Category: internet

no more Backpack

I’ve been using 37signals’ Backpack product for several years now, since February 2007. It turns out that 37signals retired the product back in June 2012, and is no longer accepting new customers for it. It still works fine for me, and they haven’t said anything about shutting it down entirely. I don’t recall ever seeing a notice on my Backpack page letting me know that they were retiring the product, but maybe I missed it. And, when I go to my account maintenance page now, there’s no indication there either; it still shows the same plan upgrade options that it always has. I’m still on the $7/month plan, and happy with that. If they’re not actually going to shut down the service for existing users, I might as well stick with it for the time being.

I use Satchel on my iPhone and iPad to access by Backpack account. It also still works, but hasn’t been updated since 2010, and likely won’t be updated again. In fact, I don’t see the full version as available in the App Store anymore, so I guess I need to be careful not to lose the copy in my iTunes library.

Since 37signals is still charging for Backpack, and since it (likely) runs on the same platform as their other services, I imagine they’ll keep it running for the foreseeable future. There’s no reason for them to shut down a service that’s generating revenue, and probably not costing them much money to keep running.

Still, it seems prudent to look into alternatives. 37signals would probably like people to move from Backpack to Basecamp, but that wouldn’t make much sense for me. Basecamp starts at $30/month, and isn’t really meant to be used as a single-person personal organizer.

Likewise, Papyrs would probably like to grab up some of Backpack’s customer base. They actually have a blog post about Backpack’s retirement on their site that’s interesting and well-written. Papyrus isn’t a good fit for me either though. It starts at $49/month and is really meant to be used for small company intranets.

There’s a good list of Backpack alternatives at http://alternativeto.net/software/backpack/. The first item on their list is Evernote, which I do use. But I’m not sure I’d like it as a replacement for Backpack. Second on their list is OneNote, which I also use, but also isn’t quite what I would want as a Backpack replacement.

From a GTD usage standpoint, I’ve tried Nozbe, and I’m curious about Asana. Maybe a combination of Evernote and Nozbe would work out for me?

I may write up some more notes on this subject, as it’s the kind of thing I enjoy messing around with and writing about, but for now, I’ve got other stuff to do today…

Amazon Web Services

My boss has gotten enthusiastic about AWS recently. We’ve messed around with a bit with in on a couple of projects, and also just for testing. We used a Linux EC2 instance for the Gisgraphy project I blogged about a while back. And we would up using a dedicated Windows EC2 instance for the gas finder site that we put up after Hurricane Sandy.

In addition to that, I’ve done some experimenting with RDS (for SQL Server) and Elastic Beanstalk. I was initially enthusiastic about both, but, once I got to working with them, I saw enough limitations that I decided to back off. RDS is a nice way to have a low-maintenance SQL Server in the cloud, but the main limitation I found was the inability to easily get a local backup of a large database loaded onto it, and vice versa. While there are ways to get data in and out of RDS, of course, there’s no support for standard SQL backups and restores, to (and from) .bak files. The recommended approach is to script the db out to T-SQL, using the standard export capability, but given the size and complexity of some of our databases, that’s just not workable.

And, as for Elastic Beanstalk, it’s a nice way to get a single ASP.NET application up and running on EC2, with a pre-configured load balancer, but we really don’t have any single site that would benefit from that, and easily fit into that model.

For now, we’ve tentatively decided to move some of our stuff up to AWS, using a few EC2 instances, but really that won’t be much different than what we’re doing now (external hosting on a managed server at PEER1). The main difference will be that we’re planning on breaking some stuff up so that we’ll have a few smaller instances, so we can scale them as needed, and we’ll have the option of spinning up a second copy of the instance running our web service, if needed. I’m not really sure how all this will work out, but I’ll blog more as we go forward, if I learn anything that seems like it would be worth sharing.

Meanwhile, I’ve been watching this screencast series on AWS. Unfortunately, I’ve found that it’s mostly covering ground that I’ve already figured out on my own. But, if you’re new to AWS, and want a guided tour, included a (somewhat leisurely) look at some cloud basics, this might be for you.

