My so-called (online) life

After two hard drive crashes in the last six months, I decided it was time to re-evaluate how I work. I lost a few files that I can't recover and thousands of files that can only be replaced by investing a huge amount of time (primarily photos and MP3's). One of the hardest things to lose was my blogroll. In this new world, losing your subscription list is a lot like losing your address book.

Of course, much of this could have been avoided by regular backups, but I am surprisingly bad about that for someone who has worked in technology for as long as I have.

The loss of data was accompanied by something almost as significant - the loss of the tools I use everyday. When you rely on desktop applications, losing them for 1-2 weeks at a time is a major inconvenience. When you get them back, you have to start from scratch, installing, updating, and customizing them just so.

So, I've set out to actually learn something from these experiences and make some changes. My main decision has been to move my life online. I want to access all of my core data and applications from any machine with a network connection. And if my primary machine goes down, I want to grab another machine and get going without missing a beat. Lastly, I want to be agnostic about which operating system I use. The following tools allow me to be 100% productive whether I'm using a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux machine.

Lists and Information

Backpack. This has been the most significant change over the past two months. I now use Backpack to keep track of nearly everything in my life, from website redesign projects (shared with the web team) and brainstorming for the new year to the Blogging Church book project, Christmas lists, and car maintenance. Once you upgrade to a paid account, you will constantly find new uses for it. You'll have enough pages to start new ones whenever you're inspired and the file storage feature is very handy.

Backpack is easily the one application, online or off, that I can't live without.

Writing

Writeboard. This has been a radical change, but an exciting one. I am now writing Blogging Church using Writeboard. 37signals has been writing their upcoming book on Getting Real using Writeboard; hopefully our book will be the second.

Why the switch from the desktop? First, I trust their hard drives more than my own (and I can easily export copies at any time). Second, the revision history is so simple and elegant as to be highly useful. Third, I can now work on the book anytime from anywhere (with an internet connection, obviously). Fourth, they've integrated Writeboard into Backpack, so my one Backpack page for the book now contains notes, a chapter list, attached documents, and links to each individual chapter in Writeboard. Oh, and it prints beautifully.

What's missing? Word count, spell check and auto-save in case your browser or connection has trouble.

Newsreader

Google Reader. I never thought I'd use an online newsreader. I have been a huge fan of NetNewsWire for two years, I think it is easily the best overall newsreader, and was convinced that there were too many advantages to a desktop application. More and more, however, I want to be able to access blogs and other feeds from any machine. I also want my subscription list and saved articles to be safe and secure.

I have used Bloglines off and on, but have always found it very frustrating. In fact, I'm amazed that it is as dominant as it is. I experimented with Newsgator's online edition, but it didn't make much of an impression (their Outlook edition, however, is sweet). Finally, I decided to give Google's new reader another try. I used it for 15 minutes when it first launched and didn't like it at all.

This week, though, I gave it another 30 minutes and became addicted. The flow takes a bit to get used to, but it quickly becomes very simple. The desktop feel and keyboard shortcuts make it fast to work with. Use j and k to move up and down through your posts, spacebar to keep reading a long post, r to refresh for the latest news, and s to star a post to save for later. Unlike most readers, you can easily see all of your new posts in one view (similar to a river of news) instead of being forced to click on  each of you feeds like email folders.

They could make adding a subscription more intuitive, and the default sorting is crazy (relevance?), but I'm happy to say it's everything I need.

Email

Gmail. I've been using it since the day when invites were being purchased on eBay and I couldn't be happier.

Bookmarks

Del.icio.us. When you use multiple machines, you inevitably face the browser bookmark problem. You bookmark a great site when you're doing research at home, but that doesn't help you much at the office the next day. Del.icio.us is an easy way to bookmark sites, tag them in any way you like, then find them later.

Software

For the small desktop applications that you can't do without, here's a great way to get back in business quickly following a crash. I created a page in Backpack to store all of my apps in one place. I've uploaded the install file for each application and then created a note for each one that includes my license, purchase date, and other pertinent details. This way, I don't have hunt through receipts and emails trying to track down all the information. I can go to one page and be up and running in minutes.

I hope this lists is helpful for those of you thinking about moving more of your work online. If you have tools and sites you love, post a comment so we can check them out!

Comments

[dan ohlerking]

thanks for all the info. i can relate to the desire to online-ize everything. i thought that going laptop with maximum connectivity would do it for me, but there's always that one situation where the file or info i need is on my laptop and i need it to be somewhere else. going totally online would save me in those situations.

then there's the argument for it that you've presented so painfully well here about hard drive crashes.... that's all i need.

the info you've given is gonna help me make the move. you pushed me over the line.

thanks.

[Barry Bowen]

Several server-based tools have become invaluable for me. I save private notes to Yahoo notepad. For example, I have one note containing all my usernames and passwords so that I will have a backup of this information if my hard drive crashes.

My aggregator of choice is the open source zFeeder which I run on my own server. All of the subscriptions are saved to an OPML file. In my opinion, Fellowship Church could use a web-based aggregator to keep your members informed about church news.

For bookmarks I operate the open source Scuttle on my server. It is a clone of del.icio.us written in php.

[MUTEMATT]

With the exception of a news reader, you could achieve all of the same results with a .Mac account. Email, address book, bookmarks, file backup, groups ... It's all there in one place. Thats what I use and it all works great, especially if you're using multiple Macs.

[Chris Marsden]

I have .mac to be exceptionally slow. I like the idea of having everything online, and cross platform, but when I am on my mac laptop, I would prefer to use the mac apps. I use gmail, but through the mail app. I have my address book backed up to my .mac account. What are the syncing options to my mac (for when internet is not available) for backpack and writeboard. I don't want to be dependant on an internet connection, since working outside is such a nice option sometimes.

[Rick]

Hey, that's quite a list. I just started using gmail, and I believe it's the web based mail service of the future. Yahoo and Hotmail just have too much advertising going on. I've also changed my homepage to google.com/ig, instead of the My Yahoo page. Much cleaner interface.

I've been using Blogger for blogging purposes, and I wish I could give it five stars. Hopefully they will integrate some categories in the near future.

I hadn't seen Backpack. Gonna go check that one out.