An oldie but a goodie: Marc Hedlund's favorite use of Backpack is to use it as a source control system for writing. This technique lets you use a smartphone or PDA as a "laptop" wherever you go.
Backpack will send you the contents of any page as email, and will accept email to any page as a way of adding to it. The format of the email containing a page's contents is exactly the same as the format it accepts to add to a page. In other words, email is a round-trip format for Backpack content: Backpack -> Email -> Backpack.Since I use my Treo 650 as a laptop wherever I go, Backpack has become the equivalent of a source control system for my writing. Before I leave in the morning, I send myself the content of my pages. While I'm on the subway or waiting in a movie line, I edit the text and give it a new title ("CodeZoo 2.0 rev. 4") and then send it right back to Backpack. At the end of the day I delete the stale versions.
This is a fantastic way to work. It doesn't matter where I am, nor whether I have a network connection, nor what sort of device is nearby, nor what application set is installed on that device. If I can get a Web browser, I can edit; if I can get my email, I can edit. It's like a Blackberry for my whole desktop.
The email links Marc refers to are located in the footer of each Backpack page:
Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.
