8 thoughts on “Gear List Management – what do you use?”

1. john ludwig October 30, 2007 at 7:14 pm

   well i love google docs in general. the “publish” option for spreadsheets has a bunch of publishing formats it supports and you can publish an arbitrary range of cells. might be a useful tool.
2. samh October 31, 2007 at 5:37 am

   I too use Google Docs for the management and publishing of my gear list. I have a nicely done Google spreadsheet that is published for visibility on the Web. When a visitor to my Web site ( http://samh.net/backpacking ) goes to look at my gear list they will find the spreadsheet displayed in an iFrame within the confines of my site. This allows me to change the list as often as I’d like and only have to make the update in one place rather than an original spreadsheet and an html or php document.

   – Sam
3. David Noll November 5, 2007 at 5:10 pm

   Brett,
   I found a gear weight calculator on the BPL website(backpacking.net). Once you are at their site go to the TLB
   featured article on cutting weight and at the bottom there are some links. The Gear Weight Calculator is the one you want. I think you will find it is what you are looking for.

   Dave Noll
4. brett Post authorNovember 5, 2007 at 9:34 pm

   Thanks for the pointer David – I found the link you mention here.
5. Frank December 16, 2007 at 4:31 pm

   Hey Brett,

   I started to write a .Net app to dynamically create a gear list. It works similar to google’s spreadsheet program, except geared [no pun] to backpacking. For example, when you add a column, you pick if it should be text, measurement [g,oz], price, etc.

   Then, from your gear list, you can create new gear lists for 3 season, winter, etc.

   Unfortunately, after a year, I just don’t have the time to commit to the development. Between the SQL, AJax, CSS, it’s a very complicated project and probably a full time job itself. One could probably make a good revenue stream though if the lists were shared and you can have things like “Most popular gear item: WM Ultralight Sleeping Bag” and then adsense links next to it.

   Anyway, I’m currently keeping my gear list in google docs: http://fperkins.com/MyUltralightBackpackingGearList.html. Unfortunately, there is no way to add an image next to the gear item. I hope they add support soon. I tried using Zoho as well, which does have image support, but it’s not bound to the cell. This means anytime you add a new row, all your images have to be realigned.

   If I get ambitious, I might add a new column to the spreadsheet and use my own tag like [img src=] and then create a screen scrape control to replace the text which would then display the image. Always enjoy your site, keep up the good work.
6. Frank December 16, 2007 at 10:42 pm

   Well I got semi ambitious and created a simple control to source in the gear list and now all I have to do is find images for all my gear. The link above actually is broke because of the period. This is the proper link:

   http://fperkins.com/MyUltralightBackpackingGearList.html
7. brett Post authorDecember 17, 2007 at 3:20 pm

   <p>hey frank – very cool. so how do you integrate w/google. you using client-ajax to grab the spreadsheet and render in place, or is the server grabbing the list and applying the formatting? </p>
   <p>yeah finding images is a bit of grunt work…. that’s the whole ‘community’ built site angle i was noodling on – basically pool the contruction of items to the community and allow everyone to keep individual lists. one person might want many lists from the same gear pool – eg. “my 3-day summer trip list”, “my 5-day winter gear list” etc. </p>
   <p>it would be a fun project – but i have too much going on at the moment to take it on.</p>
8. Fred June 8, 2012 at 3:01 am

   Hi!
   I did find this post trying to find a gear list manager, since i found the one mentioned by Franck, geargrams.com (flash app online), http://mygearlist.info/ (online and a bit messy) and Sherpa (www.sherpagear.org), this last one is the most complete i found