…the wise rule the strong…

Activist Nerd

Archives Posts

nContxt on 37signals Product Blog

October 19th, 2007 by garlinii

See it here.

Thanks guys!

Filed under nContxt having 1 Comment »

Archives Posts

Jumpchart will help you focus on content and flow

October 18th, 2007 by garlinii

I am always looking for great tools to improve my web design and development experience and workflow. I found a great one recently that I’ve toyed with on the side, and am about to fully integrate into my design + development workflow: Jumpchart.

What I like

  • It spits out clean code
    I can come out of the blocksĀ less worried about my markup.
  • Super simple export
    This was my biggest concern going in. I’m glad to see it implemented so elegantly.
  • Price
    Very reasonable.

My concerns

  • Will my less technical clients think that this is the actual website that I’m building and not just a model?
    In all fairness, this is probably more my problem than Jumpchart’s :-); it’s up to me to make this clear.
  • Does it play nicely with CMS?
    I use CMS for most of my clients (WordPress, Joomla, SilverStripe, Textpattern). That nice, clean code that Jumpchart gives me to build upon could quickly turn to rubbish if using one of these systems. I think that a nice thing to have here would be something that would take the XHTML and make it translatable into a theme for a CMS. Hopefully the Jumpchart guys can help me out with this :-).

All in all, I think that this is a really solid offering, providing a fresh way for me and my clients to think about the most important parts of a website: the content and its flow.

Archives Posts

nContxt: The right things. The right time.

October 17th, 2007 by garlinii

nContxt is a mobile interface for 37signalsHighrise contact manager. It works on iPhones. It works on Windows Mobile phones, non-smartphones. It works on any phone with a web browsers. It’s free for the first week, and then $5/month.

Here are some screenshots (more here):

After logging in, you can search your contacts (people and companies). You also see a list of upcoming tasks and their associated party:

nContxt Main Page

Searching for a person/company will display a list of results:

nContxt Search Results

Clicking on a name shows the info for a person…

nContxt Contact Info

…or a company.

nContxt Contact Info - Company

You can drill down to see more info.

nContxt Contact Info - Extended

As you’d expect, the phone numbers are nice and clickable (we are on a mobile :-)) , as are the email addresses and websites.

Using the SimpleHighrise PHP API, nContxt generates compact, XHTML Strict pages that render flawlessly on mobile browsers. This is an answer to the call for a mobile version of Highrise.

nContxt: The right things. The right time. Try it today. It’s free for the first week, and then $5/month.