Backpack
Over the past week or so, I’ve been trying out Backpack. It’s rather difficult to describe exactly what it does, and the best way to learn is by trying it yourself (you can sign up for a limited free account). However, by just saying “Go and try it”, I feel that I’m failing in my duty to the geek community, and being pretty lazy into the bargain. So here’s a slightly more informative discussion.
Backpack allows you to create and link together a number of web pages, which can contain text, check lists, notes (blog-like entries with a title and a date stamp), links to other pages and tags (like del.icio.us tags). In addition, if you have any of the account plans other than the free one, you can also upload images and files. Backpack uses Ajax extensively to handle creation, deletion and editing of elements, so it feels very snappy and smooth to use as you rarely have to refresh the page to see your changes.
So far, it probably sounds like a nicely implemented wiki, but there are a few other nice features that make it much more useful than that. First, you can send items to a particular page via email. Each page has it’s own unique and randomly-chosen email address, and sending an email to that address with ‘todo: Buy flowers’ puts a check list item ‘Buy flowers’ on that page. Using a similar notation, you can add images, notes and files to the page. This is pretty brilliant, and I’ve used it several times already from my mobile phone when out and about. I used to use Ta-da Lists to house my wishlists of books, CDs and DVDs that I would like to get for myself or as gifts for others, but Backpack provides everything Ta-da did and more so I’ve switched. The emailable items become very useful when you’re in a shop and spot something you’d like to get at some point. You can make a quick entry there and then, and then relax knowing that it’s safely on your list.
Reminders are also very handy in certain situations. You can set up reminders for any date and time in the future, and the text gets emailed to you or sent as an SMS to your mobile phone. I’m finding this useful for things like ‘Return library books’ which don’t really belong on my calendar, but I need a reminder for, and also to remind me to take something to work. I review my to do items (kept in Tracks) regularly, but I don’t get time to do it before work. A quick SMS reminder timed to arrive while I’m having breakfast is an excellent prompt to remember to take something with me, or do something on the way to work.
Finally, there’s now a mobile interface to all the pages, which loads very quickly and cleanly on my phone. That means that you can read and add things to pages, and even add reminders while on the move.
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Have you upgraded your account? I like Backpack a lot so far (even though I can't use the mobile interface on my cell phone), but I haven't decided if I'll upgrade yet.----- I've been working with backpack, but haven't been able to successfully use it from my phone yet. I have the sidekick II, and the javascript support doesn't work with the ajax controller.
So I can read, but not update from my phone. What phone do you use?
I didn't know about todo: pick up dinner. That is cool.
Thanks, Jesse
by Jesse Andrews @ 17/05/2005 2:05 am • Permalink •
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kerry: No, not yet. I'm giving it a little time to see if I really need the paid account. Having said that $5 a month is [checks Dashboard widget] £2.71 a month, which is easily less than you can spend on a sandwich lunch in a day.
Jesse Andrews: Did you try the mobile interface rather than the standard one (i.e. /mob on the end of your URLs)? I'm using the mobile Opera on my Sony Ericsson P910i (there's a story about that too, that I've been meaning to tell for a while), and it works superbly with that.
by bsag @ 17/05/2005 5:05 pm • Permalink •
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I've been giving backpack a try as well, I use it to plan a trip. The email stuff works nicely and I'll love it when I print it just before going on the said trip, will have everyhting in one place
On a side-note that is pretty nice too: http://shared.snapgrid.com/gtd_tiddlywiki.html
by Arnaud @ 17/05/2005 6:05 pm • Permalink •
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$5/month = $60/year.
and you still don't own the application. and your pages disappear the moment you stop paying.
dangerous things, these monthly subscriptions.
by Alec @ 31/05/2005 4:06 pm • Permalink •
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Alec: FWIW, there is a nice XML export for all the pages, so you can get your data out into a portable form if you decide to stop the subscription. As for the price, yes, it does mount up over time, but if you see it as a service rather than a piece of software (they maintain the servers, pay for the bandwidth etc.), then it's quite reasonable. I rent my house (for a heck of a lot more than $5 a month, unfortunately!), and the moment I stop paying rent, I lose my home. But, I don't have to pay when the roof leaks or the boiler needs fixing.
It all depends what kind of value you place on these things.
by bsag @ 31/05/2005 8:06 pm • Permalink •
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