In this sine-laptop state I’ve been in since Thursday, I’ve found myself using writeboards to take notes and jot down ideas and drafts (mostly for pieces I’m writing). It’s a nice way to have all that stuff instantly available from whichever computer I sit down at, and I don’t even have to have my flash drive with me. Very convenient and easy. But keeping track of those writeboard URLs would require its own writeboard, and that’s where Backpack comes in. You can even do to-do lists and stuff like that. I’m still on the free account, which means I’m limited to two writeboards (though if you use Writeboard.com directly you can have however many you want, with the caveat that you have to keep track of them yourself), and so I cram everything into those two. It’s working out okay so far, but eventually it’s not going to cut it. So then I’ll have to decide whether I pay the $5/month for a basic plan or write my own keep-track-of-your-writeboards app and run it on my own server. Hmm… :)
Continuing on with the note-taking thread, if I’ve just got a small note I need to remember, I e-mail myself. It works pretty well, but here is the one issue I have with Gmail: you can’t organize! I want to be able to put my e-mails into folders, hang it all! Sure, being able to search is nice, but organizational freaks like me need places to put things. :) I guess it’s a different metaphor — archive everything and find it via search — but I’d still like folders, or even tags. As it is, all I have are stars. ~sigh~
[tags]Writeboard, Backpack, 37signals, Gmail[/tags]
Comments
Take a look at the Gmail ‘label’ feature. You can apply as many ‘labels’ (think tags) to an email thread as you’d like. I’ve slowly been importing genealogically-related emails into a Gmail account and ‘labelling’ (tagging) them with the surnames they’re related to. You can then show all emails with a particular label. The one downside to their implementation is that you can only tag email threads, not necessarily individual emails themselves, but that’s still mostly sufficient for me.
But I agree with you, my control-freak mind wants to put everything in its own place. I think the ‘labels’ thing is probably better though, as (usually) most email clients wont let you put an individual message into two folders, whereas adding 2 tags to a message is doing essentially that.
I believe Gmail’s filtering capabilities will also let you assign labels to incoming emails based on criteria you specify.
HTH,
– Dan
Ah, that works! Thank you very much — I had no idea it was there. (Ostensibly I saw it whenever I clicked on that dropdown, but I guess I’m not very observant. :)) While I haven’t yet had a chance to try it out, your description of it sounds like it’ll fit my needs perfectly. (And the idea of sorting things via “tags” appeals to me. I’m willing to give up folders if I can get tags in return.)
Thanks again,
Ben
Throw in your two cents