If you’re a Basecamp user, I guess you’re annoyed by its email notification system. Every time someone does something in the account, like edit a writeboard, a new email pops up in your Inbox. And even with a Priority Inbox, there’s not really anything you can do about that: you’ll get the email. With teams, it gets worse. If you have more than 5 projects and 20 people on a single account, just think about the consequences. Hundreds of emails per day. No way, there must be a better way.
Now we can say there’s a better way to stay updated with Basecamp. Thanks to BaseApp, you’ll be able to get every single update directly on your Mac desktop, without the clutter. For serious Basecamp users, BaseApp is a must-have.
The app is developed by the non-plus-ultra of the OS X scene: it’s a collaboration between Linebreak (Cloud app) and Made by Elephant. Tim Van Damme created the UI and icon of the app (together with Linebreak’s Castro), while Nick Paulson and Maximilian Schoening were responsible of development and project management. With a team like this, the app must be good.
Indeed it is. It’s so simple, yet fast at fetching Basecamp updates and perfect at displaying them. It lives in the menubar, so it doesn’t get in the way. Once you enter your Basecamp account details in the Preferences (supports both standard login and OpenID) you can adjust the way the app gives you the goods: want it to refresh every 1 minute? Want a Growl popup or just a sound notification? You can customize BaseApp to your needs.
To see the notifications, click on the app’s icon in the menubar and you get a menu with all the unread updates. Every different type of update (new todo, new writeboard, new file uploaded) comes with a different icon. It’s pure pixel lust. BaseApp was designed to be as minimalistic as possible, and it feels just right on OS X. It feels native. This, combined to its stability (not a missed update for me), makes it a great software. You can enter multiple accounts and manage multiple projects from a single menubar interface. I love that.
Like I said, this is a must-have for Basecamp users on OS X. It’s not a full-featured desktop client, because the devs didn’t want it to be one. It’s all about notifications and staying up to date. Ditch those mail notifications and install BaseApp, you won’t regret it. A license comes at €7, and 14-day free trial is available.
