Campfire + Pyro = Collaboration Heaven

I recently started working on a new site that requires a lot of collaboration with the other staff. Instead of using IRC or AIM chats or lots and lots of email cc’s (I’ve done this and it is awful), they use 37signals‘ chat/collaboration software Campfire.

For the uninitiated, Campfire is an online chat service hosted by 37signals that allows you to chat and send files while saving everything online. You don’t have to worry about missing anything when you are away from your desk because when you sign back into Campfire, everything that has been said in the past is there waiting for you. It’s great if you work with a bunch of people in all different places and time zones.

One gripe I had with Campfire was that I had to have Safari running at all times when I wanted to be logged in. Safari is a bit of a resource hog when you open and close lots of tabs and leave it running for a while (at least the 3.0 Beta is) and I wanted to remain logged into our Campfire session most of the time.

I was talking (read:whining) to a friend about this issue and he suggested that I try Pyro, a simple app from Marko Karppinen & Co. that uses WebKit (the engine that Safari uses) to give you a dedicated Campfire viewer. No longer do I have to keep a copy of Safari running all the time to stay logged into Campfire! Hurrah!

Firing up Pyro is just like logging into Campfire. It asks for the Campfire account that you want to log in to and then for your username and password. Once you’re logged in, the familiar Campfire interface appears with a few little extras. Pyro gives you keyboard shortcuts to switch from room to room within Campfire and also to adjust text sizes. All the Campfire features work perfectly including file uploading, transcript reading and searching. The developer does warn you of issues with Safari 3.0 but I haven’t noticed any issues.

Pyro is a free download from Marko Karppinen & Co.

If you haven’t tried Campfire and you frequently do collaboration, I suggest you give it a shot, and also look at all the other 37signals applications!

share permalink ping 3 Comments