Basecamp is a project management system which allows you and your clients to keep track of your projects with messages, to-do lists, milestones, files and time management. When you setup a project on BaseCamp you can assign other users / clients who can track their projects through the web, RSS feeds or email updates.

At first I was very impressed with the BaseCamp features and ease of use, the interface was very good looking and intuitive. One of the main reasons I was keen to start using a project management was to allow my clients to track the progress of their projects and the amount of time I’ve been spending on work, BaseCamp did these very well.

The only problem with BaseCamp is the price, for the lowest package (there are several different packages) you pay $24 a month.

After I completed my clients project with the help of BaseCamp I decided to test out a free (host yourself) alternative, I went for the popular ProjectPier system, modified with a few style tweaks and a free time management plugin to bring the features up to par with BaseCamp.

While ProjectPier wasn’t as pretty and slightly less intuitive than BaseCamp all the features were available and did the job just as well as those in BaseCamp.

Overall Comparison:

BaseCamp was a pleasure to use because of it’s interface but I think I’ll still be sticking with ProjectPier for now, in this case my attitude is why pay $24 a month when you can have a system almost identical for free?

My aim while designing DaleAnthony retro was to create a unique, colourful and vibrant style to contain my blog posts and portfolio. I’ve also completly re-coded all the pages and the stylesheets to W3C standards and I hope you’ll agree that both the design and coding are a big improvement.

All of my main sections have been completly revamped. The index page now shows a number of my recent blog post rather than just one. Both the about and portfolio pages have also had a slight facelift.

Like the previous version of DaleAnthony.com (version 2) this version will not work with IE6, I know it may seem silly to some but I feel there is no need for people to be using an outdated browser. This version will however work with most other current browsers. I know the load times could be faster so when I get some more time I’ll be working to make things a little speedier.

As always I’ve coded the site into wordpress which makes things easy to manage. I’m also using a collection of useful wordpress plugins to bring some extra functionality to the website. Below is a list of all the plugins that I am using:

• del.icio.us for wordpress by Ricardo González
• FlickrRSS by Dave Kellam
• Last.fm Recent Albums and Artwork by Remy Sharp
• Twitter Script by Remy Sharp
• Askimet by Matt Mullenweg

Now that this version is complete I’ll be continuing work with some other projects such as Wired Bristol, which I’ll hopefully post some news about soon.

If you happen to come across any bugs, errors or anything which looks out of place please let me know so I can fix it.

I’m now available to take on freelance design work, if you are interested please take a look at my about and portfolio pages so you can get an idea of what I can offer.

The logo (above) is quite simple, for some reason I wanted to use a power symbol, I sketched down a few other ideas so if this logo isn’t popular I still have some other other options to work on.

I want the web-design for Wired Bristol to stand out, I want it to look modern and vibrant, something that isn’t cluttered and easy to navigate. When the website is coded the user will be able to choose which website theme they want, there will be a number of themes, which are the same design with colours and different background styles.

Below is the mock-up design I have come up with (click for large preview), obviously there is still a lot of work to do on this and the design will change a lot before it is finalised, so it would be fantastic if some of you could leave me some feedback on what to change, improve, take out or add.

And if anyone want’s to be involved with working on Wired Bristol, please let me know, I can’t do it alone.

UPDATE (17/03/08):
In response to the comment by web design bristol i’ve created a second version of the logo with the power symbol as the ‘o’ in Bristol, I do prefer this to my original logo… what does everyone else think? (click the image below for a larger sample)

At the moment I am looking for reactions from Bristol residents to see if there is a strong enough potential for the website.

From very basic planning I am looking to work on the following areas to the website:

• Local News
• Feature Area
• Sports
• Events
• Discussion Area / Forums
• Classifieds

If you have any thoughts on other areas that should be included in the website or areas that you don’t think would perform so well please let me know. As this is a community website I welcome any suggestions or help that anyone would like to offer.

I originally planned to launch this version for the new year, but due to a sudden demand of work I’ve only just managed to get everything launched.

For those of you who think the website looks a bit strange, it’s probably because you are still using Internet Explorer 6, which I’ve decided this website will not support, so if you want a better browsing experience (not only with this website but with every other website on the internet) try downloading firefox, it’s free so you have nothing to loose, I will even settle for you upgrading to Internet Explorer 7, that just about does the job as well.

