Over the weekend there was an update to Basecamp (the software we use to manage all of our projects) that included a feature we’ve been wanting for a long time: Reply to message via email.

In the past you had to log in to Basecamp in order to reply to a message. This caused problems for some of our clients who: constantly forgot their login info, were on very slow internet connections (and were reluctant to use Basecamp), or didn’t see the “A new message has been posted. DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL” note at the top of Basecamp message notifications and replied via email anyway (we never got the email, they felt ignored).

This latest update lets you reply to a message via email, so no visit to Basecamp is required. When messages are posted for you on Basecamp, you are sent an email with the contents of the message. You’ll see this text at the top of each Basecamp message notification:

— Reply ABOVE THIS LINE to post a comment to the project —

Simply click “Reply” in your email program, type your comment above that line, and send the email. The only catch is that if you want to post a file with your comment you’ll need to do that the “old” way – by actually logging in to Basecamp and posting your comment there.

This feature will be nice for mobile users (on iPhones or Blackberrys or Treos) and others with slow internet connections.