my new backpack

May 2nd 2 comments

Backpack is the new release from the makers of Basecamp, 37signals. Backpack, in a nutshell, is a personal organiser. Its seems like a ‘home’ version of Basecamp. It has pretty much the same features as Basecamp but it’s been arranged in a slightly different manner.

Pages

You create pages in your ‘backack’ and add certain things to it, namely:

Text blocks, or Notes
Files
Images
Lists
Links

They give you some examples of pages you could create like a page to organize a craft project, store favorites in your city, a portfolio, client mock-up presentations, etc. The possibilities are endless!

The free version allows you to have up to 3 pages. You can, of course delete and reuse these as you see fit. Another cool feature of the pages is that you can share them with other people.

Reminders

This is probably my favorite feature of Backpack. As you can excpect from pretty much everything 37signals do the interface is really simple and a joy to use. Backpack can remind you in two ways - there’s the regular old email method (which i’ve tested - and as a result remembered to blog about Backpack this morning :) ) or there’s the SMS method (which is currently unavailable in New Zealand).

I’ve recently discovered the usefullness of a shared calendar thanks to Mozilla Calendar and Apple iCal. Both of these products make use of the iCalendar format. What this means is that i can have one centralised online calendar and subscribe to it using either Apple iCal or Sunbird. Nice you say - but what has this got to do with Backpack? Well - the reminder system in Backpack automatically creates an iCalendar link that you can subscribe to. Sweet as! My life just got a whole lot easier!

Changes

Now this is where things get interesting…You can track changes that other people have made to any page you are sharing. It shows you a chronological list of the changes made and by whom and it also generates an RSS feed of those changes. Phat, I love RSS - the more I can get, the better!

And?

And - I love it! I can see myself using this daily. I can see my mum using this daily! Go 37signals! Such a tight little application that is so open you can pretty much do what you want with it.

2 comments on “my new backpack”

On May 5th, 2005 Peter Asquith said:
37Signals are doing some cool things! Not lucky enough to get the Golden treatment but dived in yesterday and started filling my Backpack. Like you said, the reminders feature is cool and the tie-in to iCal/Moz Calendar is great.

I’ve been getting more and more hooked on Basecamp recently to manage my work life and it really does cut to the chase. And, just to be a complete 37Signals junkie, I’ve created a heap of Ta-da Lists. I’m not quite sure where they fit in now that Backpack’s live.

All good.
On May 6th, 2005 Darren said:
The 37signals boys are working on an api for backpack so it’ll be able to talk to your ta-da lists and your basecamp.

I just realised that I have accounts with all three of those products. We’re such geeks! Rox0r!!