Update: Interesting stats on how many people upgraded/ converted to their new services; 37Signals reminds us that Web2.0 doesn’t always mean an adsense supported bottom line 

I’m sure you’ll be reading in depth reviews at some point or another by your favourite blogs and super-blog sites on Backpack’s new features — but here’s the skinny. 37Signals, poster child for Web2.0 applications people actually use and pay for, has upgraded one of its first products, Backpack, yet again.

This upgrade is fairly substantial, as it allows multiple users for any given account, mimicking, in effect, a remotely-hosted “intranet”; a gathering place where you can organize notes, files, calendars, and messages. In a way, its almost like Basecamp “lite”, although it clearly does not have the heavy lifting that Basecamp has, with respect to specific project management.

The good news? People who are on the $5 / month plan are grandfathered in, while people on the $9 / month plan get a discount, to $7 / month, as they are renaming and regearing their plans (the $7 / month plan is the “Solo” plan) to take account for the number of people who might need to use your account. The highest plan is $149/ month, and 100 users, 50 gigabytes of storage, and 7500 pages.

Personally, I avoided Backpack for a long time because — well, there’s no other way to describe it — I’m cheap. Having tried it out, I can honestly say there’s nothing else quite like it. Its an all-in-one storage area for notes AND files, and other miscellania which is one hand at a moment’s notice. Its generally stable, pretty but functional, and there’s also a nice calendar system too, which I’m sure other folks find helpful.

If you’re wanting to try it out, now’s the time. Get $5 off your first month if you use the code: SVNLAUNCH.

Nothing too profound here to say, other than over the past month or so, there have been some interesting “complications” with cloud computing.  “Cloud computing” being the paradigm shift where people move computing power from personal computers to giant invisible computer servers in the sky  to a system of servers whose location and details of which are not all that important (only that they are accessible).

Personally, I use the phrase to describe the offloading of services and applications from personal computers into online applications, where data and applications can be accessible anywhere there is internet access.

Cool and portable?  Sure.

But cloud computing is predicated upon the stability and redundancies of those invisible computers in the sky servers; when the reliability goes out the window, so does the premise of cloud computing.  Case in point?  The services offered by 37Signals, such as Backpack, Highrise, and BaseCamp which honest-to-goodness businesses rely on for productivity crumped today.  Services went down for 2 hours as their *own* provider tanked.

Case in point numero dos?  How about Omnidrive.  I wrote about it glowingly several months ago (and it was showered with praise many months ago by TechCrunch), as a fantastic tool that allows you to back up data online and so that you can carry stuff with you no matter where you go (if you have an internet connection).  In December, due to server issues it was out for such a long time people thought that it had gone into the Deadpool.

Is “cloud computing” ready for prime time?  I think its hard to tell, but clearly there need to be redundancies built into your own “systems” or way of doing things, in the event that your favourite web service does go down.  Until those companies (e.g. Amazon’s S3) guarantees “uptime” in the same way that hosting companies do (and may be they do — let me know if that’s the case), it might be hard to have mission-critical data and productivity rely on said services.

Looks like big media companies are taking a page right out of “acquire a startup a week” Google, and may be trying to bolster their online properties (perhaps, amongst other things, to capture online ad sales) with web2.0 functionality. Case in point: Hearst which has recently acquired Kaboodle, a social networking site for shopping, so that it might better integrate itself into its online magazine properties.

These kinds of magazines online magazines (such as Cosmopolitan)”feature” a variety of commercial products and services, and so it seems like an good fit with them. While Hearst might be acquiring Kaboodle to directly affect the bottom line (in an indirect fashion — increase brand, increase “stickiness” and sharing of items across friends via Kaboodle, increase the opportunity for cross/up-selling via affiliate relationships and so on), Forbes is taking a different route, it seems.

VentureBeat reports (and Forbes confirms in the comments) that Clipmarks, the social bookmarking tool, was bought not necessarily for the benefit of its readers — but so that it could be a tool that helps its journalists share information about stories faster, file stories quicker, and have the information in the hands of its readers that much sooner. I think the proof will be in the pudding as to how these acquisitions go for big media.

Personally, I think this a really fascinating story that actually integrates many different memes that I like to blog about, including the evolution of old and new media, coupled with the rise of “Web2.0″, startups and the goings on in the Valley. If big media can find ways to make these acquisitions pay off, could these web startups actually be the answer to declining newspaper profits, by acting as catalysts for further online growth (to balance the fall in offline revenues)?

Maybe.

Because if it does it might in fact be the win-win-win that everyone’s looking for.  Big media win because they stave off extinction and finally evolve into an entity that is relevant and profitable online as off.  Startups win because they get to cash out with acquisition being the exit strategy (and more players willing to pay for them).  And VC companies win when Startups win.  With all due respect to 37signals, I do wonder if the startup boom of 2006 - ? will be marked with more “companies” than ever being built not, for example, to turn a profit, but with the aim to be acquired.  Of course, the ending will only be happy if big media can actually integrate these properties to make them work for them in some kind of strategy that makes sense.  Heck, if Yahoo has a hard time doing it, what does that portend for big media companies?  Luckily this chapter is only getting started, and I, for one, am eager to see how it plays out.