Gmail as a Backpack alternative

As previously mentioned I wasn't impressed by backpack. Other people are, mainly because of the email integration. To me that feature is much better when just emulated with GMail. What you get is a responsive AJAX interface, spam and virus filtering, lightning fast search, tons of storage and a price tag of $0 per year for as many pages as you like as long as you stay under 2GB of total storage.

Here's what you do - it's just 2 easy steps

1. Create a label on your GMail account called e.g. gpack
   
2. Create a filter for email to you+gpack+securitytoken@gmail.com - set label gpack, remove from inbox
   

That's it! Now your email subject line becomes your page ID and mail is automatically organized under a label reserved for this purpose. You are using the nice feature of gmail that all mail to you+anything@gmail.com is sent to you@gmail.com. The securitytoken prevents people from secondguessing this secret email, but since you have a spam filter with GMail you probably don't even need this.

"But GMail doesn't provide public permalinks to messages", I hear you cry.
This is why I'm working on GPack, a miniature email backed wiki implementation. It support textile formatting and automated updates when your GPack is updated via email. It'll be done real soon.

Posted by Claus at May 07, 2005 06:05 PM | TrackBack (0)