Yesterday, a construction accident between Big Sandy and Tyler took out our internet and phone service. I quickly realized how dependent I am on the global data cloud to function. This reaffirmed my goal of sharing one good website a week with you, my loyal readers.

Backpack is an amazing website/service from the innovative startup 37signals. It is essentially a web-based productivity/organizational tool. It is slick, flexible, and super-cool. In fact, it combines the total flexibility of a paper-based notebook with the infinite re-writable possibilities of electronic data.

Built using the flexible power of Ruby on Rails, Backpack is one of those no-brainer tools that hides mindblowing capabilities. It actually significantly reminds me of an Apple application. It just makes sense.

You can sign up for free, which gets you most of the cool features. If you want more, you can always pay a monthly fee and upgrade your account (I recently did and can’t believe I didn’t pay the price sooner!)

Backpack revolves around pages. Each page can then be filled with Lists, Notes, Files, photo galleries, and collaborative "Writeboards." These components can be edited, moved around or deleted to your heart’s content. It is easy to use and very powerful in function. All of the text in Backpack is formatted using "Textile" codes: Basically, using simple plain-text characters you can create dynamic formatting. Making something bold is as simple as enclosing it in asterisks: *bold* = bold. Making a list is as simple as adding numbers. Adding images and hyperlinks is also easy, which means that your lists and notes can all of a sudden be quite dynamic and powerful.

Backpack also has a handy calendar and a powerful reminder system. It can be set to send reminders to email or as a text message to your phone.

What do I use Backpack for? To run my life. At this point in my life, it makes sense to have things online. I have internet at work and in my room, and so it provides a handy central point to run things through.

I use a page for each of my action lists, and then a page for projects, a page for Someday/Maybe’s, and a page for Notes. This flexible solution works quite well for me and is well worth the paltry $60 a year price tag. Which is about what I paid for my planner in previous years.

Check it out at: http://www.backpackit.com/