method for creating desktop applications to the Web; in many ways pretends the Web does not exist. One example: mangling of markup in forms and validation. This may not matter for a desktop app, but for Web it’s pretty annoying.

Over time methods of development and frameworks have reduced this aspect of framework – I’m looking at you, Castle Project and ASP.NET MVC - but still, a Web page is not a Windows form.

Despite my gripe, the ASP.NET portion of the framework still has plenty of good features to be happy about. I just with they would have got that other part right.

Today I found a site named iSerenity that offers ambient backgrounds for your work or home. Instead of offering minimal beats of ambient musicians, iSerenity offers environmental sounds. Not only things like waterfalls mind you, but the obviously relaxing sound of highways, typewriters, and vacuums. You know, things most people find relaxing. Yes, the concept makes me giggle a little.

Some of their selections are not very successful in producing a relaxed environment. The heartbeat makes me want turn into Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and the purring is as about as relaxing as a chainsaw.

Still, some of their efforts work surprisingly well. I found the dryer noise to be oddly focusing. As I listened to it I forgot it was there – yet it still helped me focus on my tasks. Turning off the sound felt strange, too – everything was suddenly different and I was back in the real world.

Give it a try at http://www.iserenity.com/.

In the beginning we loved working with Basecamp. We were early adopters and Basecamp served as a point of differentiation between us and our competitors. Most of our clients loved the system purely out of the simplicity of the overall experience; however there has always been a small undercurrent of our clients who either are confused by it, find it to simplistic or hate something about the system.

… and this is OK, according to 37Signals.

37Signals has made it clear over the years that their products aren’t meant for everyone and some people will eventually outgrow their system, we’ll I guess we are heading down that path. Let me explain our experience with Basecamp, and I’d be interested in hearing who else has outgrown the software and why.

The Good

• The simplicity of use. I guess I can’t see why customers are confused by the system, it’s pretty easy to use.
• Lack of clutter. Visually, Basecamp is easy on the eyes which makes it more likely to stay up on my screen all day.
• I find the FTP integration useful because it allows us to store customer data on our own server where it’s backed up and portable.

Critiques which fall on deaf ears.

I would submit these ideas to 37Signals but after reading "Getting Real" I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to give a damn about what I have to say.

• The Dashboard. Interesting idea but it really falls short when you have multiple projects. Especially if your projects all follow the same general outline. For instance, if we have a Web site redesign project going for 4 clients then my Dashboard calendar is useless because it doesn’t clearly tell me which project a milestone is due for.
• Email flow and usage. I can’t tell you how many clients reply to the email which says "DO NOT REPLY". However, can’t 37Signals modify Basecamp to track and thread my messages. For instance, if I send an email to a client and cc a unique email such as myaccountid@basecamphq.com then Basecamp would permit us, and our clients the freedom to work from our email accounts, while Basecamp tracks the volley.
• The Calendar. Why on Earth does the calendar slide to the current day? To me this is a big break from common usage. My iCal on my computer doesn’t shift me to the current day, it stays on the week and highlights today’s date. Basecamp just removes the previous day and starts the 2 week calendar on the current date and time. Uh?
• Templates. If I have a new project I’d sure like to be able to apply a milestone template which dropped in default project goals. For us, the current "to-do" template is entirely useless.
• Milestones. If I set a milestone to be completed on Feb 7th, 2008 and it isn’t completed until Feb 14th, 2008 then why doesn’t Basecamp track the date it was completed and who checked it complete?
• To-dos. Where is the functionality of "Ta-Da-List" and why isn’t it used here?

I can keep going but I’ll stop here.

Now, the things which are a huge turn off.

• The lack of support and the general F-U attitude of 37Signals. We wanted to build a Basecamp Hours Widget and we found that the 37Signals team was both unresponsive and kind-of unfriendly when we tried to use their API.
• Their general attitude towards new features. Why not encourage feedback from the customers? I’d love to see the top 10 most requested features and 37Signals’ stance on why or why not those features would be integrated.

That’s the extent of my rant. I think 37Signals has also done alot of good for the Web-based software movement, and I don’t want to minimize that contribution. We are still using Basecamp as of today but the plans are in the works for a new system to replace it before the end of the year. I’m interested in hearing the experiences of other Basecamp users out there.

Being a massive nerd I have a tendency to do a lot of things while at my computer.

This includes: eating, brushing my teeth, lifting weights, sleeping, wine tasting, texting, changing, and crying about my pathetic state of nerdery.

Hence, it was no surprise last week when I dumped an entire bowl of Rice Krispies onto my brand new Apple bluetooth keyboard. And let me clarify, we aren’t talking some minor spill. I literally dumped the entire bowl onto my keyboard. In fact, I mind as well have used the keyboard as a bowl in the first place. However, before losing all hope I quickly removed the keyboard’s batteries, dashed it to the sink, and washed the whole thing with water. After a good shake I set it down on a towel at a 45 degree angle and let it dry for the next six days.

To my surprise when I plugged the batteries back in last night the keyboard came back to life as if nothing had gone wrong. Now… I’ve heard rumors about being able to place keyboards in the dishwasher, but I myself have never successfully had this work. And therefore I have to admit that I was not only extremely happy (not to mention $80 richer), but also somewhat amazed that my keyboard was still functioning.

Either way, I hope this tale helps fellow geeks resurrect what would otherwise be a dead keyboard or laptop. Or better yet, helps them realize that food and drink directly over the keyboard might be a questionable idea in the first place.