2008 sierpień | Technology

SugarSync Sweetens Online Syncing

In my ongoing efforts to keep up with the latest Mac backup tools, I’ve come across a number of services that promise to automatically synchronize some set of files from your Mac or PC with a server somewhere on the Internet, such that you can access those files from nearly any device that can run a Web browser. Among the many services in this category are SpiderOak, Dropbox, and of course MobileMe’s iDisk feature.

On the whole I’ve found these services interesting but not exciting - there’s always at least one “gotcha,” such as a missing key feature, significant bugs, an unreliable infrastructure, or so-so Mac software. (MobileMe, alas, has thus far been an offender in all the above categories.) However, one such service I’ve had my eye on for a while, SugarSync from Sharpcast, suddenly got much more interesting with the release of an iPhone client and a new online feature.

Introducing SugarSync — First, the basics. You pay for the SugarSync service based on the amount of online storage space you want - rates start at $24.99 per year for 10 GB and go up to $249.99 per year for a healthy 250 GB. Once you’ve signed up (a free trial is available), you download the free client software, which is available for Mac OS X and Windows; they also offer mobile versions for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and now iPhone.

The client software runs in the background and automatically synchronizes any folders you specify (such as your Desktop folder or Documents folder, space permitting) with the SugarSync servers. Assuming an active Internet connection, synchronization happens immediately when files in the designated folders change on any device - that makes it a genuine “push” application. You can see and download your synchronized files by logging in to the SugarSync Web site, and if you set up the software on more than one computer, you can use it to sync files between them. All files are encrypted and transferred using SSL connections.

So far, that may sound like a more-flexible, higher-security, cross-platform version of iDisk. But wait, there’s more!

Doing iDisk One Better — If you’ve paid close attention to the MobileMe news, you may know that the service is missing a feature that was demonstrated publicly and was even shown in Apple’s introductory video about MobileMe (though the video was later changed to remove any mention of this feature). What we were supposed to have seen was a button on the iDisk page of the MobileMe Web site that let you email someone a link to any file. So, instead of emailing a large attachment, you’d just put a file on your iDisk, click a button, and send someone a special, private URL at which they could download the file. That sounded great to me, but for whatever reason, that feature isn’t part of MobileMe - at least not
yet.

Well, with SugarSync you can do exactly this. For example, the other day I needed to send out copies of a number of my Take Control ebooks to a user group at which I’m going to be giving a presentation next week. The combined size would have exceeded what my mail server permits, and the files could easily have been rejected on the receiving end too. So I stuck them in one of my SugarSync folders, selected them in the SugarSync Manager window, clicked the Send Files button, typed in an email address, and that was that.

SugarSync on iPhone — All that is useful, but it gets even better with the iPhone app. With a couple of taps, you can see a list of the files in the designated sync folders on your Mac or PC, and if they’re in a format the iPhone understands (such as Microsoft Office, PDF, plain text, or most graphics formats) you can view the file on your iPhone. Not only that, but you can email someone a link to any of these files right from your phone - and here’s the cool part - even if the file isn’t actually on your phone.

So picture this. You’ve set up your Downloads folder to sync with SugarSync. On your way out the door to work, you click on a link to download a 300 MB file, knowing that it will take some time to show up on your computer. Then, while riding the train or walking down the street, you pull out your iPhone, tap a few buttons, and email a link to that file to a friend, who can download it immediately, without the file ever having to sync to your phone at all - no worries about bandwidth limits, slow uploads, or anything else. (Oh, and by the way, when you get to work, the file will also be waiting for you on your PC!)

The technology behind this is all very straightforward, but SugarSync’s excellent implementation is what makes it feel magical. I’m so used to syncing meaning literally copying entire things from one place to another (and it usually is exactly that), but the SugarSync iPhone app lets you do a sort of lightweight, virtual syncing that turns out to be much more practical in many situations.

Here’s another example. You have, say, 10 GB of files on your Mac synced with SugarSync, but far less than 10 GB of free space on your iPhone. And if you did have the space, you wouldn’t want to wait for all that stuff to transfer - even with a USB connection, it would take a very long time. Yet, curiously, when you look at your sync folder on your iPhone, all the files appear to be there, with changes appearing almost instantly even over a cellular connection. And, sure enough, if you try to view one of the files on your iPhone, there it is!

