My Palm sync went west earlier in the week (now mysteriously fixed), and I very nearly took the plunge and took a paid subscription to Backpack. But then the GTD flavour of TiddlyWiKi is l’application du jour…just Google GTD TiddlyWiki or TiddlyWiki, and you’ll see what I mean.

Between them, Backpack and GTD TiddlyWiki have got me thinking that I need something Wiki-like, whether my Palm woes return or not. But, as I said last week, Backpack is not yet proven to my satisfaction.

What’s more, Wikis need all that server side stuff, and GTD Tiddly Wiki has a very nasty bug that has lost some of my data. GTDTW, in my opinion, is not yet ready for the big time, although Nathan Bowers is working on a fix.

A little Googling during that late-Saturday-night-in-front-of-the-telly-with-a-beer catatonic state, found me WxWikiServer. I’m in love! Even at the dead of night, It took me just minutes to install and configure – in effect, WxWikiServer has its own server and wiki app, and all you do is unzip and run. Then two little configuration tweaks – one to set up the Windows ID of the machine I’m running it on to allow network access, and a second to allow anonymous editing from anywhere on the network, and I was away!

WxWikiServer feels mature and solid. I’m running it on Windows 2K Professional on an old PIII; it will run on just about any flavour of Windows (desktop or server), plus Mac OS-X and Linux. If you’re looking for a Wiki and baulk at all that server-side gubbins, I’d say give it a go.

I mentioned on Monday that my life had cut itself into two halves when my Palm refused to sync with my desktop.

Well, I’ve tried on and off for the past two days to see if would play ball, to no avail.

But just now the Palm has just burst into life in its cradle to do its scheduled 1pm sync. Was it something I said?

What a start to Monday morning. My Palm won’t sync. For reasons that I can’t understand, it has just decided not to sync.

I did my GTD Weekly Review on the Palm yesterday, and have made some diary additions to ACT on the PC, so I don’t have a full view of my life on the desktop or the Palm – GRRRR!

Flipping (I’ll be polite in public) useless technology. At times like this, I hate it.

So now what do I do? Is the world telling me to move to Backpack? (I feel I need more testing before making the jump). Shall I just throw technology and return to paper?

I’ve spent too long this weekend playing with Backpack from 37 Signals. I’m impressed. Very impressed. The more I explore, the more uses I can find. It really is a Web-based application. It feels as if it has the potential depth and flexibility of a word processor or spreadsheet.

While I’m really enthusiastic about Backpack, I do keep having some niggling doubts. For example I don’t like the idea of my information being in the hands of a third party. But how is this different from Plaxo, which I already use?

A bigger worry is the issue of reliability of 37 Signals’ server – how often will I find my information unavailable?

But I can see that I will subscribe to Backpack once it has a few more features that I absolutely need – headed by recurring reminders. It’s another logical step in the evolution of my systems originally characterized by my movement to Fastmail’s e-mail service. Or, even earlier, my use of Movable Type for this blog.

The platform- and device-independence of having my stuff out there on the Net is hugely seductive. As more of my working and personal life moves away from the desktop, I have more choice of platform.

I wonder if I’ll still be using Windows in a year or two’s time? I guess that will be determined by whether Windows is truly the best platform for my needs as my ties to Windows applications decrease.

Popping up in some of the RSS feeds I read has been the news that e-mail harms our IQ more than partaking of a spliff.

Guardian Unlimited

The Register

The posited mechanism – constant distraction – seems OK, but surely phone calls and in-person interruptions are far worse distractions? I know I have far more control over e-mail than phones or people. The more duplex the interaction, the worse impact it has on my productivity, that’s for sure.

So, maybe the the next headline will be Phone Calls harm IQ more than a Smack Habit.