the lake - the 37 signals kool-aid

i really never liked (or perhaps used is a better term) any of 37 signals services, except for a couple of items in a free backpack account because i think the dashboard widget is cool to use and show off (for real work i use and endorse tiddlywiki).

their last offering, campfire, seems... well, useless. i can see the two cfo's that have heard of 37 signals rushing to buy it, but techies (which i believe make up for a large percentage of their clients) use screen and irc, multiprotocol im clients, mail, wikis and god knows what some pimply-faced kid is writing in brainfuck right now. so this pisses me off.

but hey, nice colour scheme and logos. i mean it.

p.s. don't bother pointing me to the business week articles. if you read business week, you are already dead.

update: as long as everyone is talking about distributed authentication and how cool 0-step authentication will be (with which i agree with in principle), if i am already a 37 signals' customer (remember that backpack account?) why do i have to create yet another login?

update: pedro told me to look at the conversation archive's browser, and here's my take: it's as good as proteus's and much inferior to grep.

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