I’ll be adding more to the about and portfolio pages over the coming days, at the moment the about page is quite simple and my full range of work isn’t available in the portfolio, however these areas do have content in them so I would be grateful if you could take a few minutes of your time to look through them.

I’ve also left out my twitter updates for now, the main reason being I acutally have no idea where to put the twitter block. My twitter statuses are something I want to be seen from most pages, but I just can’t think of a space to put them without making things look cluttered, so if you have any suggestions please do let me know.

Don’t forget to add the RSS feed to your feed reader and if you are feeling extra friendly please go ahead and leave a comment. Oh and… if you do happen to notice any errors or bugs please let me know so I can sort them.

A more exciting and lengthy post will follow this one shortly.

I’ve waited since the US launch to get hold of an iPhone, I’ve even manage to resist the temptation of all the new iPods. My main reason for wanting the iPhone is so that I have my music, phone and calendars all in one device that works well. I’ve also been waiting to ditch my previous phone the Samsung U600 which was useless and seemed to have a mind of it’s own so I was very pleased to get rid of it.

This is a quite a long post so I’ve broken it down into sections for those of you who want to read about specific features:

• Activation / Setup
• Phone
• Mail
• Safari
• iPod
• SMS / Text Messaging
• Maps / Photos
• Wrap-Up

Activation / Setup

I was already an existing O2 customer when I purchased the iPhone so activation was very painless and quick, I connected the iPhone to my MacBook, iTunes popped up with the activation process, all I had to do was select ‘I’d like to replace my existing phone with this iPhone’, enter a few personal details and finally select the tariff I wanted to change to. Within a couple of minutes my number was transfered and my iPhone was activated and syncing all my music, videos, contacts, bookmarks, calendars, email accounts and photos.

Phone

Making and receiving calls on the iPhone is very simple. To make a call you just press the phone icon and flick through your contacts and tap their number to call them. When you receive an incoming call all you need to do is swipe the slider or tap the screen to answer.

There are quite a few in call options which are shown on the screen while you are in a call such as mute, keypad, speaker, add call, hold and view contacts.

Whenever I have made a call or received a call on my iPhone the quality has always been very clear, no strange kettle noises like my old phone used to make. I always seem to get a good signal with O2 as well, even when I’ve been to places where friends on other networks get no signal I always seem to have a reasonable amount.

Mail

I’ve setup my iPhone to work with my personal POP3 mail account, this was a easy process, all I had to do is tick a checkbox under the info tab of the iPhones settings in iTunes and the settings for my Mail accounts on my mac were sent to the iPhone.

So far I really like mail on the iPhone, it’s simple and easy to use and no screens with complicated options like on other phones. Typing emails with the qwerty keyboard is very reliable.

Safari

I wasn’t too sure what to expect from Safari on the iPhone, Apple keep making the point that it’s the ‘real’ and not the ‘mobile’ internet on the iPhone and I didn’t really think that it would work that well but as soon as I got my iPhone I could see what Apple were saying.

You actually do get the proper, full on, nothing taken out version of the internet. Pages load quickly and display all their content (minus flash at the moment) and the fantastic thing about it that it’s really intuitive and easy to use especially with the multi-touch technology.

There are some big websites customized for the iPhone, Facebook, Meebo and PocketTweets are three of my favourite websites optimized for the iPhone they all take advantage of multi-touch and look great on the iPhone display, and If you don’t like the iPhone versions of the websites you can always just use the standard version.

If you’re looking for some iPhone optimized websites and webapps take a look at Apples own Web apps directory, all the apps and websites listed in the directory can be used with both the iPhone and iPod touch.

iPod

If you were to buy a standard iPod such as the iPod Classic or iPod Nano from Apple you would expect it to be beautiful and easy to use, now Apple have taken the iPod a step further and made it amazing by creating a whole new interface, adding coverflow, widescreen video and multi-touch.

The iPhone includes all the features you would see from a normal iPod plus some neat added features, If you tilt your iPhone sideways you get to flick through your albums with coverflow which looks beautiful and is very smooth to use, when you find the album you are looking for you tap on it to show a list of tracks to play.

