BaseCamp RSS feed

An interesting sidenote to yesterday’s post and image of my RSS list of “things to read”: notice the “Tellus” listing.

This is our Basecamp feed - so I know about anything that gets posted to any of our projects at any time - without having to go to Basecamp on a regular basis.  In case you didn’t know, Basecamp offers RSS feeds for individual projects or for the workspace as a whole. This is my preferred method of tracking Basecamp. I only visit the site when I need to: to grab a document or to post something new.

And while I am on the subject of Basecamp,  after about 9 months of using it I have come to the conclusion that I like it.  I don’t love it but I do like it.  Many of our clients really value it and take to it quickly.  I think it is great for many project necessities: collaboration, messaging, and file sharing. The to-do list seems to work well, though I have to admit we rarely use it (or at least I rarely use it).

What I don’t really like about BaseCamp has more to do with our expected usage of it rather than the tool itself.  Because we have it and use it for so much we tend to try to use it for “everything”.  While it is great for many things, it is more of a free-flow type of tool (a “space”) and not extremely useful in situations that require a more rigid cataloging, or hierarchy if you will, of content.  I know, I know - as an aspiring “agile” developer how can I even have the nerve to mention that sometimes anything “rigid” be needed?  Well, I don’t care - sometimes they do.  Disclaimer: more times than not, using something is better than using nothing.