We’ve done it! The Lively Labs team has been hard at work on Basejump, a Basecamp application for salesforce CRM.

One year later, we are excited to announce that Basejump is ready to be used! We will only be opening the application to a private beta audience for the next couple weeks as the application still needs to pass the Force.com security review before it can be publicly listed on the AppExchange.

What do I do to get an invite?
We will be selecting a small set of companies to kick off the release. Email us at basejump@livelylabs.com with the subject of “Basejump Beta” to be considered. We will be sending out instructions on how to install the private beta next week.

You can also follow us on Twitter @livelylabs for more updates and news on the private beta and when the instructions have been sent.

Will you be at Dreamforce?
If you’re going to be attending Dreamforce next week, feel free to email us at basejump@livelylabs.com and we can meet and do a demo of the app and look at how your organization currently uses or is interested in using Basecamp and Salesforce.com.

Again, why is it only a private beta?
We will only be opening the application to a private beta audience for the next couple weeks as the application still needs to pass the Force.com security review before it can be publicly listed on the AppExchange. After it is approved, it will be available on the AppExchange. A video demo will be available this weekend so that everyone can get as excited as we are!

Background: Why did it take a whole year?
The Force.com platform is supposed to be exist for building great apps quickly and efficiently, so what happened? The shared, multi-tenant nature of the platform and the Salesforce CRM in general means that certain rules are placed on developers and the applications that we create. We had technical limitations on the Force.com side that we had to take into account. 37Signals, the creators of Basecamp, also threw some technical obstacles in our way. Now they are all sorted out and we’re ready to get it in your hands!

Basejump, our Basecamp to Salesforce.com connector, will be available at the end of this month on March 1. We are currently working to make sure that the first version is released successfully.

We are very excited to share this with everyone and are happy to announce that it will be available for free on the Salesforce.com AppExchange. The only requirements for using the connector are accounts with both Salesforce.com and 37Signals’ Basecamp.

For more information on Basejump and to signup to be notified of its release, check out its product page.

Welcome to the Lab

We’re proud to announce the opening of our agency, and give you some idea of who we are and what to expect from us. If you’d like to know what we do, it may seem a little cloudy. And by that, we mean to say that we’re all about cloud computing: on-demand, web-based services that offer much greater flexibility and convenience over desktop applications. For businesses and organizations, this can be a very good thing.

Our preferred customer relationship management solution is salesforce.com. It’s incredibly powerful and versatile, and it just so happens we know how to make it do cool stuff.

In addition, we design websites and themes for use with the wordpress content management system, as well as custom wordpress plugins to add functionality.

Oh yeah, and if you need an iPhone app or something cool like that, don’t hesitate to ask.

How it all Began

I’ve been messing around with the web for years, mostly designing sites that are run off of wordpress, and a couple years ago Colin and I met and started collaborating occasionally on projects. Most of the time, it was me getting into trouble or needing help from a programmer. Either way, I try to buy enough beers here and there to offset the imbalance.

About a year ago, we started talking about forming an agency, and in the last 12 months or so it became increasingly obvious that people wanted what we had planned to offer. In the meantime we’ve been working on starting up Reno’s first coworking space, but that’s for another post.

And then, along came Chelsea- one of the best designers either of us has worked with. Every once in a while we would have a chance to exchange geek pleasantries, and realized that a collaboration between the three of us was the next step.

As it turns out, we all share the same philosophy about the web, about business and about the incredible importance of science fiction. It doesn’t get much better.