For the past couple of months I’d been considering trying to move my workflow towards the web (or rather add to what I was already doing), and with the start of 2006, I’m now pretty much mostly web-based, and absolutely loving it.

• First, there’s of course Backpack, which I’ve raved about a few times in the past couple of weeks. It’s great to have all of my current projects there, available from any computer, and helps with the planning and organization. Definitely worth the $5 a month. I’m also using the included Writeboards to do a lot of writing/text editing. Honestly, the only thing I’m missing for it to be my main writing tool is a word count and spell-checker (for my typos).
• I also recently made the switch to using Gmail as my way to interact with my mail. I now have my regular email address pointing there, and Gmail lets you set the reply-to address to anything, so everything I write from Gmail appears as it did before. Advantages to this? I’m now archiving everything, which I never did before, and it’s great the way it shows you all the past discussions when you receive a message (as they relate to it). The labeling is great (better than just using folders), and of course, you get an insanely good search engine for all of your mail. Another absolute plus is that I can access my Gmail account through my mobile phone, and so now I’m checking my mail throughout the day, even while at work. Of course, I won’t be replying much that way (I’m a horrible thumb-typist), but it’s still nice to be able to respond quickly if need be.
• With the recent upgrade to .Mac (for which I’ve always been a member), one thing they didn’t really announce, but to me is an amazing new feature, is the fact that you can now access your iDisk on the web. I use my iDisk to save all the files I’m working on, be it writing, design, etc. So not only do I have those files on both the Macs we have at home (I often switch between the iMac and iBook), but now I can access those same files from any computer.
• I’ve always had access to all my bookmarks through the .Mac feature that lets you open a pop-up window from any computer, but now I’ve also uploaded all of them to Del.icio.us, which is good for searching and tagging.
• I’ve been using Bloglines for quite a while for my daily feed reading (which probably amounts to 90% of what I read on the web on a daily basis), and that of course continues.

So there you have it: the new, mean, lean, web-packing 2006 version of Jean Snow, ready to produce (efficiently) at a moment’s notice from pretty much anywhere!

Update: I forgot to add Flickr, which I’ve been using to host all my photos for quite a while now.