37Signals relaunched their Backpack service today. The app's back end code was completely rebuilt from scratch, according to Jason Fried, and the service also got a new UI to match some of 37Signals' other recently updated products (such as Basecamp). The design still feels very familiar to any 37Signals app user, however.
There are a number of new features in Backpack, but a handful of them really stick out, and those are the ones that I'll focus on in this post.
Perhaps the best new feature is that you can now move anything, anywhere on your Backpack page. It used to be that items on your page were mostly fixed, but now every item can be dragged and dropped around the page using AJAX. This makes organizing your pages much easier. You can more easily group related items, or move them around as you add bits or change and update things.
Hard to see in this shot, but you can drag items between pages.
Extending from the drag and drop functionality, you can now drag items between pages. Just drag an item from one page and drop it onto the link for any other page in your sidebar and it will automatically be added to that page. If you drag an item onto the "Make a new page" button, Backpack will create a new page with your item on it. (Check out a demo movie here.)
Another long overdue feature that makes an appearance in the new Backpack: search. You can now search all of your Backpack pages and search terms are highlighted in yellow in the results, which makes it very easy to find what you're looking for. Other new features: titles for lists, picture galleries, and page dividers, and new RSS feeds.
Dividers can now have their own unique titles.
Backpack is a great organizational tool that got a little better today. We're big fans of 37Signals apps here, and use Basecamp (a project management application) daily to keep track of things going on across the Read/WriteWeb network. Now, to make me really happy, 37Signals needs to integrate Backpack and Highrise (their contact manager). Highrise has a feature called Cases that lets you group information about dealings with contacts on a single page (i.e., keep notes about your real estate agent and a to-list of things you need to do for your open house together in one place), but adding full Backpack functionality would put Cases on steroids. One can dream.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
The improved functionality looks good. However this is the only 37signal app for which I don't use on a regular basis. Every six months I try backup and decide against using it.
I can't find it but there was an article on webworkdaily about backup and most the comments mentioned that it wasn't worth the money.
I guess it would be interesting to see if they publish number of paid basecamp vs backpack vs highrise users.
Posted by: Neeraj Kumar | July 25, 2007 4:04 PMThanks for the review and highlighting the new features. We have some ideas regarding integration. We've already begin single sign-on integration with Highrise and Basecamp and we'll be adding Backpack shortly. Our Open Bar makes switching between apps without having to log in dead simple.
Neeraj, we're a private company so we don't share $/revenue/paid-subscriber numbers, sorry.
Posted by: Jason Fried | July 25, 2007 4:20 PMWe use Basecamp and tried Highrise but gave up for Salesforce. This new stuff looks cool, but not sure how it would add to efficiency right now.
Posted by: Michael Hoffman | July 25, 2007 4:22 PMI've been using backback for a couple of months now and am excited to see the changes.
Posted by: Sara | July 26, 2007 3:11 AMMichael - Why on earth would you move to Salesforce? That sounds crazy to me.
Posted by: John | July 26, 2007 4:40 AMOpen Bar now supports Backpack as well. This means we have single sign-on for Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack.
Posted by: Jason Fried | July 26, 2007 10:22 PMJust thought I'd add a plug for RubberSquid. It does similar things to BackPack but with a couple of really cool differences:
(i) it uses artificial intelligence to help search and display entries; and
(ii) it can be accessed on your PC, mobile phone, PDA, IP-TV, Sony PSP - in fact anything with a browser and a bit pipe.
You can find it here: http://www.rubbersquid.com
Posted by: paulmz | July 27, 2007 5:39 AMThis is different fro me. I just started my own blog and I find this information to be pretty helpful. Being able to move your information around like that makes things so much easier. I will be doing some more research on it.
Posted by: Matt Batcho | July 28, 2007 7:15 AM