I started using 37signals’ Basecamp about a week ago as a kind of extranet for some of my clients and I am really enjoying it.  It has proved to be a tremendously easy to use, flexible and secure way to share documents with my clients (saves me having to email documents to clients when they need them – instead they can download them as and when the documents are needed), leave messages for them, set up milestones and to do items and even brainstorm with a basic document editor.

Steve Rubel has published a post about another pretty exciting product by 37signals called Highrise which is a content management/CRM tool which looks like it is going to blow my hair back when it launches. 

The email feature alone is amazing.  You forward an email from a team member to a specific address and Highrise will convert that email to additional content specific to that team member on the site.  Wow!  With a few rules you could basically automate a communications workflow really effectively.  I am looking forward to trying this out and comparing its functionality to Basecamp.

Tags: highrise, 37signals, basecamp, steve rubel