IPredator

I keep thinking that I ought to sign up for a third-party VPN service, so I can put all my traffic through an encrypted tunnel when I’m on public (or quasi-public) wifi. I meant to do something before I went off to San Diego, but I just didn’t get around to it. Some of the services I’ve seen are fairly expensive. These guys, for instance, are $15/month.

I just found one that’s reasonably simple and inexpensive: IPredator. It’s € 15 for 3 months, which comes out to about $22 US. So, about $7 per month. And it doesn’t auto-renew, so if I stop using it, I can just let the account go inactive until I decide to start using it again.

I have it set up on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad now. Setup was easy enough, and the speed seems reasonable. I need to do some more experimenting on that front.

I’m curious to see if it will work on the wifi at my office. We have a SonicWall security device on our network now, and it can be a bit agressive about blocking stuff. I’m not sure if it will let the VPN traffic through or not.

done with delicious

Well, I decided not to mess around, and just jumped straight into a different bookmarking service. I set up a new account with Pinboard. They charge a small fee to set up an account, and they have a weird way of calculating that fee — it rises as more people sign up for accounts. I think a lot of other people were jumping over from Delicious today too: I saw the fee rise from $7.50 to $7.57 over the course of about an hour.
My bookmarks are currently being imported. They have a note up at their import page, saying that it may take a while, due to all the new people signing up today. Imagine that.
I have a separate Delicious account set up on my work computer, since I like keeping work bookmarks at least somewhat separate from home bookmarks. (I use to Delicious “for:” tags to share between the work and home accounts.) I’m not sure if I’ll just use the same Pinboard account for everything, set up a new Pinboard account at work, or try a completely different service at work. I might try importing my work account into Google Bookmarks or XMarks and see how that goes.

Yahoo is shutting down delicious

…and a few other things. Darn it, I have 3500 bookmarks in delicious. I’ve been using it since 2003. Warren Ellis covers this eloquently: “Hey, Yahoo? Running del.icio.us cost you pennies, and bought you so much goodwill. Now you’re just another of those scumfucks who acquires great services just to bury them.”
Here are links to a couple of articles about possible alternatives:
5 Solid Alternatives to Del.icio.us
10 Alternatives To Delicious.com Bookmarking

Sept 11

I fully intended on ignoring the fact that today is Sept 11. I had a few things lined up to do in the morning, then I was planning on watching some college football in the afternoon. I went out for a haircut this morning, though, and walked past the Sept 11 memorial here in Somerville. There were a bunch of people gathered around it, in silence. I think I walked by after all the official speeches were done. There was something about just seeing the people there, no one really talking, or doing anything, just being there.

When I got to the barber, he had the TV on, set to channel 7, where they were showing the reading of the names at the WTC site. I had about an hour wait before my haircut, so I got to listen to quite a few names being read. Very moving. So my plan to ignore Sept 11 has failed, and I am spending a good bit of time thinking about it now.

Two good articles to read: first, this classic Onion piece: God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule. The Onion did a great job in the days after 9/11 figuring out how a satirical newspaper / web site could possibly approach such a topic.

Second, this John Hodgman piece at McSweeney’s.

Death Index

Social Security Death Index Interactive Search

I wish I knew about this when I was filling out the ridiculous life insurance form I had to fill out for my Dad’s insurance. I had to give birth & death dates, and SSNs, for all his brothers, and his parents. (I actually left a bunch of stuff blank, since I didn’t know it, and seem to have gotten away with it, since I’ve gotten past that form, and onto another one. I think maybe two or three more forms, and they may actually send me a check. Almost a year after he died. Sigh.)

Anyway, this is a little scary. It seems possible to look up just about anybody dead in the US, and get their full birth date, death date, SSN, and at least a general idea of their last address. I guess the dead don’t need to worry about identity theft, but still.

domain names

For no good reason, I just went ahead and registered andrewhuey.net, so I now have andrewhuey.com, .org, and .net. And I also registered andyhuey.com, .org, and .net. Several of these domains were owned by a domain squatter at some point in the past. That’s why I first set up my blog at andrewhuey.org — it was the only variation on my name that nobody owned yet. Now, they’re all available. I guess whoever was squatting on them gave up.

I use 1&1, and they currently charge $8 for the first year, and $9/year after that. So I’m only spending about $50 per year on domains. Not bad, considering I can remember when it cost $100 a year to register a single domain.