Well, I fib slightly. What I described can happen, and often does, with smaller files and a Wi-Fi connection. But in fact what SugarSync offers iPhone users is essentially on-demand sync. It shows you all your files, and as soon as you ask for one, it fetches it from the server, which in some cases can be so fast it appears that the file was already on your phone. SugarSync also deletes the file when it’s no longer needed, so you can get approximately the effect of having many gigabytes of files available on your iPhone at any time without (most of) them actually being there.

I’d like to mention two other interesting features of the SugarSync iPhone app. One, a seemingly small but very handy thing, is renaming: you can rename a synchronized file on your computer (and the SugarSync server) from your iPhone. I’ll give you an example of how I put this feature to use. The iPhone can display text files, but only if it knows they’re text files, which it determines by looking at the extension. I had some documents on my Desktop that I created in BBEdit and didn’t bother giving an extension, and I wanted to read them on my iPhone. No problem: I just added a “.txt” extension, and a View File button instantly appeared in SugarSync, letting me see their contents.

The other interesting feature, which doesn’t appear in the desktop or Web versions of SugarSync, is a list of Recent Documents - which is to say, shortcuts to the most recently edited files in any of your designated sync folders. Unfortunately, files don’t disappear from this list when they’re deleted, and I had dozens of copies of some “recent” (but long since deleted) files on my iPhone. I eventually figured out how to clear them from the list, but it was an odd, awkward procedure: I had to log in to the SugarSync Web site, locate the previously trashed files in my Deleted Files folder, select them all, and click Permanently Delete. They did immediately disappear from my iPhone, but I think the Recent Documents feature should exclude
deleted files.

Versioning, Almost — Although I’m most excited about the SugarSync iPhone app, I also want to mention an important new feature that applies across the SugarSync line: versioning. Previously, SugarSync kept copies of synchronized files that you’d deleted, but now, in addition, it keeps up to five older versions of every file. This is very good, because it officially promotes SugarSync from “just a sync program” to “an honest-to-goodness backup program” in my book - it now creates what I refer to as additive incremental archives.

However, my enthusiasm for this new feature is tempered by the fact that it stores only the last five versions; because SugarSync syncs so efficiently, those five versions of an important file you’re working on could easily turn out to be all from the last 10 minutes! If you could store more versions, or if you could restrict SugarSync to keeping a maximum of one older version per hour (or even per day), I think that would provide more realistic and practical protection. As it is, it can’t do the one thing I want to be able to do with backups of files I’m actively working on, which is to restore an arbitrary version from hours or days ago, even if the file has been saved dozens or hundreds of times in between. So, it’s no Time
Machine, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.

Final Thoughts — I recently read a rumor to the effect that Apple is planning an iDisk feature for the iPhone and iPod touch in the next month or two. Obviously, I have no idea if the rumor is true, or what such a feature would look like if it did exist. But I will say that if Apple wants to outdo SugarSync in cleverness and convenience, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Meanwhile, even if you don’t have an iPhone or iPod touch, SugarSync is well worth trying out. Sharpcast offers a 45-day free trial of the service with a 10 GB limit, which should be more than adequate to get a feel for what it can do. SugarSync 1.1.10 for Mac is a 19.9 MB download.

Copyright © 2008 Joe Kissell. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you’re reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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Searching for the iPhone 3G Case of My Dreams

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For nearly as long as I’ve owned cell phones, I’ve carried them in my pocket, sans case, and I figured that when I got my spiffy new iPhone 3G, I’d probably do the same thing. The new phone would be slimmer than my old one, making it more pocketable, and I’d never had any particular problems with scratches or other damage (as long as I remembered not to put coins, keys, or other hard objects in the same pocket as the phone).

However, as soon as I began using my new iPhone, I realized that the glossy plastic case provides very little grip. If my hands are at all sweaty, the device feels worryingly slick. I found myself feeling anxious about pulling the phone out of my pocket on a crowded subway platform or sidewalk, because it would be so easy to drop. And, of course, even if the phone kept working thereafter, its beautiful shiny surface would be marred.

