Jim Lipsey

I’ve been using Backpack for a few months now. It’s a web application that’s hard to describe, yet has become indespensible. Basically, the service provides a very simple interface to maintain a set of pages, each of which can store notes, images, files and links. Along with these pages is a ‘reminder’ system that will send an email with a custom subject at any desired date and time. The result lends itself very well to those working with David Allen’s GTD system which mandates, among other things, to abolish ever making a mental note of anything.

The genius of Backpack is in its implementation. The interface is absurdly simple, which belies its power until after one has used it for a week or so. The loose-form page structure combined with a nearly transparent interface has made it very natural for me to dump bits and pieces of information into my Backpack a half-dozen or so times a day. As a result, I’ve been liberated from all the little free radicals of information that were previously pinging around in my head. The reminders pop up in my mailbox just when I need them, so I no longer am distracted by all the trivial things that add up to a big distraction, like remembering to expect a shipment from Amazon or that someone owes me reply to an email in a couple of days. This isn’t meant to replace a task list, but ensures that my list only represents things that are current (not in the future), and that I don’t need to remember to add items at a later date.

Through some nifty tricks that use a combination of javascript and XML, the pages are almost seemlessly editable, without requiring page reloads. The result can be used as a case-study for why ease of use will always trump feature-completeness for most everyday software.