I’ve just added Basecamp Mobile to our public subversion repository. Since this is a fun side project for me, you may notice the current release is a little bit rough, eccentric, super-ninja-alpha, or in that space between being usable and needing a lot of work.

You can download it or browse the subversion repository, and then install it on your own server.

Read the README, and give me some pointers if you’re into ruby, rails or xhtml mp. Thanks, and enjoy Basecamp Mobile!

Continue reading → | announcements, code, basecamp, mobile

Julian Romero has kindly written a Greasemonkey script to add stopwatch functionality to Tiktrac. This allows you to stop and start tasks as you work on them without needing to remember the time you spent.

Check it out here: http://wiki.mad.mw/GreaseMonkey/UserScripts/TikTracStopWatch

Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows developers to modify how websites work. In this example, Julian has written some JavaScript that adds a stopwatch to each task on your Tiktrac dashboard.

To install this script:

1. Get the Greasemonkey extension
2. Go to Julian’s wiki
3. Right click “TikTracStopWatch.user.js ” and select “Install This User Script…”

Now you should see something like this when you’re using Tiktrac:

!http://assets.helicoid.net/ima…

Continue reading → | code, tiktrac

If you like our Basecamp Mobile system, then you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve been doing a lot of work on this recently.

If you’re looking forward to running this on your own server, you’ll be able to soon. This is a side project for me, so it gets bumped out the way for other paying projects, but I promise I’m working hard on it!

Continue reading → | code, basecamp, mobile

I’ve been playing with Basecamp Mobile for about a week now, so I think it’s ready for people to play with:

http://basecamp.helicoid.net

It provides a basic interface to your Basecamp account, suitable for mobile phones.  It uses the XHTML Mobile Profile (for more on this, see my post, What is the XHTML Mobile Profile?)

Of course, it provides limited access to your account.  However, it’s built as a Rails application, and I’ll release the source code within a few weeks. This will allow you, or perhaps a colleague with the right skills, to install (and extend) it on your own server.  Before releasing it, a few friends are helping me improve it to make it suitable for public release.

Why did I build this? I thought being able to use Basecamp with my phone would be handy when I’m away from the office. I also wanted some experience working with the Basecamp API. ...

Continue reading → | code, announcements, rails, basecamp, mobile

We’d like to say thanks to 37signals for linking to us in The first business built around Basecamp. We’re currently working on an application that provides a mobile-friendly version of Basecamp. The application is of course written using Ruby on Rails, and will be released as open source so you can install it on your server (or your systems administrator can).

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but building it has been great fun, and we can’t wait to share it!

Continue reading → | code, rails, basecamp, mobile

We love APIs, and since 37signals announced the Basecamp API, I’ve been playing with a mobile version of Basecamp.

The code is currently a single ruby file, that uses their ruby wrapper for the API. If you’re interested, it uses CGI and erb, so it should be fairly easy to install if your hosting provider supports CGI and ruby.

When it’s ready, we’ll release it on code.helicoid.net.

Continue reading → | code, announcements

This is a small example of what you can do with the Tiktrac API. We’ve created a script that we use with our subversion scripts for checking source code into our repositories.

Whenever we edit code on our projects, we can easily log the time we spent at the same time using a slightly modified version of this script. Download it and hack it to your delight.

Download: tiktrac.zip

Continue reading → | code, tiktrac

Here’s a sneak preview from in-house enigma extraordinaire Alex:Here’s another from myself, your favourite Gabriel:

Neat stuff will be done soon now! Promise!

Continue reading → | code

Tiktrac has been updated. We’ve added:

• The API, so developers can extract data and integrate Tiktrac with other applications
• A cleaner sheet page, allowing you to edit the sheet without leaving the page
• A search box on most pages, to help you find tasks easily
• A sheet list that appears on the sheet page, to allow you to navigate between your sheets more easily
• A cleaner login page
• A new reports type, that gives you a general overview of all your tasks and sheets when you visit the reports section

Let us know what you think!

Continue reading → | code, announcements, tiktrac

There’s a new plugin that you can find more info about here. It hopefully fulfils all your url naming needs, it filled ours! We are planning on soon having a public SVN repository which should hold some interesting things.

Continue reading → | code

We’re Railsing it up here at Helicoid as usual, and in the process we’ve done a few little things that may help you in your quest for perfection in web application form:

Using helpers inside a controller – for when you must pluralize() but dont want to mess with the controller namespace.

A few fixes to some FormHelper bugs – need to use a form with get rather than post and find checkbox weirdness happening? fixed!

RailsConf and another patch – speaking of poor neglected get parameters, here’s the reason why they might not be working properly. Also, one half of Helicoid will be seeing you at RailsConf.

Continue reading → | code