In the first couple of weeks after the iPhone 3G’s launch, only a few case options were available (and of those, still fewer were available here in France), and though I fully expect that number to climb into the triple digits before long, I had to work with what I could find. My major desire was for something to provide traction, and secondarily, to cushion the phone slightly in the event that it did fall. I won’t wear a cell phone clipped to my belt or otherwise visible on my person, and I don’t like having to perform an additional procedure of opening a case or removing a phone before I can use it. So holsters, sleeves, wallets, and other such designs were out - I was looking for a simple, slim case with a decent texture.

PixelSkin — The first case I tried was the PixelSkin from Speck Products. This is a rubbery one-piece case that slips onto the phone easily and allows ready access to the controls, ports, and camera lens. (The case feels like it’s made of silicone, but the manufacturer doesn’t say what the material is.) Because of the case’s texture and chunky surface, my anxiety about dropping the phone magically went away - an immediate plus. I also appreciated that it came in purple, my favorite color (as well as five other colors), and putting the case on the phone was as easy as could be.

After using the PixelSkin for about a week, though, I realized that my criteria for choosing a case had left out a few important facts. For one thing, I hadn’t considered the ease of getting the phone into and out of my pocket. As fantastic as the PixelSkin was at being “grippy,” that also meant that I couldn’t get it out of my pocket in a hurry without turning the pocket inside-out. So for me, a texture that didn’t adhere quite so well to its surroundings would have been a better choice.

Also, although the PixelSkin was plenty thick and cushiony (a good thing safety-wise), that made my slim new phone about as thick as my old one had been, a minus in my book. In addition, the case’s raised lip around the screen, which might have protected it if the phone fell, sometimes interfered with tapping or dragging right near the screen’s edge. And finally, I prefer to use a dock when syncing and charging my iPhone, and the PixelSkin’s case had to be removed every time I docked the phone.

Elan Form — So my revised selection criteria included thinness, a less-tacky surface, better access to screen edges, and dockability. That turns out to be a rather tall order for an iPhone case, but I found one particularly promising candidate: the Griffin Elan Form. It’s a thin, two-piece polycarbonate shell covered with leather. (It comes in pink with brown trim, and in black.) The large, top piece slides on the phone and stays there; a smaller bottom piece pops off to enable the phone to dock. Griffin also includes a screen shield made of heavy transparent plastic.

It took a bit of oomph to get the case on the phone, as the fit is quite snug. The first few times I removed the bottom piece to dock the phone took a bit of finessing too; but now it stays on nicely when I want it to be on, yet comes off without a struggle.

The textured leather provides a nice solid grip on the phone without the stickiness or bulk of the PixelSkin; it also slips into and out of my pocket easily. Because the lip around the screen is much smaller, access to the edges of the screen is no problem. And, of course, I can now dock the phone without removing the entire case, though I do have to slip off the bottom piece, which could then potentially be lost. I’m not sure it’s a huge improvement to remove only part of the case rather than the whole thing to dock the phone, but it seems somewhat easier to me. One small complaint: after a few weeks of use, the leather began pulling away from the plastic shell in one corner. I’m sure I could glue it back into place, but I shouldn’t
have to be making repairs, however minor, on something I just bought.

Using the Elan Form made me realize there was yet another deficiency in my selection criteria: I hadn’t taken the screen into account.

I wasn’t especially worried about scratching the glass screen, but all the same, I figured it couldn’t hurt to pop in the Elan Form’s screen shield. Unfortunately, this piece of plastic is a real blemish on the case’s overall design. Thankfully, the shield doesn’t adversely affect the screen’s touch sensitivity. But it’s a thick piece of plastic that’s not perfectly rigid and as such, it doesn’t make complete contact with the entire screen. Even if you scrupulously avoid moisture or grease on the screen or the cover, the parts of the shield that come in contact with the screen will have a blotchy, amoeba-like appearance, which is both unsightly and distracting.

