Labs

Basecamp works well because it's so simple. Working online is particularly sensible for project management, since everyone can get at your planner regardless of where they are or what PC they're using.

You add the names of your team members and set up their access rights when you start a project. Individual project windows display milestones above a list of completed tasks. Each milestone has a due date and a person responsible. If you need to change a due date, later milestones will automatically adjust to take account of the delay. You can also link to-do lists with milestones.

The calendar view can be filtered to show, for example, all forthcoming milestones or just those for one user. Users can subscribe to an RSS feed to keep up-to-date with changes, and you can also post messages to each other and collaborate on text documents using Writeboard, which you can also access separately at www.writeboard.com.

The main drawback of Basecamp is that the free version only supports a single project and offers no file storage. Paid subscriptions start at $12 per month.