Watching video on the iPhone is simple, from the iPod you simply select the ‘Videos’ button, TV Shows, Movies and Music Videos are shown in a list view, to view a video all you have to do is tap it, all videos load in landscape view and you can choose between widescreen and full screen views by double tapping on the screen. All the video controls such as video timeline, volume and pause / play, forwards and backwards buttons are shown by single tapping on the screen. Using the controls is very easy and playback on the iPhone’s screen is very clear.

I’ve only owned two iPods, a mini and a nano both were amazing, however I think all the new features and eye candy make the iPod on the iPhone the best i’ve ever used.

For those of you not interested in the phone features but like the sound of flicking through your music and browsing the internet on your iPod you might want to consider the iPod touch which is essentially the iPhone without the phone features.

SMS / Text Messaging

SMS messages are stored in ‘conversations’ with contacts so it’s just like viewing an instant messaging conversation where you are able to see anything that was previously said, making it easy to reply to a message. Sending a SMS message is simple, you select the contact and type your message into the text area and press the send button.

At the moment the iPhone doesn’t support picture messages or multiple recipients but hopefully this is something Apple can easily add in the future with a firmware upgrade.

Maps / Photos

The iPhone also has a maps application powered by google which is realy very handy. You can search maps using a postcode, address or business name, the iPhone shows the results by dropping ‘pins’ onto the map, you can view the maps in either ‘map’ or ’satellite’ view. You can even get directions from one location to another or directly call a business through the results.

Photos from my iPhoto albums are synced with the phone, viewing photos is really cool, you can either view them as a slideshow or flick through them with your finger, just like you would do with a photo album.

You can move maps and photos with your finger and you can also zoom in a a specific area by either double tapping on the area you want to zoom to or by ‘pinching’ which is really cool to use.

Wrap-Up

Flicking through albums and scrolling through photos and pages with your finger seemed a bit strange at first but it didn’t take long before it seemed perfectly natural, after you’ve used the iPhone once or twice you don’t even need to think about how to use it.

The keyboard is really quite intelligent, it’s as if it knows what you are about to type. The magnafying glass is a really useful tool you can use when trying, if you hold your finger over a text area it magnifies the text so you can go back and edit / amend right down to a single letter, a lot more efficient than using arrow keys or the backspace button.

I know a lot of people will probably disagree with me but I think the iPhone is worth it’s price. You won’t find another phone that combines the features of an iPod, a great mobile phone and a full web-browser into one small smart looking device for £269, I do however agree that the price of the contracts could be cheaper or include more texts/minutes.

It’s easy to see a lot of work and effort has gone into the iPhone, this device really is fantastic. Apple certainly know how to design a good product.

Install took about 25 minutes on my 2.2GHz MacBook Pro, not long at all really, everything went smoothly and I was up and running in no time.

Desktop

The first thing you notice in Leopard is the new desktop, the menubar is now semi-transparent and the dock has a refreshed ‘glass’ table effect which I really like the look of.

The dock also has a new feature ‘Stacks’. Stacks is simply a folder you drop onto your dock for fast access to files, when you click on a stack the items in the folder fan out across your desktop.

I download a lot of files and usually have to navigate through the finder to get to the file I need, stacks makes this easier for me, when I download a file it’s automatically added into my downloads stack so I can get to it in two clicks, it’s pretty neat.

Finder

The new finder is fantastic, the sidebar has had a re-design and now looks like the sidebar you would see in iTunes, the four default headings in the sidebar are devices, shared, places and search for, these new headings are collapsible so if you don’t think you’re going to find yourself using one of the headings that often you can collapse it and make more room for the icons under the other headings.

Networked computers (both mac and PCs) are now automatically shown under the shared heading so you can get to them quickly. One thing I’ve noticed is that the Windows machines on a network have a PC with the blue screen of death as the icon, quite amusing.

The new search for heading in the finder sidebar displays preset spotlight searches for today, yesterday and past week which shows any files opened or edited within that time-scale. There are also three other preset searches; All Images, All Movies and All Documents.

The finder now has Coverflow as a new view option so you can flick through files and folder just like you’re used to doing with album art in iTunes.

When I first heard about coverflow in the finder I expected it to be slow at rendering and quite jumpy but it’s actually really smooth to use, and the reflective effect looks amazing.

