As you may have read in our huge Basecamp and Backpack article, we fell in love with these 37signals products, and I don’t see this love fading away anytime soon. Together with Backpack and Basecamp we decided to give a try to Campfire, the real time chat communication service for small and large teams, and we’re very satisfied. The web interface is simple and uncluttered, it’s fast and reliable and when combined with a Mac app like Propane, it’s a must have for any kind of team.
Guess what, I immediately went looking for a decent Campfire client for iPhone, and Ember seemed a pretty good choice. More than decent and pretty good actually, Ember by OverCommitted is the app you have to purchase if you’re a Campfire user.
The main screen of Ember is the “Lobby”, a dashboard when you can see all the rooms you’ve created, together with the information about the people attending each room. This is very useful to get a quick glimpse and check if someone is online. With the gear icon in the top right corner you can access the settings of the application, thus allowing you to configure your Campfire account, enable the landscape support and message notifications. Also, Ember has multi account support - you can add as many as you wish.
Entering a room is easy as tapping on the name in the lobby. Here you can see the actual chat, who entered or left the room, chat (of course) and do a lot of other Campfire-specific goodness. First, tapping on the “i” at the top brings up a screen where you can change the topic of a room, turn notifications on / off, see the daily transcripts, leave a room and see all the uploaded files.
Ember lets you upload files just like you can do with the webapp but, being on the iPhone, you can only snap a new photo or choose one from the Library. I wonder if it would be possible to integrate this feature with 3rd party apps databases like, say, the Dropbox iPhone app; that would be just great.
At $9.99 in the App Store, Ember could seem a little bit pricey but, I’m telling you, this is just the best app you can have right now if you’re serious about Campfire. With a delicious icon, a neat UI and a very good set of features, Ember deserved its spot on my first homescreen page.
