Knapsacking it
Published May 2nd, 2005 in General, AJAXI got a hold of a Backpack account from 37signals this weekend. They’re the creators of Basecamp and Tada Lists and probably the leading driver behind all this Ruby on Rails madness.
Backpack, like all the other Signals’ projects, is pretty to look at, easy to use, and feature-focused (meaning it does a few things, and does them as well as possible). Lots of little details that you don’t notice explicitly, but that make the whole experience painless.
But what is Backpack (speculation has run rampant)? Well, it is not two things I half expected it to be: a bookmarker or an RSS reader. Backpack seems much more focused on publishing than reading. And (smartly, I think), it’s designed with small businesses, freelancers and the like in mind.
Basically, Backpack lets you publish various kinds of information to the web, either through its conveniently usable interface, or via e-mail. Images, notes, lists and files. You can put it all up there and share it selectively with (presumably) your clients or collaborators.
The other main feature is that you can set dated reminders (e.g. pick up little brother at 3pm on Friday), and Backpack will send you a message bugging you about it on your cell phone and/or to your e-mail. Pretty cool technical accomplishment, if you ask me.
Anyway, I won’t go on about it (since it’s launching publicly tomorrow). My conclusion: it’s a very well done, focused application that is easy to use. But I probably won’t use it much. If you’re a freelancer, starting a small business, or otherwise have to communicate/collaborate/schedule time with a small group of people, Backpack will probably be very useful to you.
Yeah, the problem I have with a wiki is that it’s too unstructured – I have trouble figuring out where to put my information. Backpack gives you a little more of a framework to work within. In the end it’s up to personal preference though.