Quick Look

Quick Look is another new feature which allows you to preview files without even having to open an application. Say for example you have a PDF file which has some information you need to quickly get to, with Quick Look you simply navigate to the file with coverflow and hit the space bar, a live preview is then opened and you can even navigate through different pages.

Quick Look works with all types of files, you can even play full length video in coverflow thumbnails, in the Quick Look previewer or full screen without having to load quicktime.

Time Machine

Time Machine is the new backup tool built into OS X, when you connect your backup disk Leopard takes an up-to-date copy of all your files and creates a backup of them. If you ever loose a file you just launch the Time Machine application and go ‘back in time’ to the file you want and recover it to your local hard-drive.

At first I wasn’t too sure if I would be using Time Machine, I usually manually backup my files as I need them but I thought I would give it a try anyway and I am very impressed, It’s really simple to use and I’ve found myself deleting files just so I can use the cool interface to go back in time to get them.

Spaces

Spaces is like having several different desktops on one computer, you can assign applications to different spaces, so if you have lots of windows open this becomes really useful. You can place all your image editing software in one space, all your coding applications in another and then you might put itunes into another. It really tidies up the desktop and hides any clutter or distractions in other applications.

Mail and iCal

Mail and iCal both have some new features too. In Mail you can now add notes and to-do lists, and if you use both mail and iCal they syncronise with each other so both applications show the same to-do list, this is something I am going to find really handy.

So far I’ve got no complaints about Leopard, all the new features are great and most of them help to make everyday tasks easier. I’ve only outlined my favourite features in this post, Leopard has hundreds of other new features which are all shown on Apples own 300+ new features page.

If you have any Leopard questions or comments feel free to leave them. I would also love to hear from other people who have used Leopard to see how they are getting on with it.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a very useful and powerful social bookmarks manager which works by ‘tagging’ websites you like and sorting them into categories built from the tags to choose. Websites you tag are then added to your bookmarks which you can choose to share with the world or keep private.

One of the reasons I like del.icio.us so much is because all of my bookmarks are in one place, i don’t ever need to worry about loosing a link, I can get to my bookmarks from home, at work, at a friends house or even on my mobile.

Last.Fm

Using a system called audiscrobbler Last.fm collects information about the music you listen to and uses the information to generate a playlist of other music you might be interested in, it also links you up with other users that have similar tastes in music.

Users can generate their own playlists and radio station using tracks from the Last.Fm library. Information from your last.fm profile such as top or recently listened tracks can be shown on a webpage. If you are looking for new music I would highly recommend last.fm, it comes up with some great suggestions, it’s also a really good website to use if you want to kill some time.

NetVibes

NetVibes is probably one of my favourite websites, it’s a personal startpage which is highly customisable allowing you to add as many rss feeds and ‘modules’ as you like.

My netvibes page has blocks to show me todays weather, news, latest emails, digg posts, facebook updates, bookmarks from del.icio.us, twitter updates calendar events and notes.

Basically NetVibes takes all of your favourite websites and places any updates or information you want into one good looking, easy to use page, so you can see everything at a glance.

Twitter

Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ tool which you can update via the web, instant messaging, desktop application, email or SMS. You sign up and send in a short message saying what you are currently doing for example ‘Eating a cake’, it may seem a little bit pointless but it’s good fun.

I like knowing what other people are doing, and I have recently developed an unhealthy addiction to twitter and the refresh button. I think it’s fantastic that this website is so big and has so many people from around the world sending in what they are doing. It’s also cool to send in your own updates and search for people who have the same interests or live in the same area as you and follow their updates.

Your daily websites

It would be good to hear what websites other people find themselves visiting on daily basis, leave a comment with your top websites.

After nearly a years break from the world of blogging I’ve decided to make a comeback. The new blog has a fresh new look and will focus on two main areas, firstly my random thoughts and happenings in my life and secondly business which will focus on the development of my ‘company’ VividWire.

I have also added some pretty nifty features so my sidebar including my most recent update from twitter, photos pulled directly from my flickr feed, the last four tracks I have listened to pulled from last.fm and cool websites from my del.icio.us bookmarks.

I will be adding more over the next few days including the about me page, a photo gallery and possibly my portfolio, so keep checking back for updates!

Oh, and one last thing… comments are open on all of my blog posts so please feel free to leave a message and if you happen to find any bugs on the site let me know so I can go squash them.