With the huge launches of news weblogs like Gawker Media’s Sploid and Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post, you’d think that the medium they’re utilizing would actually be utilized. Weblogs are all about two-way communication between writers and readers, but commenting features on these two sites are noticeably absent. What happened here was that they wanted to exploit the hype and media attention surrounding weblogs for their gain, without all the aftertaste of reader opinions. What a waste.
Backpack by 37signals
Backpack officially launches this morning, but I’ve been using the app from 37signals for a few days now and wanted to record some of my thoughts, so here we go.
What is it?
Jason wrote on Signal vs. Noise about what Backpack actually is, and to be honest, it’s difficult to explain because it can be anything you want. It adapts to how you see it fitting into your life, and it can bend and reshape itself to fit the application you use it for. Personal notes, photo libraries, group organization, business information, scrapbooks. Multiple pages with multiple levels of functionality within each page equate to an application with customizability beyond that of all others. Think of it as a wiki, but overflowing with real-life usefulness and smooth interfacing.
![](http://businesslogs.com/images/backpack_preview1.gif)
![](http://businesslogs.com/images/backpack_preview2.gif)
Technical Goodies
It’s from 37signals, so you know it’ll be simple and useful off the bat. But combine traditional 37s stylings with real-time AJAX updates and yellow fade flourishes and you’ve got a web application that is on par with Flickr in terms of useful technical achievements. I can’t wait to start ripping into the source and seeing what there is to see.
Final Thoughts
I could discuss more about the functionality and interface, but it’s better if you just go check it out and roam around for yourself. Backpack is so flexible that describing exactly what it does is impossible, and that’s not a bad thing. Simple software takes the constricting details out and only leaves in the functionality you need, and Backpack’s simplicity shines right through its zippers.
Weblogs Campaigning For Your Business
Talk about email marketing working for ya — I just came across Campaign Monitor’s new weblog through an email they sent me. Of course it looks fantastic, our friends at Switch I.T. (makers of Campaign Monitor) put it together, but besides the great visual appeal, there’s something very smart going on: they are featuring their customers’ email templates on their corporate website.
Light My Firewire
I wanted to share my iBook’s wireless internet connection with my Power Mac G5, but all my ethernet cables are back home so what was I to do? Internet sharing over Firewire to the rescue.
I’ve got an 6-to-6 pin Firewire 400 cable I use for transferring files between computers, so I just plugged one end into the iBook and the other into the G5, and followed the instructions at MacDevCenter. It was literally a 1 minute ordeal, and it really seems fast to me. Think it would be this easy in Windows? Yeah, right.