• Gigaom Coming Soon: Better Syncing For Mac Os

Syncing with multiple Macs by Jun 27, 2007 - 2:00 PM CST. I have a lot of Macs. I have a MacBook Pro that my work gave me, another MacBook Pro that is my personal computer and a 20″ iMac Core 2 Duo that is our family (err, my wife’s) computer. My wife also has a 12″ Powerbook G4 that we use to check email and watch DVD’s when we’re on the road.

I used to find it almost impossible to move between computers with ease All my passwords, bookmarks, and important files had to be transferred manually (usually on a thumbdrive) each time I worked on a different computer. I’ve found a few resources that help me transition easily between multiple Macs, and synchronize contacts, bookmarks, passwords and appointments and more.Mac and iSync I know a lot of people complain about.Mac and what you get for $99/year. I don’t think an @mac.com email address is worth a Benjamin, but this surely is. You can sync your iCal calendar, Address Book, Mail accounts, Safari bookmarks and Keychains with several Macs, automatically, using.Mac. Go to System Preferences and click.Mac.

If you don’t have a.Mac subscription, sign up for a free trial. Once you are logged in to.Mac, click the Sync tab.

Gigaom Coming Soon: Better Syncing For Mac Os

The Outlook team this week introduced a multitude of new Outlook features for Windows, Mac, on the web and on mobile devices that are collectively designed to help you better manage your time. I am also quite surprised there is not a better interaction between the Mac and iOS versions of iPhoto. Hopefully this is coming soon, as I have read rumors about a new version of iPhoto for Mac which would bring back some of the features of the iOS version.

Here you will see the option to automatically sync several services. Just check the services you want to synchronize and you’re done!

Go to another computer and simply log into your.Mac account. Set the second computer to also synchronize to.Mac and all your settings, appointments, passwords and bookmarks will magically download onto the computer. Once you have several computers setup in.Mac preferences, you can manage them by clicking on the Advanced tab.Mac uses iSync to synchronize the data, and will notify you of any conflicts and let you manually resolve, or resolve all with a single click.

Because Apple offers developer tools for iSync, other applications can build in support for Mac to Mac sync. Transmit, a popular FTP client, has built-in support for synchronizing favorites between computers. Firefox Bookmarks Synchronization I love Safari (especially the new Safari 3 Beta) but I need my Firefox extensions.

As a web developer, I just can’t live without my toolbars and extensions, so I use Firefox as my main browser. Getting my hundreds of bookmarks from one computer to another was a hassle until I found. Just install the add-on, create a username and password and it will upload all your bookmarks to Foxmarks.

Do the same on other computers and all your bookmarks will be synchronized automatically. Del.icio.us Bookmarks Toolbar If you don’t want to synchronize bookmarks, and need access to them from any computer, install the extension. It replaces your Firefox bookmarks sidebar with a Del.icio.us bookmark search. You can go to Del.icio.us from any computer, anywhere and login to search your bookmarks, and have the ability to sync between different Macs.

I personally use Del.icio.us Bookmarks toolbar because I occasionally work on a random PC in the office or when I’m out of town and need to look up a bookmark. Options for Everyone Whatever you decide, there are synchronization options available so you have your data and settings no matter what computer you are on. Do you have any tips for synchronizing your data?

If so, post them here! Confessions of a Multi-Mac Pack-Rat I also need to sync folders across Macs, as I use my MBP as my exclusive work machine, but I also will use the Mini at home for things too — depending on where I left my MBP in the house (yeah, this is a stretch), but the big advantage to the Mini is the rack of storage that I have shackled to it. Running Parallels on the MBP, I looked one day and found that my nice new 160GB drive had a whopping 40GB free, and I needed to off-load some of the less frequently used files to the Mini’s disk farm and the Maxtor NAS, but I also want to be able to grab things, work on them, and then put them back — almost a check-out/check-in situation.

Much to my surprise and delight I found that there is a free file and folder synchronization utility that is included in the (free!) Apple Developer Tools, in the utilities folder, called FileMerge. FileMerge is not a fully automated syncronization tool, but it did help me to make short(er) work of sorting out wonky folders that existed on two machines. I mounted a folder over the network, and then used FileMerge to diff the folders, created a new “synchronized” folder, archived the old one, and then put the new master folder in place on both machines — or in many cases deleted it wholesale on the MBP, thus freeing up the gigabytes of space that I was taking up in more than one place (3 places simultaneously if you count the NAS backups — which adds a little comfort in terms of peace of mind, but it’s not very wise use of the available storage that I have). I also use.Mac synchronization and also sync my bluetooth enabled RAZR. I have found it to be invaluable in keeping sanity between my machines. The biggest bummer is that my wife, who has inherited my old PowerBook, cannot use.Mac sync because she has a mail-only account (an additional $10/year), and I will have to upgrade to the.Mac Family Pack ($180/year) to give her full sync capability.

However, we currently have 5 additional email-only accounts for my mother and kids, so we’re already paying $140 — the additional $40/year for sync and full.Mac features for the others, I think it’s worth it. I only wish that Apple would provide a monthly billing feature. The annual renewal is always a hard pill to swallow.

Syncplicity Makes Offline Syncing Possible by Apr 15, 2008 - 7:06 AM CST. We get all giddy over here at GigaOM when it comes to storage and backup products, so it’s worth noting that today a service called launches in public beta. What’s nice about the service is it offers both storage and backup as well as automatic syncing across PCs.

What makes it better than most is its ability to sync offline documents. Right now, the bridging feature that syncs your offline work when you get online is only available for Google Docs/Word files and Facebook photos. However, Leonard Chung, co-founder of the service, says more offline syncing options will come soon. So will a Mac product. Because my PC is wonky at the moment (hey, it’s four years old,) I didn’t get a chance to try out the software, but if you guys do, please leave us a note in the comments section with your thoughts. Initially the service is free, but Syncplicity plans to charge somewhere around $20 a month for unlimited storage and access. When compared to a backup service like, which charges $50 a year, that seems pricey, but it does offer the syncing, backup and offline access all in one package.

The company is using a combination of their own servers hosted by Rackspace and Amazon Web Services to support Syncplicity. More GigaOM backup and syncing reviews are here:. And for reviews from Web Worker Daily see here:. Tom in Raleigh Been playing with this for a week. The backround sync is slow (15 gb took 3 days, running in background and overnight (getting all the CPU cycles it can), but once up and running seemed stable and useful. Its interface and speed stomp x-drive, and it keeps a lot of stuff current. It’s pretty handy so far.

$20 a month is a bit steep until the user interface improves and uploads are quicker, but speed seems only to be a factor in dealing with the initial set up of a directory structure that is already mirrored on another machine (my office desktop, in my case). Your mileage will vary, of course.