Staying in sync (San Diego Transcript column)

Right now I'm using three computers -- a MacBook, a desktop iMac with a 24-inch monitor and a Lenovo X300 ThinkPad PC.

While I may be guilty of computer proliferation, it's highlighted for me one of the problems with using more than one computer for maintaining important information such as contacts, a calendar and files.
Ideally, we'd like to be able to use multiple devices without worrying about which one has the up-to-date phone number, appointment or PowerPoint file.

Syncing software is designed to solve this problem; to let us add or change a contact, appointment or file on one computer and have those changes ripple onto all of the others. That allows us to use different computers at different times and always have updated information at our fingertips. Those who sync their smartphones to their computers can appreciate this.

We're beginning to see some new attempts to address this need. While none are perfect, they represent the beginnings of an important new category of software that will make things easier for us in the future when we may want to access the same information from home, office or even from the car.

DotMac
DotMac makes it a snap to keep your contacts and calendar in sync on any number of computers, as long as they're Macs. The service costs $99 per year and provides a number of elements, including 10 gigabytes of online storage. But its best feature is its sync capability. It's limited to iCal and Address Book, the excellent contact and calendaring applications that come on every Mac.

Setup is simple; it works in the background and you never have to think about it. Enter a new appointment or contact, or edit an existing one on one Mac and it will show up on all your Macs within a few minutes. (You can set the frequency of syncing at one hour or longer). What happens is DotMac maintains an up to date copy of your address book and calendar and syncs it with each of the computers. It always knows which is the newest or most recently edited entry.

DotMac also syncs a number of other items between computers, such as mail accounts, notes, passwords, signatures and browser bookmarks.

Once I sync my iPhone with any of the computers, the phone becomes part of the syncing group; additions I've made on the iPhone are synced to all of the computers, while the iPhone is updated with the latest

data from the computers.

Sugar Sync
SugarSync is a new product from Sharpcast (sharpcast.com) that's designed to keep files synced on multiple computers whether they're PCs or Macs. It's designed to work with files such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel, as well as folders full of photos and music. Unfortunately, it doesn't synchronize calendars and contacts. Cost ranges from $25 per year for 10 GB up to $250 per year for 250 GB. The 10GB plan is available for a free 45-day trial.

To use the software, you download an application onto each computer that you want to keep in sync. You designate which folders on each that you want SugarSync to monitor for changes. When changes are made to any of these files, they're replicated in seconds on the other computers.

SugarSync also maintains an online archive of the files that you can retrieve from any computer by going on to its protected Web site. You can even view or retrieve the files from an iPhone or any device that has a full browser.

SugarSync lets you designate which files to update and which to archive without making changes. With your important data on multiple computers and on the Web, the product serves as an excellent backup solution.,SugarSync is a very cool product and is the best way I've found for keeping important files in sync.

The online solution
If you don't want to contend with multiple calendars and contacts, but want access to the same data from multiple devices, you can maintain just one calendar and contacts list using online products from Google, Yahoo and others. But you generally can't access them from your computers when you're offline. However, Google now offers a tool that will sync its calendar with Outlook, allowing entries made in either calendar to appear on the other. This gives you access to your calendar offline.

I haven't yet found a good solution for keeping contacts and calendars up to date on both a Mac and PC. I've tried exporting the contact and calendar files from the applications on one computer and importing them to those on the second, but often the data gets lost or mangled in the process.

I've also tried syncing a BlackBerry to both computers, but the syncing software provided by BlackBerry for the Mac has been unreliable. In fact, it deleted all my contacts the last time I used it.

I expect that there will eventually be a comprehensive solution from Google, Microsoft, Sharpcast or another company, that will work with devices of all types, and sync all of our files, calendars, contacts, and bookmarks, much like a combination of DotMac and SugarSync. It's a big undertaking, but its something that's needed for those of us using multiple computers.

Comments

[Jenny]

On the subject of file backup, sharing and storage ...

Online backup is becoming common these days. It is estimated that 70-75% of all PC's will be connected to online backup services with in the next decade.

Thousands of online backup companies exist, from one guy operating in his apartment to fortune 500 companies.

Choosing the best online backup company will be very confusing and difficult. One website I find very helpful in making a decision to pick an online backup company is:

http://www.BackupReview.info

This site lists more than 400 online backup companies in its directory and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.

[Phil Brown]

With respect to your column on staying in sync, I've found that Plaxo and thumb drives address the vast majority of my data portability needs since I found myself carrying two different laptops (for business reasons). I've maintained a love/hate relationship with Outlook over the years -- it has always kept me on the "lookout" for something less clunky and more stable. But Plaxo has pretty much sealed the deal for me because it keeps all the non-email Outlook data in sync over the net, and using IMAP allows me to leave the email on the net as well (I always make sure to keep at least one local copy of important email -- a hard-earned lesson about using IMAP). Also, I rarely keep local copies of any files I'm working on -- I just edit and manipulate them directly on the thumb drive (it's too confusing otherwise). The email service I pay for (FastMail, can't say enough good things about it) provides me with 600 MB of online file storage, which is enough for me at present (I could always pay for more). About the only thing that my local hard drives hold these days is the operating system, program files, and audio and video libraries (which get backed up to an outboard hard drive).

Finally, I just got done reading Joe Brancatelli's column about the Supreme Court ruling that laptops are luggage subject to search and confiscation without cause(!). Glaring civil liberties issues aside, reading this made me feel that much better about making sure that my laptop hard drive holds as little mission-critical data as possible...