If you’re anything like the typical family, you have multiple PCs, laptops, cell phones, PDAs, maybe a Mac and several planners, and a bunch of sticky notes. You’re more wired, but less connected. It’s especially hard to manage everything across all your commitments: your job(s), family, etc. It’s no wonder as you went to bed last night you you remembered that you forgot to pick up your suit from the dry cleaners that you were going to wear to the sales presentation today.
Enter Backpack from the folks at 37signals. I’ve been using the online organizational tool for about 4 months and I love it. I can honestly say that it has had a measurable positive impact on my productivity. It’s one of these ’so simple why didn’t someone think of it earlier’ tools.
Users of Backpack get web pages on which they can make Lists, write notes, and upload files and images. Each page has a unique address so you can email To-Dos or notes that will be populated on the page when you next visit. You can also set reminders that Backpack will send to an email address or as a text message. Each page can also be shared with one or more people which is great for collaboration whether with family or business associates.
Backpack is entirely open-ended and can be used for almost anything. I assign a page for Clever Parents that I track things that I need to do, notes, etc. I have another page devoted to tracking house projects and several others related to various business ventures. I keep a list at the top of each page of the things that I have to do today for that page topic and I’m always setting reminders to email myself.
The possibilities are limitless especially for parents. Track playgroups, sports schedules, babysitters, plan family vacations, assign a page for everyone in the family, whatever you need to organize.
The basic service is free and provides 5 webpages and premium services, which start at $5 and go to $14/month, give you additional pages, file hosting and calendering functions.
After 4 months of using it, I can tell you that I don’t use a planner anymore and if I’m in front of a computer, I have Backpack up in one of my FireFox tabs. This is an extremely useful and very cool tool.
By David on 04/7/07 in Life, Featured, Columns, An Organized Life, Clever Living
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April 10th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Thanks for the post about Backpack. Family use is one use we didn’t really consider when we originally launched Backpack, but it’s really become one of the most popular uses. We’ll be working on some enhancements this year that should make using Backpack with your family easier and better. Thanks again for the post.
May 18th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I am also a huge fan of Backpack for keeping my home and family organized. I use all of 37signals’ products at work, but i subscribed to a free Backpack account to organize all of our home renovation projects and it made planning our son’s 2nd birthday party a breeze. It was great to have one place to bounce back and forth with my husband on theme ideas, organize the guest list, shopping lists, and even include links to Amazon to narrow down presents we wanted to buy for our kid.