Frugal IT: Backpack filled with "real-life usefulness and smooth interfacing"

"10 Applications that can help you with Personal Information Management" [Frugal IT] investigates various Personal Information Management (PIM) solutions. Backpack is first up:

Backpack is a SaaS intranet for you or your business. You can store, share, discuss, and archive everything that’s essential for you or your team. “It adapts to how you see it fitting into your life, and it can bend and reshape itself to fit the application you use it for. Multiple pages with multiple levels of functionality within each page equate to an application with customization beyond that of all others. Think of it as a wiki, but overflowing with real-life usefulness and smooth interfacing.” – Mike Rundle

Try Backpack.

Get your wedding party involved with Backpack

In HOW TO: Plan a DIY Wedding Using Social Media, a Mashable editor open sources his wedding planning work-flow and shares the tricks he's learned so far. One of his recommended tools: Backpack.

It should be clear by now: planning a wedding is a mammoth undertaking (and ours is relatively small at just over 100 guests). Keeping track of all the details can be difficult, but two tools are potentially invaluable for staying organized as the list of items you need to keep straight for the wedding grows larger. One of those resources is Backpack. Though initially designed for business use, Backpack is a single-page, wiki-style organizer that can be amazingly useful for keeping track of who is doing what, what is left to do, and what has already been accomplished. Because Backpack pages can be shared, you can also use the app to get your wedding party involved — dole out tasks to bridesmaids, groomsmen, and relatives and keep track of everyone’s progress.

Read the full piece for more recommended tools.

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.

Why the Backpack Journal is "killer"

In this blog post, Sam Harrelson talks about why the Backpack Journal is "killer":

I'm going back to Backpack for workflow management. The web interface is fantastic (and familiar), I can easily email in material, create seperate pages, feel secure, integrate easily with GMail, Google Calendar and be completely web-based. 

However, the killer app Backpack has going for it is the Journal feature:

I'm using it for product management, status updates to myself and as a "private twitter" etc. It's like the anti-social bookmarketing site Pinboard for micro-messaging.

The article also raves about Satchel, which brings Backpack to your iPhone.

Yes, [Satchel] costs $10, but it's well worth the price. Satchel is speedy, works "offline" (whatever that means anymore), and intuitive. I can also easily update my Journal through Satchel. Plus, there are hacks and apps for getting Backpack to work well as a web app (like GMail) on the iPhone if preferred.

Read the full piece.

Web Worker Daily: A daily checklist in Backpack helps with marketing efforts

Tools and Techniques for Better Lead Generation [Web Worker Daily] argues that maintaining a consistent effort is key to marketing. The author says you need a reliable system so you can see exactly what you’ve done and when, as well as what’s left to be done — and Backpack is a great tool for this:

I have a page set up for each day of the workweek, and I evenly distribute the action tasks for all of my marketing tactics throughout the week.

On a given day, I simply click on that day’s page and get to work on the tasks, which are within a handy checklist (see image above along the left).

As I complete the items, I check them off. My goal is to get through the entire list on any given day. If I don’t get through the list for some reason, my rule is to get through all of the week’s tasks before the following Monday. This provides me with a little flexibility without letting me completely off the hook or allowing me to get too lax with my efforts (thus, adding consistency).

Each Monday, I un-check all the lists on every page, which helps me to stay accountable to my plans and goals for my business. I can clearly see what got done and what did not get done over the previous week. After un-checking the items, I’m ready to begin another week.

Steve Rubel discusses workstreaming with the Backpack Journal

Steve Rubel is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman - the world's largest independent PR firm. He recently posted: "Workstreaming in 140 Characters with Backpack."

Nowadays, status update boxes are everywhere: LinkedIn, Twitter, Friendfeed, Yammer, AIM, GTalk, Facebook and more. The stream is becoming a de facto way that we communicate with others. However, thinking in 140 characters is also changing how I work. I am now using status updates to workstream.

I have dusted off using Backpack as a tool for managing my life. It's improved a lot since I last used it a few years ago. One of their recent additions is the Backpack Journal, which I love. I can update it throughout the day to capture a running log of what I worked on, when. Right now this is just for my own use but Backpack works great in teams as well. Above is a screenshot from my Journal this am. I also update it from my iPhone using an app called Satchel and on the desktop use text expansion software to enter items more quickly. I use codes and phrases to track my time which I refer to when I enter my time reports.

Learn more about workstreaming (i.e. the publishing of work-related activities and events to your remote colleagues, usually via RSS but sometimes in other formats and ways).

"Backpack is a great way to keep all your wedding planning in one place"

69 Amazing Resources to Help You Plan Your Dream Wedding includes a link to Backpack:

Backpack — While it’s not limited just to weddings, 37signals’ Backpack is a great way to keep all your wedding planning in one place, accessible from anywhere there’s an Internet connection.

Related Product Blog posts:
Two examples of using Backpack to plan a wedding
"Backpack is awesome for wedding planning"
Using Backpack to plan a wedding

"Run your home more like a business" with 37signals tools

101 Tools to Run Your Home More Like a Business:

Home life seems to get more and more complicated as days go by. There are chores, paperwork, and lots of maintenance to deal with, but your home doesn’t have to take over your life. By using tools that streamline the work of businesses, you’ll find that it’s easy to get things done. Read on and you’ll find 101 tools that will make your home run like a business.

Included on the list: Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, Campfire, and Writeboard.

TUAW: "Satchel is Backpack on the iPhone done right"

Satchel is Backpack on the iPhone done right (finally) according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Whenever I'm evaluating a client application that interacts with a web-based service via its API, my acid test is the answer to this question: "Could I fully utilize this service using only this application?". Satchel gets you most of the way there. With existing Backpack pages, you can view all of your notes and lists, edit the pages tags and even view attached images and files. You can also create new pages, but the API doesn't allow for creating anything other than Note and List elements within your new page (though, you can email files, etc. directly to it once it's created). The good news is, Satchel also has a "send an email to this page" button, so you can add content to your new page relatively easily. The Satchel crew also really spent some time on the list interface, making it easy to add, remove and reorder list items in a very iPhone-ish way...

While you may be a little hesitant to drop the $9.99US on this one, I can say that it's worth every penny for the true Backpack fanatic. It's gone a long way to removing the barrier for those looking to embrace Backpack as a service, but feeling a little hamstrung by the lack of a decent mobile interface. If you love Backpack, you'll love Satchel [App Store].

Why The Strategic Incubator chooses Backpack for internal project management

Matthew Scott of The Strategic Incubator just wrote: "Internal Project Management: Backpack Is Our Choice."

Think of Backpack as your small business intranet where you share, store, secure, and discuss everything that is important for your team to accomplish a client engagement.

For example, we are currently working on multiple client engagements. We have an office located in Greater NYC area and one in Portland. Occasionally we have specialty contractors from different parts of country. We needed a shared system enabling each person to access, share, and store information vital to the client project success.

I’ll share a brief overview of how we use Backpack within minutes of partnering with a new client.

When Company-X partners with The Strategic Incubator, a process is set in motion:

• We establish a Backpack page of Company X. It takes us about 10 seconds and then we click one button to send an automatic email and text message notifying selected members of our team that we have a new project page.
• Each team member gets to work adding to the to-do list, notes section, and the writeboard section to brainstorm some preliminary creative ideas.

Before Backpack, we would pick-up the phone and receive a work status a few times a day.

Now, we just open our shared and secured Backpack URL site from any computer and in seconds I can see exactly what our individuals are doing.

The full post also includes lots of sharp ideas for how you can use Backpack for your business.

Backpack helps keep author's inbox cleaner by streamlining writing and editing process

In How Backpack Made Me Like Gmail More, Nate Burgos shares how Backpack has helped him keep his inbox cleaner by streamlining his writing and editing process.

When a web-based product (or any designed product or service) inspires this, it’s worth acquiring and using. My editor Silvia acknowledged during our initial use of the trial version that Backpack’s alleviation of multiple emails (not to mention multiple attachments) was a very good thing. Silvia’s comfort level, combined with mine, was upped.

Now my Gmail inbox is thankfully shallower, with fewer messages and files when it comes to my editorial process. Gmail offers high storage but it feels better to arrange, share and store project-based content and information in a systematic way with Backpack. This makes Gmail more breathable and fun.

Read the full article for an in-depth look at how Nate uses Backpack to collaborate with his editor on blog posts and some observations from the organizational move from Gmail to Backpack.

"Each Page serves as a central place to store the stuff pertaining to the topic of that Page, like this for a past topic for a blog entry."