July 13, 2006 Free Sharpcast Service Lets You Synchronize Your Photo Albums
By Walter S. Mossberg As more people acquire multiple computers and high-end cellphones, one of the biggest problems they face is synchronizing important files among all of these devices, and ensuring they have backup copies. Inside big corporations, these tasks often are handled by internal networks, which store files centrally and back up computers nightly. But consumers have had to resort to time-consuming and imperfect methods. These include emailing files to themselves, manually synchronizing their phones and computers, and manually copying files among their computers. Over the next year or so, I expect that one of the big trends in personal technology will be the introduction of services and products that make this job easier. Both Google and Microsoft are reportedly preparing new services that will back up all of a consumer's data to their servers. Apple already offers a service called .Mac, which, for $99 a year, gives consumers storage space on an Apple server, allows backups to that remote server and synchronizes selected data among multiple Macs. And Microsoft has recently acquired a small service called FolderShare, which I reviewed last year, that can synchronize and back up selected folders on any mix of Windows and Macintosh computers. Now, a small Silicon Valley start-up called Sharpcast is introducing an impressive, free service that synchronizes data among PCs, phones and a Web site at lightning speeds. I tested Sharpcast for several weeks, and found that it works really well. You can try it out at www.sharpcast.com. ... http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060713.html Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
