There has been lots of initiatives lately from computing giants like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, and lots of other smaller companies to let us move our computing and files online. Google Docs was probably one of the first one to allow us to move our documents online. From then, more has followed suit, including Microsoft with Office Workspace Live. Since then, with so many online services, Friendster, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, more and more people has been having their “life” in Internet, to the point that computers are pretty pointless nowadays without Internet connection.
Another “killer app” that is coming up in the horizon is syncing capabilities across devices. Most of us owns few devices, home PC, office PC, maybe laptop, and mobile phone. The problem most of us face (or at least I face) was to sync simple things like calendars, tasks, emails, to bigger items like documents and files across all those devices.
Until recently, this has been a chore. Even syncing calendar items from Google Calendar to my mobile phone was pretty troublesome. With Google Calendar Sync, that sync Google Calendar with Outlook, which then I use Nokia PC Suite to sync between Outlook and my Nokia E90, at least I have some solution that works for Calendar.
How about files and documents? So far, I have been putting my documents that I want to access anywhere in Google Docs, but there are many other documents that remains in my home PC, and thus inaccessible from anywhere else.
Microsoft has some solutions, that are frankly still quite disjointed. Skydrive is a free 5GB online storage that allows you to store pretty much anything. You can create folders, upload files, share folders, etc.
Think of it as your free online storage. I know some people who uses their Gmail as their online storage, but c’mon, Gmail is email, not a proper online storage. I use Skydrive lately to share and send some big files, and the files will still be there indefinitely, unlike YouSendIt. The problem with Skydrive? I need to remember to upload my recently edited documents into Skydrive, or else what I have in Skydrive and what I have in my desktop will be different.
Second product is Foldershare.
So far, I have used Foldershare to sync documents between my home PC and my Macbook. I can edit any documents in my Macbook while I’m watching TV in the living room, knowing when I switch to my desktop in the study room, the latest file will be there. No need for primitive way of copying to thumbdrive from one machine and putting it to another machine. So far, so good. One limitation though, both devices need to be on in order for sync to happen.
The latest one to enter the fray was Live Mesh.
The idea is simple. You select some folders that you would like to sync with other devices (up to 5GB limit), and that’s it. Live Mesh client will upload all your documents to be sync-ed to Live Desktop, and then sync those files with all other devices that you may have added to the circle. Unlike Foldershare that is only one-to-one, Live Mesh can be many-to-many, including PC, Mac, and mobile phones. Also, using Live Mesh, your files are available online, so you don’t need to have your machine turned on 24×7. As an added bonus, Live Mesh works with Windows Remote Desktop, so let’s say you’re overseas, and so happen need to access your machine at home miles away, you can go to Live Mesh, and view your other machine’s desktop like you’re sitting in front of it. I read an article recently about a guy made us of Live Mesh to share photos from South Africa to his wife back in US. Paul also love Live Mesh.
Now, you may think why on earth are there so many similar products from Microsoft to accomplish similar thing? I wonder too, and how I wished they’d merge all these into one big solution that has everything. That would have been a winner.
Put it simply, if anyone can create a solution that allows us to have our calendars, tasks, to-do-list, emails, latest version of documents, MP3s, photos, and any other files, anywhere in the world, on any device, PC, Mac, mobile phone, PDA, iPhone, and dare I say, for free, that will be Awesome.
Has anyone of you used any of the online services above?
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