Sync your files across multiple computers seamlessly
For many years I have emailed files to myself, copied them to thumb drives, and cobbled together my own FTP syncing scripts. All very complicated and error prone. Enter 3rd-party syncing services – easy as pie to use, magically work in the background, and they come in pretty colors. There are a ton out there, but here are a couple of the better options.
Dropbox:
Free for 2GB of storage space.
Beautiful interface, easy to use, cross platform, including an iPhone app and mobile site.
The iphone app is handy for viewing PDFs, but currently only offline syncs the list of documents, not the actual content.
Sharing is easy, but limited to options. In my case, I want access to other people’s folders ONLY on the website. I don’t want every change they make to automatically sync to me all the time, eating up resources.
Live Mesh:
Free for 5GB of storage space
As of this review, still in beta. It provides the ability to sync ANY existing folder you wish, provided it is not a system folder (anything within the Library folder on Mac OSX).
The Live Mesh web interface allows for a lot of flexibility in what you sync to which device. At the time of my review, the mobile app was not yet available.
For either the above software solutions, you can sync items or folders outside the main sync folders using symbolic links. I use it to sync my Omnigrafffle stencils and templates across computers.
Ultimately I’ve continued to use Dropbox and have been extremely happy with it. If you use this referral code, we both get an extra 250MB storage.