Crystal Film — A number of companies make flexible, stick-on screen protectors for the iPhone, and having read a review of the Elan Form that mentioned the screen-shield problem, I preemptively purchased a pack of Power Support’s Crystal Film for the iPhone 3G. Each package contains two removable screen protectors that (in theory, at least) adhere perfectly to the glass’s surface. (The company also makes a version called Anti-Glare Film, which is supposed to reduce the appearance of fingerprints due to its matte finish, though some users have complained
that the finish also gives the display a grainy appearance. I haven’t seen or tried that version.)

Years ago when I had a Palm, I bought screen protectors, and I remembered how tricky it was to apply them without getting any air bubbles or dust particles between the protector and the screen. So I took extraordinary precautions to work in as dust-free an environment as I could and to clean the phone thoroughly. Then I applied and removed the adhesive sheet Power Support includes for last-second dust removal and applied the screen protector as carefully as I could.

On the plus side: I was able to apply the film with no dust or bubbles. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until it was too late that it was very slightly crooked; the alignment turned out to be much more of a challenge than anything else. More irritating, though, was the fact that even though this Crystal Skin model was expressly designed for the iPhone 3G, it doesn’t quite cover the screen - there’s a gap of about 1 mm all the way around. And because the Elan Form comes just to the edge of the screen in the front (a good thing), it leaves the edges of the Crystal Film exposed, so I’m constantly reminded that it’s there (and that I didn’t get it on perfectly straight).

Apart from that, the Crystal Film works as promised. It feels and acts just like the original glass, and collects grease and fingerprints with equal ease. That’s all fine with me, though, because the main thing is that I don’t worry about minor scratches or dings on the screen and the display isn’t impaired in any way.

Inching Toward Perfection — Now that I’ve gone through two cases and a screen protector, I’ve finally come to understand what I actually want in an iPhone case, though finding the model that suits me perfectly will undoubtedly require more trial and error. I want something that will interfere as little as possible with my normal use of the phone - pocketing it, docking it, and interacting with it - while providing a good grip and protection against scratches and other minor damage, preferably for the whole phone.

With that in mind, there are two other products I’m interested in trying:

ZAGG invisibleSHIELD: It’s like a stick-on screen protector, but the two pieces wrap around the entire phone. It claims to improve the grip, though I wonder how well it will stay on, and whether I’d be nervous that it provides essentially no impact protection.
Speck Products’ SeeThru: These cases are similar in design to the Elan Form, including the slip-off bottom piece for docking, but are transparent (in your choice of colors - again, happily, purple is an option). Unlike other hard plastic cases with docking support (such as the Incase Slider Case and the Contour Flick), these have non-slip strips on the side. And, as a bonus, the removable bottom section doubles as a stand that holds your iPhone in landscape orientation.

I’m sure there are other suitable options too, or will be in the near future. Of course, I’d prefer not to spend as much money on cases as on my calling plan, so the case of my dreams better come along soon!

Copyright © 2008 Joe Kissell. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you’re reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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BBEdit 9.0 Adds Something for Everyone

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Bare Bones Software’s BBEdit, one of the longest-standing applications in the Macintosh world, has received a major update to version 9.0, adding a number of features that will likely enhance the productivity of anyone who uses the text editor or currently relies on a less-capable program. Whether you need a Web authoring tool, a programmer’s editor, a utility for manipulating massive text files, a writing tool that focuses purely on text, or all of the above at different times, BBEdit 9.0 has new features that will make your life easier. Oh, and yes, if you look hard enough, it has ponies too.

Find Modelessly — Perhaps the most significant changes to BBEdit 9.0 apply to its much-admired searching capabilities. In this version, Bare Bones has separated the act of searching for text within a single file from searching for results across multiple files. A modeless, resizable Find window provides all the grep-capable searching power that BBEdit users have long appreciated. However, if you want to run a search across multiple files, you’ll instead rely on a new Multi-File Search window that’s also modeless and resizable. Multi-File Search can search through open documents, as well as the contents of disk browsers, recent folders, BBEdit projects, recent Xcode projects, and even saved Spotlight
searches. There’s also an option to colorize grep searches in the Find window, which should make complex grep patterns easier to parse.

After all these years, it’s great to see Bare Bones setting the old modal Find & Replace dialog aside (”Thank goodness!” exclaimed Tonya when I shared this news). But never fear, if you’re addicted to the old interface, or if you frequently want to switch from searching for text in a single file to searching for the same text in multiple files, an option brings back the old Find & Replace dialog.

