Some Operation Gadget readers know that I do a lot of consulting work on other people's weblogs through my Weblog Improvement business. In order to succeed in this line of work, I need to keep lots of small projects organized and on-track.

The best tool I've found for this purpose so far has been Basecamp from 37Signals. It lets me break down projects to milestones and to do list tasks, and share work with my clients when appropriate. Since I am a heavy Basecamp user, I depend upon their time tracking feature for which 37Signals charges a small premium.

What Basecamp has been missing up to now is a lightweight timer widget that knows about the projects that I'm working on. That feature still doesn't exist in Basecamp, but I found a third party web application that will do the job nicely for the time being.

SlimTimer is a free timer widget that handles multiple tasks. It also allows me to run reports from its website that I can give to clients as backup for my billings. I can also export the data to Excel. Hopefully, I will be able to import that data into Basecamp at some point.

If you're a heavy Basecamp user, I think SlimTimer is a must-have accessory. I wonder if 37signals is aware of this site yet. If I were them, I'd be doing a make or buy analysis right now. [ via LifeDev ]