Backpack is used to publish points of contact and resources during Toronto's garbage strike

There's a garbage strike currently underway in the city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. As expected, the citizens of Toronto are left with only questions about what to do about the garbage that is piling up. Luckily Danyl Sobolev used Backpack to quickly publish a list of useful contacts and resources for this difficult situation.

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

Always remember with Backpack Reminders

Backpack can send reminders to you via email or as a Mobile SMS/text message. That means you won’t ever forget to attend a meeting, make a call, or any other task that you have to do. You can even set and schedule reminders for your co-workers too.

You can schedule reminders for you or your team by clicking on the Reminders tab in your Backpack account.

1. Give the reminder a name.
2. Choose a time for the reminder.
3. Select the people to notify.

Backpack will automatically send an email message or mobile text message to the people that you selected on the time and date you have chosen.

Watch a quick video on Reminders.

"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].

"Create a kick ass intranet app using 37signals"

Travis Vocino, a South Florida based technologist, explains how to "Create a Kick Ass Intranet App using 37signals":

I use three 37signals applications: Backpack, Basecamp and Highrise (go go referral links). With these 3 excellent web apps, I’m able to rock out a seriously awesome complete intranet setup for my business.

Just using them is fine but, as usual, I like to take it one step further into better integration with my desktop workflow. That’s where OpenID and Fluid.app come in.

The article goes on to explain how to use OpenID and Fluid.app to "turn this puppy into a desktop-like application."

Having all of these applications in place really creates a great intranet-type workflow. It’s helpful even when working solo but if you have a small team like me it really shines. I also noticed my people used the various apps a lot more once I introduced them to using OpenID to bring them together — as well as putting it all together in Fluid.app...

It’s great for tabbing to your intranet window, adding a calendar entry, and tabbing back to Photoshop, to give a quick example. This is a process that just isn’t as exciting when you’re stuck in Safari.

Read the whole piece for step-by-step details on how Travis set up his system.

Convert password protected RSS feeds to emails with Feed My Inbox

Want to get your password protected RSS feeds (from Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, or wherever) delivered via email? Benjamin Stangland, Operations Manager at Weber Marketing Group, offers this tip on converting password protected RSS feeds to emails.

I found a free solution that will convert password protected rss feeds to emails that I just wanted to share with you guys. Since this might help other 37signals customers.

Converting password protected rss feeds seems to be a challenge but www.feedmyinbox.com works.

You have to place your username and password into the feed line itself however.
https://[username]:[password]@[domain]/[path]

We use this all the time with Highrise and love it.

FYI: An email will be sent to you each time the feed is updated, but no more than every 24 hours (to cut down on inbox clutter). Whether there is 1 post or 10 posts to the feed in a 24 hour period, you receive them all in one email.

Have a good tip related to a 37signals product? Let us know.

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 just turned 4! (and a look at the design process for the new Backpack site)

Backpack just turned 4 years old a couple of days ago. We launched it on May 3, 2005 (Here's the blog post that launched the product). Happy birthday Backpack!

Also, "Design Decisions: The New Backpack Marketing Site" is a new post at Signal vs. Noise that shares the thought process and some of the design decisions we made while redesigning the latest version of the Backpack site.

View your Highrise tasks in your Backpack Calendar (or any other calendar that accepts iCal feeds)

Did you know you can view your Highrise tasks in your Backpack Calendar (or any other calendar that accepts the iCal format)? First, go to your Tasks page and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see a link that says, "Subscribe to your iCalendar task feed."

Copy this link and then add it to your calendar. If you're not sure how to add an iCal feed to your Backpack Calendar, follow the directions at this Backpack FAQ.

More examples, improved help, and Extras at the new Backpack site

As mentioned previously, there's a new look for the Backpack marketing site. You’ll now see more Examples of all the different ways you might use Backpack. We’ve also improved the organization in the Help section so that you can find answers to your questions more quickly.

You can also check out all the Extras and iPhone Apps for Backpack in one place. Backpack works with a variety of mobile devices, third-party desktop tools, software, widgets, and more.