Another related feature that has changed significantly, and for the better, is BBEdit’s Find Differences. In BBEdit 8.5, Bare Bones added the capability to display which characters within a line were different between two similar files. That was huge for us, since it enabled us to use BBEdit in conjunction with the Subversion version control system to work with TidBITS articles. Though code may have relatively short lines, a line of prose is a paragraph, and without knowing what within a paragraph has changed, knowing only that two paragraphs are not the same isn’t particularly helpful. In BBEdit 9.0, Bare Bones has enhanced the Find Differences feature such that it not only shows the changed lines, and the changed characters within
each line, it also lets you see and replace individual spans of differing characters within each changed line.

Browse and Edit — BBEdit has long had File Group documents that enabled you to bring together files and folders from disparate parts of your hard disk, but file groups were really just an alternative view of files that already existed in the Finder; you could open, rename, and delete them, but not much more. Similarly, the program has long featured Disk Browser windows that showed a view of files and folders on the hard disk; within a disk browser you could see, but not modify, the actual content of files. In BBEdit 9.0 both file groups, renamed Projects, and disk browsers now work the way they should in providing not just opening and previewing capabilities, but full editing. Whenever you click a file in
the left sidebar of a project or disk browser window, the file opens in the main window, fully editable. Double-click a file and it opens in its own window, just as in previous versions.

For programmers dealing with hundreds or thousands of files, BBEdit’s file groups and disk browser windows were useful before, and they’re far more useful now. For those for whom the previous features weren’t helpful previously, they very well may be now - I plan to give them a try, whereas I’d never seen the benefit before.

Alas, BBEdit’s FTP/SFTP Browser does not yet share this editable pane feature, which would be huge for Web developers. It would also be great to see additional version control interface within disk browsers, identifying files that had been changed in the repository but not yet updated, or that had local changes not yet committed back to the repository.

Because it’s possible to have a file open in a project window, in a disk browser, and in an independent window, BBEdit 9.0 also lets you change a file in any window and have the changes reflected immediately in all the others. I can’t quite imagine why you’d want to open multiple views to a particular file intentionally, but the alternative - keeping track of which window contained which changes to the same file - would undoubtedly cause fits of uncontrolled gibbering.

More Features — Though editable panes in Project and Disk Browser windows and the modeless Find interface are the marquee features of BBEdit 9.0, there are plenty of other additions. A Scratchpad window provides a constantly saved place to dump bits of text for editing or copying into other documents. If you use BBEdit on multiple Macs, the program can now sync the contents of the ~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit folder to other Macs via MobileMe - handy for maintaining the same clippings, text factories, and other settings between computers. One clever technique - if you have to use BBEdit 9.0 on someone else’s Mac temporarily, you can simply copy the version of the BBEdit folder on your iDisk down to
the Mac to recreate your personal environment.

Also new is text completion, which enables you to type a character or two, press a key, and select the desired expansion from a pop-up (text completion can also kick in automatically after a delay in typing, but I found that a bit overwhelming in normal use). This is probably mostly helpful for programmers, since BBEdit provides language-specific expansions pulled from the current document, nearby documents, clippings, and other sources. BBEdit’s built-in language support is also reportedly improved, particularly for Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and Python.

For sysadmins, BBEdit can now read and write bzip-compressed files (.bz2) such as Leopard’s log files, much as it could already work with gzip-compressed files. And last, but by no means least for those of us who write for a living, BBEdit windows can now feature a constantly updated character, word, and line count; clicking it toggles between counting for the document and for the selected text.

Upgrade Details — Upgrades for registered customers of any previous commercial version of BBEdit cost $30. New copies of BBEdit 9.0 remain priced at $125, and the educational price remains at $49. The program is available immediately; there’s a fully functional 30-day trial version that’s a 15.4 MB download. It requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and is a universal binary.

Copyright © 2008 Adam C. Engst. TidBITS is copyright © 2008 TidBITS Publishing Inc. If you’re reading this article on a Web site other than TidBITS.com, please let us know, because if it was republished without attribution, by a commercial site, or in modified form, it violates our Creative Commons License.

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