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Backpack: web-based PIM

by Barb Dybwad on June 29, 2005 at 01:15 PM

For anyone else obsessed with the whole GTD ~~cult~~ phenomenon, Backpack from 37signals is a must-see. It's a low-cost, web-based personal information manager that features to-do lists, notes (reverse chronological, a la blog style), image storage, and a host of neat ways to get information in and out of the system. You can send email to add content to a page, set up reminders that get sent to your cellphone or via email, and share specific pages with specified people (as well as subscribe to the changes they make via RSS). Add pages at will and interlink them, quasi-wiki style. Plus, there's a mobile version you can access from your smartphone, regular cellphone or PDA. If it sounds like information management heaven, you might want to add an action item to your next actions list to check out the free 30-day trial.

Comments

Marc PertonSep 30th 2005 1:28PM

Neutral

I agree! Backpack is a great tool, and I use it to send reminders to myself via SMS all the time. The one thing that stops me from using it as my main to-do list is that it doesn't let you create hierarchical to-do lists. You can reorder items in a list, but you can't prioritize them.

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Barb DybwadOct 7th 2005 4:41PM

Neutral

I agree. Then again, there is always some critical flaw in every tool in my arsenal, so I've given up searching for the holy grail of info management and am constantly piecing together a patchwork quilt of GTD/productivity hacks.

I haven't found a to-do list yet that can handle flexible enough prioritization for my shifting needs. I've lately been dreaming about a digg-style to-do list where I could just click a plus sign to bump something up in priority, and things would float to the top more organically.

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BrentSep 4th 2005 2:17PM

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Hey...

I've developed my own to-do list site: http://www.tdoos.com

It's somewhat similar to 37Signal's (the makers of Backpack) Ta-da lists, but it's completely free. It's certainly not a competitor to Backpack, but for quick to-do lists I think it's pretty good.

FYI: I'm not trying to spam the comments, I just thought this was somewhat relevant to the comments posted so far. :)

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