The first 37Signals product I am reviewing is Backpack. Backpack is a simple information organizer and calendar, all on the web. At first glance, Backpack reminded me of OneNote, but then I realized that there was a difference. Backpack is free.
When you first get a Backpack account, you are given your own “name.backpackit.com” domain. You have to sign in with your username and password.
Your Backpack site has four elements: Pages, Calendar, Reminders, and Writeboards.
When you first log in, you only have one page, the Home Page. But you can easily create more pages.
All pages have eight elements: Body, List, Notes, Files, Images, Writeboards, Links, and Sharing.
Here, you can see a page I have created called “Blog Stuff”. At the top of the page is the Body. In the body, you can type anything you want, including HTML. Here, I have inserted links to my Blog’s Login page, Stats page, and New Post page. I have also put a <hr> between two them.
The List section lets you make a list of items with check boxes next to them.
The Notes section, shown above, lets you input a bunch of notes to yourself. Here I have put some blog post ideas (yes, those are really my ideas) and the idea to create an About Me page. You can do nice bulleted lists by using the * and – characters.
Files and Images are only available for paying customers, so I can’t tell you anything about them.
Writeboards will be discussed in my review of 37Signals Basecamp.
Links is obvious: It lets you create links to relevant pages.
Finally, Sharing lets you share the page with other people.
You can send email to the page by emailing the content to the address at the bottom of the page. (Note: I will click “Renew Address”, which gives me a new address, before I post this, so that I don’t get any spam.)
The other elements of Backpack are the Calendar, which is only available to paying customers, and reminders, which sends you a reminder at a specified time